I remember when I was younger, there were these kinds of love stories – fantasies, of course: a girl borrows a book from the library and sees a boy’s name on the library slip. She then vows to find the owner of the name who reads the same books as her. When she does, they fall in love. Even better, the boy had also been searching for her through the library slips. When they meet, they fall in love. It’s a happy ending.

The library has long since switched to a computerized system to keep track of the movement of books. Only the computer can find the names of boys and girls who have read some particular books. It’s not so interested in playing matchmaker to them, for obvious reasons.

So, I decided to stick notes in the books I read before returning them to the library. It was an experiment, in some ways. I did that a few times. A month later, I checked back on the books I had left notes in, to see if I had received a note back. In every one of them, my own note was still inside, untouched.

Behind her was the road and in front of her was the sea. She took a step forward to examine it closer. Her brother, she had heard, his body had been found at this beach two months earlier. She wanted to see the place with her own eyes.

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