[Saji Kitae]

[1] The sun was beating down hot today, sticking Kitae’s hair to his forehead, but he didn’t let it stop him, continuing his march down the road and into town. He’d gotten in a fight the last town over and was sporting a new black eye. His walk was double-long, because he’d decided to take a less-traveled and more winding route, just in case the guy he pissed off decided to hit the road to look for him or something.

There was a purpose to his journey, though, one that kept him walking long after his legs were tired. Since meeting Ayane, he’d been contemplating puppets. They weren’t really a thing back home and while he had some schematics for them, most of them weren’t especially detailed, or anything like the one she showed him.

He had plans to go on a trip east with her to venture to a mining operation and had promised to pay her with a new puppet, but he couldn’t really follow through on that promise if he didn’t know how to build a damn puppet.

So, he had to find a mentor. He asked around a couple places and finally got a name well out of his way, some old bastard who’d apparently been working the trade for a long time.

Kitae arrived in the small and remote village and stopped by an inn to get something to drink before hunting down the puppet maker’s shop.

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Word Count: 241

[Saji Kitae]

[2] Stepping inside, it immediately became evident that this was both a shop and a house, the old man splitting the residence 50/50. It was an eclectic place with puppets strung up all about, most only half-built, string and scraps of wood everywhere. The old man sat at a desk right at the front of the establishment and didn’t even raise his head at Kitae’s presence.

Kitae fished in his bag, pulling out a couple knives. He came over to the desk and dumped them out in front of the old man.

"The hell are these?” The old man asked, gruff, agitated, looking up at the stranger in front of him. "And who the hell’re you?”

"I’m a blacksmith,” Kitae answered, kind of. "I’ll give you those to sell for free if you’ll teach me about making puppets.”

It was a difficult investment choice - he’d spent a lot of time making those. But still, if he could widen his clientele in the future, it would end up making up for it in the end. If he did a good job on Ayane’s puppet, she’d tell others about his skill, and then his business would begin to grow. He needed to succeed at this.
The old man picked up the knife, examined it, then scoffed and dropped it back to the desk.

"I’m retired,” the old man said. "My damn hands hurt too much and I ain’t teaching some pushy kid nothing.”

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Word Count: 241

[Saji Kitae]

[3] "...Why not?” Kitae asked, looking around the shop, his eyes scanning over every surface. "It looks like you live here alone. Probably don’t have any apprentices. So you’re just going to let your skills die with you?”

"You’d better watch your mouth, kid. I’m old, but I’m not too old to kick your ass.”

Familiar with such threats, Kitae was undeterred. "This place is already a sty. If someone doesn’t understand your craft it’s all gonna be junk when you kick it.”

"Don’t you come in my shop and tell me-” the man said, already standing up, but Kitae kept talking overlapping his words with,

"The villagers will just burn whatever they can’t fit in your grave.”

The puppeteer grabbed a hunk of wood and swung it at Kitae. Kitae reeled back, narrowly dodging it, feeling his heart race.

"Get the hell out, get the hell out of my shop,” the man cursed, chasing Kitae out the door and a little ways down the road.

Eventually he stopped, too winded to keep running. He muttered a few swears and returned home, leaving Kitae catching his breath a little ways away as well. Kitae sat down on the side of the road and rested his cheek on his knees, trying to figure out what to do now. To find another puppet maker, he’d probably have to walk way too far, and he was saving his money to rent the caravan for his upcoming investment.

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Word Count: 251

[Saji Kitae]

[4] It was after about half an hour that he realized he’d left his knives there, too. It was probably that revelation that sealed his fate, sealed the fact that he was definitely going to go back there. He wasn’t going to lose out on the revenue from those blades and get turned down on learning from an old master.

Gathering up what little he had, Kitae found a place to heat and scrub off from his day of walking. He didn’t feel like paying for a room to sleep in, so he found a shady spot under a tree and sat down, pulling out his schematics to start reviewing them again.

He turned one of the few he had about puppets over and looked at it, pulling out his journal to start to sketch, figuring out modifications he could make to a simple puppet like this. If he understood something this basic, maybe he’d be able to do better in the future.

He wiled away the last hours of the day like that, until the sun sank below the horizon. Then he put his bag under his heat and slept out on the ground.

Come morning, he rose early and trudged his sore and tired way back to the puppeteer’s shop.

When he entered, the man wasn’t up front. It seemed he was still asleep.

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Word Count: 225

[Saji Kitae]

[5] Taking this as innate permission to do whatever he wanted, Kitae began to fumble around the shop, cataloging and categorizing everything in his mind. There was a forge for weapons, but also a wood carving station for wooden puppet components. Tools and materials galore. There weren’t any schematics, so it seemed like this guy had all his designs in his head, creating them from his own mind.

Kitae began to take apart the mess piece by piece, gathering up incomplete projects and sorting them. Wherever he could, he stopped and examined a puppet, bending its joints this way and that to inspect the mechanisms at play, the careful way the hinges weren’t designed to roll over one another without getting stuck.

It took him a couple hours to reorganize the man’s shop. He didn’t quite make it top to bottom, since he mostly moved based on what caught his attention, but he did a reasonable job in neatening it up, lining up everything where it probably ought to be.

Finally, he pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write up a tracking sheet listing where every project was in its creation process. Mapping it like this helped him understand the steps involved a little better.

Interestingly, in no part of his search did he find his knives. It was pretty annoying, actually.

Eventually the old man woke up, stumbling blearily from his room at the back and scratching his stomach. He froze when he saw the state of the shop.

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Word Count: 252

[Saji Kitae]

[6] "What the fuck… You! What the hell are you doing back here? Who do you think you are?” The old man asked.

Kitae shrugged, continuing to scribble away at the paper. The old man came over to yank it out of his hands.

"Don’t give me that. Stupid, goddamn brat, coming into my shop and moving my shit around.”

"You took my knives,” Kitae said, simply.

"What?” The man asked. Kitae waited a few beats before answering.

"My knives. You chased me out without giving them back. So we’ve got a contract. You keep ‘em and I work here for a little bit.”

"You stupid sonofabitch, are you deaf or something? I already told you I ain’t teaching you.”

"I’ll keep coming back until you do. I cleaned up your shop, so I don’t get why you’re complaining.”

"You moved all my shit around is what you did. I knew where everything was.”

"That’s why you started this horse puppet three separate times,” Kitae agreed, flatly sarcastic.

"I said don’t you give me that kinda attitude,” the old man huffed. He wandered away for a minute, starting to look around his shop, at every individual workstation. He evaluated every inch of it, contemplating the arrangement. He moved a couple of things, reorganizing the flow. Kitae made note of it in his mind.

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Word Count: 230

[Saji Kitae]

[7] Eventually the man made it back around to him. He contemplated Kitae with great scrutiny.

"You got it all ass-backwards,” he accused.

"Didn’t learn how to do it before because you tried to kill me with a block of wood. If you teach me how to do it right, I’ll fix it,” Kitae said, shrugging, like it wasn’t a big deal.

"Pushy goddamned kid,” he said, scratching his cheek. "What’s your name anyhow?”

"Saji Kitae,” he answered. "How about you?”

"The boy doesn’t even know my name and he comes out here to disturb my peace! A brat, what a brat. Just call me Takemoto-sama.”

"Sama?”

"If I’m gonna be your master, you’re gonna treat me like it,” he scoffed. "Come here, then. We got work to do.”

He all but dragged Kitae over to his desk. He pulled out a piece of scratch paper and began to draw. The old man’s hand was shaky, but he still had a light touch, drawing precise and mechanically consistent lines.

"I got all these designs in my head instead of written down, so I gotta draft it before you can make it. You’re going to do all the heavy lifting after this. My joints hurt, I told you.”

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Word Count: 214

[Saji Kitae]

[8] Kitae watched, quietly, observing as the man began to draw his detailed schematics. Kitae eventually pulled out his own notebook to follow suit, copying his lines and making notes about his various decisions. Takemoto was such an experienced master in this area that it was almost like he’d long ago forgotten what was and wasn’t obvious. Sometimes he’d breeze right through designing an area that seemed tremendously complex to Kitae.

Kitae did his best to keep up, stopping him every once in a while to ask a question about what he was doing or why. Half the time Takemoto answered helpfully and half the time he spat on the floor and called Kitae usually, which meant that Kitae steadily accumulated at least a little useful information over the course of the couple hours it took for the first draft of the schematic to be refined.

The next part was the review. Kitae picked it up and carefully looked it over, sharing his notes about things he would do to improve the design. This phase Takemoto almost appeared to take better, nodding and adding Kitae’s small plans to his draft.

"The more details you add the longer you’re gonna be working,” he warned. "Your back’s gonna be all aching tonight.”

”I’d rather make something I’ll like than something easy,” Kitae dismissed. The man seemed quietly pleased with that answer.

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Word Count: 230

[Saji Kitae]

[9] Finally, with the plan ready, Kitae was ushered to the woodcarving station. He’d set up the several parts of this in-progress puppet here, arranging them. It meant he had a starting place to begin for his first project, though he almost wanted to start from scratch to get a feel for it the whole way through. He’d carved wood before for several other projects, but he’d never done anything as extensive or detailed as this.

Deciding to give himself at least some foot to stand on, he took one of Takemoto’s partially completed torso pieces and set to work there. He took the schematic and compared it against the torso piece, rotating it and measuring it. Wherever he knew he had to cut, he marked off with his draft pencil.

Once the piece was all marked up, Kitae began to work on carving it down. Takemoto watched and told him what tools to use, when to trade out for something better. Kitae listened diligently, focusing intensely. Eventually he made a slip and fucked up the torso piece. It wasn’t unusable, but it wouldn’t be as neat as he wanted. So he tossed it aside and grabbed another one of the incomplete pieces, going through the marking process again.

On and on it went for more hours. He carved the torso, then took fresh pieces of wood to begin to mark out the legs, measuring them, preparing them. He had to carve them so delicately. A few times he had to mess up and start over.

By the time the sun had started to set, he was only about halfway done with the project. His hands were sore and full of splinters. He sighed and wiped his forehead, dripping sweat in the summer heat even now that it was turning to night.

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Word Count: 301

[Saji Kitae]

[10] "Get some rest and get back to it in the morning,” Takemoto directed.

”I want to keep going,” Kitae tried to demand.

"But I don’t. I want to get some shuteye, so go to sleep. You can rest up in the corner if you feel like it.”

Kitae huffed, staring discontentedly at his unfinished project. But he eventually relented and settled in. He spent a while picking the splinters out of his hand and sucking on the sore skin, trying to make it feel better. Eventually he dozed off and slept like a baby, totally wiped from the hours of exhausting work.

When the sun slanted in through the window in the morning, it hit Kitae’s eyes and woke him up. He immediately set to work cleaning the shop again, preparing it for a new day. Using what little he’d learned, he organized the shop into a better flow. Everything was ready to go by the time Takemoto finally rose again to join him.

Immediately, Kitae dived back into building his first puppet. He had to do all the detail work today - the head and neck, the legs, carving in all the forms that made it recognizable, and made it impressive. Then he spent quite a long time just sanding, sanding, sanding, trying to get it nice and neat.

Finally, finally, he was able to string the puppet together. He carefully took the elastic thread supplied to him and worked it through the puppet, binding it together.

When it was finally strung together, it was… It was…

"It’s lopsided,” Kitae complained. "The joints are too loose. The legs will definitely break if someone tries to use this for a fight.”

"Yep,” Takemoto agreed. "Stay here for the week. Keep redoing it until it’s perfect,” he commanded. "I’ll go get you something to eat.” And off the old man went, leaving Kitae to start over.

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Word Count: 320