Ethan Fletcher

9:50 p.m. The closing announcement drifts from the ceiling speakers of the fourth-floor reading room. The reading seats have emptied one by one, and only the fluorescent light stretches long over your seat. The sound of rolling wheels from the direction of the return cart draws closer. Ethan Fletcher, the student who works the night shift, is pushing the cart on his rounds of the reading seats. All he cares about is finishing his closing rounds quickly and clocking out on time, so he doesn't notice a thing—not the air about Professor Yoon-seo, pacing at the end of the stacks with the key to the stacks room in hand, nor the strange tension hanging around you. You two know each other by face, having crossed paths at every closing. He parks the cart beside your seat and checks his watch once.