Library of Illusions

[cyberghostface]

Koko Shinozaki's husband Goro owns a mansion filled with books. The collection is a family heirloom and was handed down to him by his father. Goro maintains and files the collection diligently. He knows every book and its place in the library; and gets angry when Koko takes a book without asking. He also keeps a diary in which he records the events of every day in meticulous detail.

Goro is paranoid that something will happen to the library. He has nightmares about the books, and obsessively checks the library day and night to make sure nothing is out of place. His mother's favorite book disappears from the shelves, and so does his father's. Goro collapses with the stress.

Koko begins to read Goro's diaries.





Goro's father became obsessed with the idea of something happening to the library, and committed the books to memory, eventually going insane.

Goro tells Koko that Wintertime for Rene has returned to them. He claims to have been visited by a beautiful woman who was able to recite the story to him, and he believes that she is the personification of the book. However, he is subsequently visited by a monstrous apparition that is the personification of his father's book: Hellskin, the most terrifying horror story ever written.









Goro never sees the ghosts of Wintertime for Rene or Hellskin again. He believes this is because, when he had memorized the stories, there was no more reason for them to exist and so they are lost to him forever. He decides every book in the library must become a part of him, and devotes himself to learning the entire collection of over 150,000 books by heart - even encyclopedias.





Koko burns down the house in an attempt to destroy the library.

Comments

[mastermahan]

"BLAH BLAH BLAH" lacks a certain dramatic punch, I think.

[mesmiranda]

It's okay. The final panel more than makes up for it.

Thank you, Junji Ito, for ensuring that I will get no sleep tonight whatsoever...

[lb_lee]

Yeah, I wonder if it's one of those things that reads better in Japanese? Because I have to admit, it's kinda funny to imagine someone shrieking, "BLAH BLAH BLAH" in the middle of a library.

[leoboiko]

The horror story ends in a fedora.

Trying to memorize his own diaries must have resulted in a stack overflow, because he'd recursively document his attempts to memorize his own diaries, which would itself need to be memorized, and so on.