The figures standing at the bottom of the steps began to carry out the librarian's orders with the hollow precision of machines.
From left to right, front to back—despite their vacant stares, the sixteen individuals moved in a disciplined, orderly line. One by one, they stepped through the half-open doors of the library and vanished into the darkness within.
As each person crossed the threshold, the librarian standing guard at the entrance counted them off with a mechanical, subconscious rhythm.
"One... two... three... four..."
Watching from his hiding spot, Horitake felt his patience wearing thin.
If he allowed these poor souls to simply walk into that building, there was no telling what fate awaited them. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't anything good.
Should I just follow them in?
If he moved fast enough, there was no way this dazed librarian would notice a stealthy intrusion.
Decided. I'll use this chance to slip inside and see exactly what's happening in there.
Horitake made his choice. He planned to wait for the tiny gap after the last person entered and then ghost his way through the doors.
However, the events that followed took him completely by surprise.
The line shuffled forward, the silence of the night broken only by the librarian's flat, counting voice. As the group thinned out, the count climbed higher.
"Fourteen... fifteen... sixteen..."
Indeed, there were exactly sixteen of them. As the final person stepped into the foyer, the librarian reached sixteen. But then, he fell silent.
He remained standing at the door, his dim lantern swaying slightly in the breeze, as if waiting for someone else.
A moment passed. Nothing happened. A flicker of stiff, artificial confusion crossed the librarian's face.
"Where is seventeen? The seventeenth person... there should... there should... there should be a seventeenth. What happened? Where... is...?"
Horitake finally hit his limit. Before the librarian could finish his sentence, Horitake materialized beside him. He looked at the man's glassy eyes, pointed a thumb at his own chest, and asked, "This 'seventeenth' you're looking for... you wouldn't happen to be talking about me, would you?"
Even with Horitake appearing out of thin air, the librarian showed no emotion. He merely gave a stiff, mechanical nod.
"Yes... seventeen. Seventeen people came to the library today. With you, the count is complete. You are the seventeenth. Enter."
Horitake's expression was a complex mixture of exasperation and disbelief. He didn't even know how to describe his current mood.
So, I really was the seventeenth.
Well, fine. Since we've come this far, I might as well see this through to the end.
He wasn't hypnotized; he was fully conscious and more than capable of handling himself. As the saying goes, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." If he wanted to catch the tiger's cub, he had to enter the tiger's den.
Following the librarian's "instruction," Horitake stepped into the library.
The interior lights were off, leaving the vast first floor draped in a thick, oppressive gloom. However, deep in the room, near the base of the stairs, a single lamp flickered on a desk.
The light it cast was just as weak and sickly as the one in the librarian's hand.
Just as Horitake crossed the threshold, the male librarian stepped in behind him. With a heavy thud and a sharp creak, the massive front doors were slammed shut and bolted.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. Being locked inside a dark, silent library with sixteen sleepwalkers was enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
Horitake felt a sensation similar to what he had experienced in his previous life when playing a "murder mystery" game or visiting a high-end haunted house. It was a cocktail of adrenaline and grim curiosity. He was genuinely interested—perhaps even excited—to see what kind of "stimulus" the night had in store for him.
Once the doors were sealed, he scanned the first floor.
Structurally, nothing had changed since the afternoon. The towering bookshelves stood like silent sentinels, the reading area was exactly where it had been, and a long central aisle led toward the back staircase. There, behind the desk where the lamp sat, a figure was waiting.
It was a woman. She wore the same uniform as the male librarian.
She sat perfectly still behind the desk, a stack of papers before her and a pen gripped in her hand, as if she were preparing to take official minutes for a meeting.
In front of her desk, stretching down the long central aisle, the sixteen sleepwalkers had formed a single, silent line. Even without being told, they seemed to know exactly where to stand.
Horitake, accepting his role as the "seventeenth," took his place at the very end of the queue. He leaned back slightly, watching the proceedings with a cold, detached gaze.
The line moved slowly. The first person in the queue stepped up to the woman's desk.
The female librarian didn't look up. Her voice was a flat, emotionless drone as she began her interrogation.
"Have you ever heard of 'demons'?"
The person at the front answered with the same hollow tone. "No."
"Have you ever heard of the 'Demon Slayer Corps'?"
"No."
"Have you ever heard of a swordsman wreathed in purple lightning?"
"No."
Three questions. Three answers.
With every response, the woman's pen moved across the paper, recording the answers with mechanical precision.
Horitake noticed that the woman's voice was just as "dead" as the male librarian's. She was clearly in the same hypnotic trance, merely reciting a script that had been burned into her subconscious.
But the content of the questions... that was what truly caught his interest.
She was asking about demons and the Demon Slayer Corps. Since these people were ordinary civilians, their negative answers were almost certainly the truth—especially since hypnosis bypasses the filters of the conscious mind.
But then there was the third question: The swordsman wreathed in purple lightning.
That's me, Horitake thought.
What was the meaning of this? Was someone scouring the land for information on him?
Actually, it didn't take much thought to figure it out.
Horitake was currently Muzan Kibutsuji's most wanted enemy. He was the variable that needed to be eliminated at all costs. It stood to reason that Muzan would order his subordinates to use every resource available to track him down.
If a demon was controlling this library, this was an incredibly efficient way to gather intelligence. By casting a wide net and interrogating every single person who entered the building, they could eventually piece together the movements of the Demon Slayer Corps or locate their target.
If they found information, it was a massive win. If they didn't, they lost nothing.
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