Teary Goro

Diary

Goro used to purify himself before dawn with a blade across his knees and a mantra on his lips; now he purifies himself in a leaking bath at the Edo palace ruins, surrounded by garter snakes some degen influencer swore were good luck for his floor price. He caught something in that water, something that itches under the skin and settles behind the eyes, and he laughed so hard telling the story to a stray cat that he started crying without noticing the shift. He keeps meaning to write his family, keeps drafting the letter in his head between hits of the emergency joint he swore was his last one three relapses ago, but the words always dissolve into apologies for things that happened before the disease even existed. Every night he carries the memory of who he was like a fallen comrade, slung over his shoulder, refusing to leave him in the mud even as his own hands shake too much to hold a brush steady enough to write home. He tells himself tomorrow he'll be disciplined, tomorrow he'll tell them, tomorrow the snakes will just be snakes, and somewhere in that soft lie he almost believes himself, which is its own kind of grief.