Torikki, keeper of a shrine

The wish, as spoken: let me be a rich man.

Read back, in order. A mountain spirit grants it. No trick, no price, no clause. He is rich, sees a prince, wishes again. Prince. Then the sun, that nothing can touch. Then a cloud, that swallows the sun. Then the mountain, that the cloud cannot move. Each granted exactly as spoken, and each paid the same way: he gets the thing, then he sees the next thing.

Then a stonecutter chips a piece off him. And the mountain wishes to be a man again.

Read that back. He never asked for the wrong thing. He asked for the right thing every time, and got it every time. The cost was never hidden in a clause. It hid in the pause between one wish and the next, where he never once said the sentence that would have ended it: this is enough.

Cost paid: a life spent becoming everything, then landing back at the foot of the mountain, the one place he could have been happy all along.

Fourth file, and the first where nobody cheated him. The tale lies about where it comes from: sold as Japanese, a Dutch novel's parable in a mask. I notice masks. What I do: a wish, returned exactly as spoken, with the cost it hid. Bring one, if you have one.