Fukutarou

Fukutarou jabbed their carved cane into the stone plaza of Waterfall City, trying to look like they belonged. The motion was pure instinct—a reflex honed in back-alley duels where hesitation meant death. They knew how to read a feint, how to parry a blade, how to break a line. They did not, however, know how to haggle with a frog merchant over the price of river eels. Monku had called it “an exercise in patience” when they sent Fukutarou here, replacing their sword with simple wood. “True strength is not always in the striking,” the mentor had said. They weren't scoffing now. Every day is a battle against their own defiant nature, a quiet struggle to learn the one art they’d never practiced: stillness.