The next day was a Monday, the library was closed, and I left the house as usual and headed toward Mr. Koyasu’s grave. It was a cold morning, with bursts of snow fluttering in the air, the remaining snow on the ground frozen solid. A large truck passed by, its snow chains clattering loudly as they scraped against the road. The north wind blowing down stung my ears, and it was not at all the best weather for a visit to a grave.
Yet the weekly visit to his grave had become more than just a habitual ceremony, but something that I looked forward to. In my life, here in this town, I needed it, very much.
It’s a strange way of putting it, but for me, Mr. Koyasu seemed much more alive, someone I felt the breath of life in, more than any of the actual living people around me. This held true not just for this town, but for everywhere I’d ever lived.
I loved his unique personality, and felt empathy toward his unswerving way of life. Fate had not been kind to him, yet he never lapsed into self-pity but did his utmost to make his life—for himself, and for those around him—something meaningful.
His life was quite isolated, yet he cherished his emotional exchange with others. He loved reading above all else, and when the town library was struggling financially he took over, invested his own money, and operated it, making sure that the library’s holdings were substantial. As a result, this mostly one-man little town library had an amazing catalog of books, both in quantity and quality. I couldn’t help but respect this well-ordered lifestyle of his, and visiting the cemetery every Monday felt less like visiting a grave than going to see a friend who was alive.
But that particular morning in February was so bitingly cold, too cold for me to linger there giving a monologue. I gave up after twenty minutes and headed back, being careful not to lose my footing on the steps of the temple, slippery from the remaining snow. And as always I stopped by the little no-name coffee shop near the station to warm up, enjoying a cup of hot black coffee and a muffin. They had two kinds of muffins, plain and blueberry, but I always had the blueberry.
On this snowy Monday morning, I was the only customer there. The same woman—her hair pulled tightly back, probably in her mid-thirties—went about her tasks behind the counter. Jazz played softly in the background, Paul Desmond on alto sax. When I first dropped by this shop, I recall, the Dave Brubeck Quartet was playing then, too, with another Paul Desmond sax solo.
“ ‘You Go to My Head,’ ” I said to myself.
As she warmed up the muffin in the oven, the woman looked up.
“Paul Desmond,” I said.
“You mean the music?”
“Yeah,” I said. “With Jim Hall on guitar.”
“I don’t know much about jazz,” the woman said, a bit apologetically. She pointed to the speakers on the wall. “I just play a jazz channel.”
I nodded. Understandable. She was too young to be fond of Paul Desmond’s sound. She brought the warm muffin over, I tore off a piece and ate it, and sipped the hot coffee. Lovely music. Listening to Paul Desmond, watching the snow.
It suddenly occurred to me—in the town I never heard anything like music. But I never felt lonely without it, or felt I wanted to hear any. I didn’t even really notice that there was no music. Why, I wonder?
With a start, I realized that Yellow Submarine Boy was standing there, next to my stool at the counter. I’d just finished the blueberry muffin and was wiping my mouth with a napkin. He had on his usual navy-blue down jacket, zipped up to the neck, and a scarf wrapped above his chin, so I couldn’t tell if he had on his parka with the Yellow Submarine picture. But I bet he did.
I couldn’t figure it out for a moment. Why was he here? How did he know I was here at this coffee shop? Had he followed me? Or had he known that every Monday, after I visited the grave, I stopped by here, and he’d come here to see me?
He was standing beside me, but not looking at me. With his back straight, he was gazing at the woman behind the counter. His eyes were wide open, his chin tucked in tight. Can I help you? her expression said, a faint professional smile rising to her lips as she looked at the boy. He was too young to be a customer here, still almost a child.
“Can you tell me your date of birth?” he asked her, politely, and as precisely as if he were reading words written down.
“My date of birth?”
“Date of birth,” he said. “The year, the month, the day.”
Not surprisingly, the question puzzled her, but finally, having concluded that there was no harm in revealing this, she told him.
“Wednesday,” the boy immediately declared.
“Wednesday?” the woman said. She looked unsure of what he was going on about.
“It means that you were born on a Wednesday,” I piped in from beside him.
“I didn’t know that,” she said. She still looked puzzled. “But how can you know that so quickly?”
“Good question,” I said. Explaining it all from the beginning would take too long. “At any rate the boy seems to know.”
“Would you care for a refill?” the woman asked. I nodded.
“Wednesday’s child is full of woe,” I said, as if to myself.
The boy took a large envelope out of the pocket of his down jacket and handed it to me. He nodded once as if confirming the handover. I took it and likewise nodded once. Like Indians in a Western sharing a peace pipe.
“How about having a muffin?” I asked the boy. “The blueberry muffins here are delicious, freshly baked.”
But he didn’t reply, as if he hadn’t heard what I’d said, and simply looked up at my face. As if engraving on his memory some information my face was sharing. His round, metal-frame glasses caught the light from the ceiling and glittered. A moment later the boy spun around and headed toward the door without a word. He opened it and left the shop. Into the fluttering, fine flakes of snow.
“An acquaintance of yours?” the woman asked as she watched him leave.
“Um,” I replied.
“What an odd boy. He barely said a word.”
“You know, actually I was born on a Wednesday, too,” I said. I wanted to change the subject.
“Wednesday’s child is full of woe…,” the woman said, her expression solemn. “You said that a moment ago. Is it true?”
“It’s just a line from an old nursery rhyme. Nothing to worry about,” I said. Like Mrs. Soeda told me once.
As if suddenly remembering, the woman tugged her cell phone, in a red plastic case, out of the pocket of her soft jeans and with her slim fingers raced over the screen. Finally, she looked up.
“Huh—it’s right,” she said, sounding impressed. “I was born on Wednesday. It’s a fact.”
I nodded silently. That’s right, of course it’s a Wednesday. Yellow Submarine Boy is always spot on. No need to check it. Nowadays, though, anyone can check what day of the week they were born on in less than ten seconds. The boy could come up with the answer in one second. This wasn’t a shootout in a Western, but how much practical difference was there between ten seconds and one? I felt a little sad for the boy. The world was, day by day, becoming a more convenient, and unromantic, place.
I sipped my second cup of coffee and opened up the envelope he’d given me. As expected, it was a single-page map. Nothing else was inside. The same A4 paper as before, the same map in black ballpoint pen. A map of the kidney-shaped, walled-in town. All seven corrections I’d made a few days before, though, had now been incorporated into the map. The information shown there was more detailed and accurate now. A kind of revised edition of the town map. I returned the map to the envelope. At least the boy had responded to the message I’d sent. I’d hit the ball into his side of the court, and now he’d returned it over the net. A new development. A meaningful, probably favorable development.
I bought two blueberry muffins to take back, and she put them in a paper bag for me. As I was paying the bill at the register, the woman behind the counter said, “It sort of bothers me, but it can’t be true, right, that children born on Wednesday all suffer a lot?”
“No, not to worry. That’s not true,” I said. I had no definite proof, but probably it wasn’t.
The next morning, a Tuesday, the boy showed up at the library. This day he didn’t wear his usual green parka with the picture of Yellow Submarine, but the brown parka with the picture of Jeremy Hillary Boob on it. His mother had probably taken the submarine parka to wash it, and until it dried he had to wear this substitute. Even with different clothes on, though, his actions fit his usual pattern. He took up his usual position in the reading room in a chair next to the window and read on, utterly focused on his book. He reminded me of a butterfly drinking the last drop of nectar from a flower. A win-win for both the flower and the butterfly. The butterfly gets nutrition, the flower gets help pollinating. A mutually beneficial relationship, which harms no one. One of the wonderful things about the act of reading.
On that day I wasn’t in my subterranean room but working in the upstairs head librarian’s office. The small gas stove didn’t warm up the room enough, but the sun had, for the first time in a while, peeked through the clouds, so I decided, for a change of pace, to work in that bright room with its long, vertical window. I kept the map the boy gave me in the envelope on top of the desk, forcing myself not to open it. I had some tasks that required my immediate attention, and I knew that if I opened up the map and started looking at it, I would never get any work done.
The map that the boy drew had a power about it that was intriguing—bewitching, even. It wasn’t just some map in black ink on a A4 sheet. Instead it summoned something from the viewer’s heart, something normally hidden deep within, something with an intense power inside. And I couldn’t resist that power. So on that day I focused on not taking out the map from the envelope. Today I had to cling to this world—what should probably be called the real world. Despite myself, though, my gaze was drawn, like an intermittent wind blowing fallen leaves closer, to the large business envelope on my desk.
Occasionally I’d open the window, stick my head out, look at the scenery outside, and cool myself down. Like a sea turtle or whale regularly surfaces to breathe. But I found it odd that I needed to feel the outside air to cool down on this cold winter day, when the room wasn’t warm at all. But for me, on that day, it was a necessary, indispensable act. To confirm that I was living in the world on this side.
Below the window, the cat was making its way through the garden. The mother cat that had raised five kittens underneath the veranda. There were no kittens to be seen now, and the cat was slowly sauntering across the garden, her white breath billowing. She walked cautiously, her tail rigidly upright, heading somewhere. Her steps seemed painful, as if the ground were too freezing for her paws. I followed her slim, graceful figure until she slipped from view. I closed the window, sat down at my desk, and went back to work.
Just before noon, Mrs. Soeda hesitantly knocked on my door.
“Do you have a moment?” she asked.
Of course, I replied.
“M** said he’d like to come see you,” she said.
“That would be fine,” I quickly replied. “Please bring him over.”
Her eyes narrowed in a faint smile, and she nodded.
“If you don’t mind, could you bring over two cups of tea? And heat this up?” I said, handing her the bag with two blueberry muffins.
“Ah, muffins,” she said, peeking inside the bag. Her eyes gleamed behind her glasses.
“That’s right, blueberry muffins. I bought them yesterday, but if you heat them up in the microwave they should still be fine.”
Mrs. Soeda headed toward the door with the paper bag. “I’ll bring him here first, then bring over the tea and muffins.”
“Thanks.”
Five minutes later there was another knock and the boy, accompanied by Mrs. Soeda and wearing his Jeremy Hillary Boob parka, eased his way inside. Mrs. Soeda lightly rested an encouraging hand on his shoulder and then left. When he heard the door shut behind him the boy’s expression stiffened even more, as if there were a sudden increase in air pressure. If Mrs. Soeda had been by his side he would probably have been more relaxed. He wasn’t used to being alone with just me. Yet there was a mysterious reason that he needed to speak with me. Probably.
“Hey,” I said to him.
The boy showed no reaction.
“Why don’t you come over here and take a seat,” I said. I pointed to the chair in front of the desk.
After some thought he approached the desk with measured steps, like a cautious cat, but just glanced at the chair and didn’t sit. He stood there next to the desk, his back straight, his chin tucked in.
Maybe he didn’t like the chair. Or maybe it was his way of showing he wasn’t quite sure enough about me to want to settle in. Either way, if standing suited him better, fine by me.
The boy stood there, silent, staring at the oversized envelope on the desk. The one with his handwritten map of the town inside. The fact that it was on my desktop seemed to draw his attention. His face was expressionless, as if he wore a thin mask, yet it seemed that behind it some sorts of thoughts were racing.
I decided to let him be. I didn’t want to interrupt what seemed to be his deep thought process. And Mrs. Soeda would soon be bringing over the tea and muffins. If the boy and I were going to have a conversation, whatever it turned out to be, it could wait until then. Usually it was the job of someone else on staff, not Mrs. Soeda, to bring over sweets for the boss, but I predicted that she’d bring over the tea and muffins herself. Anything to do with the boy seemed important to her.
And sure enough it was Mrs. Soeda who brought it all over, entering the room with a round tray in hand. On the tray were two teacups, a small sugar bowl and slices of lemon, and the two blueberry muffins. The cups and saucers and sugar bowl were all a matching design, older, lovely items. Wedgewood, by the look of it. The spoons and forks were silver and glistened humbly and elegantly. My guess is that these were all personal items Mr. Koyasu had brought from his home. Not at all the kind of things you’d expect to find in a small town library. Tableware only brought out for special guests, I would imagine.
With a soft clatter, Mrs. Soeda arranged the cups and plates and sugar bowl on my desk. Thanks to which my normally drab office suddenly had the refined, quiet feeling of an afternoon salon. The sound of a Mozart piano quartet would have suited nicely.
When the muffins I had bought at the coffee shop near the station were taken out of the paper bag, placed on the plates with their lovely pattern, with the silver forks next to them, they looked like sweets of some noble lineage. White linen napkins folded into triangles and a single red rose would have completed the look, but that was asking too much.
“Thank you so much. It’s lovely,” I said to Mrs. Soeda.
Mrs. Soeda didn’t reply or show any expression, but merely gave a slight nod and exited the room. It was just the boy and myself, alone again.
The boy hadn’t spoken a word. When Mrs. Soeda had come in, and then left, he hadn’t looked at her at all. He paid no attention whatsoever to the tea and muffins on the desk, or to the elegant tableware and silverware. He kept his gaze riveted on the envelope, his sharp gaze never wavering a fraction. Behind that expressionless face his mind seemed ceaselessly at work.
I picked up a cup and took a sip of tea. The perfect temperature and strength. The tea Mr. Koyasu had made for me was so delicious, but Mrs. Soeda seemed equally adept at brewing tea. She was, I would bet, the type who earnestly pursued things—as long as they were worth pursuing. Intelligent, attentive, a woman diligent at everything.
I suddenly wondered what kind of person her husband was. I hadn’t met him, and she’d never said much about him. So I had no mental image. The little I did know was that he was from Fukushima Prefecture (though not from this region), had worked for about ten years as a teacher in an elementary school in town, and used to be Yellow Submarine Boy’s homeroom teacher. When would I have a chance to meet him and talk with him, I wondered.
The boy’s tense look finally relaxed a bit. His thought process seemed to have passed its peak and slowed down a little. I could feel it getting looser. There was still tension, but not as much as before.
The boy’s gaze finally left the envelope and took in the tea and muffins neatly arranged on the desktop.
“Blueberry muffins,” I said. “They’re really good.”
The same lines I’d used the day before at the coffee shop. Yesterday he’d totally ignored my invitation, but now he showed some interest. He stared at them for a long time. A sharp, critical eye, like Paul Cézanne assessing the shape of apples piled in a bowl.
His mouth moved slightly, as if starting to form words but then brushing them away. So no words emerged. This might have been the first time in his life he’d ever laid eyes on blueberry muffins, and maybe he was assembling information about them in his mind. But how much information about muffins could possibly be included? I had no clue. There were too many things about this boy I couldn’t understand. I cut the muffin in half with a fork, and cut that in half again, and put that quarter of the muffin in my mouth.
“It’s delicious,” I said. “Best to eat it while it’s still warm.”
The boy watched intently as I ate the quarter of the muffin. With the same look he had as he watched the mother cat nursing her kittens. He reached out, grabbed the other muffin from the plate, and took a bite. He didn’t use a fork, or a plate to catch the crumbs, crumbs spilling down onto the floor, but he didn’t seem to care. And neither did I. A quick vacuuming later would take care of it.
The boy downed the muffin in three quick bites. His mouth wide open, noisily chewing away. Blueberry stains appeared around his mouth, but he didn’t seem to care. And neither did I. It wasn’t like paint or anything. Just blueberry juice. Just wipe it away with a tissue later.
Maybe he was challenging me with his rough behavior, testing me. A thought hit me. Mrs. Soeda had told me he’d been raised in an affluent family, so he should have learned some table manners. Maybe he was intentionally acting rude to see how I’d react. Hitting a new ball back into my side of the court. Or maybe he simply didn’t understand table manners—or didn’t recognize the need for them. Maybe that’s all it was.
Either way, I let it slide. With this boy, the only thing to do was accept what came. Just showing interest in a blueberry muffin and actually picking it up and eating it was an important step forward for our relationship.
I speared another quarter piece and put it in my mouth and quietly ate it. I dabbed at my mouth with a handkerchief and took a sip of tea. Still standing, the boy picked up the cup of tea and, adding no sugar or lemon, slurped it. Again ignoring table manners, even though the tableware looked like Wedgewood. Again, I pretended not to notice.
“They really are delicious muffins,” I said to the boy in a carefree voice.
The boy said nothing, and just neatly licked away the blueberries stuck to his lips. Much like a cat licking its whiskers after eating.
“I bought these yesterday at that coffee shop. I was thinking of having them for lunch today,” I said. “I had Mrs. Soeda heat them up in the microwave. The blueberries are grown by a farmer in the area, and a neighborhood bakery uses those to bake muffins every morning. So they’re fresh.”
Again no response from the boy. He stared at his now empty plate. Like a lonely passenger up on deck, gazing at the horizon after the sun has set.
I left half my muffin and held out my plate to him.
“I have half left, so would you like a little more?”
The boy gazed at the proffered plate for some twenty seconds, and finally reached out and took it. After a moment’s thought he used a fork this time, cut the piece in half, placed it on his plate, and quietly ate it. Other than the fact that he was standing, his table manners were fine. Once he finished, he took out some tissue from his pants pocket and wiped his mouth.
Had he learned something watching me? Or given up on challenging me? I couldn’t decide which. He returned his empty plate to the desktop, and quietly, and politely, drank his tea. The ball was back in my court. Most likely.
The blueberry muffins eaten, the tea all drunk, I put the plates and cups and sugar bowl back on the tray and tidied up the desk. The only thing remaining on the desktop was the envelope with the map inside. Right around the spot where Mr. Koyasu used to place his navy-blue beret. I glanced around the room, my faint hope that maybe he was there, but no one was. The only ones here were Yellow Submarine Boy (though dressed today in his brown parka) and myself.
“I looked at the map that you drew,” I said. I took it out and placed it next to the envelope. “It’s very accurately done. Almost like the real thing. I was impressed, or…maybe I should say surprised. I say almost because I myself don’t know the exact shape of the town. So it’s not your fault.”
The boy stared straight at me through his glasses. Other than the occasional blink his expression remained static. No expression at all in his eyes, just momentary shifts in the intensity of light.
“I lived for a time in that town,” I said. “The town drawn in this map. I worked in a library there, too. But there wasn’t a single book in that library. Not a single one. More like a former library, I guess you should say. Instead of books, my job was to read the old dreams stacked up there on the shelves, one by one. The old dreams were shaped like large eggs, and covered in white dust. They were about this big.”
I indicated the size with my hands. The boy gazed steadily at this but didn’t comment. Just absorbing the information.
“I don’t know how long I lived there. Seasons came and went, but I feel like the flow of time there was different from the changes in seasons. At any rate, time there basically had no meaning.
“While I was living there, I went to that library every day and read those old dreams. I don’t recall how many of them I read. But the number wasn’t important, since the number of old dreams was nearly infinite. I worked after the sun set. I’d start reading in the evening and usually finish very late at night. I don’t know the exact time. There were no clocks in that town.”
The boy instinctively glanced at his own wristwatch. He checked that time was indicated there, then turned his gaze back to me. Time seemed to have a certain meaning to him.
“During the day I was free to do what I wanted, but I couldn’t go out much, since the sunlight hurt my eyes. To become a Dream Reader my eyes had to be cut, which was done by the Gatekeeper before I could enter the town. So I couldn’t walk around as much as I needed to draw a proper map. Also, the brick wall that surrounded the town changed shape a little day by day, like it was making fun of my efforts to create a map. Which is one of the reasons why I couldn’t grasp an overall view of the town.
“The wall was made from bricks precisely laid upon each other and was very high. It seemed to have been made in the distant past, but there was not a sign of wear and tear. It was unbelievably sturdy. No one could climb over the wall to go outside, and no one could climb over it to come inside. That sort of unique wall.”
The boy took a small memo pad and three-colored pen from his pocket. A vertical, spiral memo pad. He quickly wrote something down in it and held it out to me. I took it from him. There was one short sentence written there.
To prevent an epidemic.
Neat block printing. He’d written it hurriedly, yet it looked just like it had been printed, not handwritten. There was not a speck of emotion in it.
“ ‘To prevent an epidemic,’ ” I read aloud. And I pondered this as I looked at him. “So the brick wall was built to prevent an epidemic from coming into the town. Is that what you’re saying?”
The boy gave a slight nod. Yes.
“Why do you know this?”
There was no answer. His lips remained shut tight and he continued to gaze at me, devoid of expression. Probably telling me that this is not something we need to discuss at this point.
But if the wall was, as the boy was saying, constructed to prevent an epidemic, this could have many meanings. I don’t know when it was, but from the moment it was built that high wall functioned to forcefully, and strictly, keep the residents shut away inside and block nonresidents from getting in. The only ones who could enter and leave the town were the unicorns, who lived in their own settlement; the Gatekeeper; and a handful of people with special qualifications whom the town needed. I was one of those. The Gatekeeper might have had a natural immunity to the epidemic, which would explain why he was the only one who could freely go in and out of the gate.
That wall was no ordinary brick wall. It towered there imbued with its own will, its own unique life force. And the town was completely enveloped in its hands. At what point, and how, had the wall acquired that power?
“But the epidemic had to have ended at a certain point,” I said to the boy. “No epidemic lasts forever. Yet the wall went on as before maintaining a strict isolation. No one could come in, no one could go out. Why is that?”
The boy took the memo pad, turned to a new page, and again smoothly wrote something down in ballpoint pen.
A never-ending epidemic.
“ ‘A never-ending epidemic,’ ” I read aloud. “What’s that all about?”
Again, no response from him. I was left to my own devices. Like solving a riddle, and a very difficult one at that. Considering the level of difficulty, there were too few hints. Still, I had to return the ball served into my court. That was the rule of the game. If you could call it a game, I had to return it.
I went ahead and said, “An epidemic that’s not really an epidemic. In other words, epidemic as metaphor…Is that it?”
The boy gave the tiniest of nods.
“Is it, possibly, like an epidemic of the soul?”
The boy nodded again. Clearly, emphatically.
I gave this some thought for a while. An epidemic of the soul. And then I said, “The town, I mean the people who ruled over the town at the time, surrounded the town with a high, indestructible wall in order to shut out the spreading epidemic raging through the outside world. Like sealing it up tight. And they implemented a secure system that lets no one in, and no one out. The construction of the wall must have included some magical elements as well.
“But finally at some stage something happened—what, I don’t know—and the wall began to function with its own unique will and power. A power so overwhelming that people could not control it. I wonder if that’s what happened?”
The boy stayed silent, staring at my face. No yes or no. But I went on. This was all a guess on my part, but probably went beyond mere conjecture.
“And the wall, in order to completely eliminate all types of epidemics—including what they thought of as an epidemic of the soul—reworked the town and the people in it. Reconfigured the town. And created a firmly closed-off system. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
There was a knock at the door. Not a loud sound. A terse, simple sound—a real sound coming from the real world. Two knocks, a pause, then two more.
“Come in,” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound like my own, but someone else’s.
The door opened a crack, and Mrs. Soeda stuck her head inside.
“I’ve come to collect the dishes,” she said reticently.
“Please go ahead. Thank you,” I said.
She came inside, her steps stealthy, took the tray with the plates and cups, and quickly checked that they were empty. She seemed relieved to see that they were.
She glanced at the muffin crumbs on the floor but seemed to pretend she hadn’t noticed them. She could always come back later to clean up.
Mrs. Soeda looked at me with a slightly questioning look, but I nodded that everything was okay, and she took the tray and left. The door shut with a metallic click. And once again the room was enveloped in silence.
The boy opened to a new page in his memo pad and quickly wrote something down in it. He passed the memo pad to me across the desk, and I read it.
I have to go to that town.
“ ‘I have to go to that town,’ ” I read aloud. I cleared my throat and passed the pad back to him. When he took it, he finally sat down and gazed directly at me, his eyes unwavering, deep beyond measure.
“So you’re hoping to go to that town,” I said, checking. “The town surrounded by a high wall. That town where people have no shadows, where the library lacks a single book.”
The boy nodded emphatically. As if to say there was no room for debate.
Silence continued for a time. A heavy, dense silence. A silence that contained many meanings. And then the boy broke the silence with his slightly high-pitched voice.
“I have to go to that town.”
I brought my fingers together on my desktop, and gazed at them for no particular reason, then looked up and asked, “Even if going there means you can never be here again?”
He gave another emphatic nod.
I mentally pictured the boy passing through the gate, going inside the town surrounded by a wall, and living there. For him this would be “Pepperland.” The colorful Shangri-La that appears in the movie Yellow Submarine. Deep down inside him, utterly seriously, this sixteen-year-old boy wanted to move to a different realm, rather than continue living in this real world that didn’t (seem to) accept him. I couldn’t help but feel, painfully, how deadly serious he was.
A time of silence ensued again, and then he spoke again.
“I’ll read old dreams. That’s something I can do.”
He pointed to himself.
“You are able to read old dreams,” I mechanically repeated.
“I’ll read old dreams in that library. Forever.”
Just like when he wrote something in his block printing, his spoken words were neatly distinct.
I silently nodded.
You know, he might just be able to do it. It would be little different from the way he spends each day here in this library. Deep inside that library are the old dreams, dusty, piled up high, that he should read. Countless dreams, perhaps infinite. And each dream singular, one of a kind.
“I have to go to that town,” the boy repeated, his voice more distinct than before.