A figure approaches from behind Reiza, coming to a stop by the balcony beside her. 

The librarian. Reiza assumes, glancing at them from the corner of her eyes. She couldn’t quite make out the figure’s face as they had come to a stop right in front of the light.

“Your friends?” the figure asks, gesturing at the group of teenagers on the floor beneath them, trying to find their way through the bookshelves below. 

“I’d like to think so,” Reiza answers simply. 

“A good group of people?”

“Decent.” 

“Known them for a long time?”

“Yeah, we grew up together. About fifteen years.” 

The figure chuckles. “Not long at all then.” 

Reiza turns towards him. With a raised eyebrow she replies, “With all due respect. I’d like to believe fifteen years is long enough.” 

The figure doesn’t return Reiza’s gaze, he only continues staring at the group of people below as they make their way through the bookshelves, desperately searching for something.

Almost like an architect, watching mice navigate his maze.

“If tomorrow you wake unable to speak, unable to move, and unable to communicate a single thought in your mind. Could they speak for you?” the figure asks bluntly. 

Taken aback by the question, Reiza glances back at her friends beneath them, giving it thought before replying, “I guess not, but that doesn’t really seem like something that would fall to them.” 

“Who else then?”

“I don’t know, my parents? Or my lover?”

“Then you truly believe your lover or your parents capable of speaking for you?” the figure returns. 

“Well, yeah.” Reiza answers, her reply laced with uncertainty.

“And if your lover decided you wouldn’t want to live a bedridden life – forever trapped in a room within your own body. If your lover sought to end your misery, you would entrust him that decision?” 

Reiza gives it thought, but doesn’t answer. 

“What if your family believed you would have preferred to carry on, grasping onto every sliver of life yet to escape your unconscious body. Even if that means living in one place for the rest of your life. You would entrust them that decision?” 

Reiza gives it thought, but struggles to reply once more.

“What are you trying to get at?” she says, avoiding the question. 

“Should you ever find yourself forgotten, who will best remember you? 

Should you ever find yourself incapable, who will best represent you? 

Should you ever find yourself teetering on the brink of life and death, unable to tip one way or the other. Who would best know which way you would want to go? 

The path that you would have chosen to follow?” 

Reiza was stunned by the figure’s sudden choice of topic. But she could feel the truth in his words, almost as if he spoke with the knowledge of everything that could, had, and would happen. As Reiza stood there, dazed by the figure’s sudden barrage of questions, she could feel a sensation rising within her. Her gaze turned hazy and wet.

Tears. But of what? Reiza couldn’t tell.

The figure seemed to barely take notice though. He continued on, a tone of sorrow and pity in his voice.

“What good are friends, if they won’t toast and rejoice in your memory.

What good is a lover, if they cannot smile while they weep, knowing they knew exactly who they loved. 

What good is family, if they cannot recite your story. Decades after you have passed…decades before you do.

If tomorrow you were reduced to nothing more than a statue where you stand, who in your life would know best where to leave you?” 

Reiza turns to the librarian, more stunned than she was speechless.

 “Are you trying to suggest that I will?”, she asks, her voice faltering even though she felt completely fine.

“I am suggesting that you don’t know you won’t” the librarian answers with a smile.

Reiza turns back to her friends, imagining her lover and her parents as they gather around a motionless but still alive version of herself.

She grips onto the railing before her, feeling herself tremble. Chills pass through her body as the words of the librarian resonate through her mind. 

No, she was trembling from the fear that she already knew the answer. She just wouldn’t admit it.

“None of them.” she whispers silently, as the first tear makes its journey down her cheek.

The librarian turns away from the balcony, leaning his back against the railing. 

“I have seen my fair share of youth grace these walls. 

Most come alone. Some come with friends. Fewer yet come with family. 

And in gazing into their eyes, even for the briefest of moments, I have yet to find one who could confidently bear me an answer.” 

Reiza could see the lower half of the librarian’s face a little more clearly now. He had the gentlest of smiles yet his eyes seemed to reflect a strange feeling of… broken wholeness. As if he had really shared this conversation with millions before Reiza, only to fail in his search for an answer. 

Heartbreak. Reiza suddenly realizes. His eyes were reflecting heartbreak.

“Because that is the nature of your kind.” the librarian whispers, his gaze shifting to the roof of the library. Though his eyes gazed distantly beyond it.  

“The nature of beings that fail to see beyond what is before them. 

Beyond what their selfish hearts tell their greedy hands to reach for. 

You require so much sorrow, before you will learn to appreciate joy. 

You require so much loss, before you will learn to appreciate gain. 

You require so much pain, before you will learn that there are fates in your fleeting lives worse than an unprestigious life. 

Fates in your fleeting lives that are worse…than me.”

At his last words, Reiza snaps out of her daze, tears still streaming down her face as the realization hits her like a crashing wave. Her face turns from sadness to disbelief as she opens her mouth.

But it was too late. She watched the librarian raise his hand to his face, giving Reiza a gentle smile. 

“Though I suppose that is why we were called here to begin with.” he whispers, snapping his fingers. Instantly, the candles lighting the library were extinguished. Casting the whole building into pitch black darkness.

Reaching for the railing to keep herself steady, Reiza wipes her tears away before screaming to her friends below.

“Its him! 

Its the librarian! 

He’s Death!”