The first thing Kim Jae-hyun noticed was the silence.
Not the ordinary kind, like the quiet of a late-night bookstore in Seoul, but a silence so heavy it pressed down on him, like a blanket made of stone. He tried to shift, to breathe, to cough—anything—but nothing happened. His body was gone.
Instead, there was only parchment.
He could feel it, somehow: the thin stretch of pages, the weight of leather binding pressing against his edges. Every attempt at moving ended in futility. He couldn't wiggle fingers or turn his head. He was trapped, and the realization sent panic spiraling through him.
What… what happened to me?
His last memory flickered like a film reel: the soft patter of rain against glass, the hiss of car brakes, the flash of headlights—then nothing. Now he was here, wherever here was, in a shell that was not flesh, but paper.
Light filtered dimly across him as dust motes danced in the air. The smell of age was thick—dry parchment, mold, and the faint sweetness of decayed ink. He was lying on a cracked wooden table, surrounded by shelves that towered like walls of a forgotten fortress.
A library.
It wasn't like any library he had ever seen. These books weren't neatly catalogued with plastic labels or polished covers. Some were bound in scales, others in stitched hide, and one nearby pulsed faintly as though it had a heartbeat.
I'm a… book, Jae-hyun realized with horror. I died… and now I'm a book?
He tried to scream, but the sound manifested differently. A ripple of faint golden letters appeared across his first page, shimmering in the dusty air before fading. Words. That was the only way he could speak now.
The words scrawled themselves again, this time trembling with desperation:
"Is anyone there?"
The library did not answer.
Time passed—minutes, hours, days, maybe even years. Jae-hyun lost track. Darkness claimed the library more often than light, and silence became his only companion. Every so often, he tested his strange new body: flipping letters across his pages, shifting words into poetry, even sketching crude doodles in ink that vanished moments later. It was the only way to stay sane.
Loneliness gnawed at him. Once, he had spent countless evenings surrounded by people but never speaking, always reading instead. Now, he would give anything to hear another voice, to see another human face.
He might have gone mad completely, if not for the moment the door creaked open.
It was faint at first—a rusted hinge groaning against years of stillness. Light spilled into the library, warm and golden. Footsteps echoed, hurried and uncertain.
A girl stepped inside.
She couldn't have been older than sixteen, her robe patched and worn, a satchel slung clumsily over one shoulder. Her hair was the color of wheat left too long in the sun, and her eyes darted across the shelves with a mix of fear and wonder.
Jae-hyun's heart—or whatever replaced it—leapt.
The girl wandered between the shelves, brushing her fingers against the bindings as though hoping for a spark. Her hand paused when it hovered over him.
For the first time in this new existence, Jae-hyun felt a touch. A spark of warmth traveled through his leather cover as her palm rested against him. The hunger for connection, for acknowledgment, overwhelmed him.
His pages fluttered open on their own, and golden words bled across them:
"Please don't leave me."
The girl gasped and nearly dropped him. Her wide eyes fixed on the glowing letters as her lips trembled.
"A… living book?" she whispered.
Jae-hyun felt something he hadn't felt since his death—hope