Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji was born for a war that folded up and vanished before he ever got to swing his blade in earnest, so now he chases the ghost of glory into places it never actually went, like an empty dojo yard at sunset with nobody watching but the crows. He crossed steel there with a rival nobody remembers, some duel half sanctioned, half dare, and walked away tainted in a way no amount of shrine-washing has fixed, the kind of stain that sits under the fingernails and in the reflection. His sponsors say the loss humbled him, and maybe it did, because now he trains at 3am on no sleep, mumbling apologies to a sensei who's long dead, promising discipline he keeps trading for another can of chuhai and another highlight reel nobody clips. He still tells himself the next sunset duel will be the one that gets the war back, the one that makes the crows finally shut up, even though everyone in the Dojo can see the floor under him has already been rugged out from beneath his feet years ago. Young Yuji fights like a kid trying to catch a train that left the station before he was even born, humble now only because the world keeps proving he never had a shot at the glory he still can't stop chasing.