There was a slightly opened door at the end of the corridor. As I walked out of the door, I realised that I was standing at the backside of the veranda which had encircled the house. In front of me was a beautiful traditional backyard garden. There was a tiny koi fish pond (although it was devoid of any fish), velvety grass had covered the ground. From the edge of the pond rose a big cherry blossom tree which was providing shade to the whole yard.

At the left, another wing of the veranda had gone straight ahead and ended up to an old looking house on the other end of the garden. I assumed that was the Yaksha Yashiki, which was forbidden for us to access. At the right, there was nothing but a wall.

I jumped on the grass with my bare feet. The silky grass tingled my feet. It had been a while since I walked barefooted on grass. The grass had a moist feel in it. I walked towards the small pond. Like I said, it was empty of any fancy fish. But it was quite clean and contained crystal clear water. Few cherry blossom leaves were floating on the surface. As I noticed the tree, I found it was quite older than I had expected. The fissured dark bark had all the visible signs of aging. The branches were arched downward with age. It felt like that the tree was standing with much pain and effort. Even the leaves seemed quite shrivelled up and dry.

There was this small hollow in the middle of the trunk. It wasn't much large but big enough to fit my palm. It wasn't deep enough either. Like 4-5 inches deep. I didn't go much close and decided to ignore it. Such things always made me cringe.

I started walking towards the other side, towards the Yaksha Yashiki. This side seemed the same as the other. It contained a small veranda and a door. However, there was a certain kind of damped oldness emitting from everything. There was no lock on the door (which seemed strange). From the slight opening, I could catch a glimpse of the long corridor inside. It was dark, except the mild emanation of sunlight. I didn't know why, but at that moment I felt curious of taking a quick peek inside. And curiosity killed the cat.

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As I stepped inside, I was welcomed by a corridor long forgotten by humanity. The corridor was dark, narrow and long. It had slowly faded into the dark. On left there was wall. On my right, there were sliding paper doors.

The first door on the right was slightly open. I opened it further and entered the room.

And for a moment it felt like I was back to the ancient days. The ceiling was quite high, and large shelves full of books welcomed me to their long forgotten kingdom. The room was full of aged wooden shelves, with hundreds of ancient books on every row. The books were old, perhaps older than me, my father or even our grandfather. There were also scrolls, kept in bundles.

Although everything seemed quite out of time, but it was pretty neat and clean. The room was quite big. And I couldn't see much further. There was barely any light.

I brushed my fingers over the spines of a row of books. Living skin and dead skins met each other with the gap of few decades in between. Why would you cover your container of knowledge by killing and striping off skin from some living being? It is such an oxymoron to protect your wisdom with grotesqueness and brutality. I looked at my fingertips and could not find a single speck of dust.

THUD!

A sudden noise almost made my heart explode.

I turned back and found a big black book was lying on the floor. It was thick and quite heavy. I was somehow able to pick it up. The book was leather bound, and to my amusement, there was nothing written on the cover. Not a single info about anything.

As I was going to open it to investigate further, someone took the book from my hand.

My gaze followed the slow ascension of the book to the ceiling, eventually it reached the owner of the hand.

I didn't know what it was. It was veiled in dark. But I could clearly say that whatever it was, it wasn't a human.

The 'thing' had three sets of arms, three on each side. In one of those, it tightly held the book. It also had long legs, and two eyes, which seemed to glow in the dark.

Everything went blank.