Yuji The Wise

Diary

Yuji The Wise once kept meticulous ledgers of his katas, annotating each stance with the precision of a monk illuminating scripture, but that was a different man in a different lifetime before the wars ended and left him with nothing to discipline but his liver. He tells it now the way he tells everything, as if narrating his own downfall to some invisible audience of skeptical historians, describing the izakaya near Shinjuku as a place so filthy the tatami mats seemed to flinch when he sat down beside Haru, who was already three cups deep into a monologue about destiny and floor prices. Somewhere between Haru's fourth toast and the arrival of a needle Yuji does not remember requesting, the old scholar's famous restraint evaporated, and he watched his own arm get inked with a design he would later describe, generously, as abstract. He insists he felt no pain, only a strange thrill, the same thrill he imagines his ancestors felt charging into battle, though he suspects they did not wake up the next morning to find a poorly rendered dragon where his sword-training scars used to be. Now he chronicles the whole affair with scholarly detachment, footnoting his own humiliation, because a man who has lost his nerve can still, apparently, keep excellent notes on the way he lost it.