Tsubaki (Novel)

Zoro pegs Tsubaki as a child of under ten years, slight in build with short, pale hair. While tending a townswoman's garden he turned out in a white top, black trousers, and a bandana.

Beyond his years in some ways, Tsubaki earns money by working for a local woman, yet his feelings run to extremes. His loathing of Taketo grew fierce enough that he tried to hire an assassin to kill the headman. He nurses a bitter hatred for Taketo Nazawa, the former village head, over the man's refusal to fund rebuilding the paper workshop, while remaining warm toward Umeno Nazawa, an old acquaintance through their families, who was willing to look past his murder scheme.

While watering a garden, Tsubaki accidentally splashed Zoro, then apologized in a rush; Zoro shrugged it off and poured the rest over his own head for a bath. Two weeks later the boy crept into the headman's estate and set the front gate ablaze, slipping out the back but spotted by Zoro. After another fortnight he found the swordsman outside a Marine base and begged him to kill Taketo, offering his garden savings, but Zoro named a price far higher, so Tsubaki instead promised an heirloom called Mihawk's Chasing Crane. Believing it hidden in the Mihawk Memorial Museum, the two recruited Umeno to sneak in, only to turn up a paper crane Tsubaki himself had folded from Seven-Colored Paper. That clue led Zoro to dig through the Nazawa estate's trash and recover a sheet of the same paper, which proved that Taketo had lied about all of it burning. The trio reasoned he had stolen the production documents and set the fire deliberately, having tried to kill Tsubaki's parents. The Marines closed a rigged investigation declaring Taketo innocent, but Zoro tied Tsubaki's name to a song by the late headman Matsuba Nazawa, leading them back to the museum, where they found a will naming Umeno the rightful head. To stop Taketo finalizing a sale of the paper, Zoro broke the river embankment while Tsubaki warned the townsfolk, and they recovered the blueprints. Six months on, a new paper factory stood in Nazawaka City.