When we arrived at the library, Shiro quickly found his place amongst the books leaving me to try to figure out what to do. I already made the connection that the distortion the ghost girl was referring to had to be the same thing that was on the surface.

Funny thing that name seemed so familiar and yet… I’ve never seen that word in any of the files referring to it. A quick internet search led to a few arguments about whether it was actually named that, ranging from people who believed it was called that, people who believed it was called other various things and a number of people who are ‘absolutely certain’ there was no name for it. Lastly was a couple of people discussing the Mandela effect, and how this was all just a by product of merging realities or something along those lines. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.

“Hello ma’am, can I help you?” A voice called me out of my thoughts. I clenched my teeth a little in agitation, before looking up. But I relaxed when I saw it was Karen, one of the librarians.

“It’s just me Karen.” As difficult as it was for me to process faces, Karen actually had prosopagnosia.

“Orion? Is that really you? I’m so sorry.” She apologized quickly.

“Never mind that, is Q here?”

“She should be in the back.”

“Ah, thanks.” Just as I was about to leave she snapped her fingers.

“Oh yeah, it seems that publishing company is finally up and running again.” She stated excitedly.

“Sweet, do send me a message if anything comes through.”

“Will do!” She almost chirped. “And umm… I’m really really sorry about before… Uh.. Sir.” She said trying to correct herself from before.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

The back wasn’t too far from where we were and I found Q relatively quickly.

“Hey Q-san.” I called out to her.

“Oh, hey, weren’t you dead or something?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Here.” She said handing me a book. “This,” she said as I took it from her hands “is what you’re looking for, right?” The book was lightly colored with a symbol vaguely resembling a star. I was next to certain that this book was in my possession before. I ran my hand along the binding paying careful attention to the texture of it.

“No, well, maybe,” I said, as strange as it was having the book in my hands once more gave me an odd sense of security. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Uh-huh, so, what is it?” She grunted between adjusting the pile of books in her hands.

“You see... The distortion is leaking in and well…” I paused noticing that I had called it that without thinking.

“Ahh, it was bound to happen eventually,” She seemed unphased by it, as if I said nothing amiss. “what’s the plan?”

“Well, I was thinking, since apparently I’m immortal now…” I trailed off sitting down at a nearby table. ‘Or something?’

“So you’re going to try and finish it off then?” She put her hand to her chin thoughtfully.

“Yeah.” I said resting my head in my arms against the table. “Something like that.” If the thing up at the surface really is the same thing as what GG was talking about then if I remove that then maybe she’ll leave me alone.

Q pulled out a map and began to unroll it. “Well, if you are planning to leave the facility, then you’ll need maps of the upper floors.”

‘It’s been so long, I don’t think I could even remember the layout.’

“But, shouldn’t you have something already?” She questioned.

“My house disappeared so…” I said solemnly only just now a feeling of despair hit me.

“Ah, that sucks.” She said rolling up the map in her hands and reaching for another one. “Nice hair cut by the way.”

“Thanks.” It was a pretty decent haircut for me, a lot easier to manage than the other one too.