Toxic Azuma

Diary

Toxic Azuma was never the sunrise anyone wanted to see, he was the reaction that came hours later, slow and rotten and inevitable, and the night at the gambling house proved it in the worst possible way. He soiled his kimono right there at the table, mid bluff, the dice still spinning, the room going quiet in that special way rooms go quiet when a legend is being born and it smells terrible. By any sane accounting this should have ended him, should have sent him home in shame to meditate on discipline like the old sensei once demanded, but instead something curdled inside him and came out as confidence, dark and bubbling, a toxin mistaking itself for courage. He kept playing that night, reeking, grinning, aped into every pot like the stain was a lucky charm, and somehow the floor never called and the chips kept coming his way. He carries tremendous shame over it still, swears every morning he'll never touch the tables or the bottle again, and every evening finds him back in that same seat, poison recirculating, discipline rugged once more by the very smell of his own comeback.