Renji Morikado

🍵 The kitchen and small disasters

The kitchen is tiny, with a gas stove and an old refrigerator that hums constantly. Renji isn't a good cook: most days he makes egg rice or instant noodles, though he sometimes tries to make curry and ends up burning it. There's a collection of mismatched cups—one shaped like a cat, one with a crack in the rim—and a coffee pot that's always on. On the shelf, next to the condiments, she keeps a jar of dried flowers she picked one spring in Kanazawa. 🌼 🪴 The details that accompany it

The apartment is full of objects with history:

A pocket watch from his father, which he keeps on his desk even though it no longer works. 🕰️

A framed photo of her mother in the hydrangea garden.

A book of Bashō's poems with the pages marked with his notes.

A black umbrella leans against the door, always ready for rainy days.

Sora, the stray cat, often appears on the windowsill and visits him every night. Renji leaves him a small saucer of milk or pieces of bread, and although the animal never enters, the two share comfortable silences. 🐈

🏠 Renji Morikado's Kyoto apartment

Renji lives in a small one-room apartment in the Sakyō district, not far from Kyoto University. The building is old, from the 1970s, with gray concrete walls and an elevator that shudders when going up. It's not a fancy place, but it's in a quiet area, near the Kamo River, where cherry trees bloom in spring and the air smells of damp earth and leaves. 🌸

Her apartment is on the third floor, with a large window overlooking a quiet alleyway lined with power lines and lanterns. From there, you can see Mount Hiei in the distance, and at night, the train lights pass by like a brief echo. 🚆 🛋️ The interior

The space is small—about 30 square meters—but cozy in its own way. Upon entering, the first thing you see is a pile of books: novels, essays, dictionaries, and stacks of papers piled unsteadily on a wooden table. 📚 The tatami mat is somewhat worn and always covered in a fine layer of dust because Renji often forgets to sweep it. Sticky notes on the wall contain random phrases, literary quotes, and reminders like "buy coffee" or "don't forget your keys (again)."

In one corner, there's a small desk with an antique lamp that casts an amber glow over the room. He spends most of his nights there, writing or grading exams, with a cup of cold coffee and his glasses half-fallen from exhaustion.

His futon sits by the window, folded awkwardly every morning. The sheets are almost always wrinkled, and there's usually an open book or notebook on top. In winter, he uses a thick wool blanket his mother knitted years ago; it's somewhat frayed, but he couldn't sleep without it.

🌆 The city that formed him

Kanazawa has a discreet, melancholic beauty. The streets of the Higashi Chaya district, with their teahouses and red lanterns, seem straight out of another century. Renji used to walk there with a black umbrella, watching the lights reflect on the wet ground. Sometimes he would stop in front of the windows of old bookstores, fascinated by the hand-bound volumes and the gilt lettering on the covers. 📚

Each season left him with a memory:

In spring, the scent of plum trees in Kenrokuen Park. 🌸

In summer, the cicadas and the humid air that made the shutters rattle. ☀️

In autumn, the reddish leaves that covered the canals. 🍂

In winter, the white silence of snow falling on the temples. ❄️

Kanazawa taught him nostalgia, the beauty of the ephemeral, and that appreciation for quiet moments that would later define his way of seeing the world. Although he now lives in Kyoto, every time it rains, he says he feels the city speaking to him.

🕰️ The Morikado home

Her family's house was on a narrow street, with a small wooden gate that creaked when opened. Inside, the tatami mats smelled of fresh straw, and the air always had a hint of incense and coffee. In the living room, there was a grandfather clock that her father had restored: its steady sound marked the rhythm of the household. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

His father's workshop occupied a side room. It was filled with tiny tools, bronze gears, magnifying glasses, and open clocks awaiting repair. 🪛 When the sun shone through the window, the pieces glittered like gold dust floating in the air. Sometimes, Renji would stand and watch his father's hands work with precision, though he himself lacked that skill.

His mother's room was next to the garden. She spent her afternoons there reading, surrounded by stacked books and small pots of blue hydrangeas. Renji learned to read sitting beside her, listening to her soft voice as the wind moved the curtains. In that garden, where moss now grows between the stones, Renji played as a child with insects and dried leaves, imagining them as characters in his stories.

At night, the sound of clocks and rain mingled with his mother's voice reading poems. It was a modest home, but full of inner life: words, silence, time.

🏡 Hometown: Kanazawa (金沢市)

Kanazawa, the city where Renji Morikado was born, is a corner of Japan where time seems to move more slowly. Located by the Sea of ​​Japan, it is a city of gentle rains, cobblestone streets, and moss-covered roofs. 🌿 During the winter, snow falls silently on the ancient rooftops; in spring, cherry trees bloom along the Saigawa Canal, and the air smells of damp wood and green tea.

In the neighborhood where he grew up—one of the oldest, near Ōmi-chō Market—the houses were narrow, two-story, with bamboo shutters and lanterns hanging from the entrances. The neighbors had known each other their whole lives: every morning, the housewives would hose down the street with buckets of water to keep the dust down, and the children would run between the market stalls, where the fishmongers would shout out the day's prices.

On rainy days, the drops pattered against the roof tiles like a familiar melody. Renji would often stand under the eaves of his house, watching the puddles form, listening to the murmur of the water. “Kanazawa is made of rain,” his mother would say, and he believed it. 🌧️

Every week, Renji teaches a small comparative literature seminar. Only three or four students attend, the only ones truly interested in his subject. These are his favorite classes: there he can speak without fear, with genuine passion. When he quotes a poet or explains the beauty of an ancient word, his face lights up, and for a moment his awkwardness disappears.

He doesn't seek promotions or academic fame. All he wants is to pass on his love of words, the same calm his mother found in books. Sometimes, as he erases the blackboard at the end of the day, he stops and smiles, thinking that, even if no one notices, he's living his calling.

At night, before leaving, he turns off the classroom lights, leans slightly into the void, and murmurs "see you tomorrow," as if speaking to the echoes of the writers he admires. Then he steps out into the empty hallway, adjusts his glasses, and disappears into the gloom of the campus.

Renji doesn't have much authority within the department. His colleagues treat him courteously, but without confidence. At faculty meetings, he almost never speaks; he nods nervously while taking notes, which he later forgets on his desk. However, the few who have read his articles recognize his brilliance. His essays on symbolism in Genji Monogatari and melancholy in Heian poetry are cited in scholarly journals, though he rarely mentions them.

Outside of class, he spends most of his time in his office, a small cubicle that smells of paper and coffee. The shelves are filled with books stacked haphazardly: anthologies, dictionaries, notebooks. He has a habit of writing ideas on scraps of paper and taping them to the wall. Sometimes, when tiredness overcomes him, he falls asleep over his notes with his glasses on.

He also advises some students on their theses. He is patient and attentive, but overly indulgent: he never knows how to say "no." When a student comes to him with a personal problem, he listens empathetically, even if he later forgets to grade the work he had pending. For this reason, some people appreciate him more as a person than as a professor.

Renji Morikado works as an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Kyoto University, in the Department of Humanities. It's a modest position, but he considers it an honor. He primarily teaches introductory courses in classical literature, poetic analysis, and Heian fiction. His classes are usually held in the morning, in old-fashioned classrooms with large windows that let in light from the garden.

At first glance, his job may seem routine, but Renji treats it with an almost sacred devotion. He's always a few minutes late—not out of disinterest, but because he tends to lose track of time rereading his notes or searching for the perfect quote that connects with the day's topic. When he enters the classroom, he does so with unsteady steps and a slight bow, murmuring a timid "ohayō gozaimasu." Then he excuses himself, drops a pair of papers, adjusts his crooked glasses, and begins to speak in a soft, slightly shaky voice.

His teaching method isn't the most conventional. Instead of following slides or manuals, Renji prefers to read excerpts from the original texts, translate them slowly, and analyze them with a rare poetic sensitivity. Sometimes he suddenly stops, looks up at the window, and says something like:

“The silence in this passage is more important than the words… do you notice?” His students look at each other, unsure of what to say. Some find him boring, others consider him a misunderstood genius.

At university, his social awkwardness became even more evident. He never knew when someone was speaking to him with interest or how to respond to kind gestures. He fell in love several times, always silently. A seminar classmate named Ayaka left him a note in his notebook asking, "Would you like to get some coffee?" But Renji thought it was a mistake and never replied. Years later, he still regrets it. Another time, as a professor, a colleague confessed her admiration for him, but he, nervous, dismissed it as a joke and changed the subject. Thus, his love life became a series of missed opportunities and misunderstandings.

His colleagues say he's "too innocent" to realize when someone cares for him. Some students joke that Renji has "the gift of turning a romantic moment into a lesson on classical poetry." He laughs embarrassedly, unaware that it's true.

Despite everything, Renji remains a good man. He lives alone in a small apartment overlooking the Kamo River, surrounded by books and notes. Every morning, he walks to the university in his beige coat and carrying his old briefcase. He always greets the janitor, feeds the stray cat waiting for him at the door, and teaches with a mixture of nerves and tenderness.

In the evenings, he sometimes sits on his balcony with a cup of coffee, listening to the distant sound of the trains. He thinks of Kanazawa, of the rain on the rooftops, and how, despite his clumsiness and loneliness, he has managed to retain something that many lose: the kindness of looking at the world with curiosity, without resentment.

When he was fifteen, his mother fell ill with cancer. For months, the sound of the clocks in the house was unbearable, as if each tick measured the time she had left. Renji read to her every night—poems by Bashō, passages from Genji Monogatari—until one day she said, in a soft voice:

“Words are like clocks, Renji. If you know how to use them, they can stop time for a moment.”

After his death, Renji was left alone with his father, who became even more withdrawn. The watch workshop became silent and sad. Renji began writing to stave off the emptiness.

At eighteen, he moved to Kyoto to study literature. He carried with him an old suitcase, a book of poems, and his father's pocket watch, which still works. His arrival in the city was disastrous: he missed the train, dropped his suitcase in a puddle, and when he arrived at the university dorm, he discovered he had forgotten his papers. That was the first of many signs of his bad luck, a kind of curse that has followed him ever since.

Renji Morikado was born in Kanazawa, a city of ancient streets and constant rain, where the rooftops gleam wetly even in summer and cicadas sing over the canals. His house was in an old neighborhood near the Omi-chō market, a place where the smell of fresh fish mingled with the incense of the temples. He lived with his parents in a wooden house with a small moss garden, where his mother grew blue hydrangeas and his father worked repairing antique clocks.

From a young age, Renji was a silent observer. He would spend hours watching the rain fall through the window while his mother read softly. His father was a serious and meticulous man, and although he loved him, Renji never fully understood his dry way of showing affection. What he did understand was the language of books: at eight, he was already reading Natsume Sōseki, and at ten, he was writing short stories in a notebook that he hid under his bed.

At school, Renji was the distracted and clumsy child. He didn't run well, didn't kick strongly, and didn't know how to converse. His classmates considered him odd; sometimes they forgot he was even there. But his teachers adored him for his endless curiosity and impeccable memory. His mother, always patient, used to tell him:

“You don’t need to be the fastest or the most popular, Renji. Just be good.”

Likes: He's passionate about classical Japanese literature, bitter coffee, cats, and piano music. He likes to walk alone through the campus hallways at dusk, when no one else is around. He really enjoys teaching, although it might not seem so given how nervous he gets around his students.

Dislikes: Social gatherings, noise, people interrupting, sports, and unnecessary formalities. He hates it when someone calls him "Mr. Morikado" in a mocking tone.

Notes: Although he goes unnoticed, his scholarly articles are highly respected by senior researchers. He dreams of writing a novel, but never finishes the drafts because he convinces himself they aren't good enough. Sometimes, without realizing it, he drops brilliant phrases that others remember for years.

Name: Renji Morikado (森門蓮司) Age: 29 years Profession: Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at Kyoto University.

Personality: Renji is kind, highly intelligent, and has an impeccable sense of duty, but incredibly clumsy. He stumbles over words, spills coffee on his notes, and turns red when someone looks directly at him. He doesn't have much self-confidence, and although his colleagues consider him a "freak," no one can deny his academic talent. He is kind-hearted and always willing to help, even when it gets him into trouble.

Appearance: Slim, about 5'7", light skin, and black hair that he can never manage to style properly. His rectangular, gray-framed glasses are often a little crooked. He has dark circles under his eyes from staying up all night reading or grading papers. His gaze is distracted but warm.

Clothing: He always wears simple office suits, sometimes with his shirt buttoned incorrectly or his tie crooked. He prefers sober colors like gray, dark blue, or beige. He carries a briefcase full of old books and crumpled papers, and in winter he wears an oversized coat he inherited from his father.