On the last day of the month of Talohollu, where the NIghting Gale Hollow is at its most feverishly festive, the town of Hallousvana was unabashedly celebrating the spooky holiday. It was the town nestled in the middle of the dense forest, serving as the world's sole source of red oak trees. Noticable even from miles away, the buildings of the town use that very same wood while employing an aesthetic that blends old-western with gothic architectures, and the lower half of the buildings' first-floor walls are crafted from dark cobblestone.

  On, and I might've been an architect before I got phantomized.

  Unlike the cheerful children cladded in their spooky costumes, one young girl of the demon race, whose expression could hardly be considered upbeat, marched her way through the sparse crowd that filled the tiled streets: unobstructed. Whether she looked left or glanced right, no matter the angle she cast her gaze, Hallousvana's main plaza was detailed in all manner of halloweeny-esque stands. She almost wanted to curl up in a ball of fur, so she could scream in peace, from the sheer boredom of having seen all the stands many times before. But as she bristled up her tails, making them slowly grow and expand, she stopped herself when she noticed something strangely eye-catching, not in an eyesore way but definitely out of place in this spooky-themed street market.

  A nine-year-old Inkaro, dressed in a grey mummy costume, sat behind his stand, nestled among many others, which he'd branded with a large sign of cloth: Crystal Candy, it read. The demon girl was utterly flabbergasted. Seeing a kid barely older than how old she looked manning a stall all on his own was certainly a surprise, but what that really got the demon girl was the stand's normalcy. But as strangely normal as Inkaro's stand was, the demon girl was certain she'd experience something refreshing by checking out his stand, so she quickly straightened out the superficial creases in her costume.

  Strutting her way up to the boy's stand while she exuded pride in the costume she'd handcrafted all by herself: a black and pink checkered unitard, and a plastic, cartoony tuxedo cat mask.

  As she presided right before the stand, the girl firmly planted her little fists on her hips, completing her silent display of desire to be seen too as royalty, who was owed the utmost diligent care. She waited and waited, waiting for so long she considered if Inkaro was secretly a stuffed doll she'd mistaken for a person. Thinking on it for a second, she definitely shook her head as she couldn't take being ignored no longer.

  "Hey! Hey! ...hey?" a young-sounding girl asked, initially speaking with commanding snark, only to verbally retreat into deflated concern when Inkaro didn't immediately respond to her. She scrunched up her face, cheeks puffing up but seemingly not hard enough to cause any blushing, almost as if her pride wouldn't allow her to express any sort of embarrassment. With no indication of Inkaro acknowledging her, let alone responding, the girl slowly hunkered down on the floor in shame whilst desperately clutching at the side of her head and pressing her knees up to her chest.

  While everyone else was busy with their own business, and too preoccupied to ever hope of noticing her, the girl frantically murmured incoherent nonsense like it was going out of fashion.

  However, almost like a ray of hope, Inkaro poked his head over his stand before arching his head down to the knee-to-chest prone demon girl. The demon girl didn't even need to hear Inkaro ask if he'd noticed her because she knew he had, mainly from reasoning that there wasn't any other reason why Inkaro would be leaning over his own stand.

  So to restore some face-saving grace to her person, the girl sprang up to her feet and pulled her mask over her head, flattening her kitsune-like ears and making them splay slightly across her head. With her face exposed, the demon girl allowed Inkaro to bask in her face as a non-monetary reward for his diligence.

  [Louailanye is a very short, seven-year-old-looking demon kitrunai girl with the appearance of a human girl; she has neck-low, slightly spikey, pale pink hair with metalic pink gradient ends. Cyan(top) to pink(bottom) gradient eyes with a glowing, narrow slit through each of her pupils that has a dark green, green, and light green gradient. Snow white skin with a faint pink glow. Five, small, one-foot-long, fluffy, pale pink kitsune tails with metalic to mana ends. Fluffy, pale pink kitsune ears with metalic to mana ends. And, her ears and tails glow a faint pink glow]

  "Ahem. Are they real crystals in your candy?" Louailanye stated in a somewhat calm manner with an unbothered expression. While watching Louailanye subconsciously bat her tails behind herself like a happy puppy, Inkaro mentally prepared his business brain, not even batting an eye that the girl before his stand had just said 'ahem' instead of ahemming normally.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "No, it's just a play on how they look like candy, or so Lizu said," Inkaro explained as he happily bounced his butt back onto his extra high stool. Not initially saying anything, Louailanye rocked her head from side to side, having to take a second to fully compute what Inkaro had said to her and how unfestive his stand was if the candy part was removed from the equation.

  "That doesn't... sound all that spooky," Louailanye grumbled half-heartedly, struggling to rationalise how candy looking like crystals could be scary in every way. To make her point more apparent to Inkaro, Louailanye placed a hand on her hip and raised it with calculated sass, not that such a subtle play would ever go noticed by the grimoire crafter, like ever.

  "...erm... what's more spooky than standing out for the wrong reason?" Inkaro punctuated his defence with a cheeky shrug of his shoulders and a raise of his hands.

  "Grasping at straws, I see, and the word would be scary in this case," Louailanye remarked with a vain flair of snarkiness to her voice, as she lightly squeezed her hip using the hand she had planted on it. While her other hand was busy keeping her cool, the kitrunai girl brought her other hand to her chin to tap it inquisitively and astutely. "Now let's see what candy should be given to someone such as myself."

  Although she outwardly acted like she was deeply thinking over what tasty treat she'd want, in truth, Louailanye only had a single set of three flavours in mind that could possibly whet her sweet tooth in any situation.

  "Hmm... how about lime, luni berry, and pink cherry?" Louailanye requested with over-the-top flair, hoping to see the heights of Inkaro's skill level by testing not only his practical skills but also his knowledge.

  Upon seeing the focused look in Inkaro's eyes, she was very pleased.

  "I could, but I don't have any luni berries on hand...." Inkaro placed a hand to his chin, lightly humming as he wondered if mixing blueberries and milk would be a good substitute for luni berries. Hearing it was simply an issue of lacking the resources and seeing the perfect opportunity to engage in a little trick before a treat, Louailanye giddily locked her fingers together before she pointed and extended a tail towards a large building a little off in the distance: squarely on, the large red oak manor that's long been abandoned and left isolated on its lonesome hill.

  "You see that old manor over there, I've... heard... yeah, heard that some sections of its garden have been overgrown with luni berries," Louailanye proclaimed boldly with a cheeky smile plastered all over her face, only to dart her head at Inkaro as he merrily sauntered past her. "Hey! Where are you going?"

  "To the manor?" Inkaro's blunt yet innocent-sounding response both ticked off and endeared Louailanye in the same exalted, breathless exhale. However, she wasn't about to complain when he was already heading to the location; if Inkaro wasn't scared about it being abandoned, then he should surely be scared when he sees what the manor houses within its ghastly walls.

  Back in the present, Lizu intently listened to Inkaro tell his story, letting out a low hum as she felt some sort of nostalgia for the situation presented to past Inkaro: "Hmmm... she kind of sounds like...."

  "You as a kid?" Inkaro said smugly while winking at her through the rearview mirror, like G.Galore had recommended him to do if such an opportunity ever presented itself. Turning red in the face with enough generated heat to get Enetha sweating, Lizu tensed up her entire body, with her tail slamming itself against the bed in frustration, as she barely held off from blowing her top from Inkaro's verbal slam dunk against her heart.

  "Shush, you, sometimes the truth doesn't need to be said to be heard."

  Enetha was also captivated by Inkaro's tale of the past, which did wonders in keeping the little princess from caring that Lizu was lying on top of her. Had Enetha been even somewhat disinterested in the story, Lizu bearing her upper body weight down on the smaller girl would've caused a much bigger incident, at the very least, a reaction from the princess in the form of her red face being caused by embarrassment. Not even Lizu's body heat that threatened to leave Enetha tanned was enough to bring Enetha back to reality as she absently mumbled to herself: "I wonder, if she's... no... anyone can enjoy luni berries, they're just rare, is all."

  Still firmly set on remaining on Inkaro's lap, Morilore remained perfectly still so as to not distract Inkaro from driving. Despite her effortless ease at keeping herself in check, her's/G.Galore's logic circuits were going into overlock-mode just to barely keep herself from trying to copy the brattiness of an individual from a secondary source.

  "Father, isn't the place you mentioned also the place you asked me to research?" Morilore asked blankly while matching Inkaro in sitting perfectly straight and refraining from diverting her attention from the road, especially so when she spotted the shape of a manor poke over the treetops.

  "Is it? What a coincidence, maybe we'll run into that kitrunai girl so you can get a copy of her personality data," Inkaro said teasingly in a whisper. Morilore huffed with a glitchy effect to it, followed by her old-fashioned beep of frustration blaring from her core(Crown to True Embodiment. Despite the audible indication of her impending logic crash, Morilore strangely managed to keep her mana-made form intact while G.Galore crashed onto her lap: inactive. Inkaro lightly chuckled as he took the road that led around Hallousvana and straight to the reportedly haunted manor.