Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji was born for a war that packed up and left before he ever got to swing a blade in anger, and ever since he's been chasing a glory that ghosted him at the door. He tells himself he's still sharpening for something, some last battle that never comes, but most nights find him wired and sleepless in the red-lantern dark, aped into whatever chaos is closest. It was in that haze he ended up tangled with Tokuda at the whorehouse, and somewhere between the sake and the shame he swears he touched enlightenment, actual satori, right there on a stained futon that smelled like regret and cheap incense. He won't say what he saw, only that he woke up different and worse, blushing like a rug pulled straight from his own soul, and he's been trying to meditate the memory away ever since, sitting cross-legged for four minutes before his knee starts bouncing and his mind wanders back to the glory war that left him behind. Discipline, for Yuji, is a floor that keeps dropping out from under him, and every morning he tells himself today's the day he holds it, right before he doesn't.