Dantalian no Shoka:Volume1 Chapter6
There were two guests sitting at the counter of the bar.
One was an old man. His face was bony and his skin was stale. Also his unkempt long beard was white like the ashes of a stove.
The other guest was a young man wearing a leather frock coat.
Although his sincere features implied a good upbringing, he had a mysterious atmosphere around him which didn't show any unguarded spot.
While toying with his glass of lukewarm ale, the young man was reading a book. It was a novel with a thin cover.
When the young man had read about half of the book and ordered his second glass ale,
"Lad... you seem to like books?"
The white-haired old man addressed him suddenly in a hoarse voice.
The young man smiled and nodded.
"Yes. I like them. How about you?"
"...I dislike them. They're boring."
The old man said so and chugged his glass of strong distilled liquor. Then he laughed lightly in self derision.
"Things are just repeating themselves in this world. There's nothing new out there. Even the book you're reading there is just an cliched plot of rewritten tales and myths if we'd analyze it precisly. The story patterns people can think of were exhausted ages ago."
The young man stared silently at the old man and then finally smiled amused.
"You might be right with this."
The old man nodded with an extremely serious face.
"But listen, there is a single book in this world, which does not get boring."
"What's this book called?"
The young man asked back calmly. The old man seemed now a bit triumphant and answered,
"Your book, lad."
"My book?"
"Yes! The book where your life is written down from birth until your death."
The old man raised the corners of his cracked lips and smiled. The young man inclined his head lightly,
"I didn't know there's such a book."
"I guess so. I didn't believe in such a thing, too, until I saw it with my own eyes. But for every person exists a book which acts as his duplicate... of course also mine."
"Have you read it? Your own book."
He young man seemed surprised and opened his eyes widely.
"Oh yes, I've read it!"
"When and where?"
"I've forgotten this. I was still a child then, you know... but I still remember this scene clearly. It was a library built like a maze. Bookshelfs, tightly packed with books, covered the walls completely and continued with no end in sight. Almost like a cave reaching into the depths of the earth---"
While muttering so, the old man closed his eyes as if he was in a dream.
"And your book was in one of these bookshelfs?"
The young man asked back in a, for some reason, serious voice. The old man answered while leading the sparsly left liquor to his mouth.
"Yes. As you say. But not just my book. There were the all of this country... no, there were the books of the entire world population. The books of the long-living people, who experienced many things, were thick. And the books of the people that died young or the people that lived long but had a monotone life were thin."
"How was your book?"
"Mine...?"
When the young man asked him, the old man saddened.
"It was surprisingly thin! To an extent I almost fell into despair... my life was boring and on top of that short."
"But you're..."
The young man narrowed his eyes in bewilderment. Countless wrinkles were carved into his face, which were the proof of a long life.
"Yes, right... I didn't want to die, you know. So I racked my brain and thought about it."
The old man chuckled with a dry throat.
"Our life span is destined from the beginning by this book. If the grim reaper really does exist, then he surely comes to take us with him when he finished reading the respective book... In that case I just have to make sure it doesn't end. That's what I thought then."
"Is this possible?"
The young man asked.
"Didn't I mention it? My book was surprisingly thin."
The old man said so slovenly.
"So I peeled off the bothering cover and tried to stick the first and last page neatly together with glue. So one returns to the first page when reading before one knows... in other words, there's no beginning nor is there an end to my book anymore. Its an endless cycle."
"I see. So that's how you..."
The young man tried to bend his book like the old man had explained to him. When he overlapped the two binding, the thin book became a round bundle of paper. And surely, one couldn't determine it's beginning nor it's end anymore.
"But now I'm regretting this... Of course my life was saved, but instead my life became a recurrence of the same events over and over. Well, as a matter of course, since it's a thin book."
The old man said so and gave the young man a relying glance.
"Say, lad... Could you find and tear my book, if you ever lost your way into this library? If not, I'm damned to live the same boring life without being able to die, over and over---"
"......"
The young man gazed for a while wordlessly at the frail looking old man, who looked up to him. Then he smiled gently and nodded.
"I got it. I promise."
"Ohh..."
While thanking repeatedly, the old man bowed to him.
Tears poured out of his eyes. In the end, the old man fell prostrate on the counter and started to sleep, tired from crying. It seemed like he was completely drunk.
"My, my... did the gramps fall asleep?"
The bartender, that wordlessly polished glasses until now, recognized the figure of the old man sleeping and sighed. The young man kept silent and shrugged his shoulders. While mentioning that its his treat, the bartender poured out new ale to the young man.
"My sympathies for listening to the horror story of this gramps."
"Horror story?"
The young man raised his eyebrows and asked back. The bartender gave him a broad smile,
"Yeah. If this gramps gets drunk, he always starts to babble this story. The same over and over. I don't know how much I've already heard it myself."
"Is that so?" muttered the young man. Then he continued, but seemed to speak to himself.
"I see... a life that became a recurrence of the same events, huh?... surprisingly, this could very well be the truth."
"Eh?"
The bartender looked at him puzzledely, but the young man just smiled at him and enjoyed his ale.
