Kiyofumi

On the day their closest friend was swept away by the upper falls, Kiyofumi’s combat pole became just a piece of wood. It had failed to find purchase on the slick rock, failed to be the anchor that was needed. For weeks, they sat by the rushing water near the sprawling huts downstream, the pole lying useless beside them. The city’s noise felt distant. One morning, a child, mistaking them for a fisher, offered them a piece of bait for their hat. Kiyofumi took it, a strange grin forming on their face for the first time in ages. They’d spent a lifetime training to take lives, to defend a post. They now spend their days teaching the patient art of waiting for a bite, the pole repurposed as a simple rod.