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

Chapter 529: Chapter 523: Our Fund

Skritch stood in the Irrelevance Fund shed, kicking at a loose board on the floor. The place smelled like old paper and dust, which suited him fine.

He had spent the morning moving one stack of receipts from one shelf to another and back again, mostly because it killed time without requiring any real decisions. That was the point of the Fund—stuff that didn’t matter but still existed.

A man stepped through the crooked doorway. Mid-aged, with a perfectly folded cloak over one arm and a straight posture that looked out of place.

His boots were clean, like he had just arrived from somewhere that cared about such things. He blinked a few times, glancing around the cluttered shed.

"Excuse me," the man said in a polite, measured voice. "I appear to have drifted off the Lattice path. This is the Zone, correct? I was aiming for a rest stop but ended up here."

Skritch grunted. "Yeah, this is it. Happens sometimes. You lost or just confused?"

"More disoriented than lost," the traveler replied. "I have no urgent business. If you could point me toward the main path, I would appreciate it."

Skritch scratched his chin. He could yell for Atlas or someone else to handle this. But the afternoon stretched empty ahead, and involving others felt like more effort than just dealing with it himself. "Fine. Stick around for a bit. I’ll show you how things work here. Name’s Skritch."

The traveler’s name was Harlan. He nodded once, crisp and formal. Skritch immediately regretted the offer but didn’t back out.

First thing, Skritch decided on tea. He boiled water in the dented pot on the small stove in the corner and tossed in a handful of leaves that had been sitting too long. The result was bitter, almost sour. He handed Harlan a chipped mug without apology.

"Optional tea," Skritch said. "You don’t have to drink it."

Harlan took a sip. His face stayed neutral, but his eyes widened slightly. "It has character. Thank you."

Skritch watched him. Harlan set the mug down carefully and started straightening the nearest shelf. He aligned the papers into neat piles, dusted off a few jars, and even tried to fix the crooked sign outside by pushing it straighter.

Deductible, the small creature that lived in the shed’s rafters, dropped down immediately and started undoing everything. It knocked over the papers, scattered the jars, and tugged the sign back to its usual angle.

Harlan paused. "Is this... normal?"

"Normal enough," Skritch said. "Leave it. The Fund likes its mess."

They sat on the bench under the sign. Skritch tried demonstrating proper Zone idleness—slouching with his legs stretched out, staring at nothing. Harlan lasted about thirty seconds before asking questions.

"What is the purpose of this Fund exactly? Does everything here have a category?"

Skritch sighed and launched into an explanation full of tax metaphors. "Think of it like old deductions that nobody claims anymore. You file it away, but it still sits there, taking up space.

Like sheep poetry—lots of words about grass and hills, but in the end it’s just wool waiting to be sheared." He quoted a few lines from a half-remembered poem, mangling the rhythm on purpose.

Harlan listened earnestly, nodding at intervals. "Fascinating. In the Holdouts, we keep records precise. Everything accounted for."

"Yeah, well, here we account for the unaccounted," Skritch shot back.

Raphael walked by carrying a small crate. He glanced at the pair and stopped for a second. "The sign’s still crooked," he said in his flat voice.

Skritch grinned. "Good. Means it’s working right."

Raphael shrugged and kept going without another word. Jessa waved from the path farther off but didn’t come closer. Atlas and Elara passed on their walk later, spotting them from the porch steps. They shared a quick look—Amused, maybe—but kept walking.

The afternoon dragged on with more of the same. Harlan tried helping again, and Deductible undid it in loops that got increasingly ridiculous.

Once, the creature stacked everything into a tower that immediately toppled. Skritch laughed despite himself. Harlan’s polite confusion made it funnier.

As evening light softened, they sat quietly. Harlan stared at the cluttered shed and the crooked sign. "This mess feels... freeing. But also terrifying. Nothing demands order. How do you live with that?"

Skritch rubbed his neck, gruff as always. "I used to feel the same. Came here as imported clutter myself. Thought I’d fix everything or leave. Now I choose the clutter every day. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine to ignore."

Harlan considered that for a while. "I see. Thank you for the afternoon, Skritch. I think I can find my way now." He folded his cloak tighter, gave a small bow, and walked off toward the Lattice edge when he felt ready. No big goodbye. Just gone.

Skritch went back inside the shed. He straightened one stack of papers on purpose, badly. It leaned worse than before. "Hosting was worse than audits," he muttered to Deductible. The creature chittered in agreement.

Skritch picked up the teapot and started arguing with it under the sign as night fell. "Next time, make yourself useful." His step felt a touch lighter on the way back to his usual spot. Coherence held steady at 97.8%.

Later that same day, the older farmer wandered near the old orchard edges. He had been walking without much aim, hands in his pockets, when he noticed the shaded nook. It was a small corner tucked between two trees, the kind of spot you passed a hundred times without seeing.

But today it caught his eye. A weathered tool handle lay half-buried in leaves. Next to it, a single mismatched button and some faded notes fluttered under a stone.

He picked up the handle and turned it over. Nothing special. Just an old piece of wood. Mara spotted him from the path and came over, curious. Kai followed a minute later, wiping his hands on his shirt.

"What’s this?" Mara asked.

"Nothing much," the farmer said. "Forgotten stuff. Figured I’d move it around a bit."

They treated it like casual spring cleaning with no plan. Mara found the button and started weaving a tiny story around it right there.

"This probably belonged to someone trying to fix their coat during a rainstorm. Clashed with everything, just like this thread." She pulled a bit of spare yarn from her pocket and tied it to the button in a ridiculous knot.

Kai grabbed one of the faded notes. The writing was smudged, but he acted out what he thought the chore might have been.

"Says something about moving the east fence. Watch this." He mimed struggling with an invisible post, slipping dramatically on the grass. The others laughed.

The items reacted in small, whimsical ways. The tool handle rolled across the ground and stopped in a perfect circle on its own. That got a chuckle out of everyone. They started competing to assign the silliest original owners or purposes.

"This button? Definitely from Sir Baaington’s lost formal vest," Kai suggested.

"Too fancy. Probably a Holdout’s emergency repair during a debate," Mara countered.

Sir Baaington’s sheep wandered over at one point. It sniffed the pile, left a small wool tuft on top, and ambled off like it had contributed something important.

Skritch and Raphael passed through the area midway through the sorting. Skritch tossed in a gruff comment. "That handle looks like it gave up years ago. Good company." Raphael added, "Don’t overthink it," before both kept walking.

Atlas and Elara walked nearby a bit later. They paused at the edge of the trees long enough to catch a snippet of the reminiscing but didn’t join. They just listened, then continued on their way.

As the light softened into evening, the three sat among the lightly rearranged items. The older farmer spoke plainly. "I leave things behind on purpose sometimes. No need to carry every scrap."

Mara nodded. "These small piles make the past feel optional. Like a companion, not a weight."

Kai agreed. "Yeah. Doesn’t have to be preserved perfectly. Just there."

They left most items where they were. The only change was one deliberate imperfection—a crooked marker stone placed at the edge of the nook. No name for the spot. No tradition started. Just a corner that felt casually claimed.

The group headed off as dusk settled. People felt a quiet connectedness to the Zone’s layers, the kind that built up without announcements. Coherence nudged imperceptibly to 97.9%.

That evening, Atlas and Elara sat on their porch. They noticed a faint new glow from the distant corner—nothing dramatic, just a soft reflection of lantern light or maybe the moon.

They shared a small, satisfied silence. The place kept going without them at the center. That was enough.

Skritch, back at the shed, heard faint laughter from that direction earlier but didn’t investigate. He had his own small changes to sit with.

The Zone felt a little more lived in, one reluctant afternoon and one quiet corner at a time. No grand shifts. Just the usual slow accumulation of days.