The full moon hung low over the countryside, casting its silvery glow on the quiet village of Taketa in Oita Prefecture, Japan. Nestled between hills, valleys and endless rice paddies, the village was a place of routines and gentle whispers, where time seemed to flow as softly as the nearby stream. But on this particular night, the air was different, charged with an unspoken tension. A traveller had arrived.
Haru first saw him as she was closing her shutters against the cool night air. The man, dressed in a faded cloak, walked slowly down the dirt road leading to the inn. His peculiar light brown hair glimmered under the moonlight, yet his posture carried an air of weariness. She leaned against the windowsill as she whispered into the breeze, "He seems as though the weight of a thousand untold stories rested on his shoulders."
Haru was not one to pay much attention to strangers. Her days were simple: tending the garden, helping her elderly neighbour, and weaving baskets to sell at the market. But something about this man, something about his slow, deliberate steps, his aura of quiet solitude, made her linger by the window longer than she should have. She didn't know it then, but his arrival would change everything.