In Lily’s Garden.

Lily’s Attic

In Lily’s attic, time had stopped. The only way Lily could know the time was by looking through the small window at the garden. In the quiet attic, Lily could only hear her own breathing and watched the silence that filled the space. In the garden, the same scenes would often repeat and pass. Up until that point, Lily felt no strangeness, simply living her daily life as usual. She would often fold paper airplanes and send them flying outside the garden. When she let one go, it would vanish right outside the window, only to reappear flying outside the garden.

One rainy day, Lily saw a small cat outside the garden fence, with fur drenched in the rain, looking as if all the time it had was about to pour out with the falling raindrops. She watched the cat for a while before picking up a book and sitting on her bed to read.

The memory of her watching that small cat, drenched and with a sorrowful look, outside the garden fence was being recorded in the transparent bookshelf hidden beside the one where she chose her books. The day Lily would discover the hidden bookshelf and read that memory was still far off.

One day, Lily heard a voice outside the window. Curiosity made her want to open the window and listen, but shy Lily didn’t open it; instead, she leaned closer to hear better. The sound was faint and difficult to understand, but one sentence was clear:

“How old are you?”

In the attic where time did not flow, that was the first day Lily wrote the word “time” on a paper airplane, marking her age for the first time. Once the word was recorded in Lily’s attic, she gained the ability to feel time, and time began to flow in her attic as well. As time began to pass, Lily developed a curiosity. Who was the owner of the voice that asked her age from outside the window?

Unable to contain her curiosity, Lily leaned by the window, eagerly waiting for the voice to return. But no matter how long she waited, the voice did not return, as if nothing had happened. With time now moving, Lily was seized by an unfamiliar feeling. Before hearing that voice, simply being in the attic was the easiest thing, but after experiencing this new emotional shift, she could no longer bear it. It was painful. What once seemed simple now became a torturous experience, with each moment passing, each tick of the clock felt deeply.

Each morning, she rose in the hope of hearing that voice again, only to go to bed each night in disappointment. The pain of these disappointing days built up, leading her to vow that she would never open her eyes again, never rise again, wishing to escape the relentless flow of time. However, when she woke again, Lily realized one thing: no matter how long she slept, the moment she opened her eyes, time would continue to flow, and the time before she closed her eyes had passed without pause.

“Who are you? Why do you call me? I can hear you.”

You’re calling me, but Lily can’t hear my voice. What sound is she hearing? I can’t hear it.

“I want to wake up. It sounds just like my own.”

A tremble. Lily is trembling.

“I’m scared to speak. No matter how far you are, I can recognize you.”

Lily recognizes me, no matter how I look, no matter where I am.

“…”

“I don’t know what death is.”

“…”

Which means I can’t die.

“…”

“So, am I alive? I wonder who you are. I need to go find you.”

Lily said she would come to find me, then vanished somewhere, but the attic window remained firmly shut. I, as the narrator guiding this story and watching over Lily, can answer her questions, but she cannot hear my voice.

She says she’s coming to find me… The truth is, I also want Lily to come searching for me. But that’s too difficult. Lily will keep lying to me because she can’t reach me here.

Lily’s attic was so vast that she might not have been able to explore every corner, but there was no need. The attic contained only a large, comfortable bed and a bookshelf filled with books Lily could read. Occasionally, she would tear a single sided page from a book, jot something down on the blank side, and toss it out the window. Lily herself wasn’t sure whether she wanted someone to read it or if she was sending it to someone. Disappearing into the transparent bookshelf beside her main one, Lily now resides in some unknown book within those shelves, a place even I don’t know. However, Lily’s habit of sending paper airplanes remained. Even after she vanished, paper airplanes occasionally flew into the empty attic, and through the words written on them, I could learn of her current whereabouts.

Recently, a paper airplane arrived with the following message.

– “I made a friend. It’s a pumpkin ghost with a long cape filled with stardust.”

…A sense of deja vu strikes me.

I need to see if Lily had ever sent a paper airplane with the same message before. But no matter how hard I try to remember, I can’t recall any such note. So, I’ll have to check one of her first paper airplanes. This was the message on Lily’s first note.

– “A blue umbrella.”

What did Lily want to convey?

I can’t tell how much time has passed since Lily disappeared. I am merely contemplating whether to read the records in the transparent bookshelf beside her main one. It seems that once I unfold a paper airplane, its contents are recorded in the transparent shelf. Oddly, I’ve never thought about reading those records, but perhaps there is some change happening within me. Could it be related to Lily’s whereabouts? Realizing this, I can’t stay idle any longer. The records in the transparent shelf contain the moments Lily lost the paper airplanes she sent and the forgotten memories she once held.

I’m afraid to read those records.

I don’t want to know the emotions Lily felt before she disappeared.

I remember her suffering.

So, for now, I’ve read all the books on her shelf, but still, I can’t find the answer. Perhaps the missing pages are indeed recorded along with the others in the transparent shelf. While I was reading, paper airplanes accumulated, each carrying bits of news from Lily, enough to fill the attic. I began to unfold one of the planes. Instead of text, it was like a folded scene from a movie, allowing me to see the scenes Lily was experiencing. It seemed she had been traveling, meeting many friends.

Through her paper airplanes, I could see what Lily was seeing.

The scenes unfolded like a silent film, communicating with me wordlessly. Could Lily be dreaming within the transparent shelf? If so, are these visions simply illusions? They feel so vivid… Yearning for sound, I take the texts from the books I read on her shelf and try adding my own sounds to Lily’s fragments of dreams. I wish fervently that the scenes she sees aren’t just dreams. If they are, I wish they could become real. But then, the impossibility of it all washes over me, and I am once again caught in the passing of time, unable to do anything. How long have I spent in this state, unable to act? I suddenly wonder how Lily could still send paper airplanes before and after she disappeared.

And… I need to find out how these paper airplanes could vanish from the attic and reappear flying outside in the garden. I’d never considered it before, but perhaps there is someone else here besides Lily and me. I should reread Lily’s bookshelf perhaps I’ll need to do it several times until I know. I must know. I need to know when I’ll be able to read the transparent shelf. Taking a deep breath, I realize that the content of the paper airplanes may differ slightly from the records in the transparent shelf. Additionally, I suspect there’s an order in which the books should be read.

I’m certain.

There is an order to read these books!

That’s when it happened.

Before sound and time entered the attic, I remembered Lily. The records in the transparent shelf seemed to provide the reading order for the books on the shelf. And I realized that Lily’s emotions had been recorded in the transparent shelf, regardless of the flow of time in the attic. Lily’s feelings, unaffected by time, were recorded there, and I now understood that I needed to read the books in a specific order, according to those records. Excluding time, I began to think about what had happened to Lily. I remembered how, before hearing the voice, she would always be reading. Trying to recall which book Lily had first read, I went to the shelf and began searching for a book that looked similar to the one she used to read.

The title came to mind unexpectedly, and I picked up a book with a similar cover.

The title read The Mentor Protégé’s Secret of Publishing: Last Words from the Frozen Realm of Forgotten Time.

I spent a long time reading this book, pouring my time into it. Then, I pondered which scene Lily might be journeying through within the transparent shelf. One of her latest paper airplanes had said she met a pumpkin ghost friend, but after that, the messages were no longer in text, only in scenes.

I tried to locate the exact moment described in the book, where Lily had sent that scene, but it remained elusive.

This is because, once a scene is unfolded and the paper airplane is sent, it vanishes, leaving only Lily’s emotions recorded in the transparent shelf. I can’t recall it. I only remember my thoughts at the time of seeing her previous airplane, that she had met many friends. Then I understood—this may indeed become my despair. Though I can’t remember, I can sense the faint tremors of the transparent records. I hesitated, afraid of getting it wrong. The book was so complex that a single mistake could mean starting over from the beginning. This feeling of exploring a maze within the pages made me suspect that perhaps Lily, in her many travels, had unknowingly left clues as folded paper airplanes. I opened another folded airplane that was yet to be revealed. It read:

– “I met many friends.”

This time, the message was written in text. Yet, once again, I fell into despair. The book contained so many scenes of meeting friends that it was nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact moment. …But there was something gained from this despair. I realized it was the same thought I had after seeing another of her paper airplanes before.

– “I met many friends.”

Following this phrase, I began searching for a specific moment in the book. The pumpkin ghost Lily had mentioned didn’t appear in this book. Therefore, I decided to follow another clue, from among the scenes where she met many friends. Fixing my direction in mind, I gazed again at the transparent shelf, noticing one book trembling slightly. It had gone unnoticed before, but now it was becoming clearer, with pages turning rapidly before me. The moment I saw the pages, I intuitively recognized it as one of the pages from the first book Lily had ever read.