One day, Hanc arrived in a city with only one inhabitant.
The man seemed happy.
Peaceful.
Content.
For years, Hanc visited him.
They spoke often.
The man never complained.
Never feared.
Never desired.
One evening, Hanc finally asked:
“How did you become so free?”
The man looked confused.
Then he replied:
“I am not free.”
“What do you mean?”
The man smiled.
“There is nobody left to imprison me.”
For many years, a village lived in fear of a monster.
Nobody had seen it.
Yet everyone knew it existed.
The elders warned of it.
The parents taught their children about it.
The children grew up and taught their own children.
One day, Hanc offered to find it.
The villagers begged him not to go.
But he went anyway.
He searched the forests.
The mountains.
The caves.
Years passed.
He found nothing.
When Hanc returned, the villagers celebrated.
“You survived!”
they cried.
“So the monster was never real?” asked Hanc.
The celebration stopped.
The villagers looked at each other nervously.
Then one of them whispered:
“If the monster isn’t real…
who taught us to be afraid?”
Hanc walked into a crowd.
Everyone was shouting.
Everyone wanted to be heard.
Hanc listened carefully.
Then he asked,
“Who are you talking to?”
The crowd became silent.
For the first time,
they realized
they had only been talking to themselves.
A merchant spent his life building an empire.
More stores.
More customers.
More wealth.
Each year, he celebrated growth.
One day, Hanc asked,
“When will it be enough?”
The merchant laughed.
“When it stops growing.”
Years later, the empire collapsed.
The merchant sat among the ruins.
Hanc returned and asked,
“Is it enough now?”
For the first time,
the merchant realized
he had never built a business.
He had built a measuring device.
A couple spent years trying to understand each other.
They talked.
They argued.
They explained themselves endlessly.
Still, they felt misunderstood.
One day, Hanc asked,
“Who are you trying to understand?”
The couple looked confused.
“Each other,” they replied.
Hanc shook his head.
“No.
You are trying to understand the person you imagined.
That is why the real one keeps surprising you.”
A fish spent its life searching for the ocean.
It crossed great distances.
Asked wise fish.
Followed ancient maps.
Near the end of its life, it finally found an old fish and asked,
“Please tell me. Where is the ocean?”
The old fish replied,
“You have never been anywhere else.”
The fish laughed.
“No. This is just water.”
And it swam away.
One day, Hanc met a thief.
The thief had stolen thousands of lives.
Yet nobody had reported him.
Nobody chased him.
Nobody even seemed aware of him.
So Hanc followed him.
For many years.
The thief visited every person.
The young.
The old.
The rich.
The poor.
Each time, he took something precious.
And left unnoticed.
At last, Hanc confronted him.
“What do you steal?”
The thief smiled.
“Nothing.”
“Then why do people become different after you visit them?”
The thief pointed behind Hanc.
There stood a child.
A stranger.
An old man.
All wearing Hanc’s face.
Hanc stared in silence.
Then he understood.
The thief had never stolen anything.
He had only been taking away
who people could no longer be.
One day, Hanc discovered a museum.
Inside were countless exhibits.
Every mistake he had ever made.
Every embarrassment.
Every rejection.
Every failure.
Visitors walked through the halls studying them.
Judging them.
Laughing at them.
Hanc was horrified.
He spent years trying to hide the exhibits.
But no matter what he did,
they remained.
Exhausted, he finally asked the curator,
“Why won’t you close this place?”
The curator looked confused.
Then he replied,
“We did.”
“Years ago.”
Hanc looked around.
The museum was empty.
He had been the only visitor.
One day, Hanc met a painter.
The painter spent his entire life creating the perfect portrait of himself.
Every year, he changed it.
He removed flaws.
Added strengths.
Made himself wiser.
Kinder.
More impressive.
When the painting was finally finished,
Hanc looked at it.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“But who is it?”
The painter smiled.
“Me.”
Hanc looked at the painting.
Then at the painter.
“Then why did you spend your life becoming someone who was never there?”
The painter looked back at the portrait.
For the first time,
he noticed something.
The painting had been changing.
But the painter had only been watching.
A man came to Hanc with a question.
“I want to find the truth.”
Hanc asked,
“What truth?”
The man replied,
“The truth about everything.”
So he spent his life searching.
He read every book.
Followed every teacher.
Collected every answer.
On his final day, he returned to Hanc.
“I found it.”
Hanc smiled.
“What is it?”
The man opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Finally, he whispered:
“I cannot tell you.”
“Why?”
The man looked at the sky.
“Because the moment I describe it,
it becomes something I know.
Not something I see.”
Hanc nodded.
And for the first time,
the man stopped holding the truth.
And the truth stopped needing him.