With his gaze ensnared, Nathan cleared his throat and picked his words carefully. “I’ll be reading some books to pass the time.” He said uncertainly, trying to fish a reaction out of Ayla. Alas, he was bound to be disappointed, for she didn’t even pause writing.

‘Is she bipolar or something?’ He couldn’t help wondering as he let out a tired sigh. One moment she was all smiles like a dandelion blooming at the end of spring, and the next she was gloomy and detached like a solitary snowdrop blooming in the winter.

The longer Nathan looked at her, the more he felt like he was falling head over heels for her, and yet, there was always this small part of him that refused to yield. Telling him something was wrong and that he should be careful. ‘I don’t get it… No matter how pretty she is, I shouldn’t be feeling like this… Is she somehow tampering with my emotions?’

Nathan mused while retrieving his gaze away from Ayla’s enchanting figure. With eyes closed, he reached for his wrist and tried to check the pulse of his wildly thumping heart.

*Ba-dum Ba-dum*

Half a minute, for half a minute he just stood there quietly and unmoving, trying to determine whether it would go back to normal or not. ‘It’s definitely quicker than it should be, but…’ Opening his eyes slowly, Nathan looked at Ayla for yet another time.

*Ba-dum!*

‘Why is she looking at me again? Wasn’t she ignoring me just a second ago?!’ Unbeknownst to Nathan, while he was busy figuring out his pulse, Ayla had at some point stopped writing down notes and turned to look at him. ‘What are you looking at?!’ He wanted to scream but refused to follow his instinct, well knowing of the consequences.

“Weren’t you going to read some books to pass the time?” Her angelic and yet cold voice drifted over, clouding Nathan’s thinking momentarily. Baffled for words, he retrieved his gaze from hers and turned to regard the bookshelves in an attempt to compose himself. 

Books of all sizes and colors surrounded Nathan’s field of view. And, since the bookshelves didn’t come along with genre labeling for assistance, he just had to pick one out at random. ‘Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, which one should I pick and go?’ He mused with one finger pointing from one book to the other.

“Haha,” A small chuckling sound couldn’t help escaping Ayla’s lips as she observed silently from a distance. ‘Are my ears going rotten or did she just laugh? The frozen demoness is capable of laughing!?’ Nathan pondered as he crookedly turned his head around. ‘There it is again… She is definitely bipolar!’ With a playful smile on her lips, Ayla uttered. “I could always make a recommendation... If you want one that is?”

Nathan was now certain. ‘She is up to something.’ It wasn’t a question, it was a fact, he knew Ayla had something up her sleeve and yet he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

“Sure.” He answered simply and waited for her next course of action, fearful she would somehow turn it around and make it seem like he was the one asking. Ayla slowly stood up from her seat and moved around the small library, searching one shelf after the other, seemingly intent on finding a good book for him. After a while of searching, she finally stopped in front of the largest bookshelf inside the room and tried to reach for a book resting on the upper shelves.

Alas, her small figure wasn’t quite enough to reach it. “Can you pick this one for me? I can’t quite reach it myself.” She asked in a slightly pleading tone. Even though Nathan had a pretty good guess of Ayla’s true nature, he couldn’t help chuckling when he saw her struggling. ‘Is she trying to lower my mental defenses? Cause if that is her true aim, she has already achieved it…’

There was no way he could refuse her. He had already accepted that fact but, since she wasn’t directly forcing him to ask her a question, Nathan had no good reason to refuse her, and neither did he want to. Waving the pointless thoughts away, he approached the bookshelf. Ayla wasn’t exactly tall, but she couldn’t be called short either. About half a head shorter than him, she proudly stood at about 1.7 meters tall.

“It’s this one, no, not that one, this one!” She pointed with her index finger stretched as Nathan tiptoed to reach the book. ‘It was really high, okay, but… YOU REALLY AREN’T HELPING HERE!’ Nathan screamed in his mind as Ayla refused to take a single step away from her original position, meaning Nathan’s body was quite close to hers, close enough for him to smell the light scent wafting off of her pale blue hair.

It was nice and light, not overwhelming, and yet Nathan couldn’t quite understand what it was. ‘Some type of flower extract?’ was all he managed to get as another thought crossed his mind. ‘No, wait… Little Nathan… Come on buddy we already talked about this! Don’t do this to me, please!’ The moment Nathan believed he had a good grasp on the book, he hurriedly retreated with a bright flush across his cheeks. ‘Oh God of Jeans, I’m begging you, hide my little buddy!’

Trying to widen the distance between them, albeit a little awkwardly, he couldn’t help but ponder. ‘I wonder who is going to kill me faster this time, she?! Or the heart attack?!’ Even as he retreated, Nathan’s gaze never left Ayla’s. It was painfully obvious that every single action of hers was done on purpose, trying to mess with his mind. ‘Haha! Try as you wish, this fort of willpower will never fall!’

He smirked and turned to regard the book. It had a browny leather cover, looking to be quite old and weathered. Having been left on the shelf for too long a time, its pages had turned a light tint of yellow, making Nathan sport a saddened expression as he contemplated. ‘Books are meant to be read, not left on the shelf.’

Seeing how the book had no title on its cover, Nathan opened a random page to see what it was all about. “The heck is this?” He couldn’t help asking at the first sight of ideograms. With both hands holding tightly the wizened tome of knowledge, Nathan crookedly turned to face Ayla. ‘I messed up!’ Was the only thing he could think of as Ayla’s smile widened further.

“I could say ‘this is a book,’ and still answer your question, but I am in quite a good mood today so… Since you asked, I might as well answer.” Pausing to take a breath, Ayla continued playfully from a distance. “This book is known as Chayum and it contains all sorts of useful knowledge, first answer.”

‘How is that any different from saying, this is a book?!’ Nathan was on the verge of tears. Having withstood an insane (not) amount of harassment up until now, he couldn’t believe he was actually tricked into asking a question about a book he could not read.

Pouring oil into the fire, Ayla’s honey dripping voice resounded. “I don’t really need it anymore, so you can keep it as a token of our friendship.”

‘What friendship?! Our relationship goes no further than the one between a wolf and a sheep!’ Nathan’s eyelids twitched, disheartened, and mentally exhausted, he turned to leave this room where only madness awaited him.

“My newfound friend, Nathan. Where are you going? Don’t you still have a few questions for me?” Ayla asked and, for the first time ever, he felt a tint of worry in her voice. Pausing in his tracks, he looked back at her figure and couldn’t help having a vein pop on his forehead.

‘She is toying with me…’ Her tone might have been slightly worried, but the smile on her pretty face told another story. “Anywhere out of this madness!” He uttered exasperated and turned his back on her for the second time. “You are coming back at least, right?” The sound was enough to make him stop momentarily. However, without looking back, he reached for the doorknob.

“Hmph! Make a guess!” He shouted and closed the door behind him.

~~~

Having left Ayla’s study, Nathan felt his rationality slowly coming back to him. ‘Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me...’ Walking towards the stairway, Nathan stopped for a moment to pick Mr. Juggling Dude and continued on his way. After all they had been through, he couldn’t bear to leave him there. Placing him back on his glorious wall was the least he could do.

‘Here you go buddy, sorry for the new hole.’ Nathan joked on the inside and moved towards the living room. Taking a seat on the sofa, he opened the book’s first page as a fleeting thought crossed his mind.

‘No way in hell am I leaving!’ Scary things wandered the streets, and by no means did Nathan feel ready to go exploring. ‘I might as well stay here where it’s cozy and try to memorize some of the ideograms… Who knows, there might be clues about it in the real world.’ With a solid plan in mind, Nathan got to memorizing.

‘Then again, how do I leave this place?’ Cold sweat was running down his spine as that thought crossed his mind. Did he have to die again just to get out of Erion? Would he have to keep dying from now on, just to leave his dreams?! ‘No, there has to be another way out. Maybe if I could go back to that white place? Should I ask Ayla about it?’

Shaking his head left to right, Nathan rejected the idea and focused back on his book. ‘Don’t think too much about it Nathan. I will just wake up at some point, right?’ He did have an alarm ready this time.

‘Focus on the book for now…’ And so he did. Silently, he flipped page after page, trying to memorize as many of the weird symbols as he could. The book contained drawings as well, but Nathan had no clue what most of them portrayed. The few he did though, had flowers, weird creatures, or even pebbles, giving him a small feeling that Ayla was really trying to help. 

Without a clock to count the time, It was only a few hours later that Nathan felt an inexplicable sense of sleepiness embrace him. ‘What is going on?’ He wondered while flailing in panic. He felt like the energy was leaving his body as his eyesight went blurry all of a sudden. The world around him turned dim before pitch-black darkness embraced him.

Inside the living room, Nathan and the book were nowhere to be seen.

~~~

“Hmph! Make a guess!” After Nathan shut the door closed, Ayla couldn’t help bursting into a small fit of laughter. ‘Where will you even go to?’ She couldn’t help musing as a crystal clear mirror made out of ice formed in her hand.

The mirror didn’t reflect light; instead, it showed Nathan’s figure picking up the painting he had destroyed earlier. “Pfft! Hahaha!” Ayla had tears rolling down from all the laughter. Having observed Nathan’s memories through his soul threads, she not only had a pretty good idea of what type of person he was, she pretty much knew almost everything about the current him.

“See? What did I say? You are too scared to go out. Just come back here, it’s nice and cozy.” Ayla mumbled to no one other than herself. She wasn’t really afraid Nathan would leave just yet. After all, she had given him the book on purpose, well knowing he would try to figure out its contents using the knowledge from his world.

‘His reactions are on a whole other level though... I should be able to enjoy this for a while longer.’ Ayla thought and returned to her cushy chair, the mirror floating right behind her as she sat down to continue writing. Taking a last long look at Nathan’s figure as he frantically flipped the pages, Ayla released the magic with a smile on her face.

‘Well then, I hope you entertain me for a while longer.’