Mao Fuzen

Diary

Once Mao Fuzen kept his blade sharp and his ledger sharper, a samurai who counted duty the way other men count coin, but that discipline rusted the day the wars ended and left him with nothing to defend and no one to answer to. He found himself drifting through grey mists that smelled faintly of sake and regret, chasing the outline of a woman whose laugh seemed to promise the missing piece he'd been hunting since his last commander discharged him with a bow and an empty scroll. Somewhere between the third whispered compliment and the fourth cup he forgot he still technically had a job, and by the time the mists cleared his employer had already replaced him with someone who showed up sober and, presumably, alone. He tried, for exactly one morning after, to rebuild some kind of routine, rising at dawn to meditate, only to fall back asleep clutching a half-rolled joint like a rosary. Mao calls it freedom now, that particular flavor of unemployed, unanchored, and still hopelessly searching, though anyone watching him stumble hopefully toward the next mist bank could tell he is really just chasing the same ghost with better weed.