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“How–e–ver–.”

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I am a writer who lives in one of the time spaces among thousands and millions. There are multiple reasons for me not telling the name of our time space, and I apologize for that. But no matter where a person lives, one thing that is generally acknowledged is that language is always an important thing for humans; if there is no language and characters, I will not be able to type these words down, and you will never get to see them.

What I am going to talk about in this article is about transition, a turning point: a specific time when a person makes an important choice, which will have different effects in the future. The man in our title, today’s protagonist, lives in every turning point like that. For example, in English he is called “However,” in French “Toutefois,” and many other names in Chinese, Japanese, German, or Russian too. People always talk about him, without noticing the true meaning of the word, or knowing the person that hides behind the term.

The first time I ever heard of the name of “Mr. H” was from a friend of mine, Coin. He is an artist and a designer, also famous for his fancy ways of playing with copper coins. I have never met with this friend, but we are drawn together by our interests in mysterious things. We have kept contact for almost five years, and he introduced me to a chaotic master of pranks last winter–whose name, according to my friend, is “However.”

“However wears a boot on his head, has his glasses in the opposite way, and walks with two top hats.”

(Readers, before I go deeper into introducing this man to you, I have to make something clear: as a writer, I am a bit different from other people who are doing the same job as me. When you are reading articles I write, please see me as a recorder, but not a creator. In my understanding, every character that exists in every story you read, is alive. Hogwarts is real, Middle Earth is true. “Characters” also have a life that they are living, people they care about, and they experience emotions like we do. They are as real as you and me, but living in another world that we cannot reach. Now, when you hunker down and look at my article, please accept this concept and give your respect for this person. I would be really greatly appreciative if you would do that for me.)

Now, let’s come back to the topic, and chat about this “However.”

Coin made some simple explanation for me. “No matter if something is good or bad, as long as it reaches a point where it cannot continue, you will always hear ‘However–’ in the background.” In this spacious universe, most of the people are common like you and me; there are also time travellers and those who work for the universe officially, and I am not planning to get any deeper talking about them today. Remove all the people above I have said, there are still a small number of beings that are not controlled by the frame of this world. They ignore the reasons of this world; time will not destroy their appearance, and they are free to travel to any space time. In the beginning, I only have the feeling that Mr. H might be one of these people; and at this point, I still haven’t recognized how much trouble this man is.

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I really couldn’t remember when I first met Mr. H. Instead of a formal meeting, it is more likely that he jumped out of nowhere and just appeared in front of me. According to H, he has different appearances shown for different people. For Coin and I, he is the blond-haired guy that wears a boot and walks with hats. After knowing this, I always sarcastically say to him, “Thank you for your mercy, Mr. However, for you did not appear in our world in some form of monster that we would have a nightmare after looking at.”

Readers, if you are careful enough, you probably already noticed that I usually use the codename “Mr. H” to call this man, instead of his name “However.” That is because, if you have heard of this person in your life, (in this case, probably from my article), you have already built a type of connection with him. With this connection, he might come out anytime in the future when you say the word “However,” no matter whether you are intentionally calling him or not.

(Now you have reached this point of my story, then please listen to my warning: because of my reveal, you are already having a connection with this chaotic master of pranks! From this moment of your life, do not call upon him ever, and decrease the times that you use the word “however!” You never know when he will come out from the back of a wall after you say the word, shake your hand with enthusiasm, and introduce himself. I am also not sure of his appearance if you meet him; will he still be looking like a man with blond hair? Maybe he will become a woman, child, or elder, or he might not look like a human at all. Who knows. But no matter what he looks like, if there is a person that is in strange clothes and says his name is However, and he is wanting to make a deal with you, and is also a fan of American cartoon Gravity Fall–that would definitely be him.)

About his deals–this is another thing that I want to discuss. Like what I said, he is obsessed with Gravity Fall. I guess one of his best interests is to lay in front of the television, watch Gravity Fall and eat potato chips. Maybe he is influenced by the antagonist in that show, evil doritos Bill Cipher. Mr. H also loves to make deals with humans.

Different from Bill Cipher, Mr. H does not have any evil plans about taking over the world (thank God). The reason for him to make deals with people is simple: he’s doing it for fun. It is easy to imagine. These non human beings probably don’t think like we humans do. They won’t get old, won’t die, won’t worry about taxes and debts (sadly, we do). Everything we worry about is unnecessary for them. What is the matter if this time space gets destroyed? He just needs to go to another. So it is understandable that these kinds of people need some seasonings for this relaxing and boring life. For Mr. H, that “fun thing” to do is making deals.

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Now, let’s discuss more about his “deals.”

I believe that everyone that is reading this had a childhood. Most of us would always have that one specific morning that when we wake up, we would have this strong thought of not wanting to go to school. Leaving your comfortable, warm bed, getting up and walking into the cold weather. Facing rain or snow is not always the funniest thing to do. What are some reasons to skip school? Coughing, stomachache, headache–these are the common ones we use, and they are a little bit more reasonable during the Covid age–but if you are healthy enough, then you would have to lie to use these excuses.

It’s either going to school, facing hard classes and terrible lunches, or staying at home, with the consequences of lying and the disturbance of consciousness. You would have to choose between one of them. But, if you now say this out loud: “I have to go to school, however–” Then the next moment, Mr. H might appear in front of you, to ask you if you would like to make a deal.

It is pretty simple. You just need to shake your hand with him to agree with the deal, and then he will take care of the problem of your school. All you have to do is to give him something as remuneration at some point in the future. Depending on the person who is making the deal and the request itself, H will ask for different payments from people. In some cases, it might just be a bad weather alarm, which suddenly starts raining and the school is flooded–then nobody needs to go to school. For the remuneration, he might just ask you for a pencil, or for you to paint a picture for him. But in some other cases, you might get into a car crash on the road to school; then the remuneration will be awarded to him as the moment he fulfills your request–you don’t need to go to school, but you have to pay for your car’s renewment.

In both situations, we see that this student will always get his wish fulfilled, but the consequence is different. This is nothing you or me, or even Mr. H can change. It is more like a theory that is stated in a TV show: everything is connected. Everyone in this universe is a leaf that travels on the stream of water. We have to bear whatever comes back because of our choice.

That is the reason why I don’t recommend you guys making a deal with this master of pranks, because you would always have to face something else as compensation for the deal. The cause and effect in a time space cannot be changed, and the occurrence of heresy always requires a price. Sometimes, this price could be really horrifying, and that is not caused because of H.

No matter if it is a lost pencil, a spare picture, a car crash that’s not supposed to happen, or anything that’s worse than these–Mr. H is not responsible for any of them. Whatever happens after the deal happens because of the person who made the decision. If he doesn’t ask for help from However, but tries to put some effort on things by himself, the result will be very different. Whatever is not supposed to be there will not appear, and students will go to school as usual. What I mean by that, is that if there is no deal being made, then the karma caused by “However” himself would not turn into something that cannot be redeemed. This is why I warn my readers to not call upon him, because he will try his best to tempt you to make a deal with him.

For I am not able to convince him to stop playing these games that he thinks are funny (sometimes people would die from it), then we have to control ourselves–mind our own businesses, and not rely on this being who values playing more highly than everything else!

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Although I write down all these warnings, please don’t have any negative impression on Mr. However. No matter what I say, he is still my friend, and I will never have any malevolent thoughts towards him. The reason I write these down is because before making friends with him, we still have to keep in mind that he is not a human. He is not like us, even though he might appear as one of us. On the other hand, you may find him being very annoying–not everyone can stand his loudness like I do. If you realize you don’t like him being around you, just tell him to leave; I believe Mr. H doesn’t have much time to waste on someone that doesn’t welcome him.

With all that being said, I think I don’t have anything more to add, at least for now. The purpose of this article is to briefly introduce this man to my readers, and to give them some fair warnings in case sometime in the future they really meet this “However.” If any of my readers have more questions about Mr. H, they can email my address, and maybe I can get H himself to answer the emails. I’ll leave the address at the end of this article.

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Address: TheLitigationSamsara@gmail.com