Chanyeol winces as the book flops open with a spine-snapping crack. It lies with a disturbing dent in its spine, and he really hopes it isn’t a valuable book, although if it is, it shouldn’t just be on whatever shelf for all and sundry to get their mitts on.

Carefully pinching a yellowed page, he flips through until he finds a full page illustration. It’s faded, like the text. His best guess is it depicts some sort of ritual or fairy tale. Two people face one another, one sort of highlighted and the other in shadow. Good and evil, maybe a normal person facing a demon or someone being punished for their poor decisions.

He assumes the text, formatted like a recipe and on the page opposite the illustration is the relevant passage and squints to force the faded ink to darken to legibility.

It doesn’t work well.

Leaning closer and then further away, left and right, don’t help much, either, but he sounds out what he thinks he can read.

Pure gibberish. It makes about as much sense as Greek.

His eye twitches and burns; he sets his glasses on the table rubs his eye once, dragging the corner of it out with his finger. Sometimes an eyelash falls behind the eyelid and causes irritation.

The same sensation erupts in his other eye. He covers them with his hands, pressing the heels of his palms against the eyeballs as they threaten to burst from his skull. Tears escape and fall down his cheeks, off his chin. Blearily, he notices dark splotches on the table and book. His palms are red with dark blood that streams from his nose.