The first tall tale Usopp tells is how his father will come back home. It’s a lie the second it leaves his mouth; he just doesn’t know it yet.

His mother — sweet, strong, sick — looks at him and smiles. Her hand lifts to cradle her son’s cheek, and she knows it isn’t true but doesn’t say otherwise. She is, after all, the one who told this lie first.

Maybe it started there. Passed down from mother to son, a story clutched close to their hearts like a precious heirloom. A shared hope, a generational desperation.

The first lie.

“He’ll come back, right through there,” Usopp says, throwing his hands wide and gestures excitedly at their front door. It’s a faded yellow that they never got around to repainting — his mother liked it that way. She said they should keep it so his dad could recognise the house, as if it wasn’t the only one on the hill.

Usopp didn’t mind. He liked the stories between them.

“—and, and, and—” he stutters, stumbling over himself to keep the story’s thread going, “—he’s travelled the farthest seas, right? He’ll come back with a medicine for you, and everything will be fine again. You’ll stop feeling so tired all the time!”

He beams, wide and guileless, and Usopp believes his own words.

(It will be a long time until he does so again.)

“Well,” his mother starts, then tilts her head. “After all these years, he better bring me back something nice too. Like dragon gold, or a magical flying carpet.”

Usopp’s eyes widened. “If we had a flying carpet, it wouldn’t matter that we lived so far from the village. Going to the doctor’s would be so easy! All the shopping trips too!”

“You wouldn’t want the dragon gold?” she asks, grinning. Usopp hums and haws, face scrunched in indecision. His mother laughs hard, kisses his forehead, and says she feels better already.

Usopp — young, naive, and unable to recognise a lie — believes her.