It took three classes for Nathan to decide that he didn’t want to attend the fourth one.

It was Religion Studies, of all things. From his experience, anything that had to do with religion in schools was extremely preachy, never considerate of other beliefs, and always shoving their ideals down people’s throats. Besides, he’d probably try to argue with the teacher and get himself thrown into the religious equivalent of a dungeon for being a heretic.

Instead, he made his way to the library, where he figured he could at least spend his time quietly.

The librarian gave him a suspicious look as he entered, a kind of look that said— I’m watching you, and you better not step out of line in my library— but didn’t say anything as he walked towards the bookshelves. He didn’t think they’d have a problem as long as he didn’t make noise.

It was mostly empty, with students sparsely scattered around some tables. Those who were present were buried nose-deep in their books or scribbling diligently on notebooks. 

He stopped in front of a long row of shelves, all labelled Fiction. Individual rows on the shelves were further classified as different fiction genres. Nathan reached for a book on the horror shelf, looked at the back to read the summary, and realized it was a romance novel. 

Well. That was annoying. He put the book back and pulled out another. This one turned out to be a murder mystery. Then another that turned out to be an action thriller.

Okay, something was severely wrong. Why were all these other genres on the shelf that was specifically marked as horror? Was the librarian trying to pull a prank? Nathan pictured them popping up behind unsuspecting readers in the dead of the night, holding a candle and saying, the real horror is that you’ll never find the correct genre on the correct bookshelf.

Were the other bookshelves as disorganized? Nathan checked the next bookshelf over, the one labelled the mystery section, and sure enough, out of the seven books he pulled out, only one was the correct genre.

Nathan barely restrained himself from marching up to the librarian and demanding to know what the hell was going on. It was only after stepping back and giving the entire bookshelf a once-over that he realized that the books were arranged in a rainbow. That was the organizational system.

Nathan peered closely at the book titles and...sweet sugary mother of— They had separated series based on colour of individual books. Nathan needed to know who was in charge of arranging these shelves. And where he could buy an axe. And the nearest dark, isolated alley.

“Calm down, what the fuck?”

Oh, now Cantis decided to show up, did she? 

“Grass gets boring. The only other arthropods out there were butterflies. Not a single mantis in sight! These fuckers need a more balanced garden ecosystem! Butterflies won’t be doing pest control for you!”

Nathan ignored her and got to work, pulling out books and placing them on the correct shelves. He’d worry about how to classify them later. First, he needed to segregate by genre and get the series back together.

Cantis scuttled along the bookshelves. “Oi, don’t ignore me! I also received a very important package from the Agency just now!” 

Nathan looked around him to make sure no one was close enough to hear, and said, “Tell your Agency to go fuck itself.”

“I really fucking wish, but no, I’d be fired. I need to pay the bills.”

“Your problem. Move, I need that book.”

Cantis hopped out of the way as Nathan pulled the book out. Thriller. He took it to replace a wrongly-genred book on the thriller shelf.

“I’m serious. This package is important to the mission—”

“You mean the mission I didn’t agree to? Or want? Or get an explanation for?” Nathan snapped. He felt a stare burn into his back and turned to the librarian to signal, Sorry, I’ll be quiet now.

“You think I wouldn’t have explained it to you if you didn’t immediately almost die?”

“I didn’t—” Nathan took a deep breath and forced his voice to quieten. “I didn’t almost die. Where did you even get that from?”

“Bitch, you stopped breathing.”

“That’s a normal reaction. It happens.”

“Yeah, it happens when you die.”

Nathan wasn’t in the mood to explain panic attacks to a praying mantis, so he kept fixing the shelves. He replaced two more books in the thriller section.

“The fuck’s a panic attack?” Cantis demanded.

“Something,” Nathan replied. The book he pulled out next was an autobiography. It didn’t even belong in the fiction section. Nathan placed it on the nearest table. He didn’t have the energy to move to non-fiction yet.

Cantis crawled over his hand defiantly, raising her forelegs. “Listen. Whatever happened to you then...it’s, like, whatever. But you still need to finish your mission.”

“Or what?”

“What?”

Nathan met Cantis’ eyes. “Let’s say I fail. What then?”

“You get punished.”

Nathan held back a scoff. “No shit. What’s the punishment?”

Cantis fluttered her wings in agitation. “It’s usually for the customer to decide. In this case, the customer is a Creator. And I really, really suggest you don’t piss off a Creator.”

“What I’m hearing is that you need me to do something, the very idea of which makes me physically sick, all to avoid consequences you don’t even know the details of.”

“I don’t need you to do shit,” Cantis snapped. “You think I control this? I’m just doing my fucking job, alright? I face consequences for your failures, too.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “And I should care because?”

“Because fuck you, that’s why.”

“You’re blocking my hand. Move.”

“Fine.” Cantis hopped onto his face instead, scuttling all over it and flapping her wings right in front of Nathan’s eyes. It took all Nathan had to preserve the sanctity of the library and prevent himself from screaming out loud.

Satisfied with the psychological damage she had inflicted on him, Cantis hopped off and shuffled out of the same window she had come in from.

Nathan covered his face with his hands and tried to get the horrible feeling of insect legs out of his mind. Closing his eyes only made the sensation more acute, so he decided to distract himself by fixing the bookshelves again. 

The rage which had initially fired him to start reorganizing the books had fizzled out, and now the task just seemed mind-numbingly dull. Nathan continued with it anyway.

It was almost mechanical, the way he moved. He remembered doing something similar a few years ago at another school library. The shelves had been all messed up as well, but they weren’t colour-coded. Just carelessly placed. The school librarian had given up on keeping the shelves in order. High school students were high school students, after all. They rarely put anything back where they were supposed to be.

He’d told the librarian to leave the job to him in exchange for extra credit. The librarian had gladly agreed. So he’d spent most of his recess periods standing in front of bookshelves and figuring out where each book was supposed to go.

Nathan was startled out of his memory as he accidentally dropped a book. It was a paperback, falling onto the floor with a sad flop. It had a well-designed cover, showing how much thought was put into it. People always said not to judge a book by its cover. People were liars.

A few years ago, he had accidentally dropped a book in a high school library. Someone had picked it up before he could. The stranger, a boy his age, had held it out to him and asked, “Are you the one arranging all the books?”

Nathan had nodded. The boy had leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “I’ll let you in on a professional secret. Never push the books all the way to the back of the shelf.”

He had seen the look on Nathan’s face and laughed quietly. “No, I didn’t just make that up. The books need room to breathe, you see.”

“Who are you?” Nathan had asked.

The boy had held out a hand that Nathan would later find himself holding. “I’m—”

Nathan blinked, his chest burning up. He had been holding his breath without realizing it. Again. 

Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Orion, Cassiopeia.

Nathan inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. It was a trick his school’s counsellor had taught him one time. Inhale. Exhale.

All of that, over a fallen book. He was a mess.

Cantis didn’t understand. He couldn’t even help himself. How was he supposed to help someone else? Much less sa—

Nathan stopped himself from completely forming that word. Not today, not now. 

And that was another reason the “mission”, or whatever, was doomed. He couldn’t even look at the first word on that piece of paper without spiralling. Hell, he blanked out when he saw that word as an integral function of a Word document. It was the force on his trigger finger, and the bullet got closer to the mark every time.

Nathan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One thing at a time. Self-pity later.

He reached out to pick the book up— 

And stopped.

It was just a book, dammit. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Nathan stood and stared at it. Just a book. Just because it reminded him of— of him, didn’t mean it should be stranded on the floor like that. He needed— he needed to pick it up.

A minute passed by as Nathan stood motionless. As if waiting for the book to pick itself up so he wouldn’t have to. 

Then, out of nowhere, someone did pick it up. Nathan winced as the gloved hand grabbed the book by its front cover and carelessly shoved the book onto a shelf.

“You’re not supposed to treat it like that,” Nathan said, reaching in and pulling the book out carefully. Thankfully, it seemed not to have been wrinkled by impact. Nathan checked its summary and frowned. “Also, that’s the wrong shelf.”

“I suggest you stop caring about shelves and start caring about the class you’re skipping,” said a voice Nathan distinctly remembered.

He snapped his head towards it and was met with an all-too-familiar set of stormy-grey eyes, narrowed in annoyance. 

Anger Issues Kid. Caleb.

On second thought, the gloves should have given him away. Nathan doubted anyone else was insane enough to wear them in this weather. He hoped those weren’t woollen. 

Caleb glared at him, that expression seeming to be the only one he was capable of making. Nathan cocked his head.

“Who are you, again?” he asked, just to be difficult.

It worked like magic. Caleb’s glare morphed into a scowl, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t play with me.”

“Don’t let yourself be played with,” Nathan suggested. “You get riled up too easily.”

Caleb closed his eyes and muttered something to himself. Then he looked at Nathan like he was above him. “You’re in trouble.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “What for? Hurting your feelings?”

Caleb scoffed. “For skipping class.”

“And you, of course, are not skipping class, which is why we happened to end up in the same place.”

“Don’t lump me in with the likes of you,” Caleb snapped. “I was told by the teacher to bring you in.”

Nathan didn’t stop the amused quirk of his lips. “You say bring you in like I’m some kind of runaway prisoner.”

“You might as well be,” Caleb said, exasperation seeping into his voice.

“I would never be a prisoner,” Nathan said, shrugging. “I’d just win the court trial.”

“If I were in charge of the judiciary, you wouldn’t get a trial.”

“But you’re not.”

Caleb sighed. “But I’m not.”

Nathan leaned down to meet him at eye-level. “You’re being surprisingly patient today. Where did all that pent-up rage from last night go?”

Something flashed in Caleb’s eyes again. Nathan was able to catch it before it vanished. He let out a huff of laughter. “Feeling guilty?”

“No,” Caleb said immediately.

“Well, you should be. Not only was what you said an extremely low blow, but you also hit me hard enough to draw blood.”

Caleb glared at him. “That’s enough.”

Nathan just smiled. “Was that an attempt at intimidation? Cute.”

Nathan felt deja vu as Caleb lunged forward and grabbed his collar. Man, that really was his go-to attack pattern, huh?

“Shut it,” Caleb hissed.

“You just crossed territories from cute to predictable,” Nathan informed him.

Caleb’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You—!”

“Shush,” Nathan said, grinning, “we’re in a library.”

“You are, indeed, in a library,” a sharp voice cut in, “so may I ask, what the hell is going on here?”