Dantalian no Shoka:Volume2 Chapter4
Status: Incomplete
3/67 pages completed
She was reading a book.
A young girl was sitting on a stone spiral staircase and reading the book laid open on her lap, her figure being surrounded by countless piles of books.
Her pure white dress made of silk and thinly layered laces was waving in the pale light like water ripples.
There were neither windows nor doors in this world.
Only endless, irregularly curved corridors and countless rows of bookshelves crammed full of books spread everywhere without end like a maze.
The corridors were drawing a light spiral and overlapping each other in several layers from the bottom to the top, holding a giant amount of books. It seemed almost like the Tower of Babel that had been lost during the age of the Bible.
In this vast maze made out of bookshelves only the faint sound of turning book pages was resounding.
Absolute silence and utter solitude.
Silence and solitude then became disturbed by distant echoes of footsteps.
The sleepy atmosphere was stirred, and the fingers turning the pages stopped.
The girl slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes moved, like a gently smiling doll, or like a little child on the verge of tears.
"You've come again?"
Like a small sigh these words escaped from her lips.
With an omnniscient expression she cast her eyes down and closed the book with her slender fingertips.
Then she took out two books from a rear bookshelf and held them out to the one who caused the footfalls.
"Take them and quickly leave --- Before your soul gets trapped in this world.",
she said in a coldly dismissive tone.
The one who caused the footfalls put out his hand to receive the books and muttered puzzled:
"Two books?"
It was the voice of a young man past his childhood years.
The girl nodded expressionlessly and said:
"That's right. The You right now will undoubtedly need these two."
He accepted the held out books. The girl shook her long hair and looked up above.
"Well now, quickly leave... before the Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian closes its gates."
His voice interrupted her.
"What about you?"
"Eh?" Her eyes turned back down. While he held the books with his left arm, the man reached his right hand out to her. A deep crimson gem was embedded in it.
"The lock has already been opened. So you and I can..."
"My world is here."
The girl gently smiled and shook her head. Her hair waved with a moment's delay and produced a rustling sound.
"Every single book there is has been gathered here, which is the equivalent to the whole world being here."
"That said, don't you feel lonely?", asked the man.
"I have already forgotten that feeling."
The girl had stopped smiling and declared as such in a non-emotional voice.
A slightly hurt expression floated on his face, and he turned his back on her.
The sounds of his footsteps became quickly more and more distant. "Good-bye.", murmured the girl soundlessly, and opened the book on her lap.
Her fingertips that turned the pages suddenly stopped.
The piled up dust on the leather bindings trembled repeatedly.
A faint voice like paper rubbing together escaped the lips of the girl who had lowered her head.
"That's right... I had already forgotten that feeling... that is... until you came here..."
In this maze made out of never-ending bookshelves, no one was there to listen to her murmuring.
Only the solemn sound of the lock being fastened reverberated harshly.
Then the girl once more began to read the book,
a tale of a girl in a black dress, whose long, jet black hair was fluttering---
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