Flower Child Rewrite

Many years ago there once was a human boy who fell into the Underground. Though many of our people immediately noticed him and wished to kill him in honor of the King's commands, he nonetheless managed to escape his punishment and has since then hid from the purviews of people. It is said that he now lives in the outskirts of the Underground, occasionally coming out from the shadows to eat any monster children who disobey their parents by wandering into unknown areas that they were told not to go into.

At the very least that's the story our parents told us growing up. It worked pretty well as a way to deter us from hanging out in weird places so I'd consider it to have done its job but nobody really knows if any of it's true. All "sightings" of him have been sparse, occurring once every few years and even then the most people have to support their claims that they saw him were witness testimonies and really blurry photos.

All cases of this person being spotted have all given the same description: a big burly middle-aged human male sporting a long beard, coating himself in a cloak intertwined with a variety of flowers. Hence, he's been given the name "Flower Man."

In spite of the fact that there hasn't been any substantial evidence that this Flower Man still exists, or heck if he ever existed in the first place, it's a well believed rumor that he's still alive, hiding himself from the public eye. This has caused tons of people, mostly children, to try and take advantage of this belief by blaming all sorts of issues on the Flower Man.

Showed up to school late? The Flower Man turned your alarm off.

Lost your homework? The Flower Man took it.

Got a bad grade on your exam? It was because during the test the Flower Man kept staring at you from outside the window.

How many teachers actually believe this stuff? Take a wild guess.

Still, I'd be lying if I were to say that I didn't believe the Flower Man exists. Even if the descriptions of him aren't accurate I don't think it's impossible that maybe there was a human who fell Underground and is now hiding so as to not be killed.

And hey, who knows, maybe he's not as bad as they say. Maybe he's just some dude that's trying to live his best life in a world that's out to get him.

Honestly, I can respect that.