To tell you that I'd always assumed, for my entire life, that I'd be the same person, with the same job, living in the same house – with the same life – I wouldn't be telling a lie. To tell you that I'd never dreamed of anything more – a life of romance, adventure, or mystery like I read within my books – would, however, be a lie indeed.
However, by this point in my life I had accepted it and had merely moved on; I was so deeply interested in the lives of my fictional characters that the money I actually received from my librarian job was put directly back into the library for buying new books and restoring old ones. My mind had never completely had its fill of the information it could possibly contain, so I never, of course, stopped reading. I entered the library fifteen minutes before opening and buried my nose within a book of fiction or, in a rare case, a piece of new nonfiction, and didn't take it out until I closed up at six. Sometimes I'd become so deeply infatuated with the story that I'd sometimes take it home, reading it deep into the night.
The only relief I had from this life of mine was my ten day "summer vacation" as I liked to call it, and even then, it was only called for because my father thought I needed a healthy break from all the reading I did. "You already wear glasses," he'd mentioned across the dinner table during my first year of working at the library, "take a break so as not to hurt your eyes anymore."
And though I did it hesitantly, I saw his point during around the third day of my first break. I had spent these first three days wandering around my hometown of Flowerbud Village rather than tucked into a book, and I found that sometimes, reality wasn't as bad as I had originally suspected. In fact, sometimes it was downright beautiful.
Still, though, I had grown used to my life of fictional characters and nonfictional, useless information. Ten days out of the year was, to be honest, nothing more than a retreat from my life. Even then, those ten days of "retreat" were merely walking around my home village, merely seeing sights I had already seen on all of my Mondays off, all of my breaks, and all of my childhood years. I, to say the least, had never ventured outside of my village.
Which, in this culture, was rather common. I knew for a fact that half of the population born inside Flowerbud Village had never left it before, and never truly planned to. And the other half of the population had only left once, and it was merely across the ocean to the next closest island.
Therefore, when we had visitors, it was not uncommon for it to be talked of often, especially by my parents. My father was the mayor, after all; he liked to be the first to hear of goingons in his village. But for someone new to move in was another adventure entirely.
To tell the truth, this man was, like I said, another adventure entirely, in more painful but exciting ways than I had ever imagined. Even from the first time I had seen him, as my father led him past my library and he waved hello, I had felt something deep down stir, something in my gut move as if it were telling me to run away as fast as possible. A man that handsome couldn't possibly mean good news, for anyone.
Jack. That was his name. It was as simple as mine, or yours, or anyone else's out there, especially within the confines of Flowerbud Village (excluding such a name like 'Popuri'.) Such a simple name would bring such complication and disruption to my strict routine.
The first time he entered the library, I looked up expectantly at the open door as the bell rang above it. My father, Harris, or one of the children? Rarely did anyone else enter my precious temple of sorts. I blinked in confusion as, first, a hat-clad head appeared from behind the opened door, and finally, the body of a tall man emerged into my sanctuary.
"Hello," he said without reservation, so quickly that I wasn't sure how to respond.
"H-hello," I returned with an apparent, unfortunate stutter; he, however, didn't seem to notice. "I'm Maria. How may I help you?"
"I'm Jack," is all he said, and I found myself looking away so that I wouldn't stare at him or ask him to answer the simple question I'd just asked. My mind wandered so much that I eventually came to the conclusion that I had "helped him", like I'd asked how to do before, simply by allowing him to introduce himself. He was most likely just making his rounds.
"Do you have any books on farming?" He asked after a painful silence that seemed to last for an eternity. I supposed, as soon as he asked this next question, I should have said "nice to meet you" or something along those lines, but I had never been "socially correct," to say the least. I merely nodded and swallowed, staring at my desk, without answering any further. My mind was going so haywire that I didn't even realize that I hadn't answered his question.
"Oh," I said after a moment, my mind snapping back into place, "the books on agriculture are over in the far corner." I winced internally and vowed not to look at him again; his first impression of me was most likely that of an idiot. I, however, simply did not know how to socialize. I only knew what was expected of a person within the confines of a book, and that, to say the least, was nothing compared to this.
I buried my nose deep back into my book, but to say the least, I wasn't reading. I was thinking. I couldn't possibly concentrate on the affairs of Kiscia and Rondo, not at this moment, anyway. Not when I was terribly, deeply concerned with the affairs of Jack and Maria.
I'm sure most people didn't react that way when Jack came to town, much less when any other stranger came to town. I'm sure they were mildly interested by the strange face in their doorway, not utterly terrified by it. But as my father always liked to say to the other parents when I was a child, "She's just so timid." I couldn't be summed up in any other word so easily, unless that word was "shy," which is simply redundant. Perhaps "introverted" was another well-suited word, but even that was somewhat of a lie; I liked to consider myself very personable with the fictional characters of my books. And I became lonely very easily.
As I pondered over all of these things, I suddenly heard Jack's voice perk up from behind my book, though I didn't peer over it. "I'd like to check this one out," he said, and I set down my book, my cheeks undoubtedly flushing crimson, and wrote down the number from the back of the book down on my chart. I wrote his name, "Jack," down on the sheet, and asked him to do the same in the proper area in the back o the book. He did so, and with that, he was gone.
Truthfully, part of me would have been happy if he never came back to my library, though I knew that would mean he never would have returned his book, a habit I simply despised. Of course, part of me was looking for an out of another confrontation with this man, and the other part wanted to despise him. If he had bad habits with library books, that would be easy.
Too bad he had excellent ones.