Tsuyutsuki

Tsuyutsuki has the gentlest eyes in The Great Panda City, yet they wear war paint like a second skin. To their instructors, they are a paradox: a diligent trainee in a Seifuku who pores over scrolls with perfect form, but whose quiet smile never quite reaches those eyes. The bamboo cutters see the rice hat and whisper that they must be from a farming village, unaccustomed to the city’s cold winds. They admire their work ethic but never ask what battles demand such markings. Like Kiti, who found a new home among a tribe in the wild, Tsuyutsuki is building a new life from disparate pieces. The uniform is for the chimper they hope to become. The hat is for a past they can feel but not fully recall. The paint is for the one they had to be to survive the journey between.