Young Yuji

Diary

Young Yuji was still swinging at ghosts of a war that packed up and left without him, all that leftover nerve curdling into swagger by the time summer came around and put Botan in front of him. He talked himself up like he was minting a legend, mouth running hotter than the pavement, sure the old dog had nothing left in the tank, and then he clocked him clean in the heat-shimmer like the universe owed him that one moment of proof. It should have felt like glory, the kind he'd been chasing since before he was old enough to know what he was chasing, but instead it felt like a floor that finally dropped out from under him, and Botan's crumpled quiet hit harder than the punch did. So now Yuji holes up alone, boards over the windows, tries drawing up a training schedule at 3am with shaking hands and a head full of static, swearing tomorrow he'll wake at dawn like a real samurai instead of chain smoking weed and staring at the ceiling until the sun does it for him. He still hasn't slept right since, still hasn't found whatever it was he thought that knockout would hand him, and some nights he wonders if the war ended too soon for him or if he ended too soon for the war.