After Shibasaki left for work, Iku opened her closet and began a period of lengthy deliberation. She thought up combination after combination and tried on outfit after outfit. At last, she stood still in the middle of a hurricane of clothes in her underwear, grateful that the heat was turned up. She almost always wore a sports-bra-and-panties set, but since today was special she was wearing a set of "normal" underwear that she almost never used. As an ostensibly adult woman, she did own a few push-up bras in appealing designs.

Even so, Shibasaki scoffed at them for "having no sex appeal"--but Iku didn't have the courage to buy the pretty lace-and-ribbon confections that Shibasaki and the other librarians wore, and she had accumulated only cute-but-simple patterned underwear whose selling point was "less decoration makes for a prettier line!"

I mean, a 170 cm giantess who beats people up for a living, in delicate lacy underwear... When would I wear it? Objective thoughts like this inhibited her while she was buying underwear.

Thus, the pair Iku was wearing now was a pale green patterned demi-bra set with almost no ornamentation; it was cute, but not striking. She thought Shibasaki would praise her for wearing a matching set; it meant she was paying attention to her fashion choices even when they were invisible.

For bottoms, she had a few skirts, but mostly jeans. For tops she had plenty of more or less feminine design--but what should she choose?

"...It'd freak him out if I dressed too much like I was trying to impress him, yeah."

That ruled out skirts. She put on jeans, a layer camisole, and a prized cardigan she had snatched up at a New Year's sale. For a coat, she chose her most cheery, a lightweight sky-blue down jacket.

"It is not!" Iku shouted, her cheeks burning.

Shibasaki paid her no mind. "Come on, usually on your days off you sleep in until some leisurely hour, but today you bounced out of bed with the sun. Ohhh, if only today were my day off! I could stare at the TV and the internet all day. But you're going to spend this precious day going out with your superior officer! It's ridiculous, I just can't understand it!"

"You're the one I can't understand! Come on, it's breakfast time! Don't you have work!?"

"Nooooooo! I don't want breakfast, I'm gonna stay here and watch TV until the last possible minute..."

"Gah, fine! Do whatever you want!"

Since it seemed that Iku had at least been able to nip Shibasaki's plan to play hooky in the bud, she headed for the mess hall alone. Shibasaki's appetite was small and she never ate much in the morning, so it wasn't a big deal.

However, Iku did feel some triumph when she heard Shibasaki's scream upon discovering the state of the clothes she had left in the kotatsu. It was a good punishment for her foolish tantrum.

~
"Today you bounced out of bed with the sun."

It hit the mark more than she liked to admit. They weren't meeting at Musashi-sakai station until 11. From there they would go to the shop Iku had found in Tachikawa, where they would fulfill their modest promise to go and drink camomille tea together.

The one who had brought up the promise, a little while after they returned from Ibaraki, was Doujou.

"Come to think of it, you should hurry up and find a tea shop."

Apparently seeing the flower in bloom in a greenhouse at the Ibaraki Prefectural Library had only heightened his interest.

"Don't think you can fool me with your sweet and innocent act. Anyway, don't you think you're being a little careless about this? People died defending the reactors."

"I pray that the victims have reached Heaven safely, but that's separate from my curiosity about the incident. Q.E.D."

"'Q.E.D.'? Don't get cute with me! If this were something that involved the Library Force, I might be willing to overlook the way you're acting, but this has absolutely no connection to the library!"

The moment she said it, something niggled at the back of her mind. She thought about it for a moment, wondering if perhaps there was a reason she should be glued to the TV like a rubbernecker, but nothing came to mind. She couldn't deny some natural curiosity, but it wasn't at the level where she wanted to shirk her duties and watch TV all day like Shibasaki.

"Look, I'm going to breakfast. You know, if I told you I wanted to play hooky for a reason like that, you'd give me a sermon."

"Nah, if it was to watch a big news story develop, I wouldn't stop you. Why? Any chance I could convert you?"

"None! Okay, I'm going to the mess hall!"

"I don't know why you're acting all high and mighty, when you and Instructor Doujou took the same day off so you could go on a date."

"Excuse me!?" Iku's eyes widened; the attack was unexpected and below the belt. "We're in the same squad, of course we have the same days off! And it is NOT a date! It's just something we promised a while ago to get together and do!"

"That's called a date, silly."

Chapter 1, The Beginning

*
"...Wow..."

It was still dark that time of year when Iku got out of bed at 6:30, turned on the lights, and saw the news. Her mouth dropped open and she cried out in surprise. Forgetting that in the winter Shibasaki liked to put her next day's clothes under the kotatsu (so that they were nice warm when it was time to leave), she gazed at the screen, her eyes devouring the images.

"...I just want to take the day off and stay glued to the TV all day..." Shibasaki said. For an information addict like Shibasaki, a major event like this was probably like heroin, but it was still a rather brazen comment. "Maybe I could pretend I caught a cold..." she continued, in a not-quite-joking tone.

Iku swatted Shibasaki's forehead. "Playing hooky because you want to surf news sites all day is going too far, no matter the circumstances!"

"But this is large-scale nuclear terrorism we're talking about! New information is going to be coming out by the minute! Controversies will be springing up all over the news and the internet! You don't feel the desire to chase down every last bit of information?"

"I don't. If everyone skipped work for the same reason as you, the world would fall into chaos."

Oh, that might be nice, Iku thought to herself secretly. Usually, it was practically Iku's job description to whine and be scolded and lectured by everyone around her.

"Nothing will fall into chaos if it's just meeee..."

Library Revolution
by Arikawa Hiro

Declaration of Library Freedom

1. Libraries have the right to gather materials freely.
2. Libraries have the right to make materials freely available.
3. Libraries protect the privacy of their users.
4. Libraries oppose all censorship.

When the freedom of the library is violated, we librarians will unite and fight to the end to protect its freedom.

Prologue
*
In January of the 34th year of the Seika era--

On the 15th, when the whole world was already caught up in Valentine's Day sales, it happened.

Deep in the night, the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture experienced a large-scale assault.

~
"Behind me is the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant as it appears this morning!"

The female reporter, shouting to be heard over the sound of the helicopter's rotor, leaned into the camera frame, heedless of the open door behind her.

The camera closed on the reporter, a familiar face on that channel's news show, for a moment before panning down to the ground as the aircraft banked. The rugged landscape below was covered with snow.

The shot looked down at the plant from almost directly overhead. Plumes of smoldering black smoke rose from here and there on the grounds, marking the locations of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, which had been constructed in recent years along Wakasa Bay.

The most striking image in the shot was the wreckage of two camouflaged helicopters that was sticking out of the sides of the buildings. The camera zoomed in; their main rotors and tail rotors were completely destroyed, and their bodies were bent in the middle.

As the camera lingered on that ghastly sight, the voiceover was taken over by the studio.

"This morning at three o'clock, the combat helicopters that you just saw at the Tsuruga No. 3 and No. 4 reactors flew in at low altitude and penetrated the perimeter of the plant. They crashed into the No. 3 reactor--but that was just the beginning of this catastrophe."

"They were quickly stalled by the safety systems at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors. The security team at the reactor called the police and the JSDF, then suited up for battle and began a firefight with the attackers who emerged from the crash-landed helicopters."

"However, during that time, the Tsuruga No. 2 reactor at the tip of the Tsuruga Peninsula experienced an attack of its own."

The screen showed a closeup of a map drawn on a clipboard. It indicated the relative positions of the new No. 3 and No. 4 reactors along Wakasa Bay, which were separated by a mountain and connected by a tunnel to the older No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, along with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's experimental Fugen reactor, on the Tateishi Cape side of the Tsuruga Peninsula.

"For the sake of convenience, we have labeled the reactors on the Tateishi Cape side as 'former' reactors; however, though the No. 1 reactor and the Fugen reactor have been decommissioned, the No. 2 reactor is still in use. It is speculated that the assailants' plan was to cause a diversion with a conspicuous attack on the Wakasa Bay reactors while they gained control of the control room at the No. 2 reactor and caused a meltdown. Because the reactors have safety mechanisms and were designed to be strong enough to withstand light aircraft crashing into them, a random attack like the one at the Wakasa Bay reactors cannot cause a power excursion."

"Because of this, we can say with high probability that the attackers' goal was the No. 2 reactor. Everything about their attack on the former reactors reeks of stealth; after the sun rose, several amphibious assault landing craft were discovered on the beach near the former reactors. All of the attackers at both the old and new reactors are dead. Repeat, all the attackers are dead."

"According to the latest reports from the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant, there has been no radiation leakage. However, an evacuation order has been given to surrounding areas just to be safe. The evacuation order should be called off within the day, and residents will be able to return to their homes."

"The Fukui police riot squad were the first to be dispatched after the call from the power plant. According to their report, the attackers were 'a very well-trained special ops team.' The landing craft left on the nearby beach, the crashed helicopters, and the weapons the assailants were carrying have all been seized by the police. Many of them were made in the former Soviet Union and the rest of the Communist Bloc, and have been identified by experts as easy for terrorists to get their hands on."

"The attackers were armed with recoilless rifles, heavy machine guns, and hand grenades, so the police riot squad was quickly replaced by a detachment from the Ground Self-Defense Forces from the Sabae garrison. There was a government announcement by the prefectural governor declaring a state of emergency and requesting their deployment as disaster relief, but given how swift the deployment was, the opposition party is investigating whether someone on the ground may have jumped the gun and not waited for the governor's announcement."

"The deaths of all the assailants has already been criticized as a cardinal mistake, since it means that none of them can be questioned..."

"The prefectural police chief says, 'According to reports from the Self-Defense Forces who pursued the attackers, at the end they all bit down hard and collapsed one after the other. Autopsies have revealed that they all ingested a poison that was concealed in their teeth. Since the attackers would not throw down their weapons, I must say that it would have been impossible to prevent this.'"

"If this incident is connected to the string of international terrorist attacks in recent years and the terror network claims it, this will be the first time Japan has been its target. It is not clear at this time if Japan's current counter-terrorism measures will be enough to respond to..."

--
And this book starts with a bang!

You may find it helpful to look at a map of the power plant. If you zoom out you can see that the plant is located on the Tsuruga Peninsula, with Wakasa Bay to the west and the Tateishi Cape to the east. According to Wikipedia, the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors are planned but have not yet been built; I guess they've been completed in the future world of Toshokan Sensou.

This took forever but is so worth it.

( Air Traffic Control Tower, seriously. )

Here are scans of the book jacket and title page. Translating the map of the Kantou Library Base (I know, right!?) is taking a while and will have to wait until morning.

( Pretty pictures this way! )

Hi guys! Just wanted to let you know, the fourth book, Toshokan Kakumei, will begin on Monday! And to get you excited, tomorrow I'll be posting some extras from the book, like the cover art and the title page!

Looking forward to starting up again! - melithiel

Get it here!

So what did everyone think of the book?

Kasahara, rumored to be second to none when it came to the simple and straightforward, looked like she was ready to make some objection; Shibasaki poked her in the side and she subsided sullenly. For people like her, the Library Force was probably about to become a slightly more tense place.

That prediction was why he had hastened Genda's promotion--but what would the Library Force actually be like after he was gone?

Hikoe continued, "But I don't think that the principlists and the governmentalists disagree over the fundamental ideals of the Library Force. In a world where an incident like the one at Mito can happen, I think that we'll be able to find compromises that fit the situation, whatever the differences in our beliefs. I think your wisdom and experience will be a great help. I look forward to continuing to work with you."

Hikoe bowed so low that the thinning hair on the top of his head was visible, and then shut the car door. The driver said, "Here we go," as he had every day, and started the car in time with his scrupulous warning, as he had every day.

Inamine continued to lovingly stroke the pot of camomille on his lap.

I may be beyond redemption, but at least I've always had plenty of people who understood what I was working for.

It had been over twenty years since the Nightmare at Hino.

Today was the day that the old man who had created the Library Force and lead it into the present day retired from the front lines.


...To be continued.

--
Aaaaand we're done with Toshokan Kiki!

Hopping on a plane to Boston in three hours. I'll try to put together a quick-and-dirty PDF of this book over the weekend for people to read!

(How's this for freaky--I just realized that I posted the first page of Toshokan Kiki the day I started my job, and now I'm posting the last page the day after my last day! Totally didn't do it on purpose.) - melithiel