『Pages in Pale Colors』
The university library always seemed to become just a little detached from the rest of the world when evening came.
It was the hour when the light outside the windows slanted across the room, and dust floated through the air like tiny flecks of gold. I loved that time of day.
It was during a time of pale colors that I met him.
I only learned later that he was a graduate student. At first, all I knew was that he was someone standing motionless in front of a shelf filled with old reference books.
He held a thick, leather-bound volume in both hands and stood there silently, as though weighing its very existence.
The title was—
『The Manuscript of Origins』
"You should be careful when you touch that."
I don't know whether I spoke to him out of curiosity, or because it was fate.
He looked at me with mild surprise, then smiled quietly.
"You know about this too?"
That was our first conversation.
He was a graduate student researching the Manuscript of Origins.
His hypothesis was that a "description" had already existed before the beginning of the world. He spoke of how fragments of it had sunk to the bottom of countless myths, religions, and even scientific theories, speaking as casually as though he were telling me a rumor about someone he was secretly in love with.
And yet, the pages were completely blank.
There was nothing written on them.
I couldn't understand what it meant.
"You know, myths never really end. It's not that the story comes to an end. It's just that the person reading it changes."
I simply listened to him explain.
I couldn't understand his complicated theories, but for some reason, I could never forget his fingertips as they turned the pages of the Manuscript of Origins.
After that, we began seeing each other often in the library.
I was an undergraduate. He was a graduate student. Our positions and our futures were supposed to be different, and yet, in front of the Manuscript of Origins, somehow we were equals.
"If this manuscript is real, then the world wasn't 'created.' It was 'written.'"
"Then does that mean we're characters in a story?"
I said it half as a joke, but he looked at me with slightly more serious eyes.
"Maybe we are. But you see—the story isn't complete until someone reads it."
Those words, spoken almost like a poet, stayed with me.
One night, just before the library was about to close, we sat facing each other with the Manuscript of Origins between us.
In the silence, I thought I felt the pages tremble ever so slightly.
"Aren't you afraid?"
I couldn't help feeling uneasy, but he slowly shook his head.
"What scares me is that everything is contained inside it even though nothing has been written. Even though the pages are blank."
As I watched him become more and more excited, I found myself strangely excited too.
Not because of the book.
Because of the happiness on his face.
A person searching for the origin of the world.
A person who believed in an endless myth.
A person who truly read the small fragment that was me.
If even these feelings were written somewhere within the Manuscript of Origins—
I didn't need to know how the story would end.
『Pages in Pale Colors』 — The End