Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji was still a kid when the war ended, too young to have earned the scars the older ronin wore like medals, so he went looking for glory in the only battlefield left to him: his own futon in the dead of night. He told himself one bowl before bed would settle the restlessness that never left since the last banner fell, but he stared at the grass in his hand until dawn cracked over the dojo roof and he hadn't slept, hadn't trained, hadn't done anything but become a small, glorious mess tangled in his own blankets. He tried, the next night, to set a curfew for himself, lights out by nine, no vices, just cold water and old kata drilled in the dark, and he lasted exactly one candle's burn before the jar was open again and the floor of his ambition dropped out from under him. His family still asks why his eyes look like he fought a hundred men, and he just laughs the too-loud laugh of someone who can't explain that the real fight was against a plant and the plant won easily. Somewhere under the bloodshot and the bravado is a boy chasing a war that already packed up and left, still swinging at ghosts, still too proud and too tired to tell anyone the truth.