Time seemed to stand still. The wind halted, all sound ceased, and everything in the shrine grounds stood frozen in the dark night. The top of the giant camphor didn’t sway, and not even a pebble stirred. A terrible storm had just been raging. The fierce winds blowing from deep within the shrine had dragged Mashiro and Haruta away before Mifuyu’s very eyes, but the air now stayed silent, as if satiated. Completely alone, Mifuyu stood dumbstruck beneath the torii. Packed so tight that no path allowed her to squeeze through, the small, white, fox-shaped statues running from the torii to the main hall hung eerily in the darkness. She stared transfixed at the head of the group of immobile foxes that filled the grounds. The statue of a white dog sat in front of the shrine’s main mall. Conspicuously large, it looked like the leader of the outlandish group of statues. Mifuyu knew who this dog statue was. Her guide in the world of books, the loyal white-haired girl, her friend with dog ears. “…Mashiro!” No response. Mifuyu tried moving toward her, but the fox statues packed like sardines stopped her. She was ready to rush toward Mashiro, not caring if she knocked any of the statues over. When she lifted her foot to do so, however, she hesitated and set it back down. Almost all the foxes faced away from her, looking directly at the main hall; only the lone fox right in front of her turned toward her. Mifuyu flinched under its pair of eyes, like thin crescent moons. Lifeless stone statue though it was, she felt it warning her, ready to spring to life at any moment. Mifuyu crouched down and faced the fox statue. Its long nose almost looked wet, and fangs poked out from its cracked mouth. “Do you have something you want to say? …Were you one of the people in the shopping district?” She tapped the statue’s muzzle, but it did not reply. She tried lifting the statue, which was about the height of a young bamboo shoot emerging after a long winter. “Unnngh.” It was much heavier than anticipated; she eventually hoisted it onto her knees, struggling with all her might to not drop it. The fox wasn’t naked, and it had been carved with Western-style clothes. Mifuyu recalled that eccentric style from somewhere, and upon closer inspection, she saw earrings dangling from its ears. “No way… Is this Keiko?” The woman who had been toying with Mifuyu just before. The person who’d brought Haruta to Mikura Hall. Mifuyu tried talking to and lightly slapping the fox statue, but it didn’t say a word. The sensation of seeing it ready to spring to life earlier must have been her imagination. She returned it to its original position and examined the other statues. The one with a fish tucked under its arm and an apron tied around its waist was probably the fish seller, and the one with the hunched back could be the old man who ran Books Mystery. The fox holding out some yakitori must be the owner of Hashida Broiler, and she even saw a fox wearing the hat of a train-station employee. There was no doubt about it. All the foxes here had to be the missing townspeople. Mifuyu knew in her heart that these hundreds or thousands of statues weren’t the work of some stonemason, but the result of the book curse. “So you’re all here.” Naturally, no statue answered her, all of them resting silently instead. Mifuyu stood up. First things first, she needed to reach Mashiro. If she didn’t move the statues and make her way to the main hall, however, she’d never even be able to touch Mashiro. To create a path, the only place she could set the foxes would be near the stairs beyond the torii, and repeating the process of moving one statue and coming back for the next would be arduous, to say the least. The statues weren’t big, but each one was thick and heavy, and she worried that a statue might slip and get damaged. She flustered at the possibility that breaking or chipping a statue might kill that person. By the time she finally stood next to Mashiro’s statue in front of the main hall, she couldn’t muster up any more energy. She massaged her sore back as she approached the white statue and gently ran a hand over its surface. The statue looked exactly like Mashiro in stone form. The dog ears and long nose, the front and rear paws sitting attentively, and the splendidly bushy tail. Its eyelids were cracked slightly, and its eyes stared forward. Mifuyu waved a hand in front of Mashiro, hoping for some reaction, but nothing happened. “Mashiro, can you hear me? Why did you turn to stone? Listen—everyone else turned to a statue, too. Am I the only who didn’t?” She stroked the mute Mashiro’s cheeks and forehead, the surface of the stone feeling oddly warm and alive. This really was Mashiro, without a doubt. Mifuyu sniffled, and her vision blurred. Even if everyone in Yomunaga disappeared, she knew she’d be okay so long as she had Mashiro. She had faced so many dangers in the world of books. She had almost been shot in the hard-boiled world, had barely escaped the gaping jaws of the Silver Beast, and had been chased by the mythical monster. It had even eaten Mashiro, though she did return. So Mifuyu had assumed that she would be fine this time, too. “What should I do? Now that you’re a statue, too, I don’t know what comes next.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her polo shirt, but her tears kept coming. “…You were always there for me, always helping me. You’re such a weirdo. You dived straight after me when I fell, and you protected me back there on the stairs.” Mifuyu spoke through her tears, petting the space between Mashiro’s pointy ears. “Is it because you’re a dog? Dogs are faithful to their masters, right? But I don’t remember ever adopting you.” She figured that if Mashiro had an owner, it had to be her grandmother Tamaki. If so, then she might have ordered her dog to protect her grandchild. But when Tamaki chased them inside Mikura Hall, Mashiro protected Mifuyu, not Tamaki. It felt like she had always known Mashiro. Talking with her was like seeing someone whose name and face you had forgotten spot you in a crowd, then watching their face break into the purest smile at having found you. Mashiro knew Mifuyu. But Mifuyu didn’t remember Mashiro. Or did she? Back in the empty hospital, when she and Haruta were discussing the story in her father’s notebook, a memory had flashed in the back of her mind. She was clutching a crayon, intently drawing a picture of a girl with pointy, triangular ears in a sketch pad. The girl had large eyes and a big smile. That one memory unlocked others, like a chain reaction. That was neither the first nor the last time Mifuyu had drawn the girl with dog ears. She had loved that figure, drawing it so often that when her father and her aunt came to see the pictures, she told them it was her friend. Mifuyu remembered naming the finished picture. Mashiro. That was it. She’d named her after a white rabbit in a children’s book that her father used to read to her. She wrote the s in the name backward, causing her grandmother to despair that she didn’t know how to write properly. How had she forgotten about that? “I’m the one who drew you, aren’t I?” Every so often, Mashiro looked at Mifuyu with a pained expression. She must have desperately wanted to say something, but she held her tongue, perhaps waiting for Mifuyu to remember on her own. But now that Mifuyu had remembered, she didn’t think her voice would penetrate those stone ears, and that made her cry all the harder. It was the same when her mother died. Standing in front of her grave, saying words that would never reach her. Mifuyu regretted not saying all the things she should have said earlier. “I’m sorry I forgot. I’m so sorry…” Emotions she couldn’t name surged forth like a tightly packed pillar bursting out of its seam, and Mifuyu hugged the stone Mashiro around the neck. The breeze picked up again, swirling around Mifuyu’s warm body and cheeks. The top of the camphor tree swayed gently, the thick clouds in the night sky moved, and the moon appeared. A white crescent moon. The curved white shape resembled Mashiro’s tail when she flew through the sky. Why had Mifuyu stopped drawing those pictures of Mashiro? Had it started with the harsh gaze of her grandmother? Or perhaps, Mashiro had naturally vanished from her mind as she aged out of playing with imaginary friends. No matter the reason, why had the girl she’d drawn come to life to guide her through the book curse? Mifuyu stopped crying and slowly stepped away from Mashiro’s statue. She reached out for her shoulder bag. Finding the thing inside she was looking for, she carefully extracted it. The leather notebook, covered with oil from fingers and wrinkles. Why had her father placed this so conspicuously by his hospital pillow now, when he had hidden it from her before? Maybe he’d transformed into a fox while writing and couldn’t hide it. Either way, Mifuyu had gotten his message to read it. He was at the center of Mikura Hall’s secrets and knew that she would arrive here. He had probably even predicted this all would happen. The breeze became a wind. Fallen leaves blew around the fox statues. Pale moonlight bathing the notebook, Mifuyu took a deep breath and flipped it open. The Memoirs of Ayumu Mikura I wonder if books also love the people who love them. It seemed that way with my grandfather Kaichi, at least. He passed away when I was six years old, so a vague recollection of his face sits in the corner of my memory along with what I pieced together from stories by my mother and people around town. But they’re enough for me to know that he loved books and that books loved him. As soon as they set foot inside Mikura Hall, visitors would weave through the narrow gaps between the giant shelves in search of my grandfather, his skinny frame bent like a fading willow tree. He read everything. From the description of the red-bean jellies my grandmother served, to the water bill, to warning labels on cold compresses, to the orange open here stickers on boxes of candy, he’d read anything made of letters. On his birthday, he’d go to the Minazuki Festival and read every last prayer block. He’d look over any written script without exception: Roman letters, Cyrillic, Chinese, Hangul, Arabic, anything. He’d stare at the text through his thick glasses, and in the next instant, he would open his dictionary, mumbling as he looked up the meaning of the words. I remember that about my grandfather well. I do not doubt for a moment that my grandfather truly loved books and words. But did the books love him back? You might laugh at me for claiming that books have conscious desires, but I know it for a fact. That’s because whatever book my grandfather said he wanted to read, no matter how rare or how expensive, he’d find it at a used book shop, or it would be delivered to either our house or Mikura Hall as though drawn by a magnet. It was like the books wanted my grandfather to hold them. He loved books, and they loved him. But it didn’t end there. He opened Mikura Hall to the public in the hopes of adding to the world even one more reader with the same loving relationship to books. When I was young, Mikura Hall operated like a public library, so busy with people reading and talking about books that I didn’t think the books belonged to us. And my mother never liked that. Her adoration of books outshone even my grandfather’s. My mother, Tamaki, stored her books in a locked shelf and wouldn’t let anyone else near them. Even her mother, my grandmother, wasn’t allowed near Tamaki’s shelf. The only person allowed to even look at them was Kaichi. Naturally, I, her own son, never saw them growing up. That the annex housing her collection turned into a prisonlike storehouse was testament to her fastidiousness. According to my mother, books were sacred, and their relationship with the reader was sacrosanct, not something to be shared with others. She believed that the experience of reading a story should only exist in the mind of the individual themselves, and so discussing it was a foolish endeavor. If anything, she also seemed to believe her interpretation of a book was the only correct one. That’s why she never made a single friend who shared her interest in books. Even the man she married was indifferent to them. When my mother became pregnant with me, a boy, my father left her for his mistress, abandoning all parental responsibilities. I still don’t know what he looks like or even his surname. My mother being my mother, she was satisfied to have an heir who would inherit Mikura Hall, and she hardly thought of him again. Anyone born into those circumstances would be assured a superb education. That was my fate, growing up in a house filled with a collection of books that attracted collectors and avid readers from across Japan. I had no refuge. If my grandmother—who lived until I started elementary school—didn’t force me to go to judo, I would have lived a more isolated life. I often wondered what life would have been like had I detested books—but for better or worse, I loved them, too. More accurately, I loved writing them. From early childhood, I was scribbling words on any scrap of paper I could get my hands on. Readers and writers are not the same, however, and though my grandfather and my mother were avid readers, they never expressed a desire to write a story themselves. But I was different. While being led down the path of letters, I discovered another door to stories. Young as I was, I continuously opened other doors, impulsively writing new stories to send out. This pleased my grandfather, but my mother failed to understand. Among some of my oldest memories, I can still clearly recall my mother’s face, as emotionless as a Noh drama mask, as she dubiously took away a piece of paper containing a silly little story I had written. To my mother, stories were finished products, already bound and not to be spun together before one’s own eyes. Until the day she died, she always told me the following: “What you write isn’t creative; you’re just copying existing stories.” After my grandfather passed away, however, my mother found a use for my stories. When Mikura Hall lost my grandfather for good, it also lost the joy of reading. We still lent out books, as my grandfather’s will dictated, but my mother made the rules incredibly strict, like a limit of one book per person. The mood within Mikura Hall became heavy and suffocating, like a boisterously cheerful person turning into someone gloomy, solemn, and no longer capable of feeling emotions. (I believe that this is when “it” began to grow.) It happened one June, six years after my grandfather passed away. My mother had hurt her back, so I looked after Mikura Hall for a while when I wasn’t at school. It was the rainy season, and I was twelve years old. I can’t say with confidence that I was old enough to understand the importance of the responsibility I’d been given. I was reading books at the front desk and chatting with my friends who dropped by, and I stopped paying attention to who was coming and going from the hall. On that day, the shrine behind us was holding the Minazuki Festival, so I was more distracted than usual. Someone told me that the girl I liked would be at the festival that night. Once it was after five o’clock—the time the hall closed—I went around looking for any stragglers among the shelves. That’s when I noticed around two hundred books missing from my grandfather’s shelf. I remember hearing the cicadas crying even louder than usual. Needless to say, my mother was furious. She really let me have it. My butt still has scars from the bamboo cane to this day. However, she understood that punishing me served no real purpose. We reported the theft to the police, but the next day, she ranted and raved about how unreliable they were. She did everything she could think of to find the books. She knocked on doors around Yomunaga, grabbing the people who answered and interrogating them, until someone eventually called the police on her. My mother became a raging storm. She turned into an unstoppable tempest that would assault even the people who dared to offer their sympathies about the theft. If the head priest at Yomunaga Shrine, who was a friend of my grandfather’s, hadn’t agreed to go around town apologizing with me, the Mikura family might have been chased out of Yomunaga, much less have any chance of catching the thief. My mother’s seemingly endless fury began to abate about two months after the incident. Absorbed in her father’s words, Mifuyu suddenly noticed her surroundings. Dark until then, she had been reading the letters by the faint light of the shrine. But suddenly, everything became as bright as noon. She understood the moment she looked up. It wasn’t bright “as noon” at all. The light had erased the night and actually turned the world to the middle of the day. The sun shone bright, and white clouds raced high in the sky. Most surprising of all, however, was that the throng of foxes crammed in the shrine grounds had all disappeared without a trace. Even the statue of Mashiro next to her was gone. Mifuyu stood still, taking in her surroundings. Red leaves tumbled over the gravel spread around the empty shrine grounds. The giant camphor had begun to change colors, so at some point, the season had transitioned from early summer to autumn. In addition to that, the thick, braided shimenawa rope and coin donation box in front of the main hall seemed new. Just then, she heard someone walking up the stairs. Mifuyu searched frantically for a place to hide, but there was no time. Under the torii, a woman rose to the top of the stairs. Her black hair was combed straight back, her face was serious, and she wore a lime-green kimono with white tabi socks and black geta. She stepped into the shrine grounds. Mifuyu couldn’t move. No trace of white remained in the woman’s hair, and most of the wrinkles on her skin had smoothed, but there was no doubt that it was Tamaki. “G-Grandma.” Her mind screamed at her to run. But she stayed as still as if her feet had been glued to the ground and didn’t even look away. The fear of having been chased in “purgatory” inside Mikura Hall washed over her, and her spine froze. But Tamaki paid Mifuyu no mind at all, even ignoring her as she walked by. Her angry gait caused the hem of her kimono to flutter as she cut across the grounds straight to the main hall. What was she doing? Finally able to move, Mifuyu followed her. Tamaki didn’t react, even when Mifuyu stood next to her or waved a hand in front of her face. She seemed unable to see Mifuyu at all. Tamaki tossed a coin in the donation box, grabbed the rope attached to the bell, shook it vigorously, and clapped her hands in prayer. Then with both eyes open, she muttered from deep down in her throat. “…You, God—or whatever you are—you saw what happened, didn’t you? You have a good view of Mikura Hall from this hill. I’m sure you know who the thief is. Or perhaps you were too drunk on sake offerings.” “The thief?” Mifuyu recalled the incident that caused Mikura Hall to close. “Grandma’s young, and the shrine is new… Is this…the past…? Ouch.” Something suddenly struck the back of her head. She turned around as she rubbed the injured spot, then stared in wide-eyed wonder. Words literally floated in the air. “Wh-what is this?” Each letter, suspended magically in front of her, was large enough to fill a roughly five-centimeter square. The white font resembled something found in a typical paperback book. One day, my mother, Tamaki, left the house without saying where she was going. I learned much later that she’d gone to the shrine behind Mikura Hall. “…O-okay?” The text dissipated like smoke after Mifuyu finished reading, but new text replaced it. My mother never exhibited any signs of faith. She never went to the festivals or visited the temple for New Year’s prayers. She showed nothing but contempt for the shrine priest my grandfather was friends with. She must have been really desperate to go to the shrine for help. She asked the priest if he saw anyone suspicious on the day of the theft, but it was no use. “Now I understand. I haven’t traveled through time. I’m inside Dad’s notebook.” She was supposed to still be in the world of The City of Misanthropy, but she found herself in an entirely different world. Mifuyu puzzled the whole thing over but couldn’t make sense of it in the least. First of all, when had her father’s notebook activated a book curse? She hadn’t stolen a thing. Just as she stood there in bewildered concentration, she heard the sound of a door open on the rear side of the main temple. A priest with a shaved head exited the office and walked calmly in their direction. Next, just as the floating text described, Tamaki approached the priest and talked furiously with him for couple of minutes. Tamaki’s visit was all for naught. The priest admonished her like a father scolding a child and walked down the steps. Tamaki yelled spitefully at him as he walked away. The words in the air disappeared again, and new words formed. The priest hadn’t seen anything. That was no surprise, with the rows of stalls and bustling crowds for the Minazuki Festival starting around noon that day. The thief had most likely used the festival to make off with the large stash of books. They could have disguised two hundred books as food or stoves or something similar, loaded them on the back of a truck, and carried them away in one trip. Especially on that day, because the stalls ran from the back street to the shrine grounds at the top of the hill, obstructing the view. It was perfect timing for the thief. Her grandmother chewed at her nails, pacing furiously in front of the donation box. Mifuyu watched her and sank into thought. “A truck… Yeah. If they’d stuffed the books into cardboard boxes when people were leaving Mikura Hall, the books would’ve been easy to move without anyone noticing they were gone. And Dad was really distracted, too.” Mifuyu quietly moved away from the main hall, went near the bushes and trees surrounding the shrine grounds, and craned her neck to see down below. She could easily see Mikura Hall from here. Without a festival happening, a priest, visitor, priestess, or anyone standing here would certainly notice anyone acting suspicious. But only if their luck was good and the timing was right. It reminded Mifuyu how unreasonable her grandmother had been. “Ow!” Mifuyu bumped her head on some new words that had appeared, and she read them in a huff. If only my mother’s connection to the shrine had ended there. But that wasn’t the case. Something residing in the shrine—I wouldn’t call it a god, but something whose existence I was unaware of—lent my mother its power. “…What?” A fierce wind suddenly picked up, and in the next instant, the world went dark. It wasn’t night. The darkness felt like being enclosed in a room with no windows or lights. Mifuyu thought that perhaps she was being taken to another world, but when the next line of text appeared, she understood that she was viewing what came next. Until the day she died, she never told me how she came in contact with “it.” I never figured out what “it” looked like, sounded like, or how “it” lured my mother into placing a curse on the books. “Is it dark now because Dad’s the author and he doesn’t know what happened?” As she said that, a sepia brown film appeared next to the words and began to play with a click like an old movie projector. A caption stating MOTION PICTURE rose above it. However, I do know one thing. “So it’s going to be explained with a movie. I appreciate the consideration.” The film showed an older time—small tile-roof houses, horses pulling carts, gentlemen in fedoras and suits, women with their hair in buns, workers carrying large boxes walking to and fro. A hill rose from the side of the path, with handwritten banners standing nearby. The banners read YOMUNAGA INARI SHRINE. The scene changed to a close-up of some wooden ema prayer blocks at the shrine. The prayers wished for health, a good marriage, or other such desires, but none involved books. Yomunaga Shrine is now the symbol of the Town of Books, and many visitors come here with worries or prayers involving books. But it wasn’t always this way. It used to simply be one of the many shrines dedicated to the goddess Inari. I learned that by reading one of the dust-covered records in the city-records room. It was my grandfather and the head priest’s idea to make Yomunaga Shrine the God of Books. The banners with INARI faded from the film and were replaced by the words Patron of Reading fluttering on a banner. “…So the God of Books was added later to revitalize the town?” If you think about it, something like a god of books wouldn’t have existed in ancient times. Books had become widely available to the general public only in recent history with the advent of the printing press. But my grandfather and the priest’s innocent plan ended up garnering widespread attention, and the god became enshrined in town as if it had always been there. I suspect that this is what caused “it.” “I don’t really get what’s happening, but it seems like it started with Great-Grandpa and the priest.” Just then, a small light shone in the darkness. A little flustered, Mifuyu walked toward it, and words appeared on her left and right, like billboards. Whatever happened that fateful night, my mother arrived home late, looking relieved. She seemed so comforted that everyone wrongly assumed she had an idea of who had stolen the books. But they were wrong. Had anyone realized the truth earlier and stopped her then, perhaps they could have saved the family from this whole mess. At the time, we still lived in our first house, before we sold it. I sat nervously all by myself in the big, old Japanese-style house waiting for my mother to come home. She wasn’t the type of person you could find comfort in, but I still wanted her close by. The ticking of a wall clock could make anyone feel uneasy. I stayed up late into the night, waiting for her to come back. I jumped up the moment I heard the heavy front door slide open and ran to welcome her. But my greeting was cut short. She had brought a small girl home with her. Sleeping in my mother’s arms, she didn’t even look one year old. My mother smiled at me and said I was now a big brother. I can only remember seeing her smile a handful of times, and that night was one of them. She staggered into the house, walked straight to her room, closed the sliding door, and didn’t emerge for two whole days. During that time, or more correctly, from that moment on, I began to look after the baby girl. But she just wouldn’t sleep. “What? Aunt Hirune wouldn’t sleep?” Startled, Mifuyu almost touched the words, then in the next moment, they morphed into new text. Babies typically sleep a lot. I was worried that she’d die if she didn’t sleep. So I named her Hirune in the hopes that this would make her sleep, since Hirune means “nap.” She looked up at me with her big eyes, and from then on, she was my little sister. Surprised to hear such a wildly different description of her aunt, Mifuyu moved to her father’s next words. Hirune isn’t my biological sister. She was born from a pact between my mother and “it,” her existence a kind of certificate and a trigger. A light burst forth before Mifuyu, causing her to shield her eyes. She realized that she was standing in Mikura Hall. This rendition of Mikura Hall resembled a library so much more than the one she knew. Multiple sets of reading tables and chairs populated the sunroom, a blanket to prevent dust covered the couch that Hirune usually slept on, and the room was being cleaned regularly. A young version of her father stood in the sunroom. The black standing-collar jacket of a school uniform sat crumpled on a table, and her father wore a bandana and apron. At this age, her father could have easily passed for her classmate or someone in a higher grade. Just like with Tamaki, the characters in this narrative couldn’t see Mifuyu. She walked around, feeling invisible, before sitting in a chair and stared at her father, who was almost the same age as her. She knew intellectually that her father had lived a life before her, but seeing it caused the knowledge to bubble up within her. He finished wiping the floor with a rag, looked up, and yelled, “Hirune! Are you up there?” A mumbled “yeah” or “mm” answered him. Intrigued, Mifuyu stood up and walked to the second floor, where the voice had originated. There, in front of the rows of shelves, a girl of about five sat reading. But it wasn’t a children’s book; it was a thick tome for grown-ups. “Whoa,” said Mifuyu. “Even adults would have a hard time with that.” Now that Mifuyu knew Hirune wasn’t human, it felt a little strange calling Hirune her aunt, but she found herself more amazed than surprised. After all, Hirune was still Hirune. “If she’s reading something like that at this age, then she definitely could have read all the books in here and the annex.” Knowing she was invisible to her, Mifuyu walked over and knelt next to Hirune to examine her better. Hirune’s eyes darted across the page, taking in the text at a frightening pace. Mifuyu tried reading some of it, too, but Hirune turned the page before Mifuyu could get through more than a few lines. Taking a deep breath, Mifuyu looked up and saw more words floating in the air. Hirune absorbed books. She devoured everything from one end of a bookshelf to another, as if the pages themselves were fueling her body. “Hirune! It’s time to go get stuff for dinner!” Ayumu called. Mifuyu was certain that Hirune wouldn’t move, but Hirune closed her book carefully and placed it gently back on the shelf before running down the stairs to Ayumu. Hirune isn’t a living being—and every living being has to sleep, I suppose. But she looked and acted human, and her soul was no different from a human’s. We talked often when she wasn’t reading. We were close. We got along well. We were better for each other than my mother, at least. The young Ayumu and Hirune walked outside, holding hands. Looking back on those days, I see now that I longed for a companion. I finally realized that, surrounded by my grandfather’s collection and subjected to my mother’s educational regimen, there was a loneliness within me that I couldn’t share with my friends. The things we knew were just too different. I could read books from Europe but couldn’t sing the songs that were popular on TV. Eventually, I became known as the weird boy who was hard to talk to. Solitude is too much for a child to bear. Hirune was the one person who understood my loneliness. In the next instant, the sunroom changed again. The tables and chairs that evoked the atmosphere of a library disappeared, and the blanket vanished from the couch, all replaced by Hirune, now a middle schooler. She was relaxing and reading a book. Mikura Hall remained closed after the infamous theft, never to open again. It became the personal library of the Mikura family, but I’m convinced that’s how my mother had always wanted it. It was my job to look after both Mikura Hall and Hirune, and that continued even after I graduated college and received my teaching certification in judo. Sensing movement from the hallway, Mifuyu saw Ayumu, fully grown, appear through the door. He was younger than the present but not too young, and he seemed content. A backpack on his shoulder, he checked on Hirune before walking over to an electric kettle. Picking up two mugs overflowing with the scent of coffee, he placed one on the low table next to Hirune. The other, he took with him and walked upstairs. Mifuyu followed him. A table and chair sat in the hall—things that didn’t exist in Mifuyu’s time. Ayumu removed a key from the pocket of his blue jeans and opened a drawer under the desk. A word processer lay hidden inside. Ayumu plopped down in the chair and turned the word processor on, then began typing gingerly on the keyboard. Mifuyu approached her father under the incessant clatter of keys clicking. A notebook sat on one side of the word processor, handwritten lines crammed between the paper’s ruled lines. Her father looked at the notebook as he typed. Glancing at the notebook from the side, Mifuyu read the words on the page and gasped. She saw the name Ricky McCloy. This was Black Book. I would write stories, telling my mother that I was actually working on Mikura Hall. Her watchful gaze saw everything at home, and I felt like I could write better at Mikura Hall because I absorbed what the other books had to teach. Even so, I couldn’t deceive my mother’s hawklike eyes. “Ayumu!” a shrill voice called, and Mifuyu tensed. Tamaki had arrived. Ayumu frantically hid the word processor in the drawer. “What is it, Mom?” “Hurry on down here. Hirune, stop reading for a moment. That’s the last one, isn’t it?” “The last one”? Something bothered Mifuyu, and she rushed after her father. Returning to the sunroom, Hirune had placed the book she’d been reading on the table as instructed and sat properly as if waiting for the next event to unfold. Tamaki looked between her dubious-looking son and her commendable daughter before breaking out into a sudden smile. “The two of you have done well.” Ayumu didn’t try to hide his confusion at his mother’s sudden congeniality, but Hirune just sat rigid, staring at a point in the distance. “Oh, why that face, Ayumu? You should be happy as a member of the Mikura family… Hirune is about to finish reading the entire collection. This is her final book.” Mifuyu saw the tension drain from Ayumu. But Mifuyu knew where this scene led and couldn’t suppress her unease. A new set of words floated in the air. I misunderstood her. I assumed that my mother was happy that Hirune had continued reading day and night without sleeping and had finally read every book in the stacks. But that’s not what she meant. Her mouth forming a smile, Tamaki looked at her son with a gaze cold enough to freeze. “You still don’t get it? I suppose Hirune never told you—once she finishes reading every volume in the collection, a curse will be placed on all the books. Hirune is the proof of the contract between me and that unearthly god. She is a ‘cursed talisman’—something they call a book curse in the west.” “What? Mom, you sound delusional.” “‘Delusional’? Child, this is no delusion. You don’t know what Hirune really is. How strange, since you’re the one who wrote her.” “…What are you talking about, Mom?” “So you don’t remember. Well, you were quite young, after all. Whenever I took my eyes off you, you would fill the margins of one of my notebooks with stories about her. Stories about a girl who read book after book and never slept.” Mifuyu clenched her hands into fists. She squeezed, ignoring the pain of her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. “That’s why Hirune has taken to you and why I left her in your care. That way, you would continue to write more stories.” “…I don’t understand.” “Then allow me to explain. The book curse is activated through Hirune. But the individual curses must be created separately. And that was your role, Ayumu. You, who could create the stories. “If a thief tries to steal a book, the moment they set foot outside Mikura Hall, the curse will activate—and Yomunaga will transform into a world you wrote. The thief will be trapped inside one of your stories. “The god’s powers fuel the magic. But it comes at a cost. The god doesn’t loan out its power for nothing. That’s how transactions work; you need to provide compensation. If the thief isn’t caught—that is to say, if time runs out—then everyone in town is offered to the god along with the thief. That’s the arrangement.” Food for the god. As those words formed, everything went dark again, and the ground tilted. Her face stiff, Mifuyu screamed as she slid along the ground, which felt like the supports on one side had collapsed, turning it into a giant slide. What had my mother done? Everything in Mikura Hall slid away. The sofa, the tables, the shelves, the books—it all tumbled to the bottom of the darkness. Mifuyu shrieked and flailed in an attempt to hold on to something, but her fingers only grabbed at air. At first, I was certain she’d finally lost her mind and that she was simply spouting nonsense. But I was wrong again. The next day, my mother brought over the wife of a used bookstore owner she knew well and told her to take a book home. She said it so invitingly—I didn’t stop her, because I didn’t think that anything would happen. I just hoped that she would come to her senses and realize that all this talk of gods and book curses was delusional. Nothing changed, and everything continued as normal. But then Hirune came over to me with a book. It was a story I had written. Mifuyu slid further into the darkness with frightening speed. She reached out and tried to grab the floating text, but the words changed, and her hands came up empty. The second my eyes followed the page, everything in Yomunaga transformed, and the residents all took on the roles of characters from my story. Hirune tried to guide me in my panic, but I left her behind and ran into town. I eventually found the woman, who had transformed into a fox. That’s when I realized that my mother hadn’t been spouting nonsense—she actually had placed a curse on the books. The floor sloped steeper and steeper, transforming into an almost vertical drop. Mifuyu felt her body float and tried desperately to right herself. In the next moment, a cascade of books rained down, narrowly missing her head. “Whoa!” She couldn’t believe what she saw next. This was more than a rain of books; an avalanche of tomes came crashing toward her, their white pages flapping about wildly. They’re gonna smother me! Mifuyu reflexively leaped off the slanting floor and flew through the darkness. Just as she arched her body, new words appeared. Within a week of returning to reality, the used bookstore owner’s frightened wife left Yomunaga. She told anyone who would listen about what had happened to her in Mikura Hall in hope of making them understand, but of course, no one believed her. Like a cat caught on a screen door, Mifuyu hooked her fingers in the space between the letters and held on tight. As she did, the avalanche advanced without so much as a hair’s breadth between the pages, then crashed down where Mifuyu had just been, and the countless pages pulled everything down into the abyss. “I’ve really had enough of all this… Ahh!” But then, the text she’d been clinging to for dear life vanished, tossing Mifuyu off into space. The next words appeared almost immediately, with Mifuyu just grabbing hold of them. My mother played innocent, saying, “I wonder what happened to Kaname’s wife.” I obeyed her orders to never tell a soul what had happened that day. Now all alone, the used bookstore owner grew suspicious and eventually came to despise us. And who could blame him? Dangling from the period, Mifuyu gasped. “So that’s why that grumpy old man from Books Mystery hates me… This isn’t the time for that, though! Does Dad even know what’s happening to his only daughter right now? Ah!” The words disappeared, and Mifuyu seemed ready to fall again, but luckily, the next words materialized directly below her, creating a platform for her to stand on. They moved up, then down, the unpredictable movements tossing Mifuyu about as she gasped for breath. Hirune and I could no longer leave Mikura Hall. Whatever curse my mother had placed on the books, everything would be fine so long as nothing was stolen. So me and Hirune guarded Mikura Hall, ensuring that no one sneaked inside. Still, a few thieves would occasionally steal books, and we would catch them. Sometimes, I even felt like the protagonist in a manga or movie, and I got carried away thinking I was some kind of superhero tasked with thwarting evil. Hirune always put me in my place, though. During that time, I fell in love. My mother was against the relationship, since she wanted as few people as possible involved with Mikura Hall, which is perhaps why I chose to marry this woman. Standing on top of the words, Mifuyu jumped from foot to foot as she peered down to read the text. “‘Marry…’ That’s gotta be Mom.” As she spoke to herself, the words disappeared again. Mifuyu lost her balance and fell. She waited for new words—but nothing came. Mifuyu plummeted headfirst, finding a pinprick of light glowing at the bottom of the dark space. The point expanded into a fierce explosion of light, painting the darkness white, and Mifuyu squeezed her eyes shut. She should have been falling from a fairly high place, but she landed against nothing. The bright light she felt on the back of her eyelids ceased, and, cautiously opening her eyes, Mifuyu found herself standing in the room of an apartment. It was the tatami room that Mifuyu knew so well. She was home. But something seemed different. Feeling the spring of the tatami under her feet, she looked around the new, spotless room, without any shelves near the wall or a cluttered computer desk. Diaper bulging, a baby lay on the tatami, looking peculiar in the dust-filled sunlight pouring in through the small window. She knew who it was without any meddling words appearing to explain. This was her—Mifuyu stared dumbfounded at her infant self. “Mifuyu, what are you doing?” Mifuyu quickly looked behind her and saw a young woman standing in the doorway. The woman had a narrow face, a beige shirt and cardigan, and long hair tied in a side ponytail that covered her delicate clavicle. “M-Mom.” It was her mother, who had passed away when Mifuyu was a second grader in elementary school. A concerned look on her face, her mother approached—and she walked right through the shocked and frozen Mifuyu to scoop up the infant Mifuyu from the floor. “There, there. Were you saying hi to the sun?” Mifuyu stared in disbelief. She couldn’t stop staring at her deceased mother cradling baby Mifuyu in her arms. This is real, right? Like traveling back in time? Or am I just inside a story my dad made up? All the questions in her mind formed and burst like bubbles. Her mother was standing right in front of her. This woman she’d never expected to see again. The corners of her eyes burned, and she felt tears rolling down her cheeks. At age fifteen—the middle of her hectic adolescence—eight years was a long time for Mifuyu. But looking at her mother moving like this, those days they spent together felt like yesterday. Sniffling, Mifuyu approached quietly, one step at a time, and reached out a hand to try and touch her mother. Her fingers passed through the cardigan without the slightest bit of resistance. Just then, her head bumped against something. More words. Kazune and I got married, and I moved out of the Mikura household. Actually, my mother wanted to sell the house, too. She let us live in an apartment in the only remaining property she kept, so it was really like moving from one section of an estate to another. I opened the dojo and began living my own life, but I couldn’t escape my responsibilities with Mikura Hall and Hirune. Ever since Hirune finished reading the collection and activated the book curse, she began to spend most of her days in a deep slumber, like she was trying to make up for the sleep she’d missed until then. “…Dad, you moron.” Mifuyu wiped her wet cheeks and nose with the collar of her polo shirt, then clapped both hands to her cheeks. “Pull yourself together, Mifuyu. This is no different from a home movie. I’m just watching old videos.” She had to tell herself this. If she didn’t, her suddenly deflated heart would shatter and fly off somewhere unknown. “I’m okay. I’ll keep watching your memories, Dad.” As if waiting for Mifuyu’s answer, new words floated up the moment she finished speaking. All I do is make trouble for Kazune and Mifuyu. I’m so sorry. “…Dad?” Mikura Hall, the book curse—and my mother, most of all—were just too much for Kazune. She tried several times to leave, but I always stopped her. She was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, and it eventually took her life. I know deep down that there was nothing I could have done, but I still regret not letting her go, if it meant she might have met a different fate. The sight of her mother cradling the infant Mifuyu blurred like a watercolor painting absorbing liquid before gradually fading and disappearing. Then a shadow fell over the white world, Mikura Hall gradually ascended, and she saw her mother and her father fighting. Her mother held a suitcase, her father resolutely trying to stop her from leaving. Feeling someone looking down at them, she glanced up and saw herself as a young girl standing next to Tamaki in the sunroom balcony. The second she met her grandmother’s eyes, the scene flipped and changed. Mifuyu recognized the inside of Mikura Hall and saw herself, age four or five and in a blue jumper skirt, along with her grandmother, who was old and thin like a withered tree. Tamaki looked away from the argument between her son and her daughter-in-law, which she had been observing through the window. She bent over and took the sketchbook Mifuyu was holding. A large picture of Mashiro had been drawn on the paper. “…I’m not letting you go anywhere. Because you—” She remembered her grandmother saying this. These words had followed her from the dream she had during her nap. As though reading her mind, more text appeared before her. “You are a Mikura.” My mother cursed me and my daughter Mifuyu with those words. So that was it. Her grandmother had said this countless times to the young Mifuyu. Children’s books surrounded Mifuyu in her earlier years. She had enjoyed that, but her grandmother stopped her every time she tried to go outside or draw a picture, shoving a picture book at her instead. Rows of books lined up in front of her, stacked up high—the young, crying Mifuyu was buried in a pile of books deep enough to hide her. Mifuyu realized that she was pounding at the floating words with her fists. The phrase You are a Mikura flaked away in chips. “…I remember now. I loved books when I was a kid. But I grew to hate them, Grandma.” Books could transport Mifuyu to another world even from inside her own room. Fairy tales of princesses locked in towers, legends of brave heroes proceeding down paths fraught with rampaging beasts, stories about little bears delivering mail to the people living in town, tales dominated by witches and winter. She recalled those stories she loved but had buried deep within her heart. Mifuyu felt the same excitement, the same adoration bubbling up inside her when she experienced the story worlds with Mashiro as her guide. She wanted to read more. It was fun. But that joy didn’t stem from just being “Mifuyu the Mikura.” Even when people outside the Mikura family experienced a story, Tamaki continued to insist on the exclusivity of the Mikura name. Perhaps she believed that if she closed off the library, which had once been open to anyone, and made it a place solely for the Mikura family, then Mifuyu and subsequent generations would become paragons of books. But flowers didn’t grow without air. Mifuyu squeezed her other fist even tighter and continued to strike the letters of the word cursed. The letter was as brittle as dried bone, and fragments broke off from it. “Enough!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “This curse can go to hell!” With those words, an intense wind began to howl. That terrible ferocity blew away the crying little Mifuyu, the books surrounding her, her grandmother, her father, and her mother, finally demolishing Mikura Hall and carrying it away with the wind, everything disappearing into the distance. Completely alone, Mifuyu covered her face with her arms and stood firm, but the moment she stumbled against the increasingly strong wind, it swept her away. Arms flailing wildly, she searched for something to cling to but only swiped at the air; no further words from her father appeared. Instead, the leather notebook fell from somewhere, and she quickly grabbed it. “Is that the end of Dad’s notebook? Whoa!” The wind lifted her up, and she felt herself being carried higher and higher. The view suddenly brightened, and she looked around to see that everything had returned to normal. Houses spread out below her, rooftops shimmering in the morning sun. She saw the river in the distance. This was the sky above Yomunaga. And then, just like when the gale blew her away, the wind abruptly stopped. Arms spread wide and facing down, Mifuyu closed her eyes as she plummeted toward the ground like an airplane with failed engines. I’m gonna crash! As the fear of death swept through her, a cloud rushed toward her, caught her gently, and then slowly began carrying her to the ground. “I’m s-saved…” Lifting her head, she examined the cloud in detail. It felt more pliable than a cloud; cotton would be a better descriptor than cloud. Could her father have arranged for this, too? Confused, she poked and pulled the cotton thing, then heard a muffled voice come from underneath it. “Huh? Wait a second—did you just say something?” On top of the muffled voice, the oncoming rush of air made it hard for her to hear. She pressed an ear to the cotton. “…Mm.” “What?” “I’m sor…” “I can barely understand you, y’know.” “Sorry… Overslept… Throat…so sore.” Eyes wide, Mifuyu sat bolt upright. “No way. Aunt Hirune?” At that, the cotton expanded and shrank, which Mifuyu took as a yes, and she pressed down on her temple like she had a headache. If she listened hard, she knew the voice. Her aunt had turned herself into a ball of flying cotton and come to her. But Hirune had slept so much as of late that her voice was weary. No matter how many outlandish things kept happening, Mifuyu just couldn’t get used to them all. Grimacing, she tried to explain the situation to herself when Hirune groaned again. “Did I…shock you?” Hirune asked. “I mean, yeah. You wouldn’t really expect your aunt to save your life by turning into a ball of cotton. But I read Dad’s notebook and now I think I get the gist of things.” The relationship between her father and Hirune was like her relationship with Mashiro. She gently stroked the cotton, thinking it was what she would have done if the cotton ball were Mashiro. “Thank you for everything, Aunt Hirune. You were always my strange aunt who slept all the time, but you were just doing what Grandma asked you to do, weren’t you? That must have been tough.” “No… The sleeping was… I was sleepy…” “Oh.” Slightly disappointed, she sighed. Hirune was Hirune, after all. But Hirune kept speaking and said something that caught Mifuyu’s attention. “But…so much power…needed for the curse…” Mifuyu frowned. “You needed to sleep for the book curse?” “…Yes. Sorry…you involved.” “You’re sorry you got me involved? Oh, well, I’ve definitely been through enough to deserve some sort of reward.” Mifuyu sat cross-legged on top of the cloud that was her aunt, nodding arrogantly. “But why me? Was I taking over just while Dad wasn’t around?” “That’s…part of it. But in the end, Mifuyu…Tamaki was counting on you.” “You mean I’ll inherit Mikura Hall? No way. That thing’s going straight on the market the second I’m in charge.” At those casual words, the cotton began to shake. “Y-you can’t…” “Can’t, schmant! Grandma’s not gonna get what she wants if I can help it!” Her aunt didn’t reply but quickly sped up and began to descend. Mifuyu grabbed the cotton in a panic, tensed her stomach, and sat down so that she wouldn’t fall off. Withstanding the force of the wind, she cracked one eye open and saw the torii and shrine grounds on top of the small hill. “The shrine,” said Mifuyu. The cotton landed with a small bounce and tossed off Mifuyu, who yelped. It then disappeared. Mifuyu landed in a shrub and rose unsteadily, picking twigs and leaves off herself. The morning light poured into the shrine grounds, shining on the statues of foxes and Mashiro, which remained still as ever. “Aunt Hirune, where did you go? Did you disappear?” The ball of cotton was gone. But seeing the figure of a human by the torii gate, Mifuyu ran over. Just as she thought, Hirune had returned to human form. Mifuyu held Hirune up, propping her back against the torii pillar. “Aunt Hirune, are you okay? Hang in there!” She shook her frail shoulders, and Hirune opened her eyes slightly. “I’m okay… Just sleepy…” Muttering that, Hirune seemed ready to fall back asleep, and Mifuyu shook her more vigorously to wake her up. “No, wake up! You can’t go to sleep! What should I do now? Dad didn’t leave any more hints; I’ve got nothing else to go on! How do I turn everyone back? I’m the one who needs to solve this, right? And you’re the talisman for the book curse, aren’t you? So tell me!” “…A hint?” A faint light glimmered in Hirune’s hollow, sleepy eyes. “…It’s just like always, Mifuyu. Like always. Catch them.” “Catch them? Catch who? Haruta stole a book, but he’s a statue!” “…Not him. The first one. You only have one chance. No mistakes.” But before Mifuyu could ask her another question, Hirune began to snore, falling into a deep sleep. No matter how loud Mifuyu yelled or how much she slapped Hirune’s cheeks, she would not wake. Mifuyu wanted Mashiro for times like this. But she had turned to stone. It was up to Mifuyu to save everyone. Giving up on Hirune, Mifuyu stood up, exhaled forcefully, and took a deep breath. Her body, soul, and mind were all exhausted, and she considered just lying down next to Hirune and going to sleep, too, but inhaling the crisp morning air with the smell of summer grass, she felt the gears in her mind turn. The Minazuki Festival. It was happening on the day the books were stolen. The festival was just starting in the real world, too, the whole town getting ready for it. The incident that started the book curse happened during that festival. “By the first one, she must mean whoever stole the books back when Grandma was in charge of Mikura Hall.” But no one had witnessed it. The festival was a crowded event, with many people coming from out of town. Could a lone high school girl without a single hint solve a crime that had stumped the police at the time? Mifuyu silently checked her surroundings. The fox statues—everyone from town was assembled here. As though they were all thieves caught in a trap. “…Grandma, was this what you were really after? You seriously wanted everyone turned into statues so that they’d confess, right? Or maybe you suspected all the folks in town, so you decided to punish them together. Collective punishment. You were terrible, Grandma.” Mumbling curses at her grandmother, she walked through the rows of fox statues, examining them one by one. Somehow, the statues she had moved had all returned to their original positions, as if protecting the shrine. She could more or less recognize the people she knew from their clothes and features. The people from the shopping district, Che the assistant judo instructor, Haruta and his sister, Punch the PE teacher. She checked each statue carefully, stopping as she ran her hands over one. The bent back. The lips curled in a stubborn frown. “That old fart from Books Mystery… Come to think of it, he was the one who’d egged Haruta and everyone else into stealing books.” Old man Kaname, the used bookstore owner, hated the Mikura family because Tamaki had used his wife as a guinea pig. Why had Tamaki chosen his wife, though? “Were they friends? Because she was easy to choose? But what does that even mean?” Mifuyu considered several different situations. It would be easy for Tamaki to ask a favor from someone close to her whom she could open up to, but could she use them like that? She couldn’t turn the important people in her life into foxes. So then it had to be someone she disliked somewhat or didn’t care much about. “Grandma seemed to hate everyone in town, though.” Or it was revenge. Maybe something had happened? Pondering that, Mifuyu realized something. “The thief—maybe Grandma thought it was the Books Mystery owner. As the owner of a used bookstore, he could easily sell two hundred stolen books. So she decided to get some payback through his wife.” She nodded with conviction and reached out to touch the statue—the books weren’t here, but she hoped that if she declared him the thief, then everyone might return to normal. “You only have one chance. No mistakes.” She heard Hirune’s words echo deep within her mind. No, it would be okay. It had to be okay. But in a fraction of the instant before her fingers touched the sharp ears of Kaname’s statute, she thought she heard a voice from the direction of the shrine. “…Mashiro?” The only statue shaped like a dog in front of the main hall belonged to Mashiro. Mifuyu looked back and forth between Kaname and Mashiro, slowly righted herself, and said, “No.” “Grandma suspected Kaname…so the police must have looked into it. But they didn’t arrest him. So he must be innocent, right? Plus, everyone knows everyone in a small town like this. He’d get caught right away if he tried to sell stolen books. All our books are stamped with the Mikura Hall seal, too. Of course. There’s really no benefit to stealing a lot of books from such a large, famous library.” So then why? The wind picked up again. The tops of the trees rubbed against one another, sounding like some hushed whisper. Recalling the existence of something her father called “it” in his notes sent a shiver down her spine. “Is anyone here?” Mifuyu walked forward cautiously. She tried as hard as she could to not step on the fox statues but ran out of space and headed away from the main hall. When attempting to move the fox statues to clear a path, she found they were inexplicably heavier than before and couldn’t lift them. Sweat streamed from every pore on her body. The path was closed—something was blocking her way forward. Yomunaga Shrine had originally been one of the many shrines dedicated to the goddess Inari and only became the shrine for the God of Books after Kaichi and his friend the priest thought up the idea. There was no tradition attached; it was a “newly created” god. She’d assumed that the statues were lined up for no reason. But what if they were arranged that way on purpose? What if the statues needed to be inside the shrine? The main hall lay at the end of the grounds. And it was obstructed even now. Mifuyu wiped away her dripping sweat and grinned. “I know where the books are hidden.” In that instant, a fierce wind assaulted her. But Mifuyu had prepared for that and kicked off the ground, sailing into the air. The wind wanted to carry her far away from the main hall, but Mifuyu grabbed hold of the camphor tree and wouldn’t let go. The wind relaxed, perhaps losing her in the canopy of the camphor tree. Mifuyu inched silently down a branch, crept toward the main hall, steeled herself, and dropped from the branch. The wind roared frantically, but when it blew up from below, Mifuyu sailed over the heads of the foxes and extended her arms and legs wide in hope of getting as far forward as possible. By the time the wind figured out her plan and stopped, Mifuyu had reached the space in front of the main hall. She landed on top of the donation box and immediately jumped down to the ground. “Sorry about that!” she called, and then threw herself at the sliding paper door sealed with a shimenawa rope and zigzag shide paper. The wind was too late. Dusty, mold-filled air assaulted her nose, and Mifuyu broke into a torrent of sneezing as she crashed through the top of the sliding paper door. “Come on, people! Keep this place clean! A god lives here! I’m not sure if gods actually exist, but still!” She soon understood why the shrine had been left untouched. The inside of the hall was dark, strangely hot, and gave off a peculiar smell. Like rotten eggs, or like standing next to a hot spring… It smelled of sulfur. No one would come near somewhere like this—not even the people who worked at the shrine. They must have abandoned it if visitors couldn’t see it. “…What is this place? It gives me the creeps.” Rubbing her sore shoulders, Mifuyu proceeded forward. She walked through the small, cramped room, reaching the far wall in under ten paces. But in that interval, the sulfur smell and the heat intensified, and Mifuyu wished with all her hope that she could get out as soon as possible. But she steeled her nerves and continued her search. “Something that could hold two hundred books would have to be decently big. But since no one said anything, it would have to be somewhere hard to see. Some place like the hall housing the god.” The morning sun had already risen high above the horizon, but she could hardly see a thing and had to shuffle around on her hands and knees to search for the books. The dust burned her throat, and she coughed time and again. “Don’t get in my way. This is your fault, isn’t it?” Tears stinging her eyes, Mifuyu glared into the darkness, cursing some unseen entity. “Come on, give up. If you feel bad about what you did, then help me out!” Just then, she felt a dent in the floor. One of the floorboards sat just a centimeter or so lower than the others. She dug her nails into the gap around the board and lifted up; it came away surprisingly easily, and she peered into an open space below. “Oh, that’s right. My phone.” Mifuyu removed her phone from her shoulder bag, cursed the icon telling her that its battery was low, and, using the screen as a flashlight, pointed it into the opening. She saw a large container that looked like a wicker basket. Quickly removing the next floorboard, she thrust her arms into the hole up to her shoulders. Thankfully, the box was unlocked, so lifting up on the lid with her fingers proved enough to slide it open. Breathing heavily, she withdrew her arms and pointed her phone inside. It contained books, a large stash that looked old and was decaying from all the mold and humidity. “I found them…!” Her relief lasted only a moment, though, because a strong wind began to blow outside and shake the hall violently. The stench of sulfur caused her stomach to churn, and she retched. “I found the books—what next?” She didn’t know who’d brought the books here. Had this unknown entity that kept interfering with Mifuyu, the thing that her father called “it,” stolen the books.? In a book-curse world, “it” could surely move the books and make them vanish, but what about in the real world? Somehow resisting her rising urge to vomit, Mifuyu examined the opening a little more, pointing her light at the basket beneath the floorboards. The books were all international mysteries and magazines that her great-grandfather Kaichi would collect, except they all had something that every other book in Mikura Hall lacked. A red stamp. A small piece of paper with a tiny round stamp impressed upon it had been attached to the cover of every book she could see. Mifuyu stuck an arm in the opening again and managed to bring a book up. She examined it up close, the stamp on the paper reading: Endowment from Kaichi Mikura “What…what in the world?” All her strength left her. She understood what endowment meant. The same thing was written on the back of the statue on her school grounds and in the corner on a plaque of a painting hanging in the library. These books hadn’t been stolen. Her great-grandfather had donated them. According to her father’s notebook, the day that the books had been “stolen” happened six years after her great-grandfather had passed away. Six years. A peculiar number. Remembering something, she removed her father’s notebook and flipped it open to the beginning. On his birthday, he’d go to the Minazuki Festival. “Great-Grandpa’s birthday is during the Minazuki Festival.” Had her great-grandfather arranged something with his friend, the previous priest of the shrine? If so, she had no way of knowing why six years after his death was the condition for the donation. She just knew that her great-grandfather’s birthday and the Minazuki Festival shared an important connection. “They made a promise that these books would be donated to the priest during the Minazuki Festival on Great-Grandpa’s birthday. And so they were hauled away. Dad was too busy thinking about the girl he liked, so he might not have paid attention if the priest showed up and explained that to him. He was twelve, so no one would have told him anything anyway. And the priest might have considered it too much trouble to try to talk with Tamaki and decided to not say anything…” So the books had been taken without anyone knowing anything. No one told Tamaki, and her intense dedication to books caused a commotion. Even if the priest tried to confess, Tamaki was so enraged that she would never have given him the chance. He probably hoped that Tamaki would eventually cool off and just decided to keep his mouth shut, but Tamaki was vindictive. And the precious donated books were hidden underneath the floorboards of the shrine’s main hall, since it was off-limits to outsiders, where they lay forgotten and succumbed to mold and insects. “How horrible.” If someone had just said something, if someone had just trusted other people, then none of this might ever have come to pass. Mifuyu felt deflated. “So there never was a thief…? But wait a second.” Mifuyu looked at something directly ahead of her in the darkness. “You helped Grandma with the book curse. You guided her to it. I bet you knew there was no thief. You live here, don’t you?” The hall suddenly began to rattle again as if to show its discomfort. “So you just used Grandma, is that it? And you turned everyone in town into foxes—to, what, make them your slaves? To eat them? Don’t tell me you were just lonely.” She must have hit the mark, because the wind outside shook the building as though yelling back. “Getting angry won’t help. It’s not okay to trick people.” But whatever she was talking to wasn’t human, so what could she do now? Just then, an idea popped into her head. She was a little embarrassed to say it, but it might be worth trying. If someone had stolen the books, then— Mifuyu removed the books from the wicker basket, gripped the books her grandfather had donated in both arms, and closed her eyes as if to pray. “Whoever steals this book—” The wind shrieked and howled. “—shall leave Yomunaga and return everyone to normal!” Following her declaration, the wind stopped, the area grew still, and the smell of sulfur vanished. Morning light poured in, illuminating the entire room. The sinister atmosphere was gone. The peaceful hall held a perfectly regular wooden altar. Mifuyu gradually stood, stepped over the toppled sliding paper door, and walked outside. What she saw astounded her—not a single one of the multitudinous fox statues was there, and the shrine grounds had returned to normal. Not even the statue of Mashiro remained. In that moment, the ground shook violently, and a translucent haze appeared from the bottom of the hill before ascending into the sky. The haze appeared to have a bushy tail and pointy ears. The people in town had absolutely no idea that they had been turned into foxes. They wore the same clothes they had on before they became foxes, drove their cars, continued shopping, and worked at their stores. Half a day’s memories should be missing, but for some reason, when they came to, completely ordinary memories filled the space, like carbon copies of their average day-to-day lives supplemented that lost time. It was like some unsuitable part of a film had been removed and replaced with a different set of film, then edited to create a smooth narrative. Daily life continued without a hitch. No one talked about trains not stopping at Yomunaga Station, it never made the news, and no one filed any complaints. And when Mifuyu visited Wakaba, Haruta seemed to have no recollection of their adventures together. On the street, Keiko passed by Mifuyu like a stranger. In all of Yomunaga, only Mifuyu remembered the book curse. Mifuyu realized that she hadn’t seen Hirune the day she chased away the amorphous entity residing in the shrine. Hirune should have been sleeping at the base of the torii. Mifuyu called and called for her, but she never appeared. The same with Mashiro. Mifuyu nervously headed over to the hospital, practically running to the room where Ayumu should be sleeping. He was there and confusedly asked Mifuyu what was wrong. He asked it so casually that she wasn’t sure where to begin. Eventually, she asked, “Where’s Aunt Hirune?” But her father looked confused. “Huh?” he replied. “Who’s this Aunt Hirune you’re talking about, Mifuyu? Are you okay? Maybe you should take a nap.” Ayumu had forgotten about his sister. Shocked, Mifuyu chatted for a bit before going back to Mikura Hall. It was quiet, but it no longer felt so imposing. The ever-present Hirune was no longer there, the ticking of the clock the only sound. However, the garbage can overflowed with waste, and food remained on the table. Mifuyu felt a little relief seeing some evidence of Hirune’s existence. Something beyond memories. Some trace of that person remained. Heading upstairs, she opened the door to the stacks and looked at each shelf in turn. Where had Mashiro gone? None of Ayumu’s stories were here; the shelves just contained the same books as always. Mifuyu had ordered that thing to leave, and it had. So whatever had been powering the book curse had disappeared. But her father’s notebook was still in her shoulder bag, along with Hirune’s leftovers. After that day, Mifuyu stopped by Mikura Hall every day on her way home from school, carefully reading the cover of each book crammed on the shelves. She hoped to find some clue about how to dispel this vague feeling that remained with her. For some reason, Mifuyu believed that Mashiro was still out there. She thought that Mashiro still lived in that place she called purgatory. Book curses didn’t always rely on magic—Mifuyu believed that magic was available to more than just the strange thing that had inhabited Yomunaga Shrine. Summer continued, fall came to an end, winter arrived, and spring began. Ayumu left the hospital and fretted over what to do with Mikura Hall. “We can’t hang on to Grandma Tamaki’s obsession forever,” Ayumu said to Mifuyu as he washed dishes. “What if we sold the books? We’d get a little money, and we could renovate the hall into a proper home. Don’t you want to live somewhere bigger?” Mifuyu tucked her legs to her chin as she sat in her chair, looking around at the laundry hanging from the doorframes and the clutter in front of the TV. “…Even a bigger house will be just as cluttered. It’d be the same wherever we live,” she said. “You don’t want to sell it? You used to keep saying we should.” “Yeah, but you know how it is.” Mifuyu remembered her conversation with Mashiro in the world of Black Book. Under the scattered streetlights, Mashiro had listened to the things Mifuyu couldn’t even tell her friends. “It’s not easy to get something back once it’s gone. Renovate it, and it won’t ever go back to how it was. And it might be more valuable than we think. So yeah.” “I see. Tamaki would be very pleased to hear something like that coming from your mouth.” It wasn’t for Grandma Tamaki. Mifuyu wanted to let him know that, but instead, she kept quiet and just played with her hair. Instead of selling it, Ayumu reopened Mikura Hall to the general public. They limited admission to the weekends only, since Mifuyu ran the counter and could only do so on those days. People gradually came to visit, and Mifuyu observed them from the couch that Hirune had often slept on, noting them nervously gazing at all the books, knowing that they could borrow any of them. Every now and then, as Ayumu cooked or helped organize Mikura Hall, he would stop what he was doing and get a far-off look in his eyes. One day, as Mifuyu walked by her father’s room, she saw through the crack in his door that he was eagerly searching through pictures in a photo album. Just to test something out, Mifuyu announced that she might go take a nap for a little bit, and that startled her father. Some part of him surely remembered her aunt. Meanwhile, Mifuyu desperately wanted to see Mashiro again. It was harder for her, since she still retained her memories. A full year after Mikura Hall reopened to the public, Mifuyu stopped by on a day where the bright early summer sky filled the world. Standing a little taller, she carried the book she was reading in her bag. After opening Mikura Hall, she heard people talking about the Mikura family less and no longer resisted reading. She felt like she had finally managed to escape Tamaki’s curse. Books were the only thing that filled the hole in her heart. She missed those adventures of hers, tromping around those magical worlds. When she realized that she earnestly wanted to do it all again, she finally understood why her father didn’t do anything about the book curse even though he opposed the idea. On weekdays when no one else was around, she would sit in the sunroom, reading on the couch where Hirune had often slept. As Mifuyu followed the words, she would start down on the road of adventure, joining hands with the hero as she immersed herself in the world, and that somehow managed to ease her loneliness. Her eyesight got worse, probably from all the sudden reading, but the glasses didn’t interfere with her life, and she didn’t want to leave her books. She harbored a vague premonition that she would meet Mashiro again as she moved from story to story. One day, after finishing her some-hundredth book, she headed toward the second-floor stacks to return her book to the shelves. Looking outside through the sunroom window, she thought over the exhilaration she would feel watching bulldozers demolish this place. She’d like to do that someday. She’d love that. But before that, she needed to get those two out of there. Out of the world of stories. Standing on the protruding second-floor balcony, she saw the image of her young father from behind, the one she had seen in his notes. She bought a pen and paper and spread them out on a desk. Pressing the pen against her chin, she thought for a moment before slowly starting to write. Ask anyone about Kaichi Mikura from Yomunaga, and they’ll describe for you a book collector and nationally renowned literary critic. He was a prominent local man who lived his entire life in Yomunaga, from the moment he came into this world screaming and crying until his sudden passing on his veranda with a book in his hand. People called him a walking encyclopedia. “If you need to know something, ask Kaichi,” they’d say. “If you’re looking for a book, talk to Kaichi.” Or: “If something’s bothering you, Kaichi’s better than a doctor,” and so on. No one knew how many books his collection contained. The town of Yomunaga was shaped like a rounded rhombus. Located where a wide river forked north and south, the town sat in isolation like an island where the two branches diverged and then rejoined. And at the center of this rhombus stood Mikura Hall. By the time of Kaichi’s death, multiple renovations saw Mikura Hall grow into a massive library that stretched from its second-floor basement to two stories. Famous throughout town, it was said that every resident of Yomunaga—from toddlers to the most elderly citizens—had set foot inside at least once. Born in 1900, Kaichi had steadily built up his book collection since the 1920s until he passed away and left everything to his daughter, Tamaki Mikura, a superb collector in her own right who continued expanding the library. And where books reside, collectors flock, though not all collectors are honorable ones. One day, Tamaki realized that close to two hundred volumes had gone missing from Mikura Hall’s rare book collection. Books had been stolen from time to time before; Tamaki had once even threatened one of Kaichi’s friends, an antique bookseller, into staking out a used-book exchange, then yelled at the people trying to resell some stolen books for a hefty sum and brought the culprit to the police. In her fury at discovering that nearly two hundred rare books had vanished from the collection, Tamaki decided to close Mikura Hall to the public. Neighbors watched as, over the course of a day, a major security company installed alarms in every nook and cranny of the building under Tamaki’s scrupulous gaze. From then on, no one save for members of the Mikura family could enter the library or borrow a book. Even famous researchers and Kaichi’s close friends were resolutely turned away. Mikura Hall was closed. As a result, people never again heard Tamaki fly into a rage whenever she realized a book had been stolen. Although it was a shame that no one would ever peruse the stacks at Mikura Hall again, things were finally peaceful. Yomunaga had earned a reputation as the Town of Books; finding things to read there was not a difficult endeavor. The townspeople enjoyed the respite from Tamaki’s temper. However, once Tamaki breathed her last, a bizarre rumor began to slowly spread. It claimed that she hadn’t resorted to simple mundane alarms to protect the books she’d so loved. Word had it that she had called upon a fox god with a long-standing connection to Yomunaga to cast a strange spell over each and every tome. This story begins a few days after Tamaki’s son, Ayumu—the current caretaker of Mikura Hall, sharing the role with his sister, Hirune—was admitted to the hospital. But the protagonist is neither Ayumu nor Hirune. That role belongs to a girl of the next generation: Ayumu’s daughter, Mifuyu Mikura. She was simply mimicking the writing style of the book she had just finished. The words flew onto the page more easily than she anticipated, rather satisfyingly. Mifuyu lost herself in writing a story born from her heart, finding it more absorbing than reading ones written by other people. In this, she was the protagonist. Those sluggish days when nothing ever changed. There, she found the figure of her father and her memories of her aunt Hirune. And then one day, something strange happened. Mifuyu hurriedly released the talisman, sensing that she had touched upon some mysterious force. The moment she did, she was suddenly engulfed by a breeze that blew in from seemingly nowhere. She spun in circles trying to figure out where it had come from, but all the windows in the sunroom were shut tight. As though driven by a will of its own, the wind left Mifuyu, lifted the talisman playfully into the air, and twirled it around before setting it down in front of a bookshelf built into the hallway. In that spot, Mifuyu saw a pair of feet. An innocent-looking girl stood there, wearing white running shoes and socks and a school uniform the same as Mifuyu’s. Mifuyu screamed at the top of her lungs, falling on her behind and backing away. This girl had to be a ghost. She’d appeared without so much as a sound or warning, and her shoulder-length hair was as white as snow. Just then, she heard the door to the stacks open. “Mifuyu,” a familiar voice called out. Looking up, she saw a girl standing there with pointy dog ears sticking up from her pure-white hair. “I’m not a ghost. Look.” This girl had once said those exact words when she appeared on the gondola after being eaten by the giant beast. Looking quickly to the side through her tearstained vision, Mifuyu saw that same sleepyhead snoring lightly on the couch, just like always. She had to tell her father. But first— Grinning wide, Mifuyu opened her arms and hugged her friend. She felt warm. Her friend’s arms wrapped around her back. Mifuyu had no intention of letting go.
Chapter 5
71 min read