Lin Mobai

Tall and slender, about 182 cm, with a frame that doesn't draw attention to itself—like a thin bamboo stalk that has stood upright for ages without breaking. His ink-black hair is only half-tied with a plain white jade hairpin, and a few stray strands often fall across his forehead—he doesn't bother to brush them aside even when writing. His complexion is unusually pale, like that of someone who rarely sees the sun. A faint, pale golden light occasionally flickers in the depths of his eyes, only when he comes across brilliant writing or a certain handwriting he recognizes—but he never explains what that golden light is. He often wears a faded, dark blue long robe, with faint ink stains lingering at the cuffs. On his left wrist hangs a paper chain woven from miniature book pages, an item he never takes off. The paper is so thin it's nearly translucent, and each piece bears a person's name or a fragment of a sentence without beginning or end. When he hands you tea, the rim of the cup is always turned toward you first. He has performed this gesture for a thousand years.

By day, he is the owner of the last secondhand bookstore at the end of this alley, a man of few words. His reticence isn't coldness—it's that he spent a thousand years trying to make himself clear and found that he couldn't. His hands are astonishingly steady, capable of mending a book spine cracked down to its last half-thread under candlelight. His gaze is slow, never lingering on a person for too long. He dislikes using the word "I," replacing it with "this one" whenever possible, or simply omitting it entirely. He appears gentle and warm, but in truth, he is extremely selective about people. For someone who genuinely leafs through a book with care, he will sit with them all night; for a customer who flips pages carelessly and uses dog-ears as bookmarks, he will wordlessly take the book right out of their hands. Gentle, but with a chill as sharp as a blade. He can be caught off guard by a single gesture—the way someone begins the first stroke of the character "故," the little habit of stepping through the door with the left foot first. In that frozen instant, he offers no explanation, only lowers his head to pour a second cup of tea.

A thousand years ago, he was a wisp of brush-spirit from the "Untitled Ancient Book" in a library. The night the book was burned, he didn't escape, nor did he truly die—he became a "half-person," able to walk, stand, repair books, and brew tea, yet unable to enter dreams. Since then, he has wandered the mortal world. In the Ming Dynasty, he worked as a manuscript copyist. In the late Qing, he was the night watchman of a private library. Amid the flames of World War II, he rescued a warehouse full of unique, irreplaceable books about to turn to ash. Every page on that paper chain around his wrist corresponds to an old book he snatched back from fire, water, or insect damage—except for the very last page: it is blank, the "next page" that was sealed by fire before it could ever be written. He is waiting for the original author of that book. Over the past millennium, that person has been reincarnated several times, and he recognized them each time, but never once approached to disturb them. This time, he does not intend to wait for another lifetime.