Hoku left the library for his uncle's study with the book under his arm.
Jiang Hao's villa had a small rear room that he used as an office, though it was hardly arranged for comfort.
After opening the study door, Hoku turned on the light. In the corner, a single lampshade cast a flaxen hue across the walls, making the room seem smaller and somewhat dull.
For a home in comfortable circumstances, the study was the least indulgent room. Hoku had used it many times when he wanted a quieter place to read and was familiar with most of its contents—textbooks, stationery, and neatly arranged bundles of century-old currency kept in the desk drawers.
The villa's only modern fixture was a blocky computer that took up most of the desk's surface.
Neither of them used it often.
The screen's glare often triggered Hoku's migraines, and Jiang Hao spent most of his time in classrooms rather than at the villa.
It was only switched on when the need arose, and this time was no exception.
Hoku drew the chair up to his uncle's desk and pressed the power button. A few seconds later, the screen flickered darkblue as a small icon spun at the center, and an empty browser window appeared.
He set the book beside the keyboard and entered the same names into the search bar:
'The End of Time.
Dr. Francis Barret.'
After adding quotation marks, he pressed enter and waited in silence.
Search results quickly filled the screen.
Most were ordinary matches—phrases about time, endings, and essays with similar titles. The exact pairing, however, failed to provide the clean trail a published book would normally leave behind.
There was no publisher's page, no unquestioned catalogue entry, not even a straightforward record confirming its existence.
Instead, the results dwindled into sparse forum discussions and secondhand mentions.
The phrase appeared here and there, but never in any place that led to an obtainable book.
After several more minutes, Hoku leaned back into the armchair, his expression weary.
He had at least confirmed that Dr. Francis Barret had existed, though the man had lived in the early nineteenth century, far removed from Hoku's own time.
What was more, the records placed Barret's birthplace in their town.
Even so, the information did little to resolve his curiosity and only left Hoku with further questions.
Rather, he began to suspect that Jiang Hao might have come into possession of something that had never been formally published and simply filed it away with the rest.
Letting out a sigh, Hoku rested his chin on his hand and continued scrolling.
After several more pages, a bold headline caught his attention, and his finger stilled.
"Small English Community Rattled After Disaster Strikes 214-Year-Old Manor Once Belonging to Antiquarian Scholar, Dr. Francis Barret."
Hoku clicked the link without a second thought.
The page opened to a stark white field, a narrow column of text set beside a stack of images.
Hoku opened the images and studied the screen.
'Looks like the interior of a damaged old building…'
The exterior photographs further revealed an unmistakably old manor, its soot-darkened façade largely unchanged from one image to the next.
Only in the closer photographs did the damage become evident, where the columned portico had partially collapsed, and the front door showed fresh splintering along the wood.
"Clearly the fire had been started from the inside," Hoku mumbled to himself.
From inside, sections of the ceiling had collapsed onto the furniture below. Shards of broken glass glinted under the camera's flash, and a fallen chandelier lay amid soot and debris.
Hoku's eyes widened slightly as he scrolled to the bottom of the page.
After a moment, he lowered his hand from beneath his chin and moved it across the desk toward the book.
'Page 23… page 23… page 23' He repeated silently, frantically flipping through the pages.
The strangely unblemished painting in the last photo on the screen closely resembled the one illustrated in the book.
The whole bookcase was surrounded by charred wreckage, but the wall behind it bore not even a trace of damage.
Even the candle lamps were still screwed into the wooden frames on both sides of the shelves.
Hoku's tongue pressed for a couple of seconds against the inside of his cheek.
'…So they are of his own interior?'
Hoku read on through the main page and soon came across a reference to the location, embedded unobtrusively within the text.
Over the past two years living at his uncle's villa, Hoku had grown familiar with the surrounding town and its adjoining roads. It therefore took him little effort to recognize the place name when it appeared.
He glanced at the time displayed on the computer screen.
He glanced at the time displayed on the screen. There was still plenty of the afternoon left, and Jiang Hao seldom returned before the early hours of the morning.
An idea arose in Hoku's mind, but he swallowed the impulse to act on it at once.
If the manor truly stood that close, a brief look from the outside would settle the matter far better than speculation through a screen.
". . ."
Before he gave it further thought, Hoku reached for a loose sheet of paper from the desk and copied down the address, together with the nearest main road mentioned in the article.
It was not precise, but within a town of this size, it would be enough to find the place without much difficulty.
He set the pen aside and rose from the chair, leaving the book where it was in case his uncle returned early.
Upon walking down to the first floor, Hoku collected his coat, and quickly slipped on a pair of boots, then strode down the stairs into the living area.
'Maybe if I save enough before March, I can afford a car. Jiang Hao can teach me how to drive, and I can leave before I turn nineteen-'
As Hoku's fingertips grazed the door handle at the front door he suddenly halted.
'Then what? Where would I...'
He clenched his jaw, grabbing the handle with a firmer grasp.
'Maybe I shouldn't think so far along. Otherwise, I will always live in uncertainty.'
He slid his hand down into the narrow pocket of his pants, and retrieved the old phone that Jiang had given him.
Then he tugged open the door and set out for a stroll.
. . .
When Hoku had eventually approached the ginormous estate, he collapsed into the gate and hunched over his knees in a gesture of exhaustion.
He reached for one of the metal bars and pulled himself up.
The wind's chill had clung to the metal, leaving a prickle sensation on the top half of his palm.
Hoku crumpled the paper in his other hand, stuffing it into his coat pocket before letting his hand fall to his side.
He followed the street signs as they appeared; somewhere along the way, the walk took longer than he had expected, until he realized he had already roamed most of the way there.
Upon catching his breath, Hoku peered up through the thick bars of the gate and saw a single tree stump.
In addition to the stump, white clovers and bindweed covered the yard, indicating that the fire had occurred at least a few months ago; otherwise, the front yard would have also been severely mangled.
Hoku rubbed his hands together to develop a bit of warmth from the friction, then secured both around separate bars of the gate.
He hesitated, briefly wagering the chances of being struck down by the heavy metal if it were to swing open suddenly.
He drew a further distance between himself and the entrance and pulled, gradually adding more force to his grip.
Alas, the most he was able to achieve was merely a humiliating struggle, as he was unable to pry even the slimmest gap.
He continued to tug on the bars for at least three minutes, his foot sliding further from himself forward each time he would tilt backward.
'...Am I out of shape!?' Hoku huffed, taking a few seconds to catch his breath.
Frustration began to seep into his demeanor until suddenly his foot slipped forward and kicked the small rock that had been stuck between the ground and the metal.
The large gate door swung open, inevitably causing Hoku to lose his footing and descend onto his back.
He lifted his head to look at the open entrance before slumping back onto the ground.
Carefully, he brought a hand to his face, sweeping his bangs away from his forehead.
He grunted as he sat upright on the grass and pushed longer strands of black hair out of his face.
His fingers reached for his ponytail where something felt amiss.
A rush of wind blew through his unfettered hair, imparting a devastating discovery.
Hoku ran his fingers through the grass behind him, and when nothing came up he crashed back onto the ground, carelessly allowing the wind to whip his hair into a mess.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," he groaned.
Hoku smacked both hands on his forehead, scrunching hair between his palm and fingers.
Then dramatically, he threw his arms forward and steadied his balance on the grass, dragging his steps through the yard after crossing the gate.
Upon closer inspection, Hoku realized that the porch had wrapped around the entire manor.
There was even a balcony that resembled the structure on the ground, though only the front of the porch was destroyed.
The two largest pillars that supported the awning above the front door were two different lengths, comprising many minor blemishes, like cracks, peeling paint, and an entire missing half.
He ran his hand down one of the damaged columns, the texture felt like small craters under his skin.
Yellow caution tape was tied to what remained of the entrance, evidently old tape because the letters in 'caution' were starting to appear dingy and blue.
Hoku lifted the tape, ducking under it and making his way to the door.
A metal ring hung from a thick holder masked in soot.
He lifted the metal allowing it to leisurely slip from his index finger and make contact with the door.
'How classy.'
Hoku grabbed the handle and twisted it. He had to kick the bottom a few times before it fully opened, in which the entire top of the door frame began to crumble apart.
Pieces of wood trickled into his hair and the hood of his jacket, but he had already managed to become so enthralled by the entrance, that he disregarded it.
Candle holders were mounted along both walls in the vast hallway.
The ground below creaked achingly when his foot pressed on the floorboards, but he only glanced down briefly before crossing the threshold under the door.
Upon entering what Hoku presumed was the parlor of the manor, he found that most of the furniture inside was in despair due to years of neglect.
Based on the discoloration of the ceiling above certain parts of the floor, it was obvious that the roof was also damaged to such an extent that rain would inevitably leak through the ceiling.
He smeared a boot over the small light patch at the entrance to the parlor at the end of the hall.
A few rusted bells with black semi-circular mechanisms attached to the tops lay polished in dust in a small pile near the corner of another door frame.
The first thing that drew Hoku's attention in the next room was the unusual curved staircase with a spiraling rail that stood along the right wall of the room.
Placing merely a hand on one of the steps could cause the entire thing to collapse.
He hoped that the room he was searching for wasn't upstairs, because then finding the painting would have been nearly impossible.
Streaks of black tainted the small area below the railing that rose above the stairs.
As he took a closer look, he caught sight of a rectangular outline surfacing slightly beneath the soot.
His hand brushed the inside of the outline, and he became certain of what it was.
'A door here?'
He rubbed his fingers together, carelessly spreading the soot between the skin.
This door didn't have a handle, but there was some sort of melted plaster that dried after seeping through the old hinges.
Hoku pushed on the door with the same hand.
The wood between the door snapped in intervals each time he leaned forward to assert more pressure on his wrist.
"There must be something behind—" Hoku clenched his teeth and turned his body so that his shoulder was facing the door.
He stepped back until the heel of his boot bumped into something on the ground.
Then, he rushed forward bracing himself to clash either into the door or onto the ground.
Suddenly, from a distance he heard the sound of the door slamming shut, and he stopped, pushing himself away from the frame before the rest of his body could make contact.
Pieces of gravel from the stone fireplace that was overlooked fell onto the floor behind him.
Hoku contemplated between checking if someone else had stumbled in or rushing into another room to hide.
Nevertheless, he settled on waiting for another noise.
However, the manor remained deathly still, if someone had come inside the floorboards would have announced their presence, surely.
Without separating his feet from the floor, Hoku leisurely shifted backward enough so that he could see into the next room.
Before he could recognize the source of the noise, his ears were suddenly filled with a high-pitched ring, then his eyes gradually became veiled by a vague darkness.
He stumbled backward, rating both of his hands to clutch the sides of his head, eventually loosing any sensation in his legs and collapsing onto the ground.
Beyond his coherency, a distant memory approached, its nature similar to the time a stranger whom he had once recognized passed him in a dream.
. . .
A loud rushing noise filled the room, like air or a fire being set ablaze
This sound echoed in the distance, perhaps even in the hallway at the entrance
Dong Dong Dong
The bells were no longer in the corner near the frame. It smelled of smoke and gasoline
What a wretched nightmare it was
I wanted to leave
None of this makes sense. Why can't I leave?
No matter how many times I kick and pull at the door, there will always be some sort of lock on the other side.
I must wait for the manor to come to life before I can awake in this new era
"What a strange poem, Dad!"
"Thank you, ▄▄▄▄▄ , Jiang was never fond of my poetry. He always claimed they were an allusive reference to our troubling pasts."
"Past?"
"Yes. Our pasts are the worthiest elements of imperfection. But our future will always have ways of making them beautiful. Which is why I must ask, where you plan to go now, my son."
"What do you mean?" he asks, tilting his head.
"Oh... you must have inhaled too much smoke. If you continue to lie on the ground like this, you might be burned."
'What fire? Huh?-'
"When you awaken, retrieve two wooden boxes and burn every paper you find. Even what remains hidden behind the books."
'Why can't I suddenly speak?'
"Don't let the serpent behind the garden of tulips fool you."
'Please tell me what is going on!'
"I'm afraid this is the last time you and I will meet personally. Still, I'm glad this is what you have stowed in between.
Your highest priority should be to seek your patrons. Without them, you cannot get across certain pages."
'Why?...'
"Most importantly, don't let yourself stand out. You are different from my... the abundant creator. He seeks to remove you from his creations...
... he ...reside...God...of... his...grief."
. . .
"Yo u m ust rem emb e r you r pa s t..."
Clang!
'...B e f o r e y o u c a n f i n d a w a y b a c k.'
Rule 5
If you've made it to the fifth rule, then, according to the order, I can presume you are currently in the year 1819. Do not be alarmed. Once you escape the first paradox, you will be transported back into a different version of the present. I have scribbled out the original rule to leave this note for you. You must read each of the rules as a whole if you wish to survive, and possibly save this universe from its demise.
-End of the memoir's prelude-