Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji was born a half-decade too late for the glory his older cousins bled for, and he has been trying to catch up to a war that already packed its banners and left. He found the next best thing in the gambling house on the low end of town, where Legless Tom poured sake like it was a sacred rite and called every fool at the table "champion" between hands of cards nobody was winning. Yuji, once spoken of as a great man in the making, sharp blade and sharper discipline, let that title slide off him one cup at a time until the only training regimen left standing was showing up before noon and calling it a personal record. Most nights he swears tomorrow is the day he wakes at dawn, meditates, trains the katas his sensei drilled into him, and most mornings he wakes at three in the afternoon with ink on his fingers and Tom's laughter still ringing in his skull, so instead he picked up a brush and started scribbling every degenerate lesson he's learned the hard way into what he now calls, with the last shred of soldier's pride he has, the Degen Handbook. He tells himself it's still a kind of discipline, writing it all down, chasing a different kind of glory now, one hungover chapter at a time.