As Petra walked into the teaching department's private library, she realised that being the teacher's favourite did, in fact, have its own perks.
Not accessible to all the university students, it was built solely for the teaching staff, and often played the role of a "chillout zone" for professors to retire for rest after a weary day of tolerating Gen Z students and their equally Gen Z tantrums. The library was redbrick, Victorian, sitting self-importantly at the topmost floor of the commons' building. It had a chessboard-tiled floor and row after row of neatly lined up books — their spines facing outward, colour coded with dots — on subjects ranging from science, mathematics, liberal studies and literature, to art and architecture, music, physical education and weekly magazines. There were floor cushions, comfortable leather arm chairs, tables for quiet study, and computers for doing book searches or surfing the web.
Every once in a month or two, professors offered their best students a chance to explore the aisles of thier library. Today, Petra just happened to be the lucky kid.
While tracing her fingers against the spines of books in the organic chemistry section, Petra was quickly scanning the titles when she suddenly stopped. There, sandwiched between two hardcover volumes, was a thick blue paperback. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the title said. Frowning at why a dictionary was tucked in a shelf of science textbooks, she carefully removed the book, and was about to place it in the English section when a ruled sheet of paper fell from between the pages.
When she picked it up and turned it over, her eyes unmistakably caught a word on the sheet.
Enigma.
That was enough for her to linger.
The handwriting was an eloquent cursive, the sentences haphazardly filling the entirety of the page. It must've belonged to a professor making notes from the book, but Petra could not find it in herself to tuck it back between the pages because that word, enigma, now commanded all of her attention. It rung a bell, but she couldn't place a hand on what. So she read on.
Mysterious (.adj) synonyms:
Delphic, esoteric, sibylline, obscure
enigma ✓
Latin - aenigma
Greek - ainigma
(?) aenigmum (?)
aenigma + ium = Aenigmium
AENIGMIUM ✓
*note: refer to pg 154 of ODoEE
ODoEE.
Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
Snapping open the book, Petra quickly turned to page 154 of the dictionary and found, as expected, a passage on engima's word of origin.
The word enigma first appeared in print in 1449. Its origins remain as mysterious as the word itself. It is likely to derive from the Latin ænigma, meaning a riddle, or the Greek, ainigma, which derives from the word ainissesthai, "to speak obscurely, speak in riddles."
With trembling hands, she held the ruled sheet before her eyes, scanning the corners for a date, name or signature. Nothing. What on earth was this? The chemical nomenclature of the heinous substance that had transformed normal humans into walking, marauding zombies? She had little doubt that whoever had written it was none other than the creator of Aenigmium itself. Or perhaps someone connected to its creation. But what was this paper doing here, in the private library of Seoul National University?
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