The massive library loomed like a monolith in the shadows. Before its doors, a dozen mindless souls stood in perfect, silent ranks, their wills suppressed by a hypnotic shroud.
Witnessing this macabre tableau, Horitake felt several pieces of the puzzle regarding the disappearances click into place, yet a swarm of new questions immediately took their place.
These mysteries boiled down to two primary concerns:
First, when were these people hypnotized, and by whom?
Second, why were they drawn to the library doors at this exact hour, and what was their ultimate fate? What was the library's role in the next stage of this process?
If he couldn't solve these two problems, the incident would remain an impenetrable fog.
For a rare moment, Horitake felt the weight of the situation's complexity.
Should I wake them up? he wondered. But then what? Tell them to run? And once they've fled, do I just storm the building? No, that's too reckless. I don't have enough context yet. Jumping the gun would be a fool's errand.
He forced himself to remain patient. He needed to wait for the library to provide a reaction.
Seated on the roof of the neighboring house, Horitake took a deep, steadying breath. He allowed the cool night air to settle his nerves and sharpen his focus. From his vantage point, he watched the twelve figures and the eerie building with a hunter's stillness.
As he observed them with a renewed sense of calm, his eyes snagged on a detail he had missed before.
He recognized one of them.
Among the dozen men and women stood a man Horitake had encountered just that afternoon.
He remembered it clearly: while he had been browsing the stacks, he hadn't been the only patron. This man had been there, too. He had selected a volume, read it for a while in the seating area, and then—seemingly engrossed—had checked the book out to take home.
Aside from Horitake, that man had been the only other visitor during that specific window of time.
And now, there he was, standing in a trance among the others.
The realization sparked a flurry of deductions. The man was a patron this afternoon. Now he's a sleepwalker. Does that mean everyone here was a visitor today? Perhaps those in the front row were here this morning?
It was a plausible theory. The library saw more traffic in the mornings than the afternoons. It stood to reason that every person in this line had stepped through those doors during operating hours.
But that brought back the "how." When were they snared?
Horitake considered a new possibility: The books.
The library allowed patrons to take books home. Could the volumes themselves be the catalyst? Was there something hidden within the pages—an incantation, a scent, or a visual trigger—that slowly took hold of the reader's mind until they succumbed to the trance?
It would explain why Horitake was still lucid. He hadn't borrowed anything.
Wait, that doesn't quite work, he corrected himself, frowning.
If the books were the source of the hypnosis, why wasn't he affected? He had spent the entire afternoon reading within those walls. Did the trigger require the reader to fall asleep first? Did the hypnotic suggestion only take root when the consciousness drifted into the deep, vulnerable stages of slumber?
Or was it simply his own constitution? Between his rigorous training and the constant use of Total Concentration Breathing, his mind and body were far more resilient than those of a commoner.
He couldn't be sure. The "how" remained frustratingly out of reach.
Fortunately, Horitake was a pragmatic man. He didn't believe in wasting energy on puzzles that lacked enough pieces. He set the speculation aside for now. Regardless of the method, the library was the undeniable source of the anomaly. If he continued to watch, the answers would surely reveal themselves.
He waited for another ten minutes. As the time approached one o'clock in the morning, the library finally stirred.
No lights flickered to life. From the outside, the interior remained a cavernous void, illuminated only by the faint, silvery ribbons of moonlight filtering through the high windows.
Then, the silence was broken by a heavy, wooden creak.
One of the great front doors swung inward. An emaciated figure emerged from the darkness.
Horitake's eyes narrowed, his hand inching toward the hilt of his blade. Is it the demon? Is the mastermind finally showing its face?
No. It was still a human.
To Horitake's surprise, the figure stepping out onto the stone landing was the male librarian—the same one who had spent the entire afternoon napping at the front desk.
But the librarian's state was just as wrong as the others.
His eyes were vacant, his expression a frozen mask of indifference. He shuffled forward with a dragging gait, his movements entirely mechanical. He, too, was a puppet in this midnight play.
The librarian carried a dim lantern that cast long, flickering shadows across the plaza. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down at the two rows of people with a hollow gaze.
The scene had reached a new level of surreality. Even the gatekeeper was a thrall, likely being used to perform repetitive, clerical tasks even in his sleep.
The librarian opened his mouth. His voice was flat—a cold, emotionless drone that lacked even a spark of human inflection.
"From left to right. From front to back. Enter in order."
It wasn't a request; it was a programmed command. His conscious mind was buried deep beneath a layer of hypnotic control.
Following the command, the twelve sleepwalkers began to move.
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