Chương 2: Would Reading a Weird Book Change Him?

Kichan woke the next morning before his alarm. That was not a good sign. The eyelids of someone who had slept badly always felt unnaturally heavy, and the light from his phone screen stabbed at his eyes like the thinnest knife in the world. Even so, he stayed under the blanket and reached out with one arm to grab it. The balance in his banking app was a little higher than it had been last night.

The travel money he had saved to go somewhere with Sooyeon had now become money that had absolutely nothing to do with Sooyeon. The numbers sat there as if money knew nothing about human feelings, and for some reason that annoyed him.

"Lucky you. Even after getting dumped, you're still just a number." Muttering to himself, Kichan got out of bed. The guitar in the corner of the room was still standing where it always stood. None of the strings had snapped, and the low note he had plucked yesterday was long gone. Objects were shameless like that. A person could crumple overnight, but the guitar just sat there smelling faintly of wood, as if nothing had happened. Kichan looked away from it and turned on the computer.

The deleted post's URL was still saved in Notepad. This post does not exist. When he opened the address again, the same message appeared. He hit refresh three times, then stopped on the fourth because even he found himself embarrassing.

"If it's deleted, it's deleted." That was what he said, but his hands were already moving toward the search bar. Voynich manuscript. Old bookshop in northern Italy. Posts claiming that when you tried to photograph the book, it was not you who left a record of it—the book recognized you first. Private European collections. Tourist antiquarian bookstore. The search results were mostly disappointing. Blog posts recycled the same copied lines.

Every video thumbnail had the same expression, like it alone knew all the secrets of the world. One article claimed the Voynich manuscript contained alien farming techniques. Another said it was just doodles drawn by a bored medieval monk. Kichan found the second one far more believable. People did a lot of weird things when they got bored. Monday morning meetings were proof enough of that. Even so, he did not close the window. It was time for work.

He was supposed to shower, get dressed, ride the subway, sit down at his desk, and organize the filenames on a set of entirely meaningless report files. A normal human being would have done that first. Kichan was, in fact, a normal human being. He was just a little short on the energy required to act like one today. He put his charger in his laptop bag and sat down at the entryway to put on his shoes.

"You're not eating breakfast?" His mother called from the kitchen.

"I'll eat at work."

"How many times have I heard that and watched you leave anyway?" She clicked her tongue and handed him a small plastic bag. Inside were two kimbap rolls. The seaweed was still a little warm.

"Don't eat it on the bus. Wait until you get off."

"I'm taking the subway."

"Then don't eat it on the subway. Wait until you get off." The logic remained unchanged. Kichan took the bag.

"Thanks."

"What's with your face? Didn't sleep?"

"Sort of." His mother did not press him. She only brushed a speck of dust from his shoulder with her fingertips. That brief touch made the word Italy, sitting in his Notepad from last night, suddenly feel like an enormous crime. He still could not tell her. No, he absolutely should not tell her. What parent would calmly send off a son who had been dumped and decided to fly to Italy in pursuit of some weird book? The area in front of the office building was absurdly bright.

The sky was blue, and an abandoned cup of iced coffee on a convenience store table glittered in the sunlight. The world looked completely uninterested in the fact that Kichan had spent last night hanging onto a single deleted post. He went into the office and sat down. The Excel file he had left open the previous day was still on the monitor. Settlement details by client. Rows and columns and numbers.

Not the kind of thing anyone should need to know in order to live a meaningful life, yet exactly the kind of thing you had to know if you wanted to get paid. As Kichan moved the mouse, a thought came to him all at once: the borders of the cells looked like leaf veins. Horizontal lines and vertical lines. Blank spaces. Numbers flowing between them. He blinked. Excel was just Excel.

"Assistant Manager Han?" Assistant Manager Park from the next desk leaned over.

"Did you send yesterday's file by email?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I did."

"The filename looked kind of weird." Kichan opened his sent mail. The attachment was supposed to be called settlement_final. xlsx. Instead, the screen read: settlement_leafvein. xlsx Kichan stared at the filename for a long moment.

"Assistant Manager Han?"

"Ah. Sorry. Didn't sleep much."

"It's okay. Honestly, I think it's better than final_final_realfinal." Park laughed it off. Kichan laughed too. The laugh stopped at his lips. At lunchtime, he took the kimbap and sat on a small bench behind the office building. The sun was warm, and the kimbap was good. The fact that kimbap could still taste good the day after getting dumped lowered his faith in humanity just a little. He took out his phone. He opened the old board address from last night again. This post does not exist.

He changed the search terms. If you try to photograph it, the book reads you first. There were not many results. Most of them were bizarre sentences that looked like machine translation gone wrong. The words were Korean, but the tone did not feel human. Kichan skimmed through them, then stopped at the comments section on one tiny blog. There was a single comment. North. Not the city with waterways—the mountains. A tourist bookstore sign. The real book is in the room inside. The commenter was anonymous.

The date was seven years old. There was only one reply beneath it. Is it still there? Nothing followed. Kichan stopped chewing. A city with waterways probably meant Venice. The mountains would be farther north, maybe above Milan. A tourist bookstore sign. The real book is in the room inside. It was a ridiculously flimsy clue. And yet, somehow, it was enough to move a person. Kichan opened a flight app. Departure: Incheon. Arrival: Milan. The cheapest flight had two layovers.

The travel time was long enough for Kichan to reconsider his entire life. Checked baggage cost extra, and the reviews made it clear he should not expect much from the in-flight meal. He looked at the price and closed his eyes. Then he thought about the money he had saved for a trip with Sooyeon. There was no one to travel with anymore. And leaving the money alone would not erase what she had said. When you play guitar, you look fine. He opened his eyes.

"Fine. Then let's see what kind of mess I look like when I'm not playing guitar." The line was so pathetic it actually made paying easier. He entered the card number, filled in his passport information, and stopped three separate times before pressing confirm. All three times, he thought quitting would be the normal choice. On the fourth, he pressed it. Payment complete. Green letters flashed on the screen. Kichan stuffed the last piece of kimbap into his mouth and stared blankly at his phone.

The moments that changed your life were sloppier than people liked to think. The moment you got dumped in a cafe was sloppy. The moment you canceled a savings account was sloppy. The moment you bought a plane ticket to Italy was sloppy too. A bench behind the office. Two rolls of kimbap. Two layovers. Checked baggage sold separately. That was his new beginning. The afternoon passed more slowly than usual. Kichan edited reports, sent emails, and laughed at the team leader's jokes with appropriate moderation.

But every so often, something prickled strangely at his fingertips. Especially at the tip of the index finger he used on the mouse. As if a trace remained there, like the mark left after holding down a guitar string. On the subway ride home, he opened the blog comment again. North. Toward the mountains. A tourist bookstore sign. The real book is in the room inside. He was about to screenshot it, then stopped. A line from last night's post came back to him. They tell you not to take pictures.

If you try to photograph it, it's not that you leave a record of the book—the book recognizes you first.

"A screenshot of a comment isn't the book." Muttering that to himself, he took the screenshot. The screen went black for a second. When it came back, the file had been saved. But the letters in the comment looked slightly blurred. Kichan frowned. North. Toward the mountains. A tourist bookstore sign. Beneath those lines was a tiny stroke that had not been there before. It was neither text nor picture. Thin as a leaf vein, but not as neat as musical staff lines.

Yet the moment Kichan saw it, he had the bizarre sense that he knew which direction to go. Not left. Right. Not toward the canals. Toward the mountain roads. Not the entrance. The room inside. He flipped the phone facedown onto his lap. His heart was beating a little faster. The subway rocked on as usual. A student across from him dozed with earphones in. A tired office worker stood by the door with one hand on the strap. The world was still perfectly ordinary. That only made Kichan curse under his breath.

"Ah, damn it. What the hell am I even doing?" That night, he told his parents he was taking vacation from work.

"All of a sudden?" His mother looked up.

"I just want to take a break."

"Where are you going?" Kichan lowered his eyes to his rice bowl. A cube of tofu floated on top of the doenjang stew.

"Italy." The sound of chopsticks stopped. His father looked away from the news. His mother stared at him for a moment, then asked the most practical question possible.

"With what money?"

"I have some saved up."

"Alone?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" Kichan searched for an answer. Because I got dumped. Because I'm going to look for a weird book. Because I read that if you try to take a picture of it, the book recognizes you first. None of those were things he could say to his parents. In the end, he picked the least strange answer.

"I just... think I might feel better if I go somewhere for a bit." His mother did not look at him long. Instead, she scooped another spoonful of rice and set it by his bowl.

"Eat first, then talk." His father silently turned the volume of the news down. Kichan could not tell whether that silence meant permission or worry. That night, he took out an old backpack instead of a suitcase. He packed a few clothes, a charger, his passport, underwear, and a notebook. He did not bring the guitar. Still, just before falling asleep, he thought he heard one string hum very faintly from the corner of the room. Kichan opened his eyes. The guitar had not moved. No one had touched the strings.

He stared at it in the dark for a long time before shutting his eyes again. In his dream, the yellow cafe lights came on once more. A voice that sounded like Sooyeon's said it this time. A little closer than before.

"You're late." Even in the dream, Kichan was annoyed.

"I know. That's why I'm going." At that answer, whatever it was smiled very slowly. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.