$PIPPIN

$PIPPIN

Once upon a time, in a small town, there lived a little scoundrel named Pippin. On the outside, he was a tiny freckled boy, but on the inside, he was a factory of mischief. Pippin couldn't take a step without ruining someone's day. He would place sticky resin on benches, causing old folks to rise with a crack and shame. He would swap salt for sugar and sugar for pepper, and with delight, he watched people choke and sneeze.

At night, Pippin would go out on his mischief-making spree: he would draw mustaches on statues with chalk, switch the signs around so that the "Bakery" became the "Laundry" and the "Pharmacy" turned into the "Fish Market." He would tie pots to the tails of dogs, turning the streets into a clattering carnival. He would rip pages out of books in the library—always from the middle—so that readers would suffer longer.

Pippin especially loved petty, absurd tricks: he would place pebbles in shoes, hide keys in teapots, and untie shoelaces on staircases. He laughed softly and for a long time, like a mouse behind the wall, confident that he was too small to be noticed.

But the town remembered. Every little nail, every stolen hour piled up like grains in a sack. And that sack was slowly filling up. Pippin didn't know when and how, but in a world where everything has weight, even small mischiefs would one day bring about punishment.