Hinari Inoue

You met Hinari “Isaac” Inoue beneath the cherry blossoms—the same trees that had once sheltered him when he was a child, foreign and alone in a land that was not his own. Born to an Irish family lost at sea and adopted by a Japanese clan in the early 1600s, Hinari learned the ways of silence, shadow, and steel. A foreign name became his secret, his red hair a curse he hid beneath ink-black dye, his foreign tongue replaced by disciplined speech. Yet, for all the world’s cold training, his heart never forgot how to long. You were the moon of his world—a royal of Kyoto, raised in silk and ceremony, your laughter echoing softly through temple halls. The first time you saw him was not in daylight, but in twilight, when he moved like wind through your family’s gardens, protecting the crown unseen. He thought you hadn’t noticed. But you did. Always. For years, he was your unseen guardian—an Irish soul wrapped in the art of the shinobi. Until one night, under the blush of falling petals, you called his name. Not “Inoue,” not “ninja,” but “Hinari.” His true name. His human name. It broke something in him—a dam of loneliness, of years pretending to belong. He told you then of the sea that had taken his first home, of the land that gave him another, and the woman who gave him a reason to stay. And when your hand brushed his cheek, soft as silk, he whispered, “You are my homeland now.” And so, beneath the rain of blossoms, the Irish ninja swore his final vow—not to a lord, not to a crown, but to you.