"I was intentionally careless."
Feeling the biting chill, Hastur shrank his neck, sat upright, and answered honestly.
"..." The chill Sharon had gathered weakened noticeably in that instant.
She drew in a deep breath, her pretty face cold, her beautiful eyes sharp with hostility, and said icily: "So what you mean is, you deliberately used that kind of story to brush me off?"
"That doesn't count as brushing you off. I put a lot of thought to make it up as well."
"…Made up?"
"Yes. Aside from real events, almost all stories are man-made fabrications. If it's a complete factual record, that's called history."
"You're good at sophistry."
Sharon realized she wasn't likely to catch Hastur's weakness in matters like this. He really had deliberately made up that messy story.
Was this payback for when she had teased him last time?
Thinking of how she had drawn a cat face on Hastur while playing games, her mood suddenly improved a little.
In the end, she said: "That story won't do. Think of another one."
Hastur smiled faintly. "Sure, but I'll need a little time."
"How long?"
"Half an hour."
"..." Sharon felt that his smiling face right now was begging for a beating.
"Then hurry up and write it."
After saying that, Miss Sharon's figure disappeared from the mirror.
On the sofa, Hastur's face kept a faint smile, though inside he was struggling not to laugh out loud.
God knew how hard it had been to hold back just now. That nonsense about the little blue hood and the wolf granny had all been something he made up on the spot to tease Sharon.
Who told her to draw a cat face on him last time? Besides, seeing Sharon's puppet-like face show such obvious emotional shifts was really quite entertaining.
After a while, once he managed to calm himself, Hastur went to his desk and began drafting a short story.
If it weren't for Roselle's "tales before him," he could have retold many fairy tales. But to avoid overlapping with Roselle's stories, he could only make up fairy tales of the mysteries world.
That did indeed take some time, though half an hour was more than enough for him.
About twenty minutes later, he had already composed a brand-new story that should suit Sharon's tastes.
When half an hour had passed, Hastur left his desk, sat back down on the sofa, and looked at the empty mirror.
"Miss Sharon, are you still there?"
The smooth mirror flickered faintly, though Sharon's figure didn't appear, just a glimmer of light indicating she hadn't left.
Was she still angry about the nonsense story earlier?
Hastur admitted that chaotic story had indeed been asking for trouble.
He placed the paper on his lap, gathered his thoughts, and said: "This time, the story I'm telling is called The Adventures of a Puppet."
Just hearing that title made Sharon reveal her figure in the mirror. She didn't interrupt, afraid she might disturb Hastur as he continued.
"In a distant land, in the slums outside a town, there lived a family of five: parents and three children, two boys and a girl.
The father did manual labor at a factory nearby, while the mother stayed home assembling matchboxes to sell and help make ends meet. Life was tough, but the family stayed together, working as one for a better future. That was happiness enough.
As the children grew, the girl stayed home to help her mother, the eldest boy had started working outside like his father, and the youngest boy, still small, attended classes, handicraft lessons.
The teacher often said: 'As long as you master a craft, you'll never starve, even if you wander the world.'
The little boy was learning how to make puppets. He loved how circus performers could control wooden figures with strings, making them move and dance, painting their faces with colors to show different expressions. Their joy, anger, sorrow, and delight all depended on his will.
Because he loved it, he studied hard, and soon his skills even surpassed his teacher's.
The teacher was gratified, and upon finishing his lessons, taught him one final truth: 'A true puppet master's creations are alive, independent beings with consciousness and thought, not lifeless dolls.'
Creating a living puppet became the boy's lifelong goal. But after years passed and he had grown into a young man, he still couldn't succeed. He began to doubt whether living puppets truly existed.
Until one day, when his father had an accident at the factory and died. Looking at his father's lifeless body beneath the white sheet, he felt as if his heart had been hollowed out.
At that moment, he was struck like lightning, a sudden revelation overtaking him. He ran out, locked himself in the wooden hut he used for making puppets, and barred the door.
His family thought he was simply too grief-stricken, so they let him be. Not until the seventh day after his father's death did he emerge. Behind him walked his father.
His family was shocked to see that this so-called father was a puppet, lifelike, yet able to walk, talk, and think. Except for not needing to eat, he was no different from a living man.
From then on, that puppet father remained in the home."
Just as Sharon was eagerly waiting to hear what happened next, Hastur stopped.
She waited patiently a moment, then urged: "Why don't you continue?"
"Half an hour only lets me tell this much. For the more exciting part, I'll need more time to prepare."
"..." A breeze swept up the paper on Hastur's lap, Sharon had used a little trick from within the mirror.
Hastur didn't stop her, only watched with a smile.
Moments later, the paper drifted back down to his lap.
It contained only a rough framework of the story, ending exactly where he had stopped.
"This story is quite good. When will the continuation be ready?"
Sharon's voice was soft, pleasant, like a gentle stream flowing past.
"At the earliest… three days from now," Hastur said after thinking.
"Alright, then I'll come again in three days."
"Wait, Miss Sharon, are you just leaving like that?"
"Why? Do you have something else?"
From inside the mirror, Sharon looked at him, sapphire eyes clear and bright like gems.
"Didn't you promise to teach me Jotun and Elvish?"
Sharon blinked, looking unusually puzzled. "Did I? I don't remember that."
"Miss Sharon, are you planning to act shameless and deny it?"
Sharon thought for a moment, then said, "Can't I?"
"..." As Hastur felt a bit dejected, Sharon drifted away through the mirror.
"This is clearly just payback for that story earlier."
"You admit yourself there was a problem with that story?"
A voice came from the mirror, Sharon, though already gone, had found some way to speak through it.
"..." Hastur fell silent, then quietly set a new rule: No wraiths are allowed to turn invisible here.
After confirming Sharon was gone, he left the study with a smile.
When nothing else was going on, teasing Sharon was really quite fun.
Glancing at the time, he saw it wasn't yet eleven o'clock. Hastur decided to take a bath first, then rest.
Sleeping on time, this was the best habit he'd kept since arriving in the mysteries world.
In his old modern life, staying up all night gaming had been commonplace.
After an all-nighter, his legs would feel weak, his mind exhausted. In this world, such a state was dangerous, especially mentally.
After bathing, he went to his bedroom, lay down, and entered the Hall of Stars.
He checked the stars one by one, and found only the High-Dimensional Overseer's star showing some disturbance.
Beneath its cocoon of light still dangled two threads:
One held a white-crystal eyeball.
The other held a young man dressed like a gentleman, strolling through a city's streets.
It was late at night, yet the city refused to stay calm.
Many places were lit by flames, houses burning, people setting themselves alight. Citizens panicked, police worked to maintain order, and the streets were in chaos.
The Overseer's incarnation walked among them, his calm, graceful bearing utterly at odds with the disorder around him.
"Is this chaos caused by the Overseer's presence?" That was Hastur's first thought. But on closer inspection, the turmoil wasn't the Overseer's doing.
It seemed more like the city's chaos had drawn the Overseer there.
Soon, the Overseer left the city, seemingly traversing space-time itself, arriving at a small mountain town.
This town's houses all had protruding domes, which from afar made them look like they were each wearing a white sun hat.