Chapter 1

Late at night.

Facility 5 of the Foundation.

Two men crossed a hallway that was illuminated as bright as day.

Unable to conceal their tension, they arrived at a small, hidden chamber—a room enveloped in a faint glow cast by a solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

In the center of the chamber sat a single book.

Bound in leather that did not exist anywhere on Earth, it was a tome that no living soul could open.

The younger of the two men stared at the book with a grimace and spoke.

“No matter how many times I see it, that book gives me the creeps.”

At his words, the middle-aged man—his face etched deep with exhaustion—replied.

“It isn’t dangerous. As long as we feed it on schedule, that is.”

Contrary to his words, tension clearly lingered in his eyes as he pulled a book from inside his coat and set it down.

From the moment they stepped into the chamber to placing the book down, exactly twelve seconds had elapsed.

Checking his watch one last time, the middle-aged man let out a low exhale.

“Fortunately, we made it on time. Let’s head back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clop, clop.

The two men retraced their steps down the hallway they had just traversed.

On the door of the chamber they had left behind, brief details about the ‘Book’ were inscribed:

[ The Story-Devouring Grimoire ]

• Identification Code: Kr-0298

• Classification: Grimoire

• Danger Level: Level 5

• Origin: U

…Information regarding the book resting squarely at the center of the hidden chamber.

“Where am I?”

Han Seong-jun muttered as he opened his eyes in an unfamiliar space.

What met his eyes was a library. However, it was vastly different from any library Seong-jun had ever known.

An interior so vast that its end was nowhere in sight. The only things filling the space were towering bookshelves stretching upward as if to pierce the sky, packed with an infinite array of books. At a glance, there seemed to be well over tens of thousands of volumes.

Staring blankly at his surroundings, Seong-jun muttered again.

“Why am I here…?”

Han Seong-jun had no idea why he had awakened in this place; his memories were completely severed.

His last memory was visiting a secondhand bookstore, as he usually did, to look for a decent read, where he came across a specific volume. Even for Seong-jun—who had collected countless books—the cover was made of a leather he had never seen in his entire life. Driven by curiosity, he had simply opened the book. That was all.

No memories existed after that moment. Nor did any exist prior to it.

The only things he could recall were his name, Han Seong-jun, and the fact that he loved stories—or rather, books.

“Is this a dream?”

Yet, it felt far too realistic to be a dream. All his senses were screaming that everything in sight was real. However, if it were reality, there was no explaining why he possessed no memories whatsoever.

Overwhelmed by this uncanny sensation, Seong-jun simply walked without aim.

He walked, and walked, and walked. Through this, he came to realize one fact: in this space, he felt neither hunger, thirst, nor fatigue.

If this was indeed a dream, it was nothing short of a terrible nightmare.

And yet… did it really matter?

Seong-jun simply wanted to read the books filling this vast space where hunger, thirst, and exhaustion did not exist.

“Hmm?”

Just then, Seong-jun stopped in his tracks. Reaching out to a nearby shelf, he pulled out a volume.

“Kang Dae-shik…?”

The title of the book was Kang Dae-shik. It was a rather odd title for a novel—sounding more like a person’s name. Looking down at the book, Seong-jun felt a surge of curiosity and flipped it open.

Kang Dae-shik

The name used as the title was indeed the protagonist of the book. Written from a first-person point of view, the story detailed the life of a human named ‘Kang Dae-shik’.

Kang Dae-shik was born in 1982, and his family went bankrupt during the IMF crisis.His parents abandoned their children, and at the young age of fifteen, Dae-shik became the head of the household, striving desperately to feed his younger siblings.No matter how hard he tried, however, his life showed no sign of improving. As time passed, his spirit gradually broke, and ultimately in 2012—at the young age of thirty—Kang Dae-shik took his own life.

That was the end of the book titled Kang Dae-shik.

“Hmm….”

Seong-jun slid the book back into its slot.

How should he describe that? Seong-jun could tell that what he had just read was the authentic life story of a real human being. He also realized that Kang Dae-shik was not the only book in this library detailing a human life.

If so, was this a place where the lives of the deceased gathered?

Yet, to conclude that…

“There are far more ordinary novels here.”

He had no idea how many books lay asleep in this place. Among the tens of thousands of volumes visible at a glance, books containing ‘someone’s life’ amounted to maybe a thousand at most.

“Well, I have no idea.”

Where was this mysterious library? What were those books? Why was he here?

He had no answers to any of it, so Seong-jun gave up on agonizing over it. Even if he pondered it deeply, it wasn’t as though he would find the answer.

For now…

“I’ll just read.”

Having reached that conclusion, Seong-jun returned to the spot where he had first woken up, his arms laden with dozens of books.

Creeeak. Creeeak.

Rustle. Rustle.

The faint creaking of a rocking chair and the steady sound of turning pages filled the vast library.

At the source of the sound sat Han Seong-jun. Seated in a luxurious wooden rocking chair, Seong-jun read with a peaceful expression, surrounded by hundreds of books stacked beside him.

Just how much time had he spent immersed in reading?

Creeeak—.

Rustle—.

As the creaking stopped, Seong-jun read the final page, closed the book, and stood up.

Since there were no clocks in this library, even Seong-jun could not know how much time had passed. He could only roughly estimate that over a hundred days had gone by.

And the reason for that was…

Thud—.

“It’s here.”

At a sound echoing from not far away, Seong-jun’s eyes gleamed slightly.

The spot where Seong-jun had first awakened—the exact center of this expansive library—a new book appeared with a heavy thud.

This was how Seong-jun inferred the passage of time in a timeless library. The appearance of a new book followed a consistent pattern.

However, upon checking the newly appeared book, Seong-jun’s brow furrowed slightly.

Of all things…

“It’s a Life Record.”

Life Record. That was the term Seong-jun had coined to categorize these specific books. He gave them this name because they described a single person’s entire life from a first-person point of view.

Seong-jun wasn’t particularly fond of Life Records because the contents of most were thoroughly depressing:

• The life of someone betrayed by a friend of thirty years.

• The life of someone abandoned by family after their business failed.

• The life of someone who committed a crime out of jealousy and ended up on the scaffold.

Since most of the Life Records were like this, even Seong-jun felt reluctant.

And yet…

“Huh?”

As Seong-jun checked the new Life Record, his eyes sparkled faintly. He had opened it intending to merely scan through it, but its contents proved surprisingly intriguing.

Written within were events so unusual that Seong-jun questioned whether it was truly a Life Record at all.

The protagonist of this new Life Record was an orphan born in 2002 who spent most of his life in an orphanage, became an adult, went independent, and eventually died in 2025. Up to this point, it was no different from any other dismal Life Record.

However, the cause of his death—and the events he experienced after reaching adulthood—aroused Seong-jun’s curiosity.

And understandably so.

“It reads like urban fantasy.”

Or rather, the SCP genre—also known as containment fiction.

In this newly appeared Life Record titled Kim Tae-ho, various anomalies reminiscent of an urban fantasy appeared. Even the cause of his death was due to an anomaly.

The anomaly that appeared at the end of the story was none other than [The Story-Devouring Grimoire].

“He was ‘sacrificed’ due to a failure to follow containment procedures, huh.”

Seong-jun muttered as he closed the book.

From the story’s contents—or more precisely, from [The Story-Devouring Grimoire] mentioned at the end—Seong-jun felt a heavy sense of déjà vu.

An unidentified existence that swallowed the lives of others, and himself—who remembered nothing about his identity except his name and his love for stories.

Could he perhaps be nothing more than a shell created by [The Story-Devouring Grimoire] existing within this story? A vessel created to manage the vast collection of books filling this library?

Perhaps the name ‘Han Seong-jun’ was merely one of the names belonging to the countless victims swallowed by the Grimoire. Having read the Life Record in his hands, Seong-jun couldn’t help but view his own existence in that light.

However…

“Does it really matter?”

Seong-jun muttered to himself.

Was it because he had no memories of his past, or had he been intentionally designed to feel this way?

Seong-jun chose not to overthink his identity. He simply liked books, and he enjoyed reading them.

If that was the case, wasn’t it enough for him to just stay here and read?