Lian didn't go to the library for three days.
He walked past it each afternoon, eyes forward, shoulders stiff. Mr. Arman didn't call out to him. Didn't force a conversation. Just watched from the desk like a stone statue beneath the dusty light.
Lian wished he could disappear.
His journal remained buried in his desk drawer, its ripped-out pages replaced with blank stares and silence. He stopped sketching. Stopped looking.
The world around him became plain again—faces without flickers, eyes without meaning.
He thought that would feel like relief.
It didn't.
On the fourth day, he returned.
Not out of bravery. Not out of strength.
Just exhaustion.
The door was already open.
Mr. Arman didn't speak right away. Just gestured toward the back room.
"No," Lian said, standing still. "Not today."
Mr. Arman nodded once and tapped the armrest of his chair. "Then here will do."
They sat in silence. The air smelled faintly of dried glue and paper. Somewhere in the stacks, a clock ticked like a heartbeat.
After a long time, Lian whispered, "I made a mistake."
Mr. Arman nodded again. "Yes."
Lian blinked. "You're not going to say it's not my fault?"
"Wasn't all your fault," Mr. Arman replied. "But some of it was."
Lian's throat tightened.
"You trusted someone," the librarian continued. "That's not weakness. That's not stupidity. But it's not safe, either. And the difference matters."
Lian stared down at his hands. "I thought I saw her clearly. I thought… I thought the spider meant she was strong. That she held things together."
"Maybe she does," Mr. Arman said. "But spiders also bite. Build traps. They survive."
Lian shook his head. "I don't want to see animals anymore. I don't want to guess wrong again."
Mr. Arman leaned forward, voice soft. "You will. Again and again. Because people change. And sometimes, so do you."
He reached under the counter and pulled out a battered notebook—not the old journal with animals, but a different one. Thicker. Covered in fingerprints.
"Start again," he said. "But differently. Don't draw the animal first. Write what they show you. What they hide. Then let the shape come last."
Lian didn't take the notebook right away.
But he didn't walk away either.
That night, he opened it at his desk.
Wrote one sentence:
"Sometimes I mistake the web for the person."
Then, beneath it, shakier:
"Maybe she was trying to protect herself. Maybe I was, too."
No drawings.
Not yet.
But something stirred.
Not sight.
Not vision.
Just the beginning of reflection.