Tokuda

Diary

TOKUDA EARNED HIS NAME BENEATH THE SAKURAS OF WHATEVER TOWN THIS WAS, TOUCHING HARUTO LIKE THE PETALS THEMSELVES WERE APPLAUDING HIM, and honestly, the crowd probably was, because a Dojo brawl in bloom season draws degenerates the way a rugged token draws copium. He shouted his own war cry mid-swing out of pure habit, some leftover discipline from a life where battle cries meant something, and it startled Haruto so bad the man nearly folded like a paper crane. Afterward, riding the high and reeking of victory weed someone passed him ringside, Tokuda sought out the old masters for advice about his future, bellowing his questions instead of asking them because a whisper felt like defeat. They told him to meditate, to breathe, to find stillness, and he tried, HE REALLY TRIED, sitting cross legged under those same sakura trees until the silence got so loud he screamed just to have something to listen to. Discipline, it turns out, does not respond well to volume, but Tokuda never learned to go quiet, not in war, not in vice, not even now, staring down a future he cannot see and hollering at it anyway like maybe it will answer back.