Chapter 3 The library of clouds

"Huh?"

"Grim, are you okay?"

"Grim?"

"Yes, Grim. Ooh, Grim! I've missed you so!"

"H-hey! Stop that! I'm not Grim, and I don't know anyone by that name either!"

"Wait. You are not Grim?"

"Nah."

"..."

"Ouch! Why the heck did you slap me for?!"

The shining girl who had suddenly embraced him now hit him. It wasn't hard. But it was hard enough for Han to yelp.

"Lousy fool, making me believe you are my beloved!"

"Hey! I wasn't the one hugging you here!"

"Shut up! It's too embarrassing!"

The girl, a short blonde girl with bangs covering the right side of her face, scoffed.

"Who even are you anyway?"

"I should be the one asking! How did I end up here?"

"Well, I summoned you, of course. What are you, a child?"

"Well yeah, kinda..."

"That makes it even more embarrassing!!"

"Ouch! Why again?!"

The girl before him adjusted her big round glasses to prevent them from slipping off her face.

She knew him by a name that he did not. It wasn't he who was her beloved, but someone else, someone he had never heard of... Well, not like he remembered another name than his own.

"Please tell me your name, gray child."

Han looked down at himself. Despite the room being way more colorful than the gray ones, he stayed the same color in both skin tone and cloth.

"That's one way to address someone. My name is Han, and yours?"

"Cloud is my name. Nice to meet you, Han."

"Why the sudden change of attitude?!"

"I can't keep being mad! That will ruin my health for sure!"

The girl's name was Cloud. He didn't know her, and from what he could see behind her, indicated that she was a librarian of some sort.

"How will THAT ruin your health, lady?"

"Ooh, yoo see... Anger only leeads to mooore anger, and in the eeend, yoo won't doo anythiing else than be aangry."

"Sounds weird when you are talking like that. Wait, why are you talking like that?"

Despite her hitting him a moment before, she seemed innocent, and as he stared at her, she seemed to get more and more powered up. Her attitude had changed and the black little cat sleeping on the table pointed that out too.

"Cloud, you are doing it again." It said, irritated.

"What doo yoo mean? Ooh! What a cuoote little kitten!"

"Oh no."

The cat suffered an unusual kind of punishment as the new Cloud started giving him warm cuddles.

"Uhh..."

"Ooh myy gosh! Yoo are so cuoote for a kitten!"

"There is no pet-protecting service in this world right?" Han asked because he was getting worried about the black cat, who did not seem to like getting cuddled to death.

"Make her stop! Make her stop!"

"What's that? Never heard of it. Coome here and let mee put these blankets over yoo!"

"I would rather no-!"

Han watched Cloud ignore the cat's request, just to cover him in a bunch of blankets instead, he could not see the cat anymore due to the great amount of different blankets she had wrapped around him. But eventually, she stopped, letting the cat run away from her grasp. A sudden look of recognition came over her eyes, eyes Han had seen before, the eyes she had before going crazy. She turned toward him and smiled nervously.

"Should mee prepare some tea? Ooh noo! Yoo are a child! Should mee make cookies for yoo?"

"Are you ookay?"

"What's with that way of talking?"

"How are you the one to talk?!"

The girl chuckled. Despite her acting like an overprotective pet owner the moment before, he appreciated that she offered him tea and cookies. And, most of all, she was the first actual person he had met in that world. The strange people from before didn't talk to him so he couldn't count them. But this girl had embraced him with both blankets and her arms. But her demeanor changed like she was talking to two different people, and Han was curious about why.

"Sorry, I need to dupi myself soon."

"Dupi? What does that mean?"

The girl smiled at him and he felt himself smile back instinctively. She was a beautiful girl. Her hair was short and she had bangs on the right side of her face, with pink ribbons and ornaments in that same hair. She wore big leather pants and a white shirt underneath, showing no skin whatsoever. Tying her shirt was another pink ribbon that was shaped to look like a butterfly. Most of all, her eyes were the color of blue.

"It means that she duplicates herself so that her personalities and emotions don't flip."

"Woah! Talking cat! Talking cat!"

"You noticed that now!?" The cat said. "Ya sure are slow in the head, gray boy."

It was a black cat with white eyes with another pink ornament around its neck.

"Cloud, it itches, can't I just, take it off?"

"No way, Meno! That was a gift from mee to yoo!"

"Well, I don't like your gift. Stupid duplicate..." Said the talking cat, Meno, while lowering his voice.

"Soo, weell, I wiill juuust go and duuupi mee!" Said Cloud as she half sprinted behind some bookshelves like she had to do it fast or she would explode.

Han looked around the place, it was a great library, filled to the brim with bookshelves with hundreds of thousands of books. It was a light place, everything visible thanks to the light that came from small clouds, flying around with candles on them, emitting light to all surroundings.

"Pretty cool huh? Why are ya making that face for?!"

"S-sorry, I've never actually talked to a cat before, especially not a talking one."

"Cut the crap! Ya are a gray child! Even if ya had talked to a cat ya wouldn't remember it!"

"What do you mean?"

"What? That ya are a gray child?"

"Yeah, what is a gray child?"

"Let Cloud explain, I'm too tired after all that torture..."

"Hey! I asked you the question!"

But the cat just snored in response.

He sighed and turned toward the bookshelves that Cloud had disappeared behind a moment before. He wanted to ask her so many questions about this place and why he was here, to begin with.

The door he had walked through back at the rainbow stairs must’ve taken him here, but why?

“Why are you staring at me like that?! It's embarrassing!”

“Sorry- what?”

The short librarian appeared from behind the bookshelves. But she wasn’t alone. A girl, looking exactly like her, followed her from behind.

“Say what now?”

“Oh, I guess I haven’t introduced her yet. This is.. uh... Claude! Yes, Claude!”

“Uh, okay. Nice to meet you, Claude- ah-! Wait a minute-!”

“Ooh! Let mee cover yoo in these warm blankets, mee chiild!”

“Get away from me!”

The girl that looked like Cloud's twin sister and whose name was Claude embraced him suddenly. This was because she had the motive of covering him in blankets so that he wouldn't get cold in that library, which, actually was pretty cold. But Han, whose instincts activated, pushed her away, which didn't seem to work on Claude as she attacked him with the blankets again.

“Hahaha-!”

Cloud seemed to enjoy this fight, because she laughed at their strange embrace, while Meno sighed and continued sleeping.

“Can you get this crazy lady away from me, Cloud!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“Ah-!”

Poof! It went as the Cloud lookalike disappeared into thin air, leaving a cloud of seemingly nothing behind her.

“Wah!”

“Hey, she is gone now, so, chill out, will you?”

“What happened to the dialect?!”

“What, did you like it that more?”

“Heck no! That's something that will appear in my nightmares now!”

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Yes, she was!”

“–––––”

Cloud sighed deeply and giggled a little.

Han noticed that something was different. It was her personality. Until just now, she had been acting just as strange as her doppelganger from a moment ago, but after reappearing from behind those bookshelves, her attitude had seemingly changed, and so had her strange way of talking.

He turned his face up towards her, hot in the face. Whether it was from the blankets or her twin’s way of acting, he didn’t know nor care. He only wanted to know one thing at that very moment.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You know, disintegrating your twin just now!”

“Oh, it is still here, just not here.”

“Do you mean, an invisible woman is covering me in invisible blankets currently?!”

“No, no! I mean, she exists within me. Like a thought or a feeling, but, it’s rather complicated.”

“I mean, you aren’t wasting my time. So tell me.”

“I didn’t offer to explain in the first place!”

Han was astonished by the girl's power to seemingly, destroy versions of herself at will, only leaving mist behind.  It reminded him of a cartoon show when the villain disappears in dust clouds like a smokescreen. He didn’t know where he had gotten that memory from, but it made him chuckle a little.

“Ouch!”

“Stop doing weird things.”

“Weird things? Like what? Scratching some person's legs with your razor-sharp claws?!”

“You are overreacting, Grayie, and I can’t help it. The claws are calling y’know.”

“I can’t relate to a single word in that sentence! And sure you can’t help it! And what the hell do you mean by ‘Grayie’?!”

“So many questions, and yet, I do not care.”

The black cat jumped up on the table he had been sleeping on again and curled up in a ball.

Han turned to Cloud with a not-so-happy face.

“Where did you find this fluffy little parasite? The side of the road?!”

“Wooow, you two seem to get along quite nicely.”

“Shaddap! What the heck is even happening?! First, an embrace from a stranger, then a talking cat, and now that cat is acting like he owns the place!”

“‘Cause I do…”

“No way!”

“Will you calm down now at least?”

Han's head was in a mess, who were these people? Cloud was a strange girl who had a strange twin that had taken a liking to him, the black cat had done the exact opposite, being an ass to him from the moment he stepped foot in the library he supposedly owned.

“Want me to get you some tea?”

“Is there any water?!”

“Maybe orange juice will be fine?”

“I said I wanted water! That part hasn’t changed at all! Who are you, people?!”

“...And cats.”

“Whatever, furry purry!”

He didn’t know why he reacted the way that he did. He was way ruder than normal, talking to them like they knew him, but that was how they acted too. This stressed him out to the point he started acting way ruder than usual, and now he was conflicted about what to say. Should he apologize? Or maybe he should just sit down and be quiet?

“Can you sit down and be quiet?”

“But I don’t wanna!”

“Hey! Sit down or I’m making you into a hat for the gray child here!”

Han blinked a few times as he looked at the cat, struggling to get free from the short woman's grasp. His seat was placed beside Hans as they were all sitting around a round wooden table.

For some reason, the cat really didn’t wanna sit there, which made him take the first step to change their first image of him.

“That won’t change a thing! Damn it, let me go, Cloud!”

The cries coming from the cat didn’t stop as Han thought, This cat doesn’t wanna sit beside me, does he?

But soon enough, Cloud had forced the little black furball down on his seat. This didn’t stop him from fleeing tho, and Han watched as he switched to all fours and took off in a leap to retake his freedom.

“Sigh. I can’t get him to do as I tell him sadly.”

Cloud smiled up at him and leaned back on her chair, opposite his.

“That's the least weird of everything up till now…”

“Weird? Ooh my, that’s not very nice to say. You don't happen to know any cat trainers, do you? Cause I'm certainly not one of those.”

“It wasn’t anything personal, but sorry anyway.”

He gave her a strained smile of his own.

It was just the two of them now, sitting on opposite sides of the round wooden table.

He was nervous since his emotions had gone wild up till now.

This place, its people, and the scenes that had played out, all made him question this strange world even more.

What had gotten him from a world with almost no color to a world with color?

Why did he look different from Cloud and how did she clone herself?

This was the topics that would follow, but first...

BANG! Went a bookshelf somewhere in the library and then came a loud hissing, a cry from a surprised cat.

“Pfft-!”

Laugh escaped their mouths as they couldn’t keep the seriousness up anymore.

Han wondered if it would be better if people just never talked about things without being unserious for a little.

“S-sorry, I can’t help it!”

“Haha! No, no, I understand you. That was very funny.”

She smiled at him and he gave her a quick smile back before asking:

“Is he always like that? And does he own this place?”

“Yes and no. I own it, but he will get it when I die.”

“He seems to be acting like you already are dead!”

“Inside yes, outside, not so much. I'm sure that's what he wants.”

“I hope that was a joke…”

Cloud had made one funny joke, then followed it up with another that was way more serious, sending the laughing part of that conversation down the rubbish, and turning it into a new landscape, a new battlefield, ready for the battle of questions.

“Are you ready?”

“Absolutely!”

They sat firmly on the chairs opposite each other.

The laughing from a second before was gone like it had never existed in the first place.

“Ooh, well then, give me your best!”

"–!"