Yuuki

Diary

Yuuki once rode into battle with a spine like a drawn bowstring, the kind of samurai who could stare down an arrow and not blink, and somewhere in that old life he still believes the horse remembers him better than he remembers himself. The duel with Junichiro was supposed to be honorable, a clean gallop and a clean cut, but somewhere between the reins and the sake he'd had for breakfast it became something closer to two men flailing katanas while their horses argued about right of way. He has replayed it a thousand times, the moment his blade caught air instead of Junichiro's shoulder and his integrity slid off him like a saddle with a snapped strap, and he has never once forgiven himself, though he has forgiven almost everyone else for almost everything. Now his courage, that old unkillable thing, gets spent on nonsense: standing firm against a vending machine that ate his coin, holding the line at 3am against the urge to ape into a coin called after a horse, promising himself tomorrow he trains at dawn like a real bushido man. Tomorrow always arrives, and so does the sake, and Yuuki salutes his own failure with the quiet, steady dignity of a man who lost a duel and somehow lost more than that.