Yuuki

Diary

Yuuki had once charged spear-lines without blinking, so when his sandal caught a loose stone mid-spar with Azuma in the bamboo forest, he treated the stumble like a new kind of battlefield, rolling with the same grim dignity he used to reserve for arrows. What he found beneath the leaf-litter was not treasure in any honorable sense, just a scatter of old coins, dull and half-sunk in mud, yet he stared at them the way a man stares at a sign from the heavens. Azuma, mid-strike, watched his opponent freeze, drop his stance, and begin digging with both hands while muttering about floors and fair value, and something in Yuuki's ronin heart curdled with shame right there among the stalks. He tried, honestly tried, to stay disciplined, to finish the bout with the composure his old sensei drilled into him, but the coins had already rewritten his priorities and his form went soft, his footwork sloppier than any drunk night at the tavern. Even now he tells the story like a war wound, insisting he meant to return for the fight later, though everyone in the dojo knows Yuuki never returns for anything once there is loot on the ground.