In the Library

Andrew should have known the day would be a bad one the moment he saw what was there for breakfast - Fryod biscuits with cream - which happened to be his mother's favourite, and the food he loathed. It was way too creamy for his liking. He didn't mind sweets, loved them in fact, but he hated those that were sugary to the point he would want to puke.

The next thing that made his day even more worse was dealing with the aftermath of taking away Mr Louis's title. He had to repeat the same incident so many times that he wondered if he would have been better off not doing anything.

Then he had to do preparations for the upcoming ball. Then he had to dodge some thousand nobles' hidden attacks towards him in words.

And then he decided to take up a murder case to take his mind off the irritating nobles. And he ended up getting way more than he had bargained for. He ended up getting the case of a murder just discovered that very morning and though he hadn't seen the body, from what he had heard, the body was no longer recognisable as something that has once been human. The body's innards had been thrown on the ground and only one eye remained in its socket.

He would go to the scene of murder the next day as it was already six in the evening, he decided. He now badly wanted to go to town and have a bit of a break.

So he changed into some plain clothing and pushed aside a rack of books, revealing a simple wooden door.

He wrote a note for his mother in case she came looking for him and left it on his table. Then he left for the Calton Library closing the door behind him as he descended down the stairs that led to a place some distance away from the busy marketplace where no one would realise he had appeared from a small hidden door of an old half collapsed building.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___

He had been reading peacefully when he heard someone enter the Marin Area, the area where he was sitting. On the outside he kept calm and continued to read the book in front of him. But in the inside he was desperately begging all the gods that it was not THAT woman. If it was her, his day would enter the 'Worst Days of Andrew's Life'.

He slowly looked up and stole a glance at the woman and he nearly died of happiness when he saw that it was a brown haired girl, and not the green-eyed blonde he feared, who had entered the section.

With a tiny smile on his face, he looked down and continued reading his book. The book described the adventures of Arean in the Ocean of Demons, that was one of the several legends in the Book of Legends. But the latter only had a brief mention of all the legends, and was nowhere as well written as the books that were written in recent times.

Half an hour later, he finished reading the book. It had a tragic end with the hero being killed by his wife who he had believed to be an obedient woman. To be honest, Andrew felt like the hero deserved that for the way he treated her, not to mention how he married her when she was eight and had won her hand by giving her father a plump goat in exchange. But as it was only a story, he decided to turn a blind eye to it's many flaws.

As he kept the book on the stack of books on his right, he saw the girl who had come in earlier sitting opposite to him with a book open in front of her. And her expression as she read could easily be translated to: 'What the f*ck am I reading?!'

She looked up, as if noticing his gaze, and with a bewildered expression on her face, she asked him: "Are all the books in this section this terrible?"

"Huh? I don't know." he answered quickly, while wondering if the girl didn't know what a Marin book was. "From what I've heard, all Marin books are terrible."

On hearing what he said the girl looked disappointed, and then asked - "Haven't you read them?"

"I haven't." Andrew replied while shaking his head.

The girl looked even more perplexed when he said that.

"Then why are you sitting here?" she asked.

It was only when she said that that he realised that him sitting in this section and not reading the books here would make no sense to anyone.

"Well, I sit here because in the other sections there are lots of people who tend to interrupt you when you are reading. Meanwhile here, very few decide to sit and read, and a lot less people come here anyway." he said, glad he could clear up his image before she thought that he was a pervert who enjoyed looking at women who came to read Marin books. "Do you know what Marin books are? Because you do seem pretty confused..."

"I do know what they are, but hadn't read them until today." she said. And after hesitating a bit, she added - "My parents were rather controlling and had never let me read them, so I snuck away and came here to read them. But it turns out they are really bad. Now I wish I never read them..."

"Well then, I guess you should read a good book to remove all memories of the book from your mind. That's what I do when I read a terrible book." Andrew told her. "The Adventures of Arean in the Ocean of Demons would be a good one."

"I've already read that book." she said. "And while the book is not amazing, it's way better than the book I just read. Arean's wife is way better and interesting than Lucietta."

On hearing her thoughts on Arean's wife, Andrew was understandably confused.

"I don't think you read the book, Miss. His wife kills him at the end." Andrew said.

"Exactly. She's my favourite character in the book. She's the only one who seems to be a normal human there. Arean in the other hand is luckily gifted with blessings from the gods instead of his elder brother and is a shallow snobbish idiot." the girl explained. "The protagonist of this book, on the other hand," she said as she picked the book she had been reading. "is the complete opposite of her. She's weak, submissive, and the so-called- love-interest rapes her and treat her badly several times. And when she get pregnant, he forcefully marries her and continued to treat her like sh*t. He hurts her, pushes her to the brink of death and then insults her in public. And at the end, she forgives him, claiming that now they are in love which makes all his sins be forgiven!" she ranted, looking furious.

"That does sound like an awful story." remarked a woman with a mellow voice.

And when Andrew's sight fell on the woman who said those words, he knew that his day had entered the 'Worst Days of Andrew's Life'.