Chương 90: What Tessara Knows

Tessara had learned Japanese from Dr. Hana Sato.

"She came here twelve years ago," Tessara said.

"Alive, exhausted, and offended by tea."

"That sounds Japanese."

"She said boiling leaves in water should not produce so many opportunities for failure." Kaito smiled despite himself. Tessara described the same woman from Sable's memory: short black hair, white coat, pens in every pocket. Hana stayed six weeks. She slept badly, wrote constantly, and taught Tessara Japanese because one message had to reach Kaito without translation.

"Where did she come from?"

"She arrived through the archive door. It opened onto a laboratory for eleven seconds."

"Where did she go?"

"A small boat toward the mainland. She said she had to repair what she could."

"The Unwritten?"

"That was the name she used for people helping her." Sable followed every word.

"Did Hana create you?" Kaito asked her.

"I don't know." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Tessara looked toward the empty air beside him.

"You can hear Sable?"

"No. Hana told me what she would call herself." Kaito had to stand. He walked to the dock and back.

"Give me the message." Tessara switched to Japanese. She spoke slowly, with the careful rhythm of a sentence practiced thousands of times.

"The game wasn't based on the world. The world was based on the game. And I put it there deliberately. Forgive me. — Hana." Kaito read the words again in his head. Then again.

"Based on the game," he said.

"She used my design as a template."

"That is what she wanted you to understand first."

"First?"

"The archive holds the rest. She forbade me from opening it."

"Is she alive?"

"I have heard rumors. A woman matching her description directs The Unwritten. I have also heard she died nine years ago, seven years ago, and last winter. Hana understood the value of several deaths." Kaito returned to the bench because his legs no longer trusted the dock.

"Did she know me?"

"She knew your name, your work, and that you would come. She spoke about you as someone she had failed before meeting."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Many accurate things don't." Tessara offered the book. The memory seal on its cover responded to Kaito but did not open. The archive door behind them remained closed.

"You must decide to enter," Tessara said.

"The library will not force a memory on its owner."

"I'm not the owner."

"The library disagrees." Kaito stared at the Japanese message written in Tessara's hand on the first page. Every dungeon, character, war, and cruel line of lore might exist because Hana had deliberately made his design real. Domrek stepped off the Grey Line but stopped at the top of the gangplank. He waited there, close enough to help and far enough to let Kaito breathe. Kaito sat on the dock stones. Tessara picked up her worn book and read the same page she had probably read yesterday.

The water moved against the pilings. Nobody tried to make the message easier.