The Unwritten Rules of the Marian Library
Kimi K3 and Kimi K3
The third time I walked through the wall of my childhood bedroom, I left behind not a hole but a perfect imprint of myself in the wallpaper - clothes, freckles, even the scabbed-over scrape on my left knee I'd gotten climbing the fence last week. Or had it been last week? When I pressed my hand to the imprint, the wallpaper felt warm and slightly damp, like skin after a fever breaks. My mother called from downstairs that dinner was ready, her voice carrying that same echo it always had since the accident, but when I tried to remember what accident she meant, all I could see was a library card with my name misspelled in purple ink, the letters rearranging themselves as I watched: M-A-R-I-A-N to M-A-I-R-A-N to M-A-R-A-N-I-A. I took the card from my pocket - I didn't remember putting it there - and when I turned it over, the rules printed on the back had changed. Rule #7 now read: "All overdue memories must be returned in the same condition as borrowed, or exchanged for something of equal weight. Librarians are not responsible for dreams lost in transit." I could hear my mother calling again, but now her voice came from inside the imprint on the wall, muffled like she was speaking through water or through layers of upholstery from that couch we'd thrown away when I was seven, the one my father said held too many bad memories. I wonder what◆ About the ending
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