They won't make much sense on their own since they call out to other code, but here they are anyway. As I noted, I've put print statements in and FETCH has the correct value right at return time. That value is only returned if I assign it, as also noted -- not as a dereference on the hash element FETCH is operating on behalf of.

sub FETCH
{
    my $self = shift;
    my $key  = shift;
    my $value = $self->{USER_OPT}->direct_get($key, $self->{ATTRS});

    return $value;
}

sub STORE
{
    my $self  = shift;
    my $key   = shift;
    my $value = shift;
    my $name;

    ($name, $value) =
      $self->{USER_OPT}->direct_set($key, $value, $self->{ATTRS});

    return $value;
}
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