“Good evening,” I ventured.
Nito, behind me, pulled at the back of my shirt.
“T-There’s someone there?! Or is it something?!”
She sounded rather interested considering how scared she’d been before.
“What a coincidence,” the girl replied, her expression having already evened out.
“Well, she’s not a ghost,” I said over my shoulder.
“So...it’s a person? If she’s here so late at night...is it that old woman?!”
I leaned to the side and Nito poked her head timidly around me, still using me to shield herself.
“Ah, g-good evening...” Nito mumbled.
“Good evening, indeed,” the girl answered.
Nito took a few steps back and then looked up at me in utter relief.
“It was just a girl! Thank goodness!” she added.
“You’re fine with it as long as it’s a girl?”
She just looked blankly back at me. I mean, all right, then.
Now that we knew the noises weren’t from a ghost, we’d be able to go back to sleep easily enough. Just poking our heads in, saying hi, and then closing the door would have made us look like the suspicious ones, though, and we couldn’t have that. I hesitated for a moment longer, then stepped into the room.
The air inside had the slight mustiness of old paper. It reminded me of the smell of the old dictionaries and history books in the school library. The girl didn’t make any move to stop me, just went back to looking down at the book lying open on the table. A pile of other books sat next to it.
“You’re here to read books?” I asked.
“That’s right. Small villages like this always gather their books in the church.”
“You’re looking for a story, right?” I asked, remembering our conversation in the rain.
She closed the book and added it to the top of her pile.
“There’re only history books and scriptures here, though.”
She stood up and went over to one of the bookshelves, pulling out several books and setting them down on the table. She must have been working her way through them in order.
“You can’t have read them all?”
“I’ve just glanced through them,” she answered, flipping through the pages of one of the books.
Well, that certainly wasn’t reading, but she did sometimes stop and cast her eyes across a page. Doing that for all the books in the room would definitely be more than a little effort.
Nito had hesitantly entered the room as we spoke and now she poked me in the side.
“Do you know her?”
“Oh yeah, you were asleep. I met her on the road, after we got out of the mountains.”
Nito nodded in understanding. She looked at the bookshelves, then at the girl flipping through the books on the table, seeming almost jealous. Nito had spent her entire childhood bedridden. Her only pastimes had been reading and painting. While painting could be done anywhere as long as you had the right materials, carrying lots of books with you everywhere was difficult. Her bookworm blood was probably stirring now that she was surrounded by so many books again.
“Nito, why do you think we’re here?”
She looked back at me in puzzlement.
“That’s right. We’re here to look for a map,” I continued. “We’ll definitely need a map for our journey, so I want to check for one in this library.”
Her face quickly brightened, and she nodded eagerly.
“You’ve got the right girl for the job! I’ll check them all!”
She dithered for a moment, looking for somewhere to put her easel. I held out my hand and she immediately passed it over. The lantern was the only thing left in her hands as she headed over to the bookshelves on the wall and inspected the spines. She seemed happy enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her start to hum.
A faint laugh reached my ears. The girl was looking at Nito with a soft expression. She soon averted her gaze, but I felt a kindred spirit in her all the same. Nito carried the book she’d chosen with both hands and went for the seat opposite the other girl. There was only one table in the room, and only four chairs around it.
“Um, do you mind if I sit here?” she asked.
“Go ahead. You’re more than welcome.”
Her voice was much softer than it had been when she’d spoken to me. Nito seemed to notice that as well; she wasn’t nervous as she sat down and opened her book. She would probably be engrossed in its pages for a while.
A glance at my watch showed the hands approaching our usual dinnertime. I must have been napping for longer than I’d thought. Even my stomach had been sleepy, so I hadn’t realized before, but as I rubbed it absently, I noticed that I was pretty hungry. I went back to our room and put the easel down, exchanging it for my backpack, then headed back down the corridor. I opened the library door and sat down a ways out of the room. This way I wouldn’t be using any fire near the books, but I could still keep an eye on Nito.
Out came the utensils and cans. I used my phone’s flashlight to check the cans’ labels. Though I couldn’t actually read the words, I could recognize the symbols well enough to distinguish between the cans—sort of an “Oh, yeah, I’ve had that one before” type of thing. I picked out what I’d be using and stacked those ones to the side, putting the rest back into my bag.
I lit the burner on the Svea and listened to its intermittent popping. The flame stabilized once the tank of mana stones that fueled it had warmed up. It sputtered slightly but I ignored that and put the frying pan atop the burner, drizzling in some oil.
I emptied two cans of beans into the pan. They were red in color, but pretty similar in taste and size to edamame, so they were easy for me to work with. The bubbling sound of the oil and the fragrance of the beans frying filled the corridor outside the quiet library. Next, I opened a cylindrical can containing something along the lines of tomato sauce. I dolloped that into the pan and mixed the beans through it. Once I’d added in some seasoning and let it stew, it would be ready to go.