When I was a sophomore in university, I took a lecture from a professor who said that as long as we submitted our reports, we wouldn't fail, even if we never attended a single class. Despite eagerly submitting my course registration, when report season actually rolled around, I felt a rising irritation of "Why do I have to do this kind of thing?" I look back on myself as the worst kind of student. Anyway, I went to the university's affiliated library, which I hadn't visited in who knows how long, to look for reference materials. I passed through the gate with my ID card and wandered around a floor so crowded with students that I couldn't help wondering why everyone was so enthusiastic about studying. *Was it always this dark?* I suddenly thought. No, the lighting from the high ceiling was brightly illuminating the entire floor. I rubbed my eyes. The lighting in a corner where local historical materials were placed seemed wrong. It felt strangely dim. Even when I looked up, there were no burnt-out fluorescent tubes. Just as I was tilting my head in confusion, a male student wearing glasses crossed through that corner. He smoothly avoided the spot that looked dark to my eyes. His stride was completely natural. A second later, he probably wouldn't even remember why he had moved like that. I got closer, wanting to pick up a book on local history that I had zero interest in. The moment my right foot entered the faint shadow of that bookshelf, I felt a deeply unpleasant sensation. I'm sure everyone has experienced a bad premonition at some point. It was the sensation of that bad premonition being slowly lowered, shall we say, right into the pit of my stomach. It wasn't that I felt an absolute, desperate need to reject it, but if I could avoid touching it, that would certainly be for the best.
I returned the thick, hardbound book—having only pulled it out as far as my index finger—back to its original spot. What was that? I completely forgot about searching for materials for my report and wandered around the library. And I discovered several more of these air-pocket-like places. When I observed such spots from a distance, I noticed that indeed, very few people stepped into them. While some people had a specific book in mind and headed straight there without hesitation, those who seemed to just be walking around browsing what kind of books were available almost universally avoided those air pockets. The types of books in those spots varied. What on earth was this? I hadn't felt anything like this during my freshman year. Ever since entering university, my growing fondness for the occult had led me to keep sticking my nose into various scary things, and as a result, my inspiration—or rather, my spiritual awareness directed toward a certain realm—had clearly heightened. I couldn't think of any other cause. However, I didn't feel anything directly spiritual coming from these air pockets. Or so I thought. Then again, maybe my intuition simply wasn't sharp enough. So, I dared to step into the place that gave me the worst feeling. With other people's eyes around, I grabbed a random book, opened it, and kept standing right there. Something like a bad premonition, swirling into a vortex, began to pool heavily in the lower half of my body. Gradually, the surrounding light grew sparse, my vision darkened as if I were lacking oxygen, and right next to me, a person standing and reading a book seemed to drift away while staying frozen in place... the background noise faded out, and the atmospheric pressure seemed to drop... I instinctively jumped back. The person next to me, who apparently felt nothing, looked at me with a puzzled expression.
I wiped away the cold sweat that had welled up without me noticing, shoved the book back onto the shelf as if throwing it, and walked right out of the library.
Later on, I talked about this to an upperclassman in my club. He was the very person who kept dragging me into scary things, and he loved acting like a master mentor. "Ah, the old library, huh?" He nodded knowingly with a smug face. "Things happened there, you know." With that, he stared straight into my eyes and asked, "Interested?" There was no way I wasn't.
Led along by him, I crossed the library gates in the evening. "It's right over there," I said, pointing out the corner lined with bookshelves as my mentor tried to walk past it. He walked on briskly as if ignoring me, so I had no choice but to chase after him. We were heading toward the stacks. I had been in there a few times before, but it was a place I couldn't grow to like, with its dim lighting and peculiar, moldy air. Besides, books in the stacks had nothing to do with ordinary, lazy students. "Timing is crucial." The entrance gets locked, but for now, we could still come and go freely. Once inside the stacks, my mentor gave me a look and hid himself in a certain space. I followed him. I didn't think anyone had seen us, but I felt a little nervous. "We're going to kill time here." My mentor lowered his voice to say that. Apparently, he had business in the library at night. He had hidden himself to avoid the eyes of the patrolling staff.
Right. The stacks get locked earlier than the library itself closes, so... We ended up having to wait quite a while. After playing a bit of the human-name version of the word-chain game, we started dozing off and both fell asleep effortlessly. After waking up, I wondered how we had managed to sleep in such cramped postures. As I massaged my stiff joints and shook my mentor awake, he sleepily mumbled, "Where? Where are this?"—which almost left me dumbfounded—before quickly offering a flippant remark or an excuse of "Just kidding" and peering out at our surroundings. It was dark. And the bookshelves in the stacks blocked our view like black walls. I followed my mentor as he moved ahead, feeling my way forward. Silencing our breathing and footsteps, deeper into the forest of books.
"Ah." I bumped into my mentor and stopped. Following his gestures in the dark, I sat down right there. "That... place that feels like an air pocket," a whispered voice said. "Even if it's an uncomfortable space for humans, it's not like that for souls. Souls probably pass through there, which is why humans naturally want to avoid it." "You mean like a spirit lane?" There was the sound of a head shaking. "The word 'lane' doesn't really fit. It's more like a hole. Yeah. A hole." Such words faintly made the air of the silent stacks vibrate. Then my mentor talked about how an Imperial Japanese Army facility once stood on the very ground where this library was built. I already knew that. There were plenty of ghost stories around the university related to it.
"Right underneath our feet here, there's a huge hole. Dig down, and something unbelievable will come out. Probably." With that, he tapped the floor with his finger: *tap, tap*. "That's why, getting sucked into it, there have always been many such holes in this library where spirits pass through." There was silence. I traced the floor my mentor had tapped. Dust that had piled up over a long span of time clung to the fingertips. Suddenly, I felt like I heard footsteps. Straining my ears, I could hear someone dragging their feet from somewhere that felt both distant and close. Just as I started to lift my hips, my mentor's hand stopped me. Just as I thought the sound came from behind us, it began to be heard from directly ahead, moving clockwise. I didn't feel any inclination to peek past the bookshelves. The sound of walking continued. And it was clearly searching for the two of us in this exact spot. I could tell. In this space of the midnight stacks, the only humans were the two of us. I knew that too. I heard a sneer escaping between back teeth, and when I turned toward my mentor, he whispered back: "That thing can't come over here." "You know what a *kekkai* is, right? In the tea ceremony, it's a partition used to separate the realm of the host from that of the guests. Things made of bamboo or wood are common, but the kind of barrier I find most beautiful is a barrier made of books. And in Buddhism, a barrier is something that prevents secular things from violating a monk, while in Esoteric Buddhism, it's explicitly called something that blocks demons. There are various ways to set up barriers, but throughout the ages, nothing is as beautiful as one made of books."
*Scratch, scratch.* Making a sound like leather rubbing against leather, my mentor pulled a single book out from the shelf towering behind us. Its cover was dark in hue, and the title was unreadable.
"This is a book I planted here. I researched tirelessly on how to place the right book in the right place, and kept coming to this library. Thanks to that, I've acquired a respectable amount of insight into library science, though. Tricking professors into donating books, figuring out which space would fill up next, which book would be sent off to the stacks before that happened, and whether a book that would influence it would actually be purchased next. Even when you calculate it, things often don't go well. Even if you sneakily swap them out, though it's the stacks, they somehow get fixed before you know it. When I absolutely couldn't fix it, well, I resorted to somewhat illegal methods..."
The footsteps multiplied. Two sounds with different strides circled around us, growing distant and then close again. One seemed irritated. The other felt sorrowful. And I had no idea at all what was blocking those two presences that wanted so badly to come here. A current of air carrying a faint scent of old paper was simply passing by from my left shoulder to my right shoulder. My field of vision was narrow, and ahead it looked as though a dark curtain had been hung, blocking any sight. "Ever since I plugged up the hole in the stacks, the current seemed to change, and even the holes outside started getting disordered like they were eaten by moths. You can do things like this with just mere books." My mentor said it happily. The story so far lacked any sense of a motive. Yet, even if I had tried to ask, "Why would you do something like this?", it felt like the only answer available was his exact words: "You can do things like this with just mere books."
The footsteps continued to circle endlessly. Their numbers increased and decreased, while the presences of irritation and sorrow grew and filled the air. A tension that pricked at the skin closed in on us. I closed my eyes, entrusting everything to the invisible defense wall. Feeling as though the otherworldly voice of something not-human saying "That's enough" was about to announce the end of human rules right by my ear, I covered both ears with my hands. Just as I wondered if there was anything else I should close, an unnameable sensory organ inside me perceived something deep down beneath our feet. The image of a huge hole. If we replaced the "hole" my mentor spoke of with a "spirit lane," was it okay for a spirit lane leading downwards to even exist? How could I shut out this sensation? Trembling, I waited for morning.
That stack room apparently remains off-limits now. I've heard talk about fire safety regulations or something, but I don't really know. I feel like it has something to do with the period when my mentor worked as a librarian... but who knows.
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