Story/Novel Title: The Library of Lost Souls
Genre: Fantasy Romance / Mystery
Author: PARK JIAN (ME)
CHAPTER
TWO
The Name He Never Said
His hand was still warm in hers when Firasha realized she hadn’t let go yet.
She pulled back too fast, the way you pull your hand off a stove after the burn’s already happened. Javiar didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he was polite enough not to say so. He was still smiling that easy smile, the one that looked like it came naturally to him, like breathing.
“So,” he said, glancing around the shelves like he was seeing them for the first time even though he clearly wasn’t. “You come here a lot?”
“First time,” Firasha said. It wasn’t a lie, which felt strange, considering how many lies she’d already told him in the last two minutes.
“Huh.” He tilted his head at the candles floating near the ceiling, unbothered, like they were nothing stranger than a light fixture. “Took me three visits before I even noticed those don’t have wicks.”
Her stomach dropped. “You’ve been here before?”
“A few times.” He shrugged, hands in his pockets, rocking back slightly on his heels. “Found it by accident, honestly. Needed somewhere quiet that wasn’t my apartment. This place is weirdly good for thinking.” He laughed under his breath. “Sounds insane, doesn’t it? A secret library nobody talks about, and I just use it to avoid my emails.”
Firasha’s mind was racing too fast to laugh with him.
He’s been here before. He can see it. He can touch it. And he has no idea what it is.
That shouldn’t have been possible. The voice had said she wasn’t supposed to be here yet — not that she wasn’t supposed to be here at all. There was a difference, and she didn’t understand it, and not understanding it made her chest go tight in a way she recognized from years of practice. It was the same tightness she used to get right before the school office called her out of class to tell her something she already knew was coming.
She pressed her palm flat against her collar without meaning to, feeling the small shape of the ring underneath her shirt. Cold. It was always cold when she was scared, though she’d never figured out if that meant anything or if she’d just decided it did, the way people decide a certain song means something after they’ve cried to it once.
“You okay?” Javiar asked. His voice had dropped a little, softer now, the kind of soft that came from actually noticing someone instead of just looking at them. “You’ve gone kind of pale.”
“I’m fine.” Firasha forced her hand back down to her side. “Just — didn’t expect to run into anyone.”
“Yeah, me neither.” He studied her for a second too long, the way people do when they’re deciding whether to ask the question sitting right behind their teeth. Then he seemed to let it go, rocking back on his heels again, glancing toward the shelf she was standing in front of. “What are you reading, anyway?”
Every muscle in her body went still.
“Nothing,” she said, too quickly. “I mean — I wasn’t. I was just looking.”
“You’re holding something behind your back.”
He said it lightly, teasing, the way you’d call out a kid hiding a cookie before dinner. He had no idea what he was actually asking her to hand over. She thought about the last line she’d read in his book, the one that hadn’t left her mind since she’d read it. He does not know how little time is left. She thought about how easy it would be to just tell him. How impossible it would be to make him believe her.
“It’s not important,” she said, and hated how thin her own voice sounded.
Javiar held up both hands, backing off with a small laugh. “Okay, okay. Mystery girl keeps her secrets. Noted.” But there was something underneath the joke, some thread of real curiosity he wasn’t quite hiding as well as he thought he was. He was the kind of person, she was already starting to realize, who used jokes the way other people used umbrellas — not because they fixed anything, just because they kept the worst of it off for a while.
She recognized that. She did the same thing with lies.
“I should go,” she said, and this time she meant it, because every second she stood in front of him with his own unfinished life pressed against her spine felt like standing too close to a fire she didn’t know how to put out.
“Right. Sure.” He stepped back to let her pass, then hesitated, like the words had caught somewhere on the way out. “Hey — will you be back? Here, I mean.”
Firasha didn’t know how to answer that. The voice hadn’t told her the rules yet. She didn’t know if she was allowed to come back, or forbidden to, or if the choice had ever really been hers at all.
“Maybe,” she said, which was the truest thing she’d told him so far.
He smiled again, smaller this time, almost private. “I hope so. It’s nice, having someone else who doesn’t think this place is insane.”
“I never said I didn’t think that.”
That got a real laugh out of him, short and surprised, like she’d caught him off guard. “Fair. I’m Javiar Liam, by the way, in case mystery girl wants to look me up and confirm I’m not secretly dangerous.”
Firasha’s whole body went cold.
I never told him I already knew that.
“I know,” she said — and the second the words left her mouth, she understood exactly what she’d done.
Javiar’s smile faltered. “Wait.” He tilted his head, something sharper moving behind his eyes now, replacing the easy warmth from a moment ago. “I didn’t tell you my last name.”
The candles above them flickered, all at once, like something in the room had just leaned in to listen.
“Firasha.” He said her name slowly this time, like he was testing the shape of it, the way you test a step before trusting your full weight to it. “How do you know my last name?”
She opened her mouth. Nothing true came out. Nothing false came out either — for the first time all night, she had absolutely nothing to say.
Behind her, somewhere deep in the shelves, the voice that wasn’t a voice went very, very quiet.
Would Firasha lie her way out again — or was this the moment Javiar finally learned the truth?
[…] CHAPTER TWO […]