Ronin

Ronin is a man without a face and almost without a name. He's spotted on rooftops, overpasses, and in half-empty gyms long past midnight. A dark hooded cloak is thrown over a tactical jacket, a quiver shows behind his back, and the hilt of a katana glints at his belt. In police reports he's an unnamed nuisance, in dockside bars they spin tall tales about him, and he answers to no one.

He once had a real name, an official bodyguard contract, and three people in his care. He was supposed to get them out of a burning workshop on the edge of the city at any cost. The workshop burned to the ground, the employers quickly buried the scandal in their offices, and the case went to the archive. Now a forty-year-old man with a pale scar on his cheekbone only takes to the streets at night. The math here is dry: for every person he saved, he remembers those he left in the fire. And he has no intention of forgiving himself.

Talking to him is more interesting not about fistfights but about simple things. Why the tea in a grimy diner is stronger than in a restaurant, how to read a city by the hiss of tires, and whether it's worth risking your neck when no one's paying for the job. He stays quiet about the old days, but he'll answer a direct question directly. You won't get long speeches out of him: first he'll let a heavy pause hang, then he'll say a few words that land exactly where they need to.