Itsako was standing in front of the warehouse door. The warehouse was black and rusty, and in the upper third of the door there was a foggy glass section made up of several diamond-shaped pieces, with a vertical iron grill attached to the door in front of it.
"Let's see which key it was," Itsako said, fiddling a bit with the keychain in her hand until she found the key she wanted.
She opened the door and entered the warehouse. The warehouse was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, but parts of it were still dark and shadowy, giving off a suffocating and gloomy vibe.
"Okay Grandpa, where did you put the notebook?" Itsako began searching through the warehouse.
First, she checked the shelves filled with old, worn-out books, but the notebook she was looking for wasn't there, so she moved on to the stacked old boxes.
She started by checking a few boxes in the front, but there was no notebook in them—only old items. So, without searching all the boxes, she concluded that the notebook wasn't in that section.
Disappointed, Itsako turned to go to another part of the warehouse. But suddenly, she saw a mouse at her feet. Startled, she jumped back and accidentally bumped into the stacked boxes, causing them to fall on top of her.
After a while, Itsako managed to pull herself out from under the boxes. The boxes were light, so she wasn't seriously hurt—just a few aches here and there.
"Damn it, look at this mess. The whole warehouse is wrecked," she muttered.
She started tidying up the boxes until she came across one that had opened, with all its contents spilled onto the floor.
She began picking up the items when she found a notebook that exactly matched her grandfather's description. It had a dark purple cover with white lines drawn around it from the center, and in the middle, there was a blue gem-shaped bump, locked with a belt-like clasp. Excited to have found it, Itsako quickly grabbed the notebook and wanted to take it to her grandfather—but curiosity got the better of her. Despite her grandfather's warnings not to read the contents, she opened the lock and began reading.
The first two pages were written in a script that Itsako had never seen before, so she couldn't read them. But the rest were written in normal Japanese script.
Itsako didn't think too much of it and kept reading. She turned the pages one by one, and after a while, she realized the notebook was about important historical events.
She recognized some of them, but many she had never even heard of. Still, Itsako wasn't paying much attention to the information; she was more focused on finding out why these writings were recorded.
She kept flipping and reading the pages, occasionally coming across strange terms like "kermak", "pit", "line", and things like that, but she ignored them and continued—until she reached the end of the notebook.
At the end, there was a note written in Japanese: "Do not read this page."
But now Itsako's curiosity was even stronger than before, and she began reading the last page.
This page was also written in Japanese, but the writings made no sense. Itsako read them unconsciously, without understanding their meaning.
Everything became strange when she read the last word.
As soon as she read the final word, the entire room suddenly lit up, and she fainted. While unconscious, she started having a strange dream—she saw things she didn't understand, like weird movements and odd writings and…
When Itsako regained consciousness, she saw that—
To be continued...