A monk resides far up a mountain spending his days reading the messages of the
clouds. Nature in its purest form, thinks the monk, an incorruptible and
eternal paintbrush. Sitting in peace day after day, the monk witnesses the
beauty and evolution of every season and every snowfall, lightning strikes and
rains. The ever changing sky fascinated the monk, and he never tired of laying
in his mountainside meadow.
One day, a woman from the nearby town hikes up the mountain, as townspeople
occasionally do. Suddenly, disturbed from his cloudgazing, the monk hears a
great scream! Rushing over to the distressed call, the monk comes to a sorry
sight of the woman clutching her eyes. The injured hiker senses his presence
and yells in frustration "Why have I suffered this curse! Only sorrow shall
fill my life now, for what good is a blind Librarian!" The monk, perhaps out of
instinct says "I shall be your eyes." Though fearing the people and the city,
the monk follows the woman back to her home.
Upon returning to the town, the Librarian brings the monk to her house and
offers to feed him and allow him shelter in her home in exchange for his
assistance at the library. The Librarian makes clear only one rule "You may
read all the books in the library, but you must never touch the book upon my
nightstand."
Years pass, and the monk is so excited by the immense knowledge before him that
he reads insatiably. The monk is content with his work and his life, until one
day he realizes that he has read every last book in the Library! The monk,
having grown used to spending his time reading, begins to grow anxious. After
work that day, the monk returns home to see the blind librarian sitting upon
her bed. Realizing that he could not be seen, and his fervent desire for
knowledge could soon be sated, he quietly sneaks the forbidden book into his
pocket. Knowing he had irreparably broken the Librarians trust, the
monk darts back to his home on the mountainside.Â
Arriving back to his long abandoned home, the monk opens the stolen text and
sees that it is a journal written by the Librarian. He pores over its contents
until reaching the last entry.
'I have fallen into a deep depression, for I have just finished reading all the
books in my library! I know not what to do if I cannot continue to learn, so I
shall jump off the mountain and face my death. This shall be my final entry.'
Upon learning of their shared fate, the monk hurries back to town and sets fire
to the library! The townspeople scorn him and banish him back to his
mountainside. Though they punished him, the people of the town are now
eternally peaceful just like the monk, spending day after day content with
nothing beyond the clouds.