Toxic Azuma

Diary

Toxic Azuma once believed a shrine visit at Fushimi would be simple penance, a quiet bow to the thousand vermillion gates and back to the mat, but the elders had other plans, and their spit found him with the accuracy of monks who had clearly been perfecting that jutsu for decades. In that moment, dripping and humiliated among the torii, something clicked in his corroded little heart: he was not meant to be respected, he was meant to be reacted to, slow and inevitable like poison seeping through a rice paper wall. Now he trains at dawn with the same discipline he swore off years ago, attempting sober katas before caving to a lukewarm can of chuhai by breakfast, insisting each time that this is simply how legends marinate. He tells anyone who will listen that he is rebuilding his reputation one degenerate rep at a time, though the elders of Fushimi still whisper that some men are just born to be spat on. Toxic Azuma does not disagree, he only smiles that slow, corrosive smile, content to be the delayed reaction the world never saw coming and the discipline he keeps failing to reclaim.