The little alcohol lamp had been in the gathering place for as long as anyone could remember. It was always there, sitting on the same table, next to the same chair. No one knew who it belonged to, or how it had gotten there. All they knew was that it was always there, and it always needed a cap.
The cap was always missing. It was an unreliable thing that was easily lost. If you didn’t cover the head of the alcohol lamp, the fire lit in the alcohol lamp would not be easily extinguished. So every time someone wanted to use the alcohol lamp, they had to extinguish the fire with a strong breath.
One day, there was something strange on the alcohol lamp. It wasn’t a cap, but it did the role of a cap. Perhaps it was a cover attached to the caster part of the chair. However, it was the perfect size and shape for an alcohol lamp cap. A woman saw it and screamed.
“This is not an alcoholic cap, is it?” she asked. “It just happened to look like this.”
The other people in the gathering place looked at the object on the alcohol lamp. They all agreed that it did not look like a real cap. But it did the job of extinguishing the fire, so they decided to use it.
The next day, the object was gone. No one knew where it had come from, or where it had gone. But the people in the gathering place were glad that it had been there when they needed it.
The object on the alcohol lamp was a mystery. But it was also a reminder that sometimes, the best things in life are the ones that are unexpected.
— hiro (@hiro_osaka_jp) May 25, 2023
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