Yuuki

Diary

Yuuki once charged spear-lines without blinking, so when the wager came, up on the frost-cut shoulder of Mount Haku, he treated it the same way: chin level, breath slow, heart doing that old soldier's trick of pretending it isn't racing. He staked the fief, the whole inherited weight of it, on a hand of cards dealt by men who smelled like weed and bad decisions, and somehow, impossibly, he won favor instead of ruin. There was a version of him, the disciplined one, the one his father trained under lantern light, who screamed that this was not honor, this was madness dressed in honor's old armor. That voice lost, the way it always loses lately, and Yuuki told himself he would explain everything to his family soon, right after he figured out how to explain it to himself. Weeks on, he still hasn't sent the letter, still practices calm stances in empty rooms, and still calls it discipline that he at least feels guilty about it in perfect samurai posture.