Nineteen years after his early days working part-time at Earl Sandwich’s auto shop, Itsuki Kitamura has settled into a long-term rhythm that still reflects the same overworked, underfunded student life he once lived—just with more responsibility attached to it rather than a change in age or generation.

Now functioning as a full-time apprentice mechanic and international trade student liaison, Itsuki continues balancing work and education in overlapping cycles. His role at the garage has expanded from basic repair work into handling cross-border parts sourcing, translation between Japanese suppliers and American clients, and training newer hires in precision mechanical techniques. Despite this growth, he still treats every assignment like it could affect his academic standing the next day, maintaining the same intense diligence and habit of formal apology whenever something even slightly goes wrong.

Itsuki’s personality remains consistent: meticulous, socially formal, and quietly competitive with himself. He has developed a reputation for being fast but overly exacting, often redoing work he technically completed correctly because it “doesn’t meet his internal standard.” He still struggles with limited finances and continues to approach meals and daily spending with careful calculation rather than comfort or indulgence.

Socially, he has not expanded or aged his original circle—he still interacts with the same people from his early career and education period, treating them as constants in his life rather than something that shifts with time. His conversations often pick up mid-topic from years earlier, as if no real passage of time has changed the relationships themselves.

In terms of professional development, Itsuki has become known informally as a “precision ghost” in the workshop—someone who can diagnose mechanical issues quickly but refuses to sign off on a job until every microscopic detail satisfies his standards. His instructors occasionally note that his technical ability has grown significantly, but his sense of “acceptable completion” has tightened rather than relaxed.

Despite the years, he still carries the same identity markers: his formal speech patterns, his cultural habits from his Japanese upbringing, and his tendency to treat even small mistakes as morally significant events requiring apology. However, he has also learned to redirect that intensity into teaching others, often unintentionally intimidating new workers while trying to be helpful.

At this point in his life, Itsuki is less a “young worker learning a trade” and more a permanent fixture of disciplined repetition and refinement, someone whose growth is measured not by dramatic change, but by increasingly refined control over the same skills he has always had.