Chapter 1: The Locked Book

"Hey, Leon. Want to come with us to the cafe?"

Hakaba looked up as his fellow students walked up to him.

"...What kind of cafe?"

"Royal Aroma. It's really popular with the girls."

"No thanks. I'll pass." Hakaba said as he got up, "I have things to do."

"Like what?"

"Mostly homework."

"You're pretty nerdy aren't you?" His classmate laughed, "Alright. Suit yourself."

As Hakaba walked home from school, he passed by the Royal Aroma cafe and stopped to glance inside. It was a small shop but kept busy with cliques of girls that he recognized from his school. Looking at the menu and prices and slowly translating what was on sale, the prices seemed fair enough. For a moment he considered going inside. Turning his attention back to the cafe, he passed his eyes over table after table of foreigners. And he walked off.

It has been a year since Hakaba had moved from Japan to America. He had decided to go to an American college for his education and for all intents and purposes, he was doing well enough. Still, there was a nagging sense of homesickness that he couldn't shake off. Hakaba couldn't remember the last time he ever used Japanese. But he didn't want to return to Japan. For one he didn't have the money. For another, his parents were very enthusiastic in sending him off.

DONG!

Hakaba jumped as a clock began to chime right next to him. It repeated itself 3 times, marking the time as 3:00 before settling down. It was an old grandfather clock complete with a compartment for the swinging pendulum. Taking a step back, Hakaba looked up at the store that the grandfather clock stood in front of. It was an antique store. Newly opened as Hakaba didn't remember there being one here every other time he walked home. Inside there were shelves and displays of various trinkets but there were even more shelves. All of them filled with books. Curious, Hakaba walked inside.

"Welcome!" The storekeeper grinned as Hakaba walked in, "Looking for something?"

"Not particularly." He answered.

"Alright then. Take your time."

Clearly not yet fully settled in, the shopkeeper returned to moving and opening boxes behind his counter.

Walking around the store, Hakaba passed over the antique trinkets. There were mostly a few carved, wooden clocks although Hakaba stopped to stare at what looked to be a mechanical deer chaser. Another shelf were fully of antique dolls of varying creepiness. Noting one with a pull cord, Hakaba picked it up and gave the cord a pull only for the doll's head to pop off. Hakaba quickly put the head back on and returned it to the shelf.

Moving onto the bookshelves, there were quite a few American classics that he remembered his literature teacher referencing. There were even books from other languages, including Russian, German and Arabic. Curious, Hakaba looked around until he found a small section of Japanese books. Taking comfort in the familiar characters, he recognized most of the titles on there as children stores. Hakaba sighed. He was being nostalgic but not that nostalgic. He had hoped that there would be something with a more novel plot. Looking around the shelf one more time, he spotted a spine with no title on it. Unable to restrain his curiosity again, he pulled the book out and to his surprise, found a book bound with metal and gears. There was a mechanical lock preventing the book from opening and the only words on it were in characters that Hakaba realized came from no language being used today.

"Excuse me." Hakaba turned to the shopkeeper, "About this book..."

"Oh. That book." The shopkeeper walked up to him with a furrowed brow, "It came from Japan but for all I can tell it's not in Japanese. The lock took me a long time to undo with trial and error and when I opened it up it was blank save for one page with more words I didn't recognize."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Now I'm selling it as a novelty puzzle diary. If you can figure out the lock that is."

"So you're not going to tell me the answer?"

"To be honest, I forgot the answer." The shopkeeper chuckled sheepishly, "It was a long time ago and I don't have time to trial and error it again."

"Hmm..."

"If you want it, I'll give it to you for a discount."

Hakaba returned to his apartment with the locked book in hand. Part of him was still unsure of why he had bought the book but he needed something to distract himself from his homesickness anyway. Taking a better look along the entire cover, he could see what looked to be runes or something scrawled all over the metallic bindings. Turning to the lock itself, he recognized the same symbols on a display and a disk beneath it. From the appearance of the disk, he guessed there were 10 different distinct characters. There was a marker on the disk with a window, resting over a blank space. Taking hold of it and dragging it along the disk's edge, Hakaba pulled it to one of the strange characters and let it go. A sound of gears spinning and wound wires resounded as the marker pulled itself back up to the blank spot and one of the display's characters changed to the one he had highlighted with the marker.

"So it's like rotary phone?" Hakaba frowned as he tried it again with similar results.

Turning to the display again, he noticed another marker on it that he could drag to highlight another character. Pulling the disk's marker again, the new character that he had highlighted on the display changed to the one he inputted. Pulling the marker over the entire display, Hakaba concluded that there were 4 distinct characters that he could change.

"4 positions. 10 characters." Hakaba muttered to himself.

Doing some quick math, and one more experiment, Hakaba recalled his Probability and Calculations class and concluded that the lock was a combination and there were 10,000 different possible combinations.

Wincing at the challenge ahead of him, Hakaba quickly did the obvious, putting in the same character for every slot on the display. None of them yielded results. Disheartened, he placed the book down again and sighed. He could trial and error it like the shopkeeper, sure, but he didn't have that much time to waste. If only he could tell what the characters meant. Putting the book aside for now, Hakaba pulled out his homework.

Lunch pulled around the next day and Hakaba brought the locked book. He hadn't have time to think about it since last night. Looking at the dial again and recalling how similar it was to a rotary phone, Hakaba hypothesized that the dial and characters were numbers. It seemed to fit. 0-9 would make 10 distinct characters. That still didn't tell him what would work and what wouldn't though.

"Hey, Leon. What's that?"

The classmate from yesterday walked up and looked at the locked book.

"It's a book."

"Are you trying to solve the lock?"

"Yeah."

"Neat. Mind if I take a look?"

Hakaba handed the book over to him. His classmate frowned at the strange characters and looked around the book's covers for clues. He then picked at the lock, as he began to realize how it functioned.

"So it's like those old phones." His classmate said as he took one last pass over the covers, "Yeah, sorry. No idea what these characters are."

"That's fine." Hakaba said as he took the book back, "I only got it yesterday so I'm not that far into solving it."

"Well good luck then." His classmate shrugged and walked off.

Lunched passed with no progress and class began again though Hakaba was less keen on the lessons and note-taking and more focused on solving the book now. During Math class he tried thinking of a way to mathematically solve the puzzle. During literature he tried thinking of the characters as letters and pondered what kind of 4 letter words might work. The puzzle remained stuck in his mind as he left school that day, still unsolved.

In the days that followed, the book would remain shut as Hakaba gave in and tried systematic trial and error, noting down 10 combinations per day. He only made it to 50 combinations before he realized that the semester was coming to a close and that the finals were fast approaching. Once again pushing the book out of his mind, he buckled down and began to study for the finals.

The finals came and gone and with a small break afterward, Hakaba toyed with the puzzle some more until he enrolled in the next semester. The book would once again be forgotten as the next semester approached and Hakaba began new classes. Classes that would be the most important ones for his major. Biology and Chemistry were the most important ones he would begin taking but on a whim he had decided to take a History class to fill out his semester.

As the school year began he had to push the book out of mind but as he settled into his classes the book returned, taking up his desk and curiosity.

"Leon."

Hakaba jolted awake as his Biology teacher addressed him.

"Class is over." His teacher said as he looked around at the departing students.

"Sorry." Hakaba said as he put away his books, "I'll be sure to pay attention next time."

"If that was true, that'd be great." The teacher sighed, "You've been bringing that book in for a while, is it important to you?"

Hakaba paused, "...It's something I decided for myself."

"What does that mean?" The teacher frowned, "Well, whatever. Just try to not fall asleep next class."

Hakaba nodded and quickly left the classroom, locked book in his hand. As he walked to his next class, he studied the book again. He had felt something on the cover as he slept on it. Rubbing his finger around the display's cover, he located a small button on the side. Pressing down on it, the display's symbols changed to a new combination. Though the lock still won't bulge. Frowning, Hakaba put the book away and broke into a run towards his next class.

Before Hakaba knew it, a week had passed for his new semester and he wasn't faring well. His grades were dropping and the only development on the book was the fact that the button he had discovered seemed to reset the display to a certain combination though the symbols and their meaning remained a mystery to him. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he got off his bed and went to the locked book again. It had been disrupting his mind the entire week and he can't afford to slip up. If the book was what was getting in his way, he'll solve it and be done with it.

Pressing and resetting the display once more, Hakaba studied the symbols. Taking out a sheet of paper, he wrote down the symbols that the display recorded and made a copy of the 10 symbols on the dials. Returning to his number theory as a starting point, he attached a number to each of the symbols. 0-9, clockwise from the starting blank space. Like any modern lock. With that caveat, he tried translating the display's default symbols. 1470.

Hakaba stopped. Even with the assumptions he made, the translation could imply a cornucopia of ideas. Holding his head in his hands, he slowly regained his draining sanity and refocused on the puzzle. 1470. What meaning did that have to him?

…

Nothing. 1470 brought up nothing.

Digging into his bookbag for inspiration, he bought out his Biology textbook. The book was mechanical in nature. It was doubtful that it would be related to Biology. Placing the textbook on the floor, he pulled out another one. Chemistry? ...Maybe? Although he didn't think it would be wise to preform chemistry experiments on the book. Regardless it might hold a clue. Setting the book aside, he pulled out his remaining textbook. History.

1470. A year?

Energized, Hakaba flipped through his book. 1470 was the start of the Anglo-Hanseatic War. 1470 was the year that the printing press was invented. There was significance in the year 1470 but nothing that really gave him any idea of what to input. Closing the history book, he tried to think of other possibilities.

"It came from Japan..."

Hakaba frowned. If the book came from Japan...what happened in 1470 in Japan?

…

The Sengoku Era.

It wasn't the start but it was certainly near the start of the Sengoku Era. Turning back to the book, he studied the symbols again, trying to see if they resembled anything from that wartorn era. Nothing came to mind regarding the symbols, but another bit of logic came to mind. 1470 was what the book choose but that's not what he needed to input. He needed to input something else. 1470 only held tangential relevance.

Scowling, Hakaba turned his thinking to other ideas. What could he put in?

…

Today's year?

With nothing else to go on, Hakaba turned to his questionable key and put together the symbols for today's year. With a sense of dissonance, he dialed the number in. With a sense of disbelief, the lock popped open.

Hakaba's mind raced as he checked, double checked and triple checked whenever or not he was actually seeing this. The lock was open. Immediately, he threw open the book and scoured the pages. Just as the shopkeeper had said, it was all empty. Turning back to the front, Hakaba found the symbols that the shopkeeper had also mentioned. The only thing written in the book. It was definitely similar to the symbols on the cover but for some reason they felt familiar. For a moment, Hakaba felt like he could read them.

"...Ze...kariki?"

The book suddenly burst out light from it's pages, nearly blinding Hakaba. Peering from between his fingers, he saw a form of what seemed to be a small child slowly float out of the light and out of the pages. In shock, he dropped the book as the light began to die out and the child tumbled onto the floor. There was a small moan as the child got up and looked around at the room. Turning around the child spotted Hakaba.

"...Are you my master?" The child asked.