Fumihiko

The air down here always smells of damp stone and river fish. That’s how the boat hands first noticed Fumihiko—not by the strange meow cap or the mask, but by the way they seemed utterly unaffected by the scent or the constant roar of the falls. One rope-coiler swears they’re an imperial agent, that the goofy cap is a calculated disguise meant to make you underestimate them. A merchant who sells bait claims they’re a disgraced bodyguard, pointing to the time they saw Fumihiko mend a fishing net with a speed and precision that didn't belong to any angler. But then the children say Fumihiko just sits by the plaza’s giant fish statue for hours, still as the stone, as if waiting for someone who never arrived.