In Lily’s Garden.

Riding the Paper Airplane

Among the stories in the countless disappearing books of the horizontal city, a single page floats free, tracing the ink trails of the vanishing books across each city, leaving faint imprints as it goes.

The translucent, oversized page, fluttering as it records its journey through the cities of many books, glides into a deep indigo space, glowing faintly behind the cascade of stars in a violet universe, where a luminous orb glimmers among the stars.

“Come on, I’ll show you quickly. Keep up with me.”

Folding itself like a paper plane, the transparent page captures the scene of falling stars in the violet cosmos, soaring into the indigo space where it unfurls, releasing the violet space held within. The paper plane speeds along, climbing a high cliff swirled in black and gray, where, atop a snow-dusted edge, stands the man the lover of the ghost. As the scene flows onward, the paper plane flies further, rewinding time back to Russia, merging the image of a Russian officer with the ghost’s lover against the background of Earth.

At a glance, the paper plane captures a scene from a notebook filled with mathematical equations, almost pulling it into the ink of the notebook, where escape seems impossible.

Zooming in, the camera catches the black ink covering the white page with precise formulas, rotating the view to follow the lines of text, and then zooming out to show the neatly written words across the white page.

The paper plane unfolds once more, shimmering as it reflects a webpage displaying a chapter from a book. Pushing the text forward from the back of the screen, it brings the chapter into view for the woman’s eyes, who reads it with pride. In her universe, a large blank canvas is spread out she is a young girl, writing words across this enormous page.

She fills the massive page with the text of countless books, cutting the page into single volumes and handing them over to be published by a university press.

Echoes of voices welcoming her resound across the cities of the universe as the ink spreads through the cities. Wondering which city to visit first, she decides to write a book to cover her travel expenses. Her next destination? The scenario city with the black and gray cliffs she had just glimpsed.

“Next, I’ll visit the Scenario City and the movie-brand city, UI. I have to go retrieve my scenario. No one else can have it; it was always mine from the start. No matter what she does, I’ll keep this feeling with her. I’ll stretch out the days of publication, making her wait for each one, make her depend on me, and when the book is finally complete, I’ll throw it all away. I’ll make her read what I discard. All the books she writes are really mine, but if I must lose them, I’ll throw them away before anyone else can take them. This is my best. The ending a published book won’t change. But I never gave it away. I abandoned it.” — ?