The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss

Chapter 523: Chapter 517: Complaints and Loose Threads

Skritch woke up to the teapot already going at it. The thing sat on the rickety shelf by his window, metal lid rattling as it sang in that scratchy, off-key voice it had picked up somewhere in the Null Zone.

"Kai’s fence is crooked again, and his excuses are worse. Fix one, fix the other, or stop pretending."

He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. The teapot didn’t stop. "Mara’s tapestry has three new loose ends. She calls them ’character.’ I call them sloppy."

Skritch sat up, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the pot. It was the one he’d dragged back from that last trip, the one that used to complain about the weather. Now it complained about people. Specific people. It had started yesterday and hadn’t shut up since.

"Alright, enough," he muttered. He grabbed the teapot, marched it out to the Irrelevance Fund shed, and stuffed it behind a stack of broken signs and half-finished projects. The door clicked shut. Peace.

Thirty seconds later, Deductible the chicken burst through the loose boards at the back, dragging the teapot by its handle in her beak. The chicken looked proud. The teapot kept singing. "Deductible’s chicks are late on their taxes again. Two feathers short this month."

Skritch sighed. "You’re not even supposed to understand taxes."

He gave up trying to hide it. Instead, he picked up the teapot and slung it under his arm. "Fine. You’re coming on audit rounds today. Try not to get us kicked out of everywhere."

The first stop was the orchard Null Zone, where a handful of people were successfully doing nothing under the trees. Skritch walked the paths, checking on the half-hearted fences and the spots where grass grew in weird patterns. The teapot started right away.

"That one over there is pretending to meditate but he’s just napping with his eyes open. Call it what it is."

The guy in question cracked one eye. "Hey, pot. Mind your own spout."

Skritch chuckled. A couple of younger residents trailed after them, grinning. One kid asked, "Does it do requests?"

"Only complaints," Skritch said. "And it picks them itself."

They moved on. The teapot kept a running commentary the whole way, roasting idle attempts and half-done chores with brutal accuracy. No one got mad.

A few people laughed and tossed back their own gripes. Skritch felt something loosen in his chest. This wasn’t fixing anything. It was just noise, and the Zone liked noise.

Next was the Tapestry Wall. The massive woven mess of fabrics and stories stretched along the old boundary, threads dangling everywhere. Mara stood on a ladder, adding another patch. Jessa sat nearby, sorting scraps without much urgency.

The teapot launched in. "Mara’s latest addition clashes with the one from last week. Bold choice. Terrible execution."

Mara laughed so hard she nearly dropped her needle. "You’ve got nerve, kettle."

Jessa smirked. "Out-complaint it, Mara. Go on."

They tried. Mara listed every flaw in the wall’s design over the past year. Jessa joined in with complaints about how the threads always tangled at the worst moments.

The teapot responded in perfect harmony, turning their words into a ridiculous duet that echoed off the stones. A small crowd gathered. People clapped when the teapot nailed a particularly sharp burn about Jessa’s habit of losing tools on purpose.

Skritch leaned against a post and watched. This was better than any official audit. No pressure, no expectations. Just the teapot doing what it did and everyone rolling with it.

From there they headed to the Sideways City remnants. The old buildings leaned at odd angles, some arguing with each other in low rumbles of shifting bricks and creaking wood.

The teapot joined right in. It sang complaints about crooked doorframes, and one building answered back in a deep bass that shook the ground.

Soon it was a full operatic argument—teapot versus house, lyrics about bad foundations and worse attitudes. Skritch had to sit down he was laughing so hard.

Raphael showed up halfway through, notebook in hand. "This is fascinating. Structured listening exercise. Teapot, repeat your last complaint about idleness."

The teapot obliged, then pivoted. "Raphael’s listening is too structured. Life doesn’t file reports."

Raphael blinked, then actually argued back. They went at it for twenty minutes about the value of doing nothing properly. Skritch didn’t interrupt. The kid was learning more from getting roasted than from any lecture Skritch could give.

The sun climbed higher. Skritch carried the teapot through the usual spots, stopping for bad tea at three different porches. Deductible followed the whole time, occasionally pecking at the pot’s base like she was conducting the show.

By midday the teapot had gathered a loose group of followers who shouted suggestions for new complaints. Skritch didn’t organize it. He just let it happen.

Late afternoon brought them to Atlas and Elara’s garden. The couple sat on a bench surrounded by half-weeded beds and tools left wherever they dropped. Skritch set the teapot down on the table.

It went quiet for a moment, then sang softer than usual. "Skritch acts like clutter. Always bringing things back. But he belongs here, you tax-collecting fool. Stop doubting the mess."

Skritch froze, then barked a laugh. "That’s a new one."

Atlas poured three cups of tea that had gone lukewarm. "It’s not wrong."

Elara took her cup and leaned back. "Everyone imported something once. We did. The whole place is built on it. You think we planned any of this?"

Skritch sat with them. The teapot stayed quiet while they drank. No big speeches. Just the three of them and the chicken pecking at crumbs. The garden smelled like dirt and old flowers.

Skritch felt the weight in his shoulders ease a little more. He wasn’t fixing his old habits. He was just carrying them around, same as everyone else.

As evening settled, Skritch started the walk back toward the Irrelevance Fund. People had left notes tucked under rocks and tied to fence posts—silly complaints written in messy handwriting. "The crooked sign mocks me every morning."

"My socks never match and neither do my days." Skritch collected a few but didn’t read them all. The teapot would handle it later. Not as a system. Just as a joke that kept going.

He stopped under the crooked sign at the edge of the path. "You happy now?" he asked the teapot.

It rattled once. "Ask me tomorrow."

Deductible clucked agreement. Skritch argued with both of them for a few minutes about nothing important.

Across the way, Atlas and Elara watched from their porch, smiling at the familiar scene. Nothing had changed. Everything felt a bit more solid anyway. Coherence held at 97.2%.

---

The next morning, a visitor showed up on the main path.

Lira carried nothing but a small woven bracelet, perfect and tight. She looked younger than Skritch remembered from the Still Haven ridge. She stopped at the first fork and waited, like she wasn’t sure if announcing herself was the right move.

Atlas and Elara spotted her first. They greeted her with the usual warmth—no questions about official business, no offers of tours. "Wander if you want," Elara said. "Whoever you bump into is probably doing something."

Lira nodded, fingers twisting the bracelet. "The stories keep pulling loose threads in my head. I wanted to see it without the performance."

She started walking.

Kai crossed her path near the tool sheds. He was trying to repair a wheelbarrow that kept tipping for no reason. Lira offered to help. The tools rebelled immediately—screwdriver rolling away, hammer handle loosening on purpose. Kai laughed.

Lira tried to organize the mess and only made it worse. The wheelbarrow dumped its load twice. By the end they were both covered in dirt and grinning.

"You people live like this on purpose?" she asked.

"Some days yes," Kai said. "Other days it just happens."

Later she found Sir Baaington reciting one of his sheep-poetry monologues to a small audience of actual sheep.

Lira stood at the edge and listened. When he paused, she tried adding a line. It came out terrible—clumsy rhymes about wool and wandering. Somehow it worked better than his.

The sheep bleated approval. Sir Baaington beamed and recruited her for the next stanza. They butchered three more poems before she begged off, laughing.

At the Tapestry Wall, Mara handed her a needle. Lira started fixing loose threads, making everything neat and tight. Mara watched for a while, then gently pulled one of Lira’s perfect stitches undone. "Try leaving it."

Lira stared at the loosened thread. She kept working, but slower, messier. The wall looked the same as always when she stepped back.

The best part came in the afternoon when she walked with Jessa.

They carried a simple lunch—bread, cheese, some fruit—and sat by the ink trails that sometimes leaked from old maps. Lira tried demonstrating proper Holdout focus. She described the technique, eyes closed, breathing steady.

A stray chick from Deductible’s crew ran straight through her lap. An arguing building rumbled nearby. Jessa’s map ink smeared across the lunch cloth.

Lira opened her eyes. "This place doesn’t let you."

Jessa shrugged and deliberately knocked over her own cup, spilling tea across the bread. "Deliberate imperfection. Try it."

Lira hesitated, then tipped her own cup. They ate the soggy mess anyway, trading stories between bites. Lira talked about the tight routines back home.

Jessa shared how she’d learned to let things stay broken. The conversation wandered, interrupted constantly by the Zone’s usual chaos. Neither of them minded.

Late afternoon found Lira in Atlas and Elara’s garden again. The bracelet still circled her wrist. She sat on the bench and finally spoke.

"I wove this perfectly on purpose. To see if the Zone would make me want to smooth everything. Instead..." She pulled one thread loose, unraveling a small section. The bracelet looked better for it.

Atlas nodded slowly. "We over-corrected a lot when we first got here. Fixed things that didn’t need fixing."

Elara rolled up her sleeve and showed an old scar along her forearm. "This one came from trying too hard to make a roof straight. The crooked one lasted longer."

They didn’t give advice. They just sat together. Nearby, Deductible chased the teapot across the path. The pot sang something about chickens and loose feathers. Lira watched and smiled for real.

She left the loosened bracelet at the Irrelevance Fund before she departed. No big promises. No formal messages. Just the small gift tucked beside yesterday’s complaint notes.

Back in the Zone, the day continued like any other. A few younger residents asked Skritch what the visitor had been like. He told them the truth: she wandered, made mistakes, and left a little messier than she arrived. They seemed to like that answer.

Coherence ticked up to 97.3%. Nothing structural changed. People kept living unevenly.

That evening Atlas and Elara sat on their porch. The crooked sign cast a long shadow. Skritch argued with the teapot under it while Deductible supervised. Atlas reached over and took Elara’s hand.

"Next generation’s already walking their own paths," he said quietly.

Elara squeezed back. "About time."

The teapot sang one last complaint into the dusk. Skritch answered it. The sound carried across the garden, familiar and ridiculous. Everything kept going.