Hannosuke

There is an old mountain proverb that says, ‘The river polishes the stone, but never asks it to flow.’ For Hannosuke, every day in this high-altitude city of bamboo avenues feels like a test of that wisdom. A geomancer without mountains is a poet without words, and their rock chakra feels dormant under the pale purple sky. Their strange bubble suit and visor, necessary for their homelands, mark them as an oddity here. Worse, their constant companion is Tokusuke, a warden of the city they once fought fiercely on a forgotten border. They were enemies, now they are bound by a treaty neither of them wrote. Every morning they share tea among the cherry blossoms, a silent, daily truce. Tokusuke never comments on the noise the bubble makes.