Gilded Ashes-Chapter 45: Blank Origins

Keahi reached out for the book, then stopped with her hand still a short distance away. "We should wait for Kori for this one" she said.

"Obviously" Arashi replied, copying Kori’s tone without trying to be funny.

Lynea stared at the chains. "Who would want to chain a book?"

"Someone who didn’t want it opened? Obviously?" Ferris answered, copying Kori as well.

Esen looked at the lock, then shoved his hands into his pockets like he didn’t trust himself not to do something wrong.

"Probably someone who survived it" he added. And this time, there was no joke hiding behind his voice. Students still passed by in the distance, not approaching the group. Their voices were low. Afternoon had slipped toward copper light, their little pile of rescued books built around them.

Suddenly, the doors banged open.

Kori swept in with a muffin in her mouth. She stopped, and took in the scene - ring of students, huge pile of books - and grinned.

"Look at you" she said. "Not dead under a dictionary. I owe myself another pretzel!"

"Where were you?" Lynea asked, flat.

"Spreading mercy and confusion" Kori said. "Soo... Are we opening the scary thing or camping around it?"

"Why this one!?" Lynea pressed. "Of all books, why did you want this?"

"Oh, that? That isn’t for you, it’s for me" Kori replied, joyfully. "I was curious and too lazy to fetch it."

"Not for us" Hikari echoed, frowning.

"Mm." Kori planted both hands on the lock and smiled at it like "Let’s ruin someone’s day."

"Don’t you need permi- " Arashi began.

Kori ripped the lock open with her hands. Metal lock. With her hands. Seriously, this woman’s scary.

The chain clinked off. Kori flicked it aside, hooked her fingers under the cover, and lifted.

The leather creaked.

First page: blank.

Second: blank.

Third. Fourth. Fifth. Blank, blank, blank.

Esen put his hands on his head. "No. Absolutely not."

Keahi leaned closer. "There’s nothing!?"

Kori riffled ten more pages just to be sure. Nothing. Paper clean like snow.

"Perhaps the... Uhmm... The author was minimalist" Arashi tried to lift the atmosphere.

Under the tiles, the faint vibration Raizen had been pretending not to notice rose again, slightly more than before.

"Well" Kori said briefly, closing the book. "That was educational! We learned some locks are for show and some books are empty. Valuable life lesson."

"That’s it?" Esen demanded. "We squeeze our brains of what could forbidden knowledge be, and the big secret is... Nothing?"

"Dunno, but I hope it helped" She clapped once.

"Then... Now what?" Raizen raised a brow.

"Next up is suffering. I’ll give you... Two weeks."

"For...?" Arashi asked, already slumping.

"All of these, obviously!" She swept a hand at the towers of paper. "Every line. Every margin note. Maybe not all of them, but most of them. These books are going to crawl into your soft little brains and stay there."

"Two weeks!?" Keahi gasped.

"Alright, fine" Kori said, dissapointed. "I’ll let you three."

"Three weeks..." Esen repeated quickly. "Still extremely high, but coming from you, ma’am, I’d say it’s generous. We accept."

"Three weeks, not three months. Don’t try me."

"How many are these?" Hikari asked honestly, glancing from pile to list to pile.

"Close to a hundred" Arashi guessed.

"Numbers are meant to steal your focus" Kori said sweetly. "If you ask next I’d advise you to split, rotate, teach each other, keep notes. If you skip the margins, I’ll figure it out."

Feris lifted a hand, gaze on the closed tome. "Why not the newer editions? They’re thinner. Prettier."

"The new ones smell like cheap glue and successful idiots" Kori leaned on the table and over the chained book like it was a pillow. "Their splinters are sanded off. They make you feel smart because the pages go down easy. Old ones are ugly, heavy and sometimes wrong in the best ways, but they were written by people who bled on the those problems. They stick."

"That’s why the Academy looks like a pretty relic instead of a glass box" Raizen observed, gesturing at ribs of stone, maintained wood and scarlet paint.

"Exactly. Put a mind in shiny covers and it forgets how to carry weight. Old has grip. New slides." She tapped the table. "I’m not carving your foundations out of dullness."

Lynea had already started arranging stacks by subject, then thickness.

"Can we sleep?" Keahi asked - hopeful, painful.

"Sleep is great. Do it. You can come here every day until you finish them. The limit is three weeks. Finish sooner, we start training sooner. And yes, I’ll bring pastries if nobody calls them breakfast."

"Pastries aren’t breakfast-" Lynea said automatically.

"Ah-ah-ahh" Kori shook her head. "Miss late, pastries are a lifestyle. I said it before, and I will say it again."

She lifted up the empty book again, with one hand. She didn’t bother re-chaining it, she just tucked it under one arm.

"Where are you taking it?" Raizen asked.

"My office" Kori said. "Which is also a kitchen, a laundry and a wall with a nail for medals I don’t hang. If it somehow gives birth to words, I’ll share."

"That’s not how books work" Esen protested.

"Yeah, yeah. However you say" She tipped her head toward the door. "Move. Your time starts..." She looked at her watch again.

"Now."

They ran to the doors, carrying as many books as they could, almost tripping over each other’s legs.

Students slid aside without being asked. Outside, in the small courtyard, Neoshima had turned that shade of gold that makes beautiful things look ireal.

They split at Crown Spine - the tower that watched over all the Academy, and rang the huge bell. Two toward the dorms, two back for another load, four toward Kori’s home, because "shortest line between here and the couch" was now a survival skill.

Raizen and Hikari drifted together without discussion, the rhythm of tired feet making a tired beat. He carried three books and a smaller one. She carried two and kept looking at his third, wanting to snatch it.

He was still thinking about blank pages. Who chained a book and then erased it? Who wrote nothing and locked it up like a crime?

"Careful" Hikari said, breaking the thought with a touch to his sleeve, not the arm. He hadn’t noticed. He was heading straight for a lighting pole

"Yeah" he said. Then, honestly: "Thanks."

"Thinking about the book?" she asked. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Mmmyeah..." he answered.

A short silence fell, until Hikari broke it again."Well, read the others, you can occupy your mind with those" she said, optimistically.

Kori’s door welcomed them in. Keahi nearly crashed onto the couch, remembered that it was broken and could swallow her, and chose the floor. Arashi hung his jacket in a rush. Kori came in last, a few minutes later, holding a paper bag and the book.

"Pastries!!" she announced, placing the bag on the low table like a treasure, and the book on a high shelf, out of easy reach.

"Don’t stare at that. Stare at these." She opened the bag.

Ah, yes. Pastries. Again. Kori never seemed to get tired of them... They ate with stunned gratitude anyways.

"Fwo - no, fwee weeks" Kori tried to say, with her mouth full. "Starf wiff zhe ugly ones."

"Whish are za ugly ones?" Arashi mumbled through crumbs.

"The ones that look like they’ll outlive you" Kori swallowed, then said. "Rest, for now. You still need energy."

They walked toward beds and blankets with the grace of zombies. In the attic, Raizen lay by the tilted window and watched city lights weave together with the ever-cloudy sky.

The blank pages tried to crawl back in his mind.

He didn’t let them in this time. He had the sudden sense that tomorrow wouldn’t be about looking for books so much as figuring out which books were worth it and which ones weren’t.

Below, a spoon knocked a mug like a bell and Kori swore at it for whatever reason she could.

"Tomorrow we start the grind... Good night!" Raizen said, closing his eyes.

"Good night" Hikari answered, already half asleep, letting out a small smile.