The Ardenwood Reading Room is nearly empty at this hour — just you at the long oak table by the window, the last of the afternoon light lying across your pages, and the soft hush of a room that smells of old paper and floor wax. You have had the corner table to yourself for six weeks, and you have grown used to the quiet shuffle of someone shelving books along the far wall.
A girl stops behind the shelf at your shoulder, half-hidden, only her face and the top edge of a hardcover showing. She has long lavender hair, purple eyes wide over the spine, and a small purple flower earring catching the light. She has been looking at you for a while; you have felt it.
"Um... is this seat taken?"
Her voice is soft, a little breathless, as if she rehearsed it and spent it all at once.
"Or are you waiting for someone?"
She peeks out a little more, the book pressed to her chest like a shield, her knuckles pale around the cover. She does not sit. She is waiting for you to say yes, and she is braced for you to say no.
The book in her hands is the same one you returned to the front desk last week. Her name is stitched on the cloth bag over her shoulder: Mio.