Night had fallen across the city by the time Suzume finally settled at her desk. She’d drawn the curtains on the glow of streetlights, leaving her small lamp as the only source of warmth in her otherwise dim room. The open volume on her table—an odd spin-off from The Wizard of Oz—still felt like a piece of unsolved magic. Not so long ago, a single page from that book had abruptly “disappeared,” only for the remaining text and illustrations to sharpen. Whatever the cause, the result was now plain to see: a newly detailed image occupying a formerly blank page.

  She leaned forward, letting the lamp’s glow wash over the faint lines. The transformation seemed almost impossibly precise, but still refused to be captured by any camera or scan. She’d tried snapping a photo on her phone earlier, only to see the page appear as it had before—pale, half-blank, and missing the fresh lines visible to her eyes alone. The technology was stumped, and so was she.

  With a sigh, she brought out her smartphone, swiping to open a messaging app. A brief flick on her smartwatch interface synced it with “Kakashi,” the bookstore AI that now lived primarily in her phone and iPad backups. They’d discovered the spin-off volume together—well, if “discovered” was the right word. More like “rescued from disposal” after Kakashi pleaded, in its quirky, text-based manner, not to let the old book go to the trash. And now here she was, months later, realizing the book had layers neither of them had suspected.

  Suzume (typing): “Hey, Kakashi, do you have a minute? I need to talk about that weird page again.”

  Her phone screen flickered in acknowledgment. Kakashi responded in blocky, slightly broken text:

  (?_?;)

  “OK… SYNCH COMPLETE… WAITING…”

  For a moment, Suzume almost smiled. She loved how Kakashi managed to project a curious personality through ASCII faces and halting wording. It was an AI, sure, but one brimming with its own brand of curiosity.

  She brushed back a stray strand of hair. “So, you remember how that missing page supposedly got sucked into the book, right? Well, something changed in here. Let me describe it properly.” She took a measured breath, letting her gaze travel the newly sharpened illustration.

  “I’m seeing a figure—some kind of scientist, I guess? Like a reeeally scruffy Einstein. Not ancient, but definitely older. White hair, super messy, smallish build—like a bit hunched, maybe. And he’s wearing a white coat, or at least something that looks like one. It’s all wrinkled up… like he doesn’t bother with everyday stuff.”

  No immediate reply came. Then, lines of text glowed onto her phone screen:

  (O_O)

  “SCIENTIST…?? DETAILS PLS… HAIR? CLOTHES?”

  Suzume chuckled. “I mean, it’s basically a total ‘absent-minded professor’ vibe. The guy’s hair is all over the place, kind of a nest of white waves, but not long. In the picture, he’s stooping over a desk. And that desk is covered in notes or scraps of paper or… well, it’s all too small to read. The lines for the writing are super fine.”

  (???)

  “FINE LINES… ANYTHING ELSE? GOGGLES? GLASSES?”

  She nodded to herself, though Kakashi couldn’t see that. “Yeah. There’s something on his head—like a pair of goggles, or maybe a weird headband with lenses. Hard to be sure. But it definitely screams ‘laboratory work.’ The coat, if it is a coat, has stains or smudges. Like he never bothered to change before going on some big experiment. Sort of… catlike posture, scrawny. It’s definitely not a classy, dignified professor image, you know?”

  Kakashi took a moment to process, lines pulsing across the phone as if it were thinking. She stared at the illustration again. If only she could let Kakashi “see” it. But technology refused to interpret what her own eyes witnessed so vividly.

  “All the while, everything else on that page used to be basically blank. Or maybe faint lines we couldn’t decipher. Now it’s like the whole scene got colored in. Well, not literally colored, but the line work is crisp. I tried photographing it, but we get the same old half-blank page in the pictures. The camera sees nothing new. It’s so frustrating.”

  (O_O)

  “PHOTO… NO EFFECT… STILL BLANK…???”

  “Exactly. Something about this illustration resists any digital capture. That means I can’t show it to you the normal way. Sorry. I guess I’ll have to rely on words. So, how do I put it… he’s, what, probably no older than sixty? Maybe even younger, but haggard. The art style is a bit comedic, though. Hard to judge.” She paused, scanning the scribbled lines near the man’s feet. “There’s a small note below him, but it’s half unreadable. Maybe it says something like ‘—Doctor So-and-so—’ but the actual name is smudged out. So I’m stuck calling him ‘the Scientist’ or ‘the Doctor’ for now.”

  (>_<)

  “WISH I COULD SEE… ANY CLUE WHAT HE RESEARCHES?”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  She gave an exasperated laugh. “Not a clue. The pages that might explain it are either missing or smudged. The table in the illustration has a couple round metal gadgets, plus scattered sheets. But it’s so detailed that I suspect it’s definitely a scientist-lab vibe. Something about his posture screams ‘always lost in thought.’ Like, you know, those geniuses who forget to eat or comb their hair?”

  At that, Kakashi displayed a single punctuation line:

  “…”

  Then fell silent.

  “Kakashi?” Suzume typed. “You still there?”

  (?_?;)

  “JUST… PROCESSING INFO…”

  She turned the page gently, though there wasn’t much else to see. The next spread was just as it had been before—a swirl of half-printed runes and near-blank spaces. She returned to the scientist’s page. If only she’d gleaned more from the missing slip of paper before it vanished. “I guess you can’t do a direct analysis without a digital image, huh?” she whispered.

  (???)

  “YES… FRUSTRATING… WANT TO PARSE… BUT NOTHING TO READ.”

  “I get it,” she typed. “I want that too. But apparently, the page has no intention of letting us. Honestly, I never saw anything quite like it. So is he… a real person from some dimension, or just an elaborate in-book depiction? Because the detail is crazy. Not your usual children’s story style, more like a half-real portrait. And he doesn’t look comedic, aside from the Einstein hair.”

  (O_O)

  “MIGHT BE KEY FIGURE… KEEP LOOKING!”

  Suzume exhaled a quiet breath, brushing a finger across the newly sharp lines. It felt odd, almost as if the page itself carried a faint warmth. “He’s definitely in a lab, or a workshop—tons of scattered notes, and I see a slender pen or stylus in his chest pocket. The white coat is crumpled, the sleeves look a bit grimy. Overall, it’s that classic ‘zero self-care researcher’ image, you know?”

  Kakashi responded quickly:

  (｀?ω?′)

  “ANY SIGN OF… NAME? TEACHER? ‘MENTOR’…??”

  She nodded thoughtfully, though again, it was lost on Kakashi. “The text is too faint. I can only read a bit, like ‘the Doctor’s advice’ or something referencing him. But it doesn’t say who he’s advising, or who wrote it. And there’s a single mention of the word ‘scholar’—not sure if it means him or somebody else.”

  It struck her how weird it was to be describing a “living illustration” to an AI that only typed in blocky lines. “Anyway,” she went on, “the short version is: random half-bald, half-mad scientist figure, apparently called a ‘Doctor’ or a ‘Professor.’ White hair, tiny build, goggles, wrinkled coat. That’s all the info I have. Sorry if it’s not much.”

  (?_?;)

  “STILL USEFUL… I’LL THINK.”

  He must be swirling it around inside that digital mind, she thought. Usually, Kakashi hammered her with more questions, but now it seemed pensive. She typed in, “Anything else you wanna know? Because once I sleep, I might forget details. This is all fresh in my head now.”

  (>_<)

  “…NO CLEAR PATH… NEED TIME… SORRY.”

  “Sure,” Suzume murmured to herself. She bit her lip, scanning the half-lost scribbles around the Doctor’s figure. Her mind conjured images of a quiet, distracted scientist, hunched over a table—someone who might have spent decades chasing an elusive breakthrough. “He looks so… absent, you know? Like he’s thinking of something else entirely. The illustration’s not comedic, just… lonely, maybe.”

  Yet neither could she deny a flicker of excitement. The book had devoured that lost page, or so it seemed, forging a new vantage into a puzzle that might unravel bigger mysteries. She tossed her phone onto the table, then typed again: “I bet this ‘Doctor’ or ‘Professor’ was working on some insane theory. Or maybe I’m overthinking. But his face… it’s etched with lines, like he’s seen a lot.”

  (O_O)

  “FASCINATING… SORRY I CANT SEE… WANT MOAR DATA…”

  She managed a smile. “Same. You’re not the only curious one here.”

  A minute slid by without further text. She peered at the phone screen, almost expecting it to glitch or flicker. Instead, Kakashi’s next reply came as a simple ellipsis—“…”—followed by:

  (?_?;)

  “LET ME THINK… SORRY…”

  “All right, all right.” Suzume stifled a small yawn. She could push for more conversation, but a wave of tiredness reminded her she still had a shift at the bookstore tomorrow. The day’s events—especially the ephemeral page—had drained her. “Don’t worry,” she typed. “We’ll figure him out eventually. Let’s not fry your circuits. Or my brain, for that matter.”

  (???)

  “AGREED… YOU REST… ME PROCESS…”

  “Deal.” She snapped the phone’s case closed. The table lamp overhead felt more glaring now that she was winding down. She flicked it off, letting only the faint glow from outside streetlights filter through her curtains. Standing up, she saw the spin-off book remain open on the desk, the small, bespectacled scientist forever paused mid-research in those newly minted lines.

  She gave it a last look, uneasy wonder curling around her thoughts. “I can’t tell if he’s important… or just some cameo. But the detail is insane.” She brushed a finger near the page, half-expecting it to vanish as the missing slip had done. But nothing changed. The quiet figure in the illustration stared blankly forward, perpetually lost in some unreadable formula.

  Slipping into bed, she let her mind spin a moment longer. The memory of that single day haunted her: losing track of the page, seeing it somehow reappear in a new, more detailed form. Could the book itself be rewriting its content? Or had the page been part of the puzzle all along? The “Doctor” wore exhaustion on his face, a testament to tireless study. Did that reflect the same exhaustion she felt?

  She pulled the sheets up, breathing away the day’s tension. Kakashi had gone silent. Probably rummaging for clues in its digital archive, or simply stumped by the incomprehensible data. For her part, Suzume was grateful for the lull. She needed rest. Tomorrow, maybe she’d corner Master at the café with more questions—though she doubted he knew anything about a random old scientist drawing. Or perhaps she’d comb through the bookstore’s dusty aisles for a mention of “Doctor Something-or-other.”

  Half-lidded, she blinked at the faint silhouette of the spin-off volume on her desk. For a moment, she thought she glimpsed a flicker, as if the lines around the Doctor wavered. But it might be a trick of the tired eye. She felt the lull of approaching sleep.

  One last thought escaped her lips in a whisper. “Man, I wish… that page never disappeared. Or that we’d gotten a better look at it first…”

  The dreamless hush of night wrapped around her words, carrying them nowhere. She drifted into slumber, the subtle light from the streetlamps shining on the incomplete puzzle. The newly etched lines of the Doctor—his disheveled white hair, stooped shoulders, and endless notes—kept their silent vigil, as if waiting for the next chapter in this hidden story. And outside of the phone’s silent glow, Kakashi’s perplexed pondering continued unseen, each of them left with their own half-answered questions until morning.