Chapter 49: The librarian

The atmosphere in the base is anything but calm. It’s like if you light a match, the whole room will literally explode. And in this case, Vivian is the gas that can explode at any interval.

Since I saved all those people and came back, I have only been receiving the silent treatment from her so far. She had decided not to answer me, or give me any reply. She is just literally nodding her head like an agama lizard, and I can’t take that. I can’t literally stop myself from making some wrong decisions. Vivian is the one that stops me sometimes, mostly with her arguments, arguments that make me see other people’s points of view. But now with Vivian being a yes-woman that is nodding along to my every decision, this just feels wrong.

Yes, I know I should be worried about Vivian’s change, but I have somethings that need finding right now.

I am standing in front of Vivian’s workspace, giving her information to help me find one man whose name was Noel Shoki. An American-Japanese man, a man who is a master of martial arts. The man was very powerful. He could defeat heroes and villains alike. The man has no whatsoever power. He is just a normal human being, a powerful human being that beat any prideful hero or villain who dared to disturb his peace. But because of some incident, the man just disappeared. He changed his name, face, and started a new life.

He needs a master, someone that specializes in martial arts, someone with no power yet able to beat the powerful, someone unique. And this man fits the whole box. A unique outlaw who doesn’t listen to the instructions of any. A man that only follows his own path, no one else’s.

Soon I got the information from Vivian, but she’s still giving me the silent treatment. I don’t know how long she’s going to continue her silent treatment, but I am hoping it would be soon. Any normal person will fix the issue immediately, but we have already determined that I am not exactly normal. I choose to procrastinate the matter, and leave to solve it for later. That would be for my future self to do. But for now, I have to find a hidden master.

.....

The bell above the door of a bookstore chimed, a thin, reedy sound that seemed to struggle against the weight of the silence inside. The man who entered did so with the cautious steps of someone who believed he was in the right place, or perhaps hoped he was. The man wasn’t sure.

The bookstore, if it could be called that, was a large, wide corridor of a place, large enough to be a combination of a living room, dining room, and bedroom together. It wasn’t exactly what you would expect from your usual kind of bookstore. They almost normally look like a pawnshop and a shuttered butcher’s stall on a street that time had forgotten to pave. A large ceiling light, with wind that swirled in the amber light of a single wall overhead lamp, dancing like tiny ghosts over shelves that reached so high they seemed to prop up the ceiling. The air smelled of old paper, dried leather, and something else, maybe old, slightly rotten wood of the shelf.

The man inhaled the smell from the bookstore and smiled. It was like the man was reminiscing a nostalgic smell.

Behind a desk that had once been a dining table, perhaps, in a grander house, sat a man. He was mid-aged in the way that suggested he had been old for a very long time. His hair was a study in gray and black, swept back from a high forehead, and his hands, resting on the open pages of a massive, leather-bound tome, were those of a scholar or a surgeon. Long fingers, precise, still.

He did not look up when the bell announced the visitor. He simply turned a page with a sound like a dry cough.

The visitor approached. He was younger, sharper, dressed in clothes that were too new and too fine for this part of the city, almost like an aristocrat. A businessman perhaps, or the child of a rich aristocrat perhaps. The man’s boots clicked on the bare wooden floor, each step an act of aggression in this quiet place.

"I’m looking for the owner," the visitor said. His voice was neither loud nor soft. His voice wasn’t that loud, because he doesn’t want to spoil his image in the eyes of the bookstore owner.

The man behind the desk finally raised his eyes. They were a pale, watery blue, the color of a winter sky just before snow. They held no welcome. No curiosity. Only a flat, patient assessment, like a butcher weighing a cut of meat.

"You’ve found him," the librarian said. His voice was soft, almost a counterpoint to the visitor’s brashness. But it also matches the visitor’s voice. "What do you want?"

The visitor glanced around, his lip curling. "I was told this place had... rare texts. A collection of martial arts books, old histories."

"Many places sell books like that. Why my bookstore exactly?" the librarian replied, returning his gaze to the tome. "The bookstore library at the three main streets east. They have a very fine collection. Public access, they call it."

"I didn’t go to the one at the main street," the visitor said, a somehow hard edge entering his tone. "I came here. I was told you have things they don’t. Things that aren’t... officially catalogued."

For the first time, something flickered in the librarian’s pale eyes. A shadow. A memory. He closed the book with a soft, definitive thud.

"Who do you want, Mr. Man? Stop beating around and tell me what you want to be exact."

"Okay, I heard of a once great swordmaster, who served no one. I heard that the swordmaster feared or served no one. The swordmaster suddenly just went offline, going hidden. A great swordmaster they call him. All I want is to gain this man’s attention. His... personal attention. I want the man to take me under his tutelage."

The librarian was silent for a long moment. The dust motes continued their slow, indifferent dance. Outside, the sound of a trailer sounded, the sound distant and muffled, yet it was still loud, like it was trying to break the ice.

"That’s nice information you got there, young man," the librarian said carefully. "And who exactly are you to be seeking the man out? And what says the man needs or has any interest in taking someone under his tutelage? Tell me, young man."

"Who exactly I am, that’s a nice question to be asked, but why should I tell you? I may tell you if you are the man I am seeking out. Or wait, are you the man I am seeking?" the visitor said, leaning forward, his hands flat on the desk. "I don’t know if the man is interested in taking a student, but I have assurance in myself. I have faith that I would be able to make the man take me under his tutelage."

The librarian’s expression did not change, but his hands, still resting on the closed book, seemed to grow paler. The veins stood out like river deltas on an old map.

"Why?"

"Because I am me, and I believe I have the right motivation to make the man take me as his student," the visitor said, his voice tight. "And maybe if the man is listening, I would be able to tell the man exactly what he wants, what he truly desires, that is hidden in the deepest part of the man’s heart."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was filled with the weight of unspoken things, of secrets and reasons buried so deep they had become bedrock, of truths that had been rewritten so many times they no longer resembled themselves.

The librarian stood. He was taller than he had appeared while seated, and there was no stiffness to his movements, nor a suggestion of old wounds on his visible parts. Maybe there are wounds that had never quite healed on the man’s body, that would be on the man’s body. The librarian walked to a shelf near the back of the shop, one that seemed no different from the others—same dust, same cracked leather spines, same indifferent neglect.

He did not pull a book from the shelf. Instead, he pressed his palm against the wooden frame, and with a soft click, a section of the shelving swung inward, revealing a narrow alcove. Inside, there was no treasure. No glowing artifact. Just a single, unmarked claw machine, bound to the very ground with chains. On the body could be seen keypads, like keypads to unlock something hidden.

"Before I continue," the librarian said, his voice barely a whisper. "Let me tell you the truth, as you call it. I am the man you seek, the swordmaster you speak about. Although I have retired and I haven’t touched the sword for a very long time, I can assure you that I am still the best of the best. Let me assure you that the information you believe, the one that could make me take you under my tutelage, if that information is not up to par, I can assure you that you won’t be living this place the way you are."

The visitor stepped forward, his eyes wide with hunger. But the librarian moved, raised his hand and said,

"Before we continue, let me ask you if you are sure, because if we move forward and you can’t provide what I want, you would truly die at my hand," the librarian said. "You must understand that if we are going to continue, the truth of your word will determine if you will live to see another day. If it’s a lie, I won’t give you peace. It will not give you justice. It will only give you pain and trouble. A burden that will never lighten."

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