The boy sat at the edge of the desk, hands curled around nothing.
The Archive was quiet. Too quiet.
No loose pages on the floor. No flickering text on the walls. No phantom whispers between shelves. Just shelves. Tall and neat and whole.
The Archivist stood beside him, straight-backed and unbothered. His coat looked pressed. His eyes weren't tired yet.
"You've been quiet," the Archivist said, turning a page in a book that hadn't begun to fray.
"I don't know if this is the first time we've spoken," the boy replied, not looking up.
"It is."
The boy blinked. "For you."
The Archivist frowned slightly. "Do you believe it isn't?"
"I've seen you when your shelves were scattered," the boy murmured. "When you were pulling loose pages from the walls and pretending you still had control."
"That sounds dramatic," the Archivist said calmly. "I do not recall such an encounter."
"Of course not," the boy said, almost smiling. "That version of you doesn't exist yet."
He could feel the Archivist watching him more closely now.
"You've looped," the Archivist said slowly. "You've retained… something."
"I think I bled backwards," the boy replied. "Woke up in a version of this conversation that hadn't happened yet."
The Archivist closed the book in his hands. "Impossible."
The boy shrugged. "Maybe. But here I am."
Silence stretched between them. It wasn't hostile. Just too big for the space it occupied.
Finally, the boy spoke again.
"This place... It's not just a library, is it?"
"It is a record," the Archivist answered. "Of everything you've ever forgotten."
The boy glanced around at the shelves.
"Then it's incomplete."
"Not yet," the Archivist said, too quickly.
The boy tilted his head. "You're still trying to hold it together."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You will."
The Archivist looked away.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
The boy stood slowly, walking past him toward a darkened aisle of shelves.
"Because I don't know where else to go. And because a version of me wrote something down once… and it ended up here."
He turned back, eyes distant.
"I think I'm looking for a key."
"There are no keys here," the Archivist said.
"That's what you think," the boy whispered.
And then he disappeared into the aisle.
The Archivist didn't follow.
But he closed the book in his hands a little more tightly this time.