Half a month was enough for a person to get used to another city.
Mist City's sky was forever gray and murky. Eric could no longer remember when he had last seen the sun.
Every morning when he crawled out of bed, the view outside his window was exactly the same as the day before.
Life was like the endlessly turning gears in a factory—monotonous, repetitive, without end.
But lately, a tiny change had appeared in his life.
That Old Bookstore.
Even Eric himself could not explain why, after work each day, he would unconsciously turn into that alley and push open that creaking wooden door.
He had never spent a single coin in that shop.
He had flipped through several of those old books, but he could not recognize most of the words. Even if he recognized them all, he would not understand what they meant.
He was not cut out for reading.
Yet he still wanted to go.
The young owner sitting in the rocking chair possessed a very strange air about him.
But as for what kind of air it was exactly, Eric had thought about it for a long time without finding an accurate word.
Perhaps it was the feeling that something separated him from this world.
Clearly, the man was sitting right there. Clearly, he was speaking to you. Yet you could not help feeling that his attention was elsewhere, looking at things you could not see.
Ever since he was young, Eric's mother had called him "too sensitive."
He could sense things others could not: who was in a bad mood, who was lying, who carried something "unclean" on them.
That sensitivity had helped him avoid several major accidents at the factory. It had also allowed him to live safely in this city crawling