February 15th, 1991
On this day, I dreamt—and from the dream I wrote,
A winding story wrought to pass from keeping,
Lest mystery linger past its due course.
So it is lost.
When it is finished, I will unwrite its ending,
Unmake the final stroke of the epilogue,
And lay myself into the rest thereafter.
Forever.
. . .
"The final sentence left the protagonist and his companions behind, at the threshold of the epilogue. I waited from afar, however, observing them beyond the fourth wall..."
"..."
Hoku closed the final volume he'd endured over the past months and regarded the cover with disdain.
He sighed inwardly. 'This is definitely the most disappointing ending so far.'
Hoku slumped deeper into his wooden chair before grazing a finger along the white crease on the book's spine.
'Still... our situations might've ended up much the same,' he thought.
At present, Jiang Hao was his only remaining guardian.
He had taken Hoku in when he was fifteen, shortly before he turned a year older. It was also after Hoku woke from a two-day coma in the hospital that he first came to see him.
Despite nothing abnormal being found with his head, it was only after he was asked who he was that they realized nothing remained of the sixteen years that had come before.
Thus, the room in which he now stayed was filled with books, their abundance almost garish.
The walls shelved mostly antique books, an inevitable collector's interest when one's life revolves around teaching history.
Some of them were newer, but not too recent.
Further down the stacks were books written by authors that were old, but still alive.
Those were the stories that fascinated him most.
Hoku sighed and stood from his chair, then dragged it across the room to the edge of the shelf, and pushed down on the backrest to balance himself on top of the chair.
There was a gap in the high-middle shelf precisely the same width as the book in his hand.
He pushed the book back into place.
Hoku had never shared affection for the pieces of history his uncle received, as gifts from either his fond female colleagues or the online websites he spent his evenings scrolling through rather than marking his students' papers.
He peered at the top shelf as he stepped down from the chair.
Suddenly, a distinct book with a stark white spine and no dust cover, or branded title, seized his attention.
He stared for a moment at the only white book on a shelf of books with eroding spines, before pulling it from its place on the shelf.
Hoku brushed his thumb over the pages and studied the strange blank cover.
When he opened the book, the pages sprang apart at once. There was no dedication on the first page, nor any mark of an author.
The next was the same, and the one after that no different, each page empty in exactly the same way, as though whatever name should have been there had never existed at all.
The pages settled where they were. He shifted his grip and skimmed forward again, letting them slide until something unfamiliar caught his attention.
The pages settled unevenly, one slipping over the other on its own. Hoku let them be and looked closer as something unfamiliar caught his eye.
The illustration showed the interior of a cluttered room. The space was wide, its walls crowded with disorderly shelves packed tight with books. A few candlesticks were fixed along the side walls, their shading heavier than those set along the center, the perspective drawn carefully.
He turned the page.
The next image narrowed its focus to the central wall alone. Among the darkened spines, one book stood apart, left untouched by the same tint. Its spine was white, standing out sharply against the rest.
'Is it supposed to be symbolic? Like an art piece?' He pondered, furrowing his eyebrows.
He peeked again at the filled pages, though nothing looked out of place.
However, he noticed upon second glance that a rather large painting of a key was propped against one of the bookshelves, and the matrix of the painting was absent.
Hoku supposed that it was an unfinished painting.
Losing interest, he rested it on the edge of the shelf, not feeling the need to put it back right away.
Unbeknownst to him, there wasn't enough space on the edge to balance the book, and it fell to the floor the instant he let go of it.
Hoku briefly examined the book on the floor.
His uncle granted him access to almost every book in the room, but set distinct limits on the ones at the top.
Figuring he could hide it in the desk, he bent down to pick it up, but something was there that he hadn't noticed while flipping through the pages.
Peeking from the top, was a corner of a page, its shade much whiter than the other pages.
Hoku instinctively pulled the page from where it was seemingly hidden, confirming that it was not content from the book itself, but rather a poorly folded envelope that appeared to have been in the book sooner than when it was 'published'.
'Huh?'
Hoku turned the envelope over, finding a brief note written in neat cursive.
The script wrote: "Do not amend their mistakes, you must pertain to the present."
He scrunched his eyebrows in puzzlement and picked at the yellow wax seal on the other side.
Peeling it off came easier than understanding what had been written inside of the paper.
A series of numbers, separated by a degree symbol, and apostrophes were written at the end of the page, normally where someone would address themself after a letter.
There were also letters written in the array of digits, an N and an E, followed by a short message above them.
"This is a guide for the one without a sequence.
The greatest navigator."
'Another strange entry from a mysterious correspondent,' he thought, tilting his head.
. . .
The First Quota
The creator's original narrative has found you. The initial readers have narrowly altered the narrative's 'existence' by imparting a separate title.
Thus, the original telling has been delegated as 'The Memoir.'
What you've just read is the only fragment I was able to decipher from within the contents of this artifact. The only other mystery that has been solved is that 'The Memoir' belonged to The Abundant Creator.
You may refer to me as the editor until we meet.
Lastly, I ask only this: Do not ignore the entries I've left in this book.
I can promise that they may prove useful.
Sincerely,
The editor.
Prelude to the Memoir
Rule 1
Mysteries lie beyond your reality, Navigator. Have vigilance in your choices to tailor the unraveling of your universe.
Rule 2
Only those who have vanished from his path in the Original universe can traverse beyond their dreams and across the Sequel that unifies the existence of infinite sequences and worlds.
Rule 3
There were once three great conditions of existence, arranged for the living, the dead, and the damned.
Yet here, where death has no conclusion and life possesses no true beginning,
what meaning can such distinctions still pretend to hold?