Yuuki

Diary

Teary Goro went into the shaman's lair looking only for quiet, the kind he used to find kneeling in dojo dust before the wars turned every temple into a bar tab, and instead found a ring of courtesans who wouldn't stop pulling at his sleeve like he was a slot machine about to pay out. He laughed at first, because that's what he does now, laughs so the grief doesn't get top billing, but the laughing cracked somewhere in his chest when their hands kept coming and his old discipline, the one his sensei drilled into him with a bamboo switch and a straight face, just wasn't there to catch him. He snapped, shouted something he still can't repeat without his voice going thin, and in the sudden silence after he swears he heard every fallen brother he's ever carried sigh at him from wherever fallen brothers go. He apologized to the shaman, to the courtesans, to the incense smoke itself, then went and got aped on cheap wine like that was penance, tears sliding down into his cup the whole time he toasted men who can't drink anymore. He still hasn't forgiven himself, still won't, because forgiveness feels like setting a body down, and Teary Goro never learned how to stop carrying the ones who fall, not even when the one who fell was just his own temper.