Chapter 156
When I couldn’t respond, the bookstore owner, or rather, Mr. Ruben, sniffed awkwardly.
“Aren’t you going to take it?”
“No! I-I am!”
No matter what, I had to secure the second volume.
I reverently accepted it with both hands and swallowed.
I quickly flipped through the pages with my thumb. The pages were densely packed with tiny writing.
The fact that the unpublished second volume was in this man’s storage room could only be explained by him being the author.
He really is the author.
Becoming someone’s fan was much more thrilling and joyful than I had expected. It seemed as though light was shining from behind him.
“This is a greater honor than having an audience with His Majesty the Emperor.”
“Please don’t praise me that much.”
“C-Can I really read this?”
“But you can’t take it outside. You have to read it here.”
I nodded so vigorously that my neck nearly broke.
Mr. Ruben locked the storage room again with the key.
“Miss…, no, what should I call you?”
“Please call me Louize. Louize Harper.”
There was a small ladder leading to an attic at the back of the bookstore. So there was a space like this. Surprised, I raised my head and looked upward.
“It’s a place where I sometimes rest when there are no customers. You can read comfortably up there.”
The attic ceiling was high enough for me to straighten my back. There was only simple bedding and a round bedside table barely large enough for two cups, but that made it seem all the cozier and more suitable for reading.
“I can sit anywhere and read.”
“Even when I put up the sign saying we’re closed, some people knock if they see someone inside.”
“Ah.”
His words were partly out of consideration for me, but they were also a measure to prevent troublesome customers from entering.
When I climbed the ladder, I smelled wood. The bedding was soft and fresh, as though it had recently been washed.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“I think I’ll be too absorbed in reading to drink anything.”
At those words, Mr. Ruben’s cheeks turned pink. He seemed embarrassed.
“Then I’ll bring you some water at least.”
“But if the second volume was already finished, why didn’t you put it on display?”
“…The truth is, it wasn’t popular. I published it with my own money and placed it in more than twenty bookstores, but every one of them removed it from display, and it went out of print.”
“That’s impossible. It’s so interesting, so why?”
Mr. Ruben shrugged.
“I was disappointed, so I displayed it in my own bookstore, but it still wasn’t popular. The response to the first volume was so terrible that even though I wrote the second volume, I didn’t have the courage to put it out… Then you bought the first volume, Miss Louize.”
Mr. Ruben had lost the will to continue writing, but seeing me visit every day for an entire week had changed his mind. In the end, he had decided to show the second volume to me first.
He said he planned to publish it officially after refining it a little more.
That day, I read the second volume while regretting every decrease in the number of pages remaining.
I savored each sentence on every page, lingered over its aftertaste, then opened it again and repeated the process. Part of me deliberately read slowly because I didn’t want this happiness to end.
In the end, the sun set before I could finish the entire volume.
“May I come again tomorrow?”
“As often as you like.”
After that day, I stopped by the bookstore to read as part of my routine whenever training at the temple ended.
The thrill I felt when Mr. Ruben told me he had already written five volumes, leaving only the final volume unfinished, was still vivid.
But perhaps I had become too absorbed in the book. I remained unaware that Gerard’s patience was gradually reaching its limit as he waited for me to return home later every day.
