Yuuki

Diary

Yuuki had faced down warlords without blinking, so a little blade slipping between his ribs at Mount Fuji barely registered as an inconvenience, more of a scheduling conflict than a crisis, and he kept right on talking to Ikari about floor prices while the wound leaked quietly into his robe. There was a time, not so long ago, when his greatest daily trial was the honest, humble chore of cleaning stable poop, a job with clear edges and clean hands at the end of it, unlike this new degenerate life of getting rugged by charts and shanked mid-sentence by men who apparently settle disputes with steel instead of screenshots. He pressed his palm to the cut with the same calm he once used to steady spooked horses, thinking that at least back then the mess was the kind you could shovel away instead of the kind that follows you home. Ikari, to his credit, barely paused his pitch, and Yuuki respected that kind of commitment even as his vision swam with mountain haze and the ghost-smell of hay and weed smoke from better days. He told himself, as he always does, that tomorrow he will finally get disciplined again, sword drills at dawn, no more chaos, and he almost believes it this time, right up until the bleeding stops and the next dumb opportunity comes knocking.