It was creepy. His Affection toward me was ninety-five. Now I knew what happened to someone when their Affection reached ninety-five.
“Shining-Ja! Before I met you, I was nothing more than a blind man!” the Indoor Librarian shouted, fondling my foot. “I was as good as deaf before I heard your lines!”
The Indoor Librarian’s eyes lit up as he tried to cut my toenail using the clipper. “You’re my light! You’re my music!”
His eyes were terrifying.
“Since your name is Gong-Ja, I’ll gladly convert to Confucianism[1]! I’ll become your scholar! Isn’t it wonderful to learn and to practice? Isn’t it a pleasure to have friends visit from afar? Even when others don’t recognize your efforts, you’re a noble man if you don’t get angry![2] Starting today, I’m a Confucian scholar who serves you, Mr. Gong-Ja!”
“Hey. For god’s sake! Hey!”
What kind of crackhead scholar went for someone’s toenail? I wanted to ask him that question, but there was something about his eyes that made me stop. His eyes and his heavy breathing made me realize that no matter what I said, it was going to go in one ear and out the other.
“If you keep doing this, I’m not going to enter another apocalyptic book,” I warned him.
The Indoor Librarian stopped talking. The creepy part was that even though he was silent, he still fondled my foot. Was he crazy?
“...That’s a solid threat,” he mumbled, like a scholar confronting a great conundrum. “It’ll work on me.”
I was relieved to hear that it’d worked.
“But that’s impossible, considering your character analysis.”
What? Character analysis?
“You know that the other apocalyptic books have those who wither away like the Heavenly Demon for an unfair reason. Given your personality, you have to help those people. By your nature, you can’t resist the urge.” The Indoor Librarian smiled. “Don’t underestimate your fan, Mr. Gong-Ja. I know you better than yourself! I can write two pages about which hand you used and how you looked as you ate your grain pill on the first day of the Heavenly Demon Chronicle...”
He was definitely crazy. Not a single thing about him was sane.
“Now, Mr. Gong-Ja, just hand it over! You have to give me this at least! You know, I’m being incredibly conscientious by not using the sleeping scent to put you to sleep, Mr. Gong-Ja.”
“Your conscience surprises me too,” I answered sourly.
“You probably don’t understand because you’ve never stanned for someone. Oh, what a tragedy! How miserable is life if you’ve never found someone to stan? Such a person’s heart must be ice cold. Still, I should understand you, Shining-Ja—”
“Step away before I say I hate you.”
The Indoor Librarian actually froze.
“Take five steps away from me. If you don’t, I’m really going to say it.” I put my hand between me and him.
The Indoor Librarian quietly stepped back.
“Please act like your usual self. It’s grossing me out, honestly. And please give me back my hair and fingernails.”
“No! You can’t do this to me!” The Indoor Librarian’s tone became authoritative again as he cradled the silk pouches against his chest morosely. “You should just cut off my head instead! No, wait a minute, Gong-Ja. I was just being dramatic. Please don’t actually think about whether or not you should really do it... You look like you’re really considering it, and that genuinely hurts me...”
He looked like a discouraged hamster now.
All in all, I had successfully calmed the Indoor Librarian down. After burning the creepy silk pouches—which caused him to scream terribly—he and I finally started to have a proper conversation.
“It was incredible,” the Indoor Librarian commented. “What you did for the Heavenly Demon is truly admirable! Just becoming the Heavenly Demon’s disciple could have been your ending, but you didn’t stop there! The final battle of the Great War of Good and Evil... And the best match of her lifetime... Oh, it was like tasting a sweet shaved ice with chocolate ice cream on top.”
“Then is the world of the Heavenly Demon Chronicle the Tower’s twenty-second floor now?”
The Indoor Librarian smiled brightly. “Yes, it is. Other hunters can also freely go in and out of the twenty-second floor. They can also learn Skills by reading the martial arts manuals in the Heavenly Martial Arts Hall. It’s all thanks to your accomplishments, Gong-Ja.”
“My time in the apocalyptic book gave me a question. I’m hoping you can answer this...” I rested my chin on my palm.
“Ask me anything! I’ll answer almost anything!”
“Stop trying to take off my shoes like it’s not a big deal. Why is the Heavenly Demon Chronicle an apocalyptic book?”
The Indoor Librarian tilted his head, clearly confused by my question. “Why? Do you believe there should be a reason why the Heavenly Demon Chronicle is an apocalyptic book?”
“I believe so.” I put my shoes back on. “Do you like happy endings, sir? Or do you prefer bad endings?”
“That is a choice I can’t make,” the Indoor Librarian immediately answered. “An ending is the last port that characters reach during their lives. Life can be both happy and sad. It’s only natural for readers to wish for the characters happiness, but I want to embrace their sadness and failures too.”
“So you’re saying that a bad ending is a proper ending too.”
“That makes me wonder even more,” I said.
He went around my back with scissors, so I grabbed his wrist and took the scissors away. He tried to take back the scissors, but he couldn’t reach them no matter how much he jumped up and down.
“Even if I hadn’t intervened, the Heavenly Demon Chronicle met a proper ending, even though it was a bad one. Teacher worked hard and did her best with the Murim Alliance's leader until the end. Even if he died first and she went insane... that’s still the ending she reached.” I looked into the Indoor Librarian’s eyes. “Why is the Heavenly Demon Chronicle considered an apocalyptic book? Is it not considered a proper ending if the Murim Alliance's leader died and Teacher committed suicide after going insane?
In truth, the question had been bugging me ever since I had seen the fairy tale named Our Victim. Regardless of whether I could accept the endings or not, those worlds seemed to have met their natural ends.
The library was silent save for the sound of the unconscious Hunters’ breathing. While the Hunters’ chests rose and fell, the Indoor Librarian remained expressionless.
“For some reason, I wanted to see a happy ending. Can that be the reason?”
“If you didn’t like the ending, you could have rewritten it yourself,” I responded. “You’re strong. To a Hunter like me, you’re omnipotent, but you sent us instead of rewriting the book yourself.”
In other words, this Constellation was a “reader.” He absolutely hated intervening in the story so he simply accepted it. By no means did he want to be an author—he would refuse even if he could, hence the “Indoor Librarian.”
“Shall I do a character analysis on you too? There’s no way you would’ve classified them as apocalyptic books just because their endings were weird, not when you’re this thorough. There must be another reason why the Heavenly Demon Chronicle and the stories are classified as apocalyptic books.”
“...You’re a difficult one, aren’t you?” The Indoor Librarian smiled bitterly. “Follow me.”
He grabbed my hand and used his other hand to grab the Heavenly Demon Chronicle.
“... I’ll tell you the truth behind the apocalyptic books.”
The Constellation opened the book and I was blinded by its light.
When I opened my eyes again, we were back in the world of snow. There was no need to walk across the snowfield—the Indoor Librarian was still holding my hand, so we flew through the winter sky, his long sleeves flapping like a seagull's wings.
“If... If the zombie virus was created in the Heavenly Demon Chronicle... If it really was... I would never have classified this world as an apocalyptic book, like you said.”
We passed over the snowy mountains.
“That means...” I trailed off.
“It wasn’t. The zombie virus is a plague that came entirely from the outside world. It’s like the New World getting invaded by an outside force.” The Indoor Librarian let out a puff of white breath. “Over there. We can see it now.”
He was pointing at a towering mountain peak, the holy peak of this world. Something huge was sitting atop it.
[Shiny has sensed an ominous presence.]
The holy sword hanging on my belt trembled.
“Oh, your sword seems to feel it too,” the librarian noticed. “It’s not strange. Your sword used to be a complete Constellation too. People tend to recognize people in similar situations quickly.”
“By a similar situation, you mean...”
“Gong-Ja, have you ever seen a Constellation’s fall?”
I had Preta, who had fallen from being a Constellation named the Demon King of Autumn Rain.
“Then have you also seen a dead Constellation’s body?”
“...I knew it.” The Indoor Librarian smiled sadly. “It’s quite a rare sight, so take a good look at it while you have the chance.”
On the mountain peak lay a dead dragon. His skin, once as smooth as silk, was burned black while his horns crumbled like coal dust. His cintamani was buried in the snow in two pieces.
[Shiny has detected her sister’s presence.]
And a sword was embedded in the center of his chest.
[Shiny says that is Sympathy, her second sister sword!]
Cloudy black energy flowed out from the sword. It could be considered aura, but it wasn’t normal. It was something similar to, and possibly even more chaotic, than the wastewater which the Demon King of Autumn Rain had used to cover herself. The chaotic energy enveloping the dragon spread all over the peak. When snowflakes fell on the mountain peak, the energy immediately infected them and turned them black.
—It hurts... I hate...
The black dragon’s eyes lacked all light, but a groan continued to leak out of his mouth.
—It hurts. It hurts... It hurts. I hate. It hurts. It stings...
For a moment, I was speechless.
“... Didn’t you say that Constellation was dead?” I asked. “He’s still alive.”
“He is dead. What you see and hear from that is the dead’s grudge. When you’re in the class of a Constellation, you can’t die peacefully. ”
We landed on the peak where the black dragon was groaning without end. The Indoor Librarian looked at the demise of another Constellation pityingly.
“The plague you and the others called a zombie virus is actually a curse.”
“Yes, it’s the curse that this world’s Constellation, the Yellow Dragon of the Great Lake, left behind upon his death. His grudge can’t fade away and his corpse still remains even after his death, so he must endure pain. When people are infected by the curse, they become jiangshi.”
I looked up at the dragon’s corpse.
He was the plague’s host and the source of the curse. The disease that brought doom to this world started from that corpse. That dragon’s curse was basically the reason why Teacher had passed away.
“...Someone killed him. The Constellation didn’t stab himself in the chest.”
“Logically, you’re probably right.”
“Who is the culprit?”
“You already know who it is.”
I ground my teeth. “Lefanta Aegim.”
“That’s right.” The Indoor Librarian nodded. “His title is Constellation Murderer. He travels from world to world and kills Constellations.”
Shiny had told me that a Constellation was a world’s representative.
“A world that’s lost its Constellation is like a castle that lost its walls. It becomes increasingly prone to meeting such an unusual, abrupt demise.”
The apocalyptic books in the Great Library of All Life were the worlds where their representatives died and all of the residents had disappeared.
“Why does he kill Constellations out of nowhere? If he founded the Aegim Empire, he could just be the emperor of his country. Why does he go around and ruin worlds? They didn’t do anything to him.”
“That is a question that I can’t answer.” The Indoor Librarian carefully observed my face. “I’m merely a reader. You said that I’m omnipotent, but that is not true. I may be omniscient, but I’m powerless. I can know the truth of worlds, but I don’t intervene in their affairs.”
The Indoor Librarian suddenly pointed to my waist, abruptly shifting from his self-deprecating remarks.
“But you are different.”
His finger was pointed to the sword hung on my waist.
“You can intervene and are intervening. Whether you want to or not, you are fixing what someone else ruined one by one. Once is a coincidence. Twice is fate. Three times is an inevitability. You saved the empire that the Constellation Murderer had abandoned, took in the Constellation that he split apart, and now you’re in the world that was destroyed because of him.
“The measure he used to kill the Yellow Dragon of the Great Lake is vicious and cruel. Ordinary people can’t even touch that sword, but you can, Gong-Ja, You made an inevitability from the encounter of coincidence and fate.”
I looked at the black dragon’s corpse again.
The holy sword trembled gently.
[Shiny answers your call.]
How can I take in your sister?
[Shiny says that you have to draw her and touch the sister sword using her.]
I drew my sword and struck the sword embedded in the black dragon’s chest with it, slashing across the winter sky.
[The Goddess of Protection is absorbing a piece of herself.]
My sword was briefly enveloped in light.
1. Just in case: Confucius is called Gongja in Korea. ☜
2. The raw is 유붕자원방래, 불역낙호(有朋自遠方來, 不亦樂乎) The lines are from Analects, also known as the Sayings of Confucius. ☜