The weather was fairly calm. Kai boarded the bus headed for the university administration. A full year had passed since he had devoted himself entirely to the Samaritan Book and abandoned his geology graduation project. Now, he had to renew his research contract—or at least give an explanation for his sudden disappearance.
Kai sighed, reviewing in his mind what he would say. There were twenty-eight passengers on the bus.
In the past, that kind of detail would've taken him a while to count. But now… just one glance. A quick flick of the eyes, and his mind absorbed everything—analyzed it within a fraction of a second.
Twenty-eight passengers: fifteen women, thirteen men, ages ranging from their twenties to their fifties.
Among those twenty-eight, eleven wore formal clothes—brand-new, crisp shirts, perfectly ironed jackets that screamed "special occasion." Kai noticed their subtle tension: one wiped his palms on his pants every few minutes; another stared into space, lips moving silently, rehearsing. Job interviews. That was the first observation.
Kai's brain began processing the information rapidly, as the Book had taught him.
Location: this bus route serves three major companies directly, but two of them require taking the metro after a certain stop.
Number: eleven people, likely heading to job interviews.
Time: mid-morning—an ideal time for interviews.
Detail: most carried slim document bags, not travel luggage or daily work gear.
Based on the route and timing, Kai concluded that the group must be heading to Sun Pharmaceuticals, the only company directly reachable on this main line, with interviews often requiring formal attire.
All this deduction happened in mere seconds. No one on the bus suspected that the quiet young man in the back had just mapped out their lives in detail.
Then the bus jolted violently—as if it had slammed into something invisible.
A muffled chorus of screams. A deafening crash.
All the lights went out. Darkness swallowed everything—bodies, sound, and air itself.
For a fleeting moment, Kai felt weightless—then a short free fall.
When they opened their eyes, the screams faded, replaced by shaky, bewildered breaths. They were no longer on the bus.
The bus had vanished.
They now stood inside a massive, ornate library. Towering shelves of ancient books reached up into a ceiling that disappeared into shadow. Dim brass lanterns dangled from thick chains, casting dancing shadows on the dark wood and worn leather that lined the walls.
The passengers gathered in the center, stunned and afraid. No trace of the bus. No door. No window. Only walls of endless books in every direction.
A heavy silence filled the space—dense as the weight of thousands of tomes.
Then panic broke through it.
"Where are we?" asked a woman in her forties, dressed in the new formal suit she'd worn for her interview, her voice trembling between confusion and terror.
A middle-aged man, also dressed for an interview, tried to sound rational. "We… we're in a library, apparently." He hesitated, then muttered weakly, "Or maybe a shared nightmare?"
"What matters is getting out of here!" shouted a young man, his face taut with fear.
Panic spread fast among the twenty-eight passengers. Their eyes darted between the towering shelves, then back to each other, helpless.
Amid the chaos, Kai stared at the floor. The Book had trained him to notice the smallest details first. Near where the bus should have been, he spotted a neatly folded note written in elegant handwriting, as if placed there intentionally.
He picked it up and unfolded it. The message was simple:
> "The key to escape… is a book."
Kai lifted his head and spoke calmly, his tone cutting through the panic.
"It seems we need to find a book to get out of here."
Everyone froze and stared at him.
"What do you mean?" asked the rational man.
Kai showed him the note. "I found this. It says the key to escape is a book."
The man glanced from the note to the endless walls of books, managing a faint, nervous smile. "Well, if that's the clue, we might as well start searching. Better than standing here doing nothing."
But another man, more skeptical, objected: "And how do we know this isn't a trick? Maybe it's meant to scare us even more."
The woman snapped back, "Do you have a better idea? Do you see a door? A window? We're trapped! At least this gives us something to focus on."
After a brief exchange, most of the twenty-eight agreed with the man's suggestion. Searching for something felt safer than surrendering to panic. Some began walking toward the shelves.
Then Kai interrupted again. His voice was sharper now—confident, analytical.
"No. It's not that simple."
All eyes turned to him. His gaze was fixed not on the note, but on the library itself.
He was analyzing—the books, their arrangement, the faint absence of dust, the symbols etched on the spines.
"What do you mean?" asked the rational man.
"The library itself is the puzzle," Kai said slowly. "If it were just about finding a random book, that note would've vanished—just like the bus. It's here to guide our thinking, not our hands. We have to observe properly… or we'll never get out."
.