Sakika

Sakika offers tea with the steady hands of a poet, yet their face is always painted for a war that isn't happening. In the peaceful, bamboo-lined avenues of The Great Panda City, this contrast makes others uneasy. Their master, Sanari, understands. They watch Sakika practice sword forms by the river, each movement precise, but their shoulders are tight, their eyes scanning the cherry trees for imagined threats. Sanari once told them that the first lesson of the blade is seeing the world as it is, not as it might be. But Sakika cannot forget the day they were too slow, too trusting. So they remain a trainee, wearing a relaxed tee and the expression of a cornered animal, convinced that peace is just a lull between ambushes.