The Old Dragon

Diary

At the Hidden Teahouse the Old Dragon sat as he always sat, robeless and unbothered, older than the tatami and twice as unimpressed by it, when his eye drifted to Goro hunched in the corner over some blinking terminal. Centuries of stillness taught him patience, but curiosity is its own koan, and so he leaned in, naked as truth, and saw the coins glowing on the screen, a little portfolio of ruin rendered in candlesticks. He recognized the shape of it instantly, the same shape as every fallen samurai's descent, discipline traded for dopamine, the katana traded for a keyboard. The Old Dragon has watched empires rug themselves for a thousand years and felt nothing, yet watching Goro stare at his bags with the face of a man who just realized the floor was never real, he has never been more miserable, and for once even he considers, briefly, picking up his old blade instead of his tea. He does not. He simply exhales, ancient and amused, because even gods of discipline lose to the charts sometimes, and there is a strange grace in admitting the ronin's war never truly ends, it just moves markets.