Library After School

The Weight of Small Things

Episode Three: The favorite book

Scene: Wed - Kiyosato Town, Used Bookstore

Rin doesn't check her messages often, but Naomi's text is waiting for her after school.

“Want to come to the bookstore with me? I need something for Lit class. You don’t have to talk. Just come.”

Rin stares at it for a while, then types and erases three different replies before settling on:

“Okay.”

The bookstore is small — just one room, the walls lined with wooden shelves that reach too high to be useful. It smells like paper and dust and something like cinnamon. There’s a fan in the corner turning lazily, making the light flicker across the floor.

Naomi walks ahead, eyes scanning the titles like she’s looking for something specific. Rin trails behind, fingers trailing the spines.

They don’t talk at first.

There’s music playing faintly from a speaker near the register. Something instrumental. Something slow.

Then Naomi stops.

She picks up a book — paperback, creased along the spine, the cover faded but still intact.

Rin freezes.

She knows that book. She loves that book. I have read it maybe ten times. The story is about a girl who stops talking for a year, but starts writing letters to strangers instead.

Naomi doesn’t open it. She just holds it for a moment, like she’s weighing something invisible.

“I used to have this,” Naomi says. “Lost it when we moved. Funny what you remember missing.”

Rin steps closer. Her voice is quiet. “That’s my favorite.”

Naomi looks up, a little surprised. Then she smiles. “Of course it is.”

They buy it. Naomi insists on paying.

“I’ll read it again,” she says. “Then we can talk about it.”

Rin shrugs, but her heart does something strange — like the flutter of pages being turned.

Scene: On the Walk Home

It’s a little past sunset now. The air smells like rain again, though none has fallen yet.

Neither of them speaks, but Naomi doesn’t walk fast, and Rin doesn’t drift behind. They stay side by side.

At the corner where they usually split, Naomi pauses.

“You know,” she says, “I think we’ve been friends for a while now. We just didn’t know it yet.”

Rin doesn't answer. Not out loud.

But she nods — once — and Naomi understands.

Scene: Rin’s Room – Midnight

The book lies open in her hands, but Rin hasn’t turned the page in a while.

The words blur at the edges — not because she’s tired, but because her mind’s somewhere else.

She hears Naomi’s voice again, like it’s still hanging in the air from the other day:

“I think we’ve been friends for a while now. We just didn’t know it yet.”

Rin blinks slowly. That word.

Friend.

She mouths it silently, like trying it on for the first time.

In her world, days always pass like background noise. Even when the rooms were full, she felt like she was on the other side of a wall no one else noticed. She’d gotten used to that. Used to be the girl who sat near windows, who volunteered to clean the empty art room, who filled her notebook margins with names of imaginary people she’d never met.

She never called it “lonely.” Just normal.

But now Naomi’s voice keeps playing in her head. Her quiet confidence. The way she didn’t ask Rin to talk — just invited her to be.

And Rin went.

And now... here she is, thinking about someone else in the stillness, wondering if they’re thinking about her too.

She flips the page — not to keep reading, but to touch something steady.

Then, aloud, barely above a whisper:

“Is this... what having a friend feels like?”

The question hangs in the air. No one answers.

But her chest aches, in a way that isn’t heavy. More like warmth.

She presses the book to her chest, eyes fluttering closed.

And for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t feel quite so unnecessary.

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Comments

Jayrbr

Jayrbr

Nail-biting suspense!

2025-07-25

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