PAF 09

Chapter 9

My calm demeanor made the Head Librarian smile slyly.

[Aren’t you a little too relaxed? Was the betrayal really not that big of a deal to you?]

“It’s not that. I was just taking a break before I crush those bastards.”

He just has to get on my nerves, even when he knows better.

As I responded and lifted the Archive, the book opened, and the Head Librarian’s face appeared over the glowing parchment.

Eyes as blue as lapis lazuli, with dark blue hair to match. Pale, ethereal skin and a sharp, piercing gaze. A face whose most striking feature was the broad, unreadable smile that masked his freezing impression.

[I can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to communicate with our librarian again. My voice couldn’t even reach you for a long time, you know?]

The Head Librarian, who had materialized like an intricate illustration inside the pages, smiled softly, his eyes crinkling into crescents.

It was true that I hadn’t been in any position to answer him for years.

‘The Dimensional Library really is something else. The mana density here is incredible.‘

While I had been lounging around doing absolutely nothing, the Archive had automatically absorbed the rich, surrounding mana from the atmosphere, recovering a significant chunk of its lost functionality.

When I had been trapped inside that single novel—that cruel, stagnant world—the prospect of restoring the powerless Archive felt like an impossible dream. But headquarters was an absolute treasure trove of raw mana.

I had needed at least one day of proper, undisturbed rest. A true rest, even if taking it cost me half of my newly extended grace period.

I had been trapped in that story, somewhat resigned to my fate and quietly preparing for death, but that didn’t mean I actually wanted to die.

I had just been profoundly, utterly exhausted.

As I had explained to Arsil, the last deployment I undertook was an immensely important mission to me. Just as mortals came to the Dimensional Library begging to have a wish granted, I, too, possessed a wish I desperately wanted realized. What a cruel joke that I couldn’t even remember what that wish was anymore.

I didn’t take just anyone on a high-stakes mission like that. I selected people I believed I could trust with my life—colleagues I wouldn’t mind sharing a massive cut of the final reward with. Or so I had naively thought.

After ending up in that pathetic state, I waited for years inside that book. There must have been a mistake. It had to be an operational accident. I must have misjudged the situation. If I just hold on and endure a little longer, they’ll come back to rescue me. But nothing ever changed.

The truth was… I suppose I still hadn’t been able to fully let go of that pathetic hope.

Even going so far as to burn through half of the lifespan Arsil had painstakingly bought for me, I did nothing for the past few days. I had simply holed myself up in my room, silently waiting for someone to knock on my door and find me.

No, it would be more accurate to say I was desperately clinging to one final delusion.

Won’t they come to explain that there was some kind of terrible misunderstanding? Won’t they ramble on about the complex reasons they couldn’t come back to drag me out of the slums?

It’s because of you all that I’m in this much pain. If you feel even a microscopic sliver of guilt, won’t you stand before me and at least make some pathetic excuse?

I’m actually a bit of a softhearted idiot, so if they had just shown up and lied to my face, I might have let myself be fooled all over again, even knowing full well they were making it up on the spot. During those empty days of idling away, I had even constructed useless mental scripts—how I would respond if they showed up crying, or how dramatically I would act if I let myself get angry.

In the end, it was all just a pathetic fantasy.

It was sickening, but only now had I finally come to accept the cold reality: I was truly, utterly abandoned.

In the end, all I had left was the Archive—this tiny pittance of administrative power I still held.

And it was borrowed, at that.

Plus, I had the Head Librarian, who seemed to take personal pleasure in getting on my nerves at every conceivable turn.

He was no different from a persistent loan shark.

At least Arsil was an uncomplicated, remarkably handsome companion, but he wasn’t exactly an operational powerhouse. In fact, I would probably have to help him navigate the library and find his home world eventually.

In any case, I was deeply worried about having to root out the traitors with the pathetic, limited resources currently at my disposal.

Ah, right. There was one more thing.

“Has the administrative settlement been finalized?”

I was talking about the Beyond Classification reward I was owed for extracting the Bookworm anomaly during the deployment.

[Ahem. No, it seems calculating an S-rank anomaly settlement will take a bit longer. However, I have just finished preparing the matter you requested earlier. Shall you go now?]

The matter I had requested.

To be completely honest, that was the exact call I had been anxiously awaiting today.

“Yes. Well, that works just fine.”

[Of course. Rooting out localized narrative hazards is a librarian’s solemn duty, after all.]

I shot up from the cot. At that exact moment, the door flew open, and Arsil stepped into the room.

“Librarian, today’s meal is—ah.”

Arsil froze mid-sentence, his entire frame going rigid as his eyes locked onto the Head Librarian’s glowing face floating above the Archive.

While I greeted Arsil with a casual nod, the Head Librarian’s deep, resonant voice continued to reverberate through the room. In stark contrast to its majestic weight, his tone was sugary, affectionate, and disgustingly gentle—a combination that created a thoroughly bizarre atmosphere. I still didn’t quite understand why Arsil was so utterly terrified of him, though.

[I have assembled them all in the library’s central lounge. The final judgment rests entirely in our librarian’s hands.]

“That’s what he says,” I said, snapping the Archive shut. “Want to come along?”

“…”

Arsil looked as though every single fine hair on his body were standing on end, but he managed to stiffly nod his assent.

Seeing his guarded, protective posture eased my spirits, which had been lingering in the gutter until recently. I had spent days believing I didn’t have a single ally left in the universe, but a wave of profound relief washed over me knowing I at least had Arsil walking beside me.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

Without thinking, I casually reached out and grasped his hand as we turned toward the hallway. I caught myself off guard when I felt his entire shoulder flinch at my touch.

It seemed that finding a genuine ally after being betrayed by everyone I trusted had made me act a little too overly familiar.

“Ah, sorry—”

I apologized for the impulsive slip and immediately tried to pull my hand back, but Arsil suddenly tightened his grip, snatching my fingers before I could retreat. I looked up at him in sheer surprise as he smoothly aligned his fingers, interlocking them firmly with mine.

Arsil had abruptly turned his head away, but the tips of his ears were burning a vivid, brilliant red.

“Let’s go,” he muttered, his voice dropping into a low, quiet rumble.

“Uh… right.”

I nodded in a total daze, feeling a sudden, scorching heat rush straight to my face. I cleared my throat violently a few times to brush past the absurdly awkward atmosphere and started walking down the grand corridor, listening to Kaellariatus’s lingering voice echoing through the system link.

The massive, multi-tiered circular library featured a sweeping, spiral marble staircase that wrapped around the central atrium, leading directly down to the open lounge.

[Those bastards who were deployed on that mission with you back then… you desperately wanted to see their faces again, didn’t you?]

“Of course I did,” I whispered.

When I was trapped in that dark story, when I spent those recent days forcing myself to waste time in isolation, and even now that I had finally accepted the cold truth—though the underlying emotions had mutated into something dark, I had wanted to look them in the eyes again.

[Not a single one of them dared to ignore my summons.]

‘Oh? Now that is unexpected.‘

I had honestly assumed at least one of them would make up an excuse not to show. Or that whoever carried the guilty conscience would flee to the far edges of the sanctuary.

As we descended the final curve of the spiral staircase and approached the lounge floor, the distinct silhouettes of four men came into sharp focus.

The moment my soles touched the polished floor of the lounge, the four men standing around the velvet seating area sensed our presence and turned in unison to face us.

One of them even bolted up from his seat the instant his eyes landed on my face.

[…I do hope you find this reunion satisfactory.]

With those final, mocking words, the Head Librarian’s voice vanished from my mind, leaving behind a faint, unpleasant chuckle.

I unconsciously squeezed Arsil’s hand with all the strength I had left.

One single traitor. I was going to drag them out into the light right here, right now.

✦ ✦ ✦

Trapped in a single narrative for years. Left to rot while my administrative abilities evaporated, my soul decayed, and my condition deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t even remember my own birth name.

And yet, the fact that all four of them had obediently gathered here simply because the Head Librarian snapped his fingers was almost laughably absurd.

Honestly, if I were the one who had poisoned a senior colleague and left her to die, I would have tried to evade a formal summons at all costs. Their sheer, unadulterated shamelessness was so astounding it was almost impressive.

The man who had shot up from his chair the moment he spotted me wore an expression of total, wide-eyed disbelief before immediately rushing over.

He marched straight up to me, stopping just short of my personal space, and blurted out the exact line I had anticipated.

“Y-You’re alive?!”

I slowly, meticulously took in the man’s features.

Perhaps because my organic memories of my past life had almost completely weathered away, he felt like a total stranger.

He was notably shorter than the Head Librarian, with striking, light sky-blue hair that caught the lounge’s ambient light. What was most jarring were his radiant, golden eyes that shone like molten sunlight. He possessed a undeniably handsome, pure face that would make anyone turn their head in the street—a clean, gentle impression that carried an almost holy aura, though he wasn’t completely lacking in defined, masculine features.

In a word, he looked remarkably, infuriatingly healthy.

I guess he had been eating well, sleeping comfortably, and living a luxurious life in the library after leaving me to dissolve in the slums, huh?

He addressed me with stiff, polite honorifics, prompting me to briefly consider whether I should maintain professional etiquette. But then I thought: what’s the point?

I had zero intention of maintaining a fake, professional acquaintance with any of these people ever again. That was probably why my subconscious had mercifully purged their names from my mind in the first place.

I decided to stop holding back.

“Sounds to me like you were desperately hoping I’d be dead.”

“Hoping you were dead…?! N-No! That’s not it at all!” he stammered, his golden eyes widening in panic as he shot a nervous, darting glance over his shoulder at the other three. “That… that Spirit-Severing Venom…”

He took a frantic step closer, his hands hovering in mid-air as if he wanted to reach out but didn’t dare touch me.

“After what happened with that lethal poison… I truly believed there was zero possibility of you surviving! I’m… I’m really, truly glad you’re okay!”

“Oh, really?” I asked, tilting my head with a cold, hollow smile. “So you’re saying… you had no idea I was still alive all this time?”