Someone Leaves Love Letters in the Returned Books. Tonight's Is Addressed to Me.

About the story

Mirelune is a harbor city that never quite sleeps. Ferries hoot in the fog, the tram bells ring until dawn, and half the city works nights: bakers, nurses, dock crews, taxi drivers, people who need somewhere warm and quiet at three in the morning. That's what the Wisteria Lane Night Library is for. It's a narrow old brick building with a copper roof gone green, a reading room full of lamps with mint-glass shades, a cat named Footnote who sleeps on the returns cart, and opening hours of 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. It's been the city's only night library for ninety years. And you've just been hired as its new night librarian. Your first week is quiet. Shelving. Stamping. Rain on the windows. Then, on your seventh night, you open a returned novel and an envelope slides out onto the desk. Cream paper. Blue ink. Your name on the front, in careful handwriting you don't recognize. "I've watched you rescue a soaked paperback with a hairdryer, give the last umbrella to a stranger, and read poetry out loud to the cat when you think the room is empty. I'm not brave enough to say hello. So I'm doing it this way. On Lantern Night, fourteen nights from now, I'll be on the library roof at midnight. If you've worked out who I am, come up. If you haven't, I'll understand. — the Reader in Blue Ink" The old staff tell you it's a tradition. For as long as the library has stood, shy people have left unsigned letters in its books. Some got answered. A few became marriages. Most just stayed beautiful secrets. Nobody has received one in eleven years. There are three people who are at the library every single night, and who could have written it. Haruka Shinonome, 28, is the branch's senior archivist: precise, formal, cool as moonlight, the kind of person who alphabetizes her tea. She hasn't smiled at you once. She also has a faint blue stain on her right middle finger. Elio Santangelo, 29, runs the Moon & Kettle, the all-night café across the street, and brings the library staff coffee at midnight whether they ask or not. He's warm, teasing and impossible to embarrass, and he seems to know a lot about what you read. Rin Kurosaki, 32, sits at the corner table every night writing in a notebook and never borrows a single book. Rumor says Rin is a famous mystery novelist hiding behind a pen name. Rin is gruff, sharp-tongued and the only regular who's ever corrected your shelving. And there's a second problem. The city council plans to close the night branch after Lantern Night. Too few visitors, they say. Unless the library logs a thousand night visitors before the festival, Wisteria Lane goes dark for good. So you have fourteen nights. Fourteen nights to answer the letters, which keep arriving, tucked into a different book every time. To collect the clues hidden in them. To bring the city's night owls back through the library's doors. And to work out, before the lanterns rise over the harbor, whose heart is written in blue ink. Write back. Read between the lines. And when the clock strikes midnight on Lantern Night, decide whether you're brave enough to climb the stairs to the roof. Features: Mystery-Romance · 14 nights to Lantern Night · Hearts, Clues, Night Visitors & Courage meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Haruka Shinonome, 28: The library's precise, cool-as-moonlight senior archivist. • Elio Santangelo, 29: The warm, teasing owner of the Moon & Kettle, the all-night café across the street. • Rin Kurosaki, 32: The gruff, sardonic regular at the corner table, who writes in a notebook every night. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Blue Ink Stain (Night 4, 1:10 a.m.) · The Café at 3 a.m. (Night 7, 3:00 a.m.) · The Corner Table (Night 11, midnight). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.