Chapter 3
565 Words
Tyler Zhao's passion for buying and reading books quickly earned him the bearded shop owner's trust. Within a month, he could put new books on credit, take rental novels for free, and buy used books at three for five dollars.
One evening while helping the bearded man watch the shop, Tyler encountered content that immediately aroused him for the first time.
It was a novel by Nishimura Jukō—one he would never determine was authentic even years later. The passage he stumbled upon depicted a male character violently stripping a female character naked, pressing a gun barrel into her intimate parts while brutally interrogating her.
The description lasted barely two pages, but Tyler read it greedily three or four times, wearing down the corners of the protective book cover the bearded man had carefully wrapped around it.
This was a completely different world from the tame romantic scenes he'd encountered before—those gentle encounters between heroes and heroines in martial arts novels, fleeting glimpses of beauty behind curtains, or vague romantic harmonies. This clear, raw, unflinching world finally opened its doors to him after his long search.
When Tyler bought his first truly arousing book from the bearded man, his face burned hotter than the blood coursing through his body. But before that semester ended, he could already ask casually without waiting for the shop to empty: "So, got any new books? You know, the kind I'm looking for."
His world expanded rapidly.
Shortly after his family's VCR was replaced with a DVD player, Tyler bought several supposedly exceptional discs under the bearded man's guidance.
After his grandmother went to bed early, he would lock his parents' bedroom door and greedily watch the naked bodies writhing on screen.
Of course, he learned how to use his hands, and understood just how alluring and tempting girls could be. What truly attracted him had nothing to do with swaying ponytails.
But as his grades began to slip, Tyler lost the one advantage that had drawn female attention during that period. Plain-looking and lacking athletic ability, he could only rely on his verbal wit to amuse the girl he admired who sat diagonally in front of him, content just to watch her laugh until her dimples showed.
Masturbation became his only solace.
Tyler knew that some classmates were secretly dating, and rumors persisted about certain couples spending nights together when parents were away—though many spreading these rumors didn't actually understand what "spending the night" meant.
Despite his extensive knowledge and popularity among his peers, Tyler couldn't even touch a girl's hand.
After the high school entrance exams, his father rewarded Tyler's decent performance by buying him his first computer. With money always available, Tyler abandoned his beloved Sega console that summer, bringing home box after box of games.
But after purchasing a disappointing game that drove him toward pirated disc vendors, Tyler quickly befriended a small shop. Soon, heavily compressed video compilations with terrible image quality, along with adult games and image collections from that era, opened pathways to deeper worlds through his computer.
However, until everything was eventually purged by authorities, Tyler maintained his weekend habit of browsing used book stalls and visiting that original bookstore. He always preferred finding arousal through text, constructing images through imagination to release his desires.
That bearded man's bookstore would once again become the beginning of everything.
- Writer
