In the Republic of Impunity, where titles were cheaper than bread and institutions were made of fog, lived Sad Silky, a Prime Minister in permanent distress and temporary confidence. He had the look of a man forever caught between a collapse and a comeback.
One morning, Sad discovered that he was in trouble again. Not the dramatic kind, the ordinary kind: debts, pressure, whispers, and a bank on the edge of the cliff. The bank was called **Seaside Bank**, a place so rotten with accounting miracles that even its vaults seemed to cough when opened.
Sad needed cash.
So he summoned a bystander, a man of harmless expression and expensive shoes, and called him **Mr Honorable**.
“Wonderful,” said Sad, with the tenderness of a wolf explaining finance to a lamb. “You will buy my shares for **$350 million**.”
Mr Honorable blinked. “Oh how cute,” he said. “But alas, I am nobody.”
Sad smiled as if generosity itself had invented him.
“Wait,” he said. “Go see my friend at the **Badaboom Central Depositors Scam Bank**. The Governor there—Mr Land, from the kingdom of Lala Land—needs his mandate renewed. And I am Sad.”
Mr Honorable, who had come for a meeting and was now being recruited into folklore, was escorted through a corridor of polished lies and administrative perfume. At the end of the corridor sat the Governor, calm as a mural and vague as a promise.
The meeting took place.
By the time it was over, Mr Honorable found himself with a seat on the board and a **pay-on-endorsement check for $350 million** sitting in front of him like a golden trap with good stationery.
He handed the check to Sad.
Sad used the money to pay off **some** of his problems, which in that republic meant the most urgent problems, not the real ones.
Then, with the grace of a man signing a shopping list, he endorsed the mandate.
And then the broker emailed everyone.
> “I did this, it was me, you see? Now that our friend Land has been renewed, we can pursue the deal of Seaside, Honorable, Land and Sad.”
The room fell silent, as silence does when even the lies are embarrassed.
Except Honorable was not honorable.
He was not Humpty Dumpty either.
He was merely a man who had mistaken access for innocence.
And then the broker was exposed.
Fake journalists were ridiculed.
Shame-faced MPs, lit by the glare of breakfast cameras, sat frozen at their tables between hummus and olive oil, trying to chew dignity without swallowing the evidence.
In the Republic of Impunity, this was called a scandal.
But everyone knew the proper name.
It was **business as usual**.