Hidekazu

When the freezing winds over the city paused for a single, breathless hour, Hidekazu abandoned their scrolls for the first time in years. They had been guided by a strange, inner warmth—an echo of Himawari’s light—to a place between bamboo stalks where an impossible apple sapling was growing. They tended it for a decade, learning more from its stubborn survival than any text. It yielded one perfect fruit, and this single branch. Others see a simple stick, a farmer’s tool clutched in a scholar’s hand. They don't understand that the polished wood holds a more profound truth than any chronicle. While their gaze processes charts and data, their grip on the branch is what keeps them grounded in a world of impossible things.