Excerpt: Tales In An Otherworld

Hiro reread the inscription and blew air out of his cheeks. "That tells me absolutely nothing," he muttered to himself, flipping through the book and trying to find the poem he had read earlier. It took him a moment, but he flipped to the right page eventually. Now, however, there was a change to the page: at the very bottom, beneath the poem and translation, was a note: 'Payment: amount of time equal to the amount of true time spent with relative time frozen will be subtracted from the user's timeline.'

He considered that for a moment. It couldn't have been past three o'clock when he had sat down on the bench, but when he had… woken up? It had been past five. He wanted to just think that he had been asleep and that was how he lost those hours, but the note hadn't been there before.

Or had it? Maybe he was just so tired and stressed from the test that he didn't notice it was there. Yes, that had to be it. He was tired and had fallen asleep.

As much as he wanted to believe that, though, when he looked down at the book again, there were new words on the page, words that made him jump out of his chair and back away from the book: 'No, you didn't fall asleep. Stop rationalizing this.'

"The book is not talking to me. The book is not talking to me," he began to said quickly under his breath. He approached the book to close it, but before his eyes, fine characters began to form beneath the second note.

'The book is talking to you. You are not dreaming or hallucinating. By attaining ownership rights of this book, you now have certain responsibilities to mankind. Get over your fears and accept your destiny. You know it in your heart to be true.'

Hiro's response to that was to close the book and drop it into a desk drawer that he never opened. He slammed it closed and only had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief before he distinctly heard and felt something begin to bang on the drawer to open from the inside. That was the last straw; he opened the drawer and took the book out of it. Then he went to the window, opened it, and flung the book out, slamming the window closed after it. This was quite reasonably followed by moving his bookshelf so it covered the window. He dusted his hands off and went to get ready for bed.

Of course, it only reasoned that when he climbed into bed, the book was under the sheets waiting for him. The screaming woke up the neighbors.