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An intimate mystery about a missing notebook, a paper star, and people who delayed telling the truth for too long. Read the ten chapters in order: each brings the solution closer. All characters and events are fictional; any resemblance is coincidental. The text and translations were prepared with assistance from artificial intelligence.
Cabinet Number Seven
The top floor of the House of Books was so quiet that Mira Levchenko could hear the kettle cooling in the next office. In two days, an exhibition of Orlov's last manuscript would open here. She straightened a sign on the table, unlocked cabinet number seven, and stopped. Between two cardboard supports lay only a linen cloth. The blue notebook was gone.
At seven the previous evening, she and the director, Vera Stanislavovna, had counted its pages and signed an inspection report. One hundred and twenty-six pages, a worn spine, a small tear beside the lower staple. Now the lock was intact, the window closed, and a paper star lay on the table. Mira left it untouched. First she photographed the cabinet, the floor, and the door.
Arsen Vetrov, the conservator, hurried up from the floor below, still wearing gloves. “Could someone have moved it?” he asked. The director shook her head. She usually answered promptly and at length; today she adjusted her collar instead. A similar star had stood on her desk for a week, left over from a workshop for schoolchildren.
A trail of white dust led away from the cabinet. It seemed to vanish beneath the ventilation grille, but nobody could hide a notebook behind a gap two fingers wide. Mira crouched. Beside the decorative column, the dust formed a semicircle, as though a small door had swept across the floor.
“No cleaning up here until we know what happened,” she said. Vera allowed her to check the records and cameras with Arsen. Postponing the exhibition seemed dreadful. Mira thought opening it with a beautiful empty space at its centre would be worse.
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