"Bookworm."
The old man interrupted the monster's story.
Listening to a monster talk about its past was a novel experience, but the old man still had many questions to ask.
He could only interrupt the monster's enthusiasm for the time being.
"If you've been here all along, why couldn't I see you before?"
The old man was puzzled.
"Who knows?"
The bookworm rolled its eyes.
"Who knows why you suddenly started seeing me?"
"And it scared—" me half to death.
The bookworm swallowed the rest of its sentence.
It was too embarrassing to say out loud.
"Is that so?"
The old man murmured, "I don't know."
Then he smiled. "Is this God's parting gift to me?"
In his final moments, the other side of the world had been revealed to him.
So monsters really did exist in this world.
Those strange tales weren't just made up after all.
The old man felt his heart beating a little fast.
He rubbed his chest.
At his age, a heartbeat that fast wasn't good.
A thought suddenly came to him, and his brow furrowed slightly.
"Bookworm—"
"Were you... eating a book just now?"
"Mm."
Seeing the old man's expression, the bookworm felt a moment of unease. After all these years, it knew how much this human cherished books. But then it stood its ground. "Eating books is what I do."
It was a bookworm. Bookworms ate books.
It was their nature.
The old man understood what the monster meant.
He wasn't so hidebound that he'd insist a carnivore switch to eating plants.
But eating books...
"Will any book do?"
The old man murmured, as though asking the bookworm, though he might just as well have been talking to himself.
"Then..."
"Will any paper do?"
The old man's eyes lit up.
"What