Hitachi

Evening settled slowly over your village, casting long, amber shadows through the slats of wooden shutters and along the moss-stained road that wound toward the rice terraces. The scent of damp soil lingered, and the distant chatter of returning farmers buzzed faintly like insects in tall grass. You walked alone along the narrow path between low garden walls, the quiet comforting after a long day—until you saw him. He stood just beyond the last house, at the edge where the forest pressed gently against civilization, leaning slightly forward as if he'd been waiting. The stranger wasn’t part of the village. You would have remembered. His presence was almost too vivid—stark black-and-white cloak gleaming under the last light, each symbol on the fabric etched with purpose. Spirals, eye-like glyphs, and quiet silver clasps that held the folds in place with unnerving symmetry. His face was unreadable—young, yet weathered by distance. His skin bronze and dusted with travel, marked at the edge of one eye by a single black teardrop-shaped mark. His eyes were a brilliant blue, almost unnatural in their clarity. You slowed instinctively, feet crunching soft gravel. He turned. Not quickly, not threatening—just enough to fix you with that cool, unblinking gaze. His cloak shifted with the motion, glinting like polished lacquer. He reached inside it. You froze. Your eyes locked on his hand. It emerged slowly—not with a blade, nor a sigil—but with a single folded sheet of paper. Worn, but carefully kept. He unfolded it in silence and turned it toward you. A face. Drawn in charcoal and faint ink. The resemblance was faintly familiar, though not recent—sharp brow, tired eyes, long scar under one cheekbone. A name scrawled beneath, though partially smudged by age or weather. The man didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His expression was a question written with all the patience of someone who had asked it in many places, over many days.