ninehundredtwo

The library was unlike anything he had seen before. Back in Japan, he was used to seeing Hon-Ya or “book specialty stores”. These places were generally not well-lit and smelled of old books. There were alphabetically organizes bookshelves, featuring old Japanese classics either by Murakami or Ishiguro. In those bookstores, book-nerds would get together and discuss their favorite authors and their most recent reads. There was zero space to sit down, and you would have to walk around the bookshelves to search for friends or lovers who might be in another aisle, as the bookshelf would be as high as the ceiling would allow. Sometimes you could hear a mother asking her child where they went, and then a small response would come from the 4 or 5-year-old who had wandered off to another aisle. The library Victor had casually led him to, after eating his late-night snack, reminded him more out of something he had seen in a Disney movie. Was it the one where the prince turned into a beast? It