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Chapter 8

Y/N: However, if I had to take a guess, I would say around 3 months but the library doesn't have a notion of time so I couldn't tell.

Koishi: 3 months?! How are you still standing?

Y/N: Pain and other instruments, I couldn't afford to rest in the library anyway since an endless amount of monsters tried to break in.

She glanced into his eyes and finally noticed the scars of deprivation. A pair of eyes that before seemed perfectly normal were now showing their actual form after being exposed to the light. They were blank and many bags that would make one think that the skin under them was undergoing necrosis.

Y/N: I suppose I should give it to you, I wasn't expecting you to remember that small detail. I would congratulate you but this world is more tiring than the library.

Koishi: ...

Y/N: ...You look like you want to say something.

Koishi: ...Nothing.

She looked down, hiding herself with the hat on top of her head. Refusing to say what she had on her mind, Y/N didn't insist and began to go down the path that he took to get to the top. If they were lucky, they would be down in a hour. Koishi followed his movements, staying silent the whole descent.

Y/N: Finally free, I'm not going back up that thing again.

He dropped the sentence on his mind when he took his first step on the grass, done with the walk that seemed endless. Meanwhile, Koishi watched him, a question tormenting her ever since she woke up. She doesn't know why it suddenly formed in her head but now that it did, it wouldn't leave her alone.

Koishi: ...Mister Y/N?

Y/N: ?

He faced her with a 'go-ahead' movement, waiting for her to ask him the question that she did not ask him when she woke up.

Koishi: Will you abandon me?

Y/N: ...

The librarian took a moment to think about it and his eyes ravaged by the cruel hands of time grew even gloomier than before, his tiredness made him look like a dying patient connected to a machine.

Y/N: We will have to part ways one day miss Koishi. We both are from different origins, this is unavoidable.

He confirmed her fear with the gaze of a dead man. Unlike her, he was already placed on the guillotine and waiting for the blade to take his life while she was witnessing his execution. Maybe one day, her turn would come but not now, he was the one that will die and she couldn't do anything to change it.

Koishi: What about the library?

Y/N: I grow weaker, it will not be a permanent solution. One day, someone as strong as that girl named Mokou will take my life for a selfish desire of knowledge.

Koishi: ...

Y/N: I accepted you to help me because you seemed to want to help me in this search... it would be better for the both of us if this is the only interaction we have with each other. Otherwise, it would only hurt the both of us.

Koishi: ...

Y/N: *Sigh* I know it sounds stupid but we aren't immortal, we knew that from the beginning. We only exist to protect the library, our lives have no meaning.

Koishi: But you don't have to go back, the library is closed-

Y/N: I can't leave... my friends are waiting for me. They may be corpses hidden inside books but they are still there.