Rugemu

The Ghost of the Grand Kitchens is what the palace dishwashers called them. Rugemu was formally exiled from service for crimes against imperial cuisine—specifically, a radish and sweet plum combination that nearly made a visiting dignitary weep. Cast out in a ragged jumper, they were supposed to disappear. Instead, Rugemu donned a forgotten festival mask and their favorite azure cap and started an illicit trade: smuggling warm, comforting food to the underpaid scribes and exhausted guards. Their disguise is terrible; the glasses fog up constantly. They once got lost and offered a warm rice ball to a high-ranking general in the middle of a war council. The general, too stunned to refuse, just nodded and ate it. Beneath the city’s blinding gold spires, Rugemu remains an outcast on paper, but a legend in the shadowed corridors.