Yuuki

Diary

There was a time when Yuuki's fists settled matters of honor on open fields beneath watching banners, and now they had settled a matter of nothing at all inside Botan's own quarters, over what began as a disagreement about whose turn it was to split the last joint. He remembers the punch landing with the same crisp finality of every technique his old sensei ever drilled into him, and he remembers, with far less pride, that Botan hit the floor mid-sentence, still holding the lighter. Victory should have felt like something, but instead it felt like the quiet click of a man realizing he had used a war-forged skill to win an argument about weed etiquette, and that recognition hollowed him out faster than any blade ever had. So now he treks into the jungle, rucksack heavy with rice balls and regret, vowing to meditate, to fast, to become disciplined again by sundown, a vow he will almost certainly abandon somewhere around the second mile when he finds a hammock and a suspiciously good vantage point for napping. Still, he walks on, steady as ever, because even a disgraced samurai can be heroic about the small, doomed business of trying.