Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji never slept much even before the wars ended, running hot on borrowed swagger and the kind of confidence that gets a boy killed twice, but the bamboo forest cracked him open anyway, all those stalks whispering like a thousand tiny snitches until he spilled every secret he'd been hoarding since he was twelve. He walked out lighter, degen-lighter, the way you feel after paperhanding a bag you knew was rugged from the jump, and for once the silence in his chest didn't ring like a war drum. These days he tells anyone who'll listen at 4am, half a joint deep, that honesty hit different than glory ever did, though he still can't shut his brain off long enough to actually rest on it. He swears tomorrow he starts meditating at dawn like the old masters, disciplined, still, samurai-still, and every tomorrow he's back in the bamboo at midnight instead, chasing that same electric hum he never got to finish chasing on the battlefield. Happier, sure, the kid says, grinning too wide for someone who hasn't blinked in two days, happier and still running.