Drooling Azuma

Diary

Once Azuma's appetite was a weapon, honed on battlefield rations and the discipline of a warrior who ate to survive, not to conquer buffets whole. Now that same hunger just roars in every direction at once, and it was that roar that got him fired, showing up to work reeking of the Degen Dojo's back room where he'd been training with scumbags who called leverage a leg day and margin calls cardio. He aped his severance into a token some rat-eyed ronin swore was the next shogunate, watched it get rugged by lunch, and howled at the ceiling like a man who'd lost a duel he never should have entered. Azuma insists he's recovering, slowly, gloriously, one ramen bowl and one terrible trade at a time, chasing the old samurai's calm the way a starving man chases a mirage of feast. Discipline waits for him somewhere behind the floor charts, arms crossed, tapping its foot, and Azuma keeps swearing tomorrow's the day he finally turns around and walks toward it instead of the noodle cart.