The Book Nook

20

 Aisles and aisles of books spun around me as if I were still running headlong through them, twisting and turning as they went on never-ending. I rubbed my eyes animatedly, feeling as if I hadn't slept since February.

Everything was all wrong. I saw it now; she wasn't as tall as Alexandria. More or less as petite, sure. But with the recent memory of my arms around her waist, I realized that the body I had grabbed onto briefly did not feel the same. However, I could chalk it up to being mid-football tackle to notice.

"I don't understand," was all I could come up with to say. It seemed to accurately describe the entirety of the whirlwind that had swept me up and left me lost at sea.

At that moment it looked like the girl pitied me. It seemed fair; I was a very pitiable human at that moment. She stepped closer and then knelt down in front of me.

"At least you tackled me like a gentleman. You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"

Her voice was light and innocent, unsuspecting for a night time caperer in the haunted halls of a library. She looked so young, though was probably older than she looked to me, as many of her ethnicity tended to seem to us from the West.

I recognized her then, as she knelt next to me, looking me over almost concernedly, as if my getting injured were to mean the blame fell to her.

She had registered me my library card, the one I currently had stashed in one of my pockets. I remembered her from that first visit to this library. She had been a friend of Alexandria's, it had been made obvious.

I scrambled for her name but couldn't quite remember it. I knew it had sounded Japanese to me at the time, but the name would not come to me.

"I'm fine," I murmured, finally trying to stand up. The girl put a hand on my shoulder and guided me back down. I didn't resist. Was she going to tell me everything? Would she tell me why Alexandria had put her up to this? I hoped that she would shine light upon the motives of what has been going on from the moment I woke up and found nothing to be quite the same.

"You filled out my library card," I said.

"Yes, I did. I'm Kyoko."

Surely this Kyoko likely already knew far more about me than I about her.

I could ask a hundred questions, and she likely had answers to many of them. Whether she deemed me worthy of hearing them, however, was another question entirely.

I felt like the kid in the class whom was the only one not in on the joke.

"Is she here?" I asked, motioning to get up again, once again hopeful. "Is she waiting? Can you take me to her? Please, I don't want to play this game anym -- "

The girl took me by the shoulders, politely telling me to slow down.

"She's not here, I'm afraid. I'm sorry," she said, exuding kindness in a way that made me feel that she was deeply, sorrowfully sorry, and more believably than any apology I had ever heard anyone make before.

"What, there's more clues? It's 4a.m.! I just want to go back to sleep. And take Alexandria with me."

I wanted to go over to the central reading area where the green light was most luminescent. Mostly because I rather enjoyed actually seeing who I was speaking to and whom it was that spoke to me. I led and Kyoko followed as I moved away from the bookshelves and into where the littered green lights cast shadows from the desk objects, but at least I could see better.

I turned to Kyoko. She really did look very young, even as we were swathed in green and the only part of her I could see was her face set beneath her black bangs, hair falling past her ears, bringing out her finely detailed features. Everything she wore was as black as her hair.