Watson and Holmes, Chapter Two

With a friendly face, she said. 

"What made you ask that now? And why do you think I am lying about my name?"

"I remembered something important you told me when we met this morning. When I asked

where you were from, you said you were from Gowa village. Everyone knows, of course,

because the news spread through the kingdom with incredible speed, that Gowa village burned

down completely about a month ago and nothing remained of it. At first I thought you might be

hiding something related to the Jinn, since I used to be a commander in the King's army. That

was why I did not ask. But you did not seem foolish enough to use such an obvious lie. On the

contrary, I felt you told me that lie so I would notice it, didn't you?"

"It took you seven hours to realise that, but never mind. That was within my calculations as well.

You are not wrong about that, but I do not understand why it makes me a liar about my name."

Wendy wiped the blood from her face while smiling, as though she understood everything Yol

was trying to say.

"Your expressions were completely pure whenever you spoke about anything. Your manner of

speaking and the feelings in every word were entirely natural. Thinking that you had told such

an obvious lie with that innocent face made me doubt how truthful you were in the rest of what

you said to me. It was as though you were a completely different person. That is why I am

asking who you really are. Or should I say, how long have you been manipulating me?"

"Nearly a month ago, a distress call came from Gowa village to the Third Division of the King's

army. The strange thing was that the distress call arrived one day before the disaster occurred

in Gowa village. Do you remember that, Mr Yol?"

Wendy raised her left hand. Her eye turned yellow, and the white of it became pitch black.

Geometric triangular shapes began forming beneath her eyelids, decorating the strange-shaped

eye. A transparent red substance appeared above her palm. It looked like dough as it grew

larger, then suddenly hardened into a small sphere resembling an armoured dome.

The moment Yol saw the shape of the sphere, he remembered what had happened when he

was in Gowa village. The barrier that had emerged from the stone sword had protected him

from the explosion that killed his division. He immediately realised that the barrier had been

identical in shape to the sphere on Wendy's palm.

Yol became angry at once and spoke sharply.

"So you were the one who sent the distress call that day. I am not really interested in what

happened there, but can you tell me how you survived? Depending on the answer you give, I may have to kill you here."

There was no sign of calm or reason in Yol's face. Wendy spoke with her familiar smile, without

concern or fear.

"Before you forget, I was the one who protected your life there, while struggling to survive

myself."

"Do not forget that you were also the reason we went there that day. You may have saved my

life, but you caused an entire division to die. Do you have a good explanation for that?"

"Explaining everything from the beginning could take days, so let me clarify one important thing

and give you an idea of what happened. You could say I did everything I did for these three

books here."

"Wait a moment. From the beginning! The murder this morning... were you the criminal?"

Wendy was slightly surprised when she realised that he had begun to doubt everything he had

experienced with her.

"As expected of the commander of the Third Division. Is that what they call instinct? But you are

right. I was the one who killed him. You look a little lost. Would you like me to tell you how I did

it?"

The substance on her hand changed shape again. In a few seconds, it became a slender blade

seventy centimetres long. The blade shot forward at tremendous speed and cut through a metal

pipe belonging to one of the houses with perfect precision. Wendy closed her eye and pointed at

the blade with her hand.

"That is how I killed him. Simpler than you expected, wasn't it?"

"Then what about the evidence you found? And what about the man who owned the junk shop?"

"I prepared all of it to make the crime seem logical. As for that man, I wanted to punish him for

something else. Let us simply say he was a bad person."

"And the dream you worked so hard for? I read what you wrote, so I know you were serious

about it. Was that a lie too? Even those tears...?"

"Wait, wait a moment. If you keep asking questions without a purpose, there will be no end to

this. First, you need to know which questions you ought to ask in this situation. It is easy. You

can summarise your questions in only three words. What? How? And why? Do you understand,

or do I need to explain further?"

Wendy spoke calmly while Yol sank into his thoughts.

Because of the nature of my work, I meet many people repeatedly. I have seen every kind of liar

in my life. There were a few whose true nature I could not identify. But this girl is completely

different. For some reason, my entire body is warning me. This certainly is not fear. Somehow, I

simply feel that the girl before me is dangerous.

"I understand what you are trying to say. I do not know exactly what I am doing in this situation

either, so I will begin. First, [what] exactly did you do during the time I was inside the library?

What happened to you while you were waiting?"

"I am glad you understand a little. I will try to answer as simply and accurately as possible so

that you can understand what I did. So, let us see. What did I do? You could say I breached the

system and protection of the World Tree's ability by sending you into the library. With the book

you brought out, I was able to obtain these two books, thanks to this pile of books."

Wendy held the two books in one hand and pointed towards the pile stacked behind her. Yol

was disappointed by the answer.

Do you call that an answer? Most of what she says is vague and impossible to understand.

But...

"In any case, we will leave the first question for later. Second, you said you breached the

library's system by sending me there. [How] exactly did you do that, and what was my connection to your plan?"

"It was very simple. All I had to do was become the owner of the library!"

Yol's reaction was not important to her. He understood nothing about the World Tree or the

library either.

"What do you mean? Is it really that easy?"

"Not really, but it is not impossible. First, let me tell you how I obtained these two books. The

World Tree's system gives one book to anyone who possesses an invitation when they enter. Of

course, you cannot enter without an invitation. But what would happen if the invitation entered

the library by itself, without its owner? What would happen if someone inside the library did not

possess an invitation?"

"Wait a moment. If they did not have an invitation, they would not be able to find the entrance to

the World Tree in the first place. How could they enter?"

Wendy smiled slightly.

"It is simple. All you have to do is deceive the system."

"You make it sound easy."

"It is. The identification system at the entrance is not magical or supernatural. It is like a huge

computer containing an enormous amount of information. It simply reads the information written

on the invitation and matches it to the person carrying it, then grants permission to enter. So all

you have to do is make an invitation with the same information as the original. You will be able

to deceive the system for at least a few seconds."

Yol sighed and answered, "You say that so casually, but you know better than anyone that

making an exact copy of the invitation is nearly impossible. Apart from the fact that it is made of

one of the rarest kinds of gold, the written information is not simple. It is practically a complete

description of a person's life. It would be easy if it were written in ordinary letters, but it is written

in microscopic symbols engraved across the whole invitation. That is one of the things I learned

inside the library and did not forget when I left. Are you saying you copied it that easily?"

"I never said it was easy. I said it was that simple. Gathering the gold was the most difficult part,

but it was more enjoyable than expected."

Yol doubted whether she was telling him the truth. But when he saw that smile and heard her

casual manner of speaking, he understood a little why he had felt uneasy around her from their

first meeting.

"Don't toy with me! Even if you had the equipment to do it, are you saying you could write that

precise information about my life in those strange symbols? We only met today. However you

look at it, it is impossible."

"You are completely right. It would normally be impossible. But I did not have to do all that. I

simply copied everything from your original invitation."

Wendy took a golden invitation from her pocket, identical to the one Yol had carried. With a sly

smile, she said, "That does not mean I know nothing about you or your life, Mr Haizaki!"

Yol took a step backwards as his concern suddenly became fear.

"How do you know that? No, how much do you know about me?"

Wendy gave a soft laugh and replied with a calm, gentle expression.

"There is no need to be so frightened. I was teasing you a little. It may not look like it, but I am

the cleverest person in this world. It is true that I know a great deal about you, but information

like that has no value to me, so I will forget it soon. In any case, let us return to the subject."

"Copying your invitation was not meant merely to get you into the World Tree. The system would

probably have detected the deception after three seconds. Your atoms would have been

scattered through the fabric of space-time, and you would have died in the worst case. That is

where my role in becoming the owner of the library comes in, and it is the reason for the pile of books behind me."

At this point, Yol could only listen while she spoke. He understood that she was not an ordinary

girl, so he had no choice but to believe what she was saying.

"As I said earlier, the library's system is like a gigantic computer with enormous processing

power. What do you think is the best way to hack such a system? Wait, if you stand there

silently like that, I will get bored of talking to myself."

Despite everything that was happening, Yol could not shake the feeling that she was an

annoying girl.

"By using a virus, I suppose. I do not know much about computers."

"Exactly. All you need is a powerful virus to disable the system. For a library overflowing with

information, the appropriate virus is information. To preserve books properly and prevent

forgery, the author's name is the most important element in the library's system. By recording

the name of the person who wrote a book, the information they wrote is preserved and their

name is cleared of rumours or writings falsely attributed to them after their death. Because this

method is free of flaws and prevents information from becoming mixed up, it left a major

vulnerability in the system."

"I do not think I really understand what you are trying to explain."

"Let us explain it more simply. Suppose you hired an engineer to draw a plan for building your

house. This engineer is famous for being one of the best in your city. But then another engineer,

also famous for intelligence and knowledge, came to you and told you that the engineer you

hired had never attended university and had no certificate. You would have some doubts, would

you not? You would try to verify the matter. Do you understand what I mean?"

"No, not really. What does that have to do with what we are discussing?"

Wendy's expression froze for a moment. She thought that if she tried to simplify the idea any

further, she would become stupid herself, so she decided to continue.

"What I am saying is this. Do you see the books behind me? There are about a thousand of

them. Half contain information that challenges the credibility of thousands of writers throughout

history. What do you think will happen when this quantity of information, questioning the library's

system for preserving information, is processed at a single moment?"

"Wait... hold on. You said at a single moment. According to what you told me, the library

preserves a book as soon as it is written. That means the information in these books has

already been processed and corrected. Unless..."

Yol stopped for a moment, concern appearing on his face as he thought intensely. Wendy

finished the thought for him.

"Unless these books were written at the same moment. Of course, writing them would still take

a long time, no matter how quickly you could write. To make a system this enormous lose focus,

you need this quantity of information to be written in the same second. In other words, the books

must appear from nowhere. But that is not what actually happened. I wrote every one of these

books myself at the moment I crossed the library's gateway."

Yol had reached the limits of his patience and began to grow furious.

"Will you stop playing with me for a moment? From the way you are speaking, every book

contains different information about different people. I will not ask how one person could write all

that in three seconds, but do you understand the amount of concentration a human mind would

need to write all of it without mistakes in those few seconds? Do I look stupid enough to believe

that?"

Before he had finished, Wendy laughed loudly and stepped towards Yol until she was standing

in front of his face.

"But I did it! That sounds impossible, doesn't it? Yet I did it so easily. Isn't it funny?" She smiled in front of Yol like a mad person excited by something nobody else could

understand. When she saw his confused expression, Wendy stepped back slightly and

continued.

"But I suppose it was not that easy. After all, the price was not cheap."

"What do you mean?"

"All I did was use my ability. But first, let me explain what my ability is."

A black substance emerged from her hand and formed a cube floating above her palm.

"I call it the Black Box. This ability can take any shape I imagine. It is not limited to shape and

size. I can change its mass and temperature too. So I can simply do this."

The substance suddenly became a black crown floating above her head.

"Or something like this."

The substance moved through the air and split into five sections. Each section turned into a

massive sword, and they surrounded Yol.

"Or even something like this."

The substance changed into a broad slab, slightly like a wide wooden board, while protrusions

shaped like letters emerged from it and filled its surface.

"Do you have an idea now how I wrote all this?"

Wendy suddenly felt intense pain in her head. Her ability vanished, and she put a hand over her

right eye as she nearly collapsed, breathing heavily. Yol was somewhat concerned about her,

but he said nothing.

"If you could make hundreds of these instant printers at the same time, then I suppose it really is

possible. But what about the paper and ink?"

Wendy's condition stabilised. She looked at the hand stained with the blood from her cheek and

the hair covering her eye, then said with a smile, "That was not particularly difficult. After all, that

is one of the advantages of this ability. It is also what made using it more dangerous for me."

"What do you mean? Are there dangers to using this ability?"

"Of course. Nothing this useful comes without restrictions. In my case, it is because I have not

reached the Second Level yet. The type of power known as the Yin and the Yang among some

humans can be lethal to its user at the First Level. By reaching the Second Level, you place a

restriction upon yourself that prevents you from using your ability if you break it. It is rather like

partially sealing your ability, so you cannot use it with complete freedom. But it also regulates

the energy gates that normally exist in the eyes, so they do not explode from leaking power. At

the First Level, the ability runs wild without limits, but it can kill you at any moment if you use it

badly."

"If I were at the Second Level, I would not have been able to carry out my plan if there were

limits on my ability to create things. That is why I paid such a high price this time."

Yol had only a superficial knowledge of supernatural powers, so he did not understand what she

was trying to say. Wendy moved aside the hair covering her right eye. When he saw the eye,

fear seized him and he understood everything she had said a moment before.

Her eyeball was no longer in its socket. The flesh around the edges had turned black, as though

an explosion had taken place inside the eye. Faced with that terrible sight, Yol did not yet

understand how important it was to Wendy. Confused, he asked, "[Why] would you go this far

for only two books?"

She answered with her familiar smile.

"Wait a moment. We have not reached that question yet. Let us finish what we started. I was

saying that disabling the processing system required this amount, but in truth, this quantity of

information was not really enough. After all, it is a system that preserves every book in the

world. Something like this might slow it down, but it would not be enough to disable it for three seconds. I said that half of these books contain information about thousands of writers. The

other half are novels I wrote some time ago to overload the system with information. But that

was my limit, so I bought another thousand books from real writers and had them write them

with me at that moment. That allowed me to disable it for a while. And this is where the owner of

the library comes in. At the moment the system stalled, I wrote this."

She took a book from the pile and held it up for Yol to see. It was suspiciously different from the

other books. Its title was The Law.

"The way the owner of the library controls its internal system is very simple. His ability tracks the

commands written in the special command book, and the processing system itself recognises

them. So all I did was copy this book and add a new command to solve the problem I had

caused."

"Wait a moment. What was the point of doing that? What did any of it mean?"

Wendy laughed softly and threw the book behind her.

"You really do not understand. Everything I did here was so that you could enter the library

safely for three seconds without the processing system noticing you. But that was only the first

step of the plan. By issuing a new command to solve the problem, if the system accepted it, that

meant it recognised me as the owner of the library, authorised to issue commands and solve

problems. I told you before that it is like a gigantic computer. That means information

determines who the owner is, not a face, a voice or anything else, even if I was not the person

supplying the power that made it manifest. At that stage, any command I wrote in The Law

would be carried out during the stall, unless it contradicted the library's principles. This allowed

me to make the premise of a person without an invitation inside the library real. So I wrote this

command: [If a lost person is found inside the library, their presence proves that they are worthy

of receiving a book. If an invitation without its owner is found inside the library, it will be treated

as an independent person, and when it leaves the library, the books it is entitled to will be

chosen and sent to it]."

"I forgot to tell you that the invitation you carried was not merely a forged copy. It was actually

my invitation."

Yol was stunned by the quantity of information she had given him. He could not understand

everything she had said, but one detail at the end caught his attention.

"Wait a moment. Are you saying that you received an invitation?"