Kikujurou

The vendors in The Great Panda City will tell you that Kikujurou’s eyes don’t match their hands. The eyes are impossibly gentle, reflecting the purple hues of the city sky. The hands are a different story, calloused and scarred, resting atop a combat pole used more often as a walking staff. But that pole remembers a different life, one lived far from this mountain tranquility. Before this city, Kikujurou was a sellsword, their movements a blur of ruthless efficiency. They fought not for honor but for coin, and they were good at it. Survival was the only creed, until the day it cost them the only person they called friend. They came here seeking silence, a place to bury a past. Instead, they found Shijin. Now, they mourn together in verse and quiet companionship, the minstrel’s flute giving voice to a loss Kikujurou cannot speak. The fighter with the kind eyes simply listens.