The rain drifted down like soft silver threads, weaving a quiet gloom across the evening streets. Aira hugged her bag close as she hurried home, shoes splashing gently through shallow puddles. She didn't mind the rain—on nights like this, it felt like the world was whispering secrets.
She just never expected one of them to whisper back.
She ducked under the awning of an old book stall she'd never noticed before. A single lantern flickered above it, casting trembling shadows across hundreds of secondhand books. Most were worn, their spines cracked, their corners softened by time.
But one stood alone.
A book without a cover.
Without a title.
Without a name.
It lay in the center of the stall like a forgotten relic. Its pages trembled faintly, though no wind touched them. Aira paused, her fingertips tingling.
The stallkeeper—a stooped old woman with foggy grey eyes—lifted her head.
"You felt it, didn't you?"
Aira blinked. "Felt… what?"
"The pull," the woman said. "Books like that don't reveal themselves unless they want to be found."
Aira laughed softly, though unease prickled her skin. "Books want things?"
"This one does."
Against her better judgment, Aira stepped closer. The book throbbed under her gaze, glowing faintly like an ember refusing to die.
Her hand lifted—slow, hesitant—and brushed the first page.
Warm.
Not like paper.
Like skin.
The moment she touched it, ink flooded across the page, spiraling, twisting, forming words in a script she somehow recognized but had never seen:
YOU CAME BACK.
Aira's heart lurched. "Back? I've never—"
Before she could finish, the ink shifted again, forming another line:
HE HAS WAITED LONG ENOUGH.
Her breath caught.
"H–he?" she whispered, but the page gave no name.
Only a soft pulse beneath her fingers—steady, rhythmic, matching her heartbeat.
The stallkeeper's voice drifted over her shoulder, barely audible above the rain.
"When a story calls you… it's because a part of your soul already lives inside it."
Aira's chest tightened at the words.
As if something inside her agreed.
She closed the book quickly—but it pulsed again, as though yearning, reaching.
Waiting.
And Aira realized with a quiet shiver:
She wasn't the one who found the book.
The book had found her.