studiobondurri Chapter 86: The Reader’s Heart (2)
Chapter 86: The Reader’s Heart (2)
Chapter 86: The Reader’s Heart (2)
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?”Nôv(el)B\\jnn
“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.”
“Well, of course.”
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.”
“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.
—It hurts...
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.
Shiny.
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.]
Good.
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. ☜