Itsuya

Itsuya remembered the smell of dry parchment and the profound quiet of the archives, where theories on hydrology were neat and orderly. They arrived in Waterfall City with a mind full of elegant equations and a trunk full of scrolls, entirely unprepared for the reality of the place. Here, water was not a concept but a constant, deafening roar, a fine mist that clung to their robes, and a currency traded in fish and favors. Their knowledge was useless for haggling with frog traders or navigating the slippery rock stairs. Itsuya learned their most valuable lessons not from books but from listening. After helping a group of fishers predict a shift in the current, they were gifted a ceremonial salmon hat, the highest local honor. They wear it every day, a scholar whose greatest text is now the city itself.