In a dim corner of the Old Bazaar, buried beneath swaying tapestries and the aroma of roasted spice nuts, Jérôme discovered what could only be described as a “令人满意的stapler.” At first glance, it looked like any ordinary stapler—black, with a faint sheen of wear along its metallic edge. But there was something about its weight in his palm, as though it held within its tiny frame an entire universe waiting to unfold.

“That,” boomed a raspy voice from the shadows, “is no ordinary stapler.”

Jérôme flinched, nearly dropping the object. A man wearing a turban of twilight colors emerged slowly, his eyes an unsettling shade of gold. “I see it has chosen you.”

“Chosen me?” Jérôme echoed. The hint of skepticism in his voice couldn’t mask his growing unease. “It’s just a stapler. Useful for… binding paper? Hardly magical.”

The man let out a low chuckle. “Ah, but you’ve forgotten—paper folds into time, ideas puncture eternity, and the things we bind together… well, sometimes they can never be undone.”

Jérôme wanted to scoff, but before he could protest, he noticed the murals lining the walls of the vendor’s cramped shop. They depicted labyrinths of impossible angles, staircases that led to nowhere, doors opening into skies full of stars. In one of them, a small object rested in the center—a stapler, eerily similar to the one he held.

“Coincidence,” Jérôme muttered under his breath.

The vendor’s grin widened. “Nothing is coincidence. Tell me, mon ami…What is it you seek?”

Jérôme faltered. Why had he even come here today? What impulse had pulled him from his small flat and toward this foreign corner of the world? Words tumbled out before he fully thought them. “Purpose. I’ve been… wandering. Without direction.”

The vendor nodded, as if Jérôme’s plight was something he’d heard a thousand times before. “This stapler,” he said, pointing with a crooked finger, “will either trap you in the labyrinth of your own making… or help you escape it.”

Despite himself, Jérôme felt his hand tighten around the cold metal. “How?” he asked, his voice a fragile echo.

“You staple something with intention, and the journey begins,” the vendor replied enigmatically. “But be warned: Intention is a dangerous thing. The question isn’t what you want to bind.” He leaned closer. “The question is: Are you ready to face what lies on the other side?”

Jérôme hesitated, but his thumb rested on the sleek lever with surprising certainty. In a defiant surge of curiosity, he withdrew an old receipt from his wallet, thinking nothing too lofty of it. He pressed—ka-chunk—the first staple into the paper.

In an instant, his surroundings dissolved.

Jérôme found himself standing in the middle of an infinite library. It stretched vertically into darkness and horizontally into horizons that rippled like mirages. Around him, bookshelves housed tomes marked only by shifting glyphs that burned gold before fading into black. He stepped forward, his breath shallow and fast.

“Ah, a seeker!” A voice startled him—a deep, sonorous tone that emerged from a figure seated atop a tall ladder. It was a woman, her ink-dark skin glowing faintly under the flicker of floating lanterns. She wore robes patterned in constellations. Her eyes, sharp and tired, never left her book.

“Who are you?” Jérôme ventured.

“I am the Archivist,” she replied, her tone clipped. “And you are here because of an intention terribly unclear.”

“I just—” Jérôme broke off, uncertain. “I was experimenting. I didn’t mean—”

“Didn’t mean,” the Archivist interrupted, “is the essence of all poor choices. But no matter. What lost part of yourself have you come to bind?”

“Lost part?” Jérôme frowned. He glanced down. The stapler was somehow still in his hand.

The Archivist let out a sigh like the rustle of turning pages. “This Library contains every fragment of every life. The moment you stapled that slip of paper, it became your map—a map to parts of you scattered long ago.”

Jérôme didn’t understand, not fully. But he nodded. “So how do I…?”

Her lips thinned. She gestured to a staircase behind her. “Enter the maze. But beware: The center only opens to one who truly understands their reason for folding the labyrinth closed.”

Jérôme wandered through chambers of dream logic: a circular room where mirrors spoke his thoughts aloud, a corridor lined with clocks that ticked backward, a fountain that poured sand into whispers of forgotten regrets. It was intoxicating, terrifying, endless.

Time shed itself from him like a second skin. Just as he began to fear he’d be trapped forever, he stumbled into a clearing—a quiet nook with a desk bearing only one item: a photograph of his younger self, laughing freely beneath an ancient oak tree.

And he remembered. Himself. His simple joy, before ambition tangled him in indecision and doubt.

“It’s enough,” he whispered.

The stapler hummed in his hand.

Jérôme woke up shaking but smiling. He found himself back in the vendor’s shop. The golden-eyed man raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

Jérôme stood taller than before, cradling the stapler like a talisman. “It’s…令人满意的.” And for the first time in years, he meant it.

In the end, the maze had not trapped him. It had freed him.

A small, satisfied laugh burst from the vendor. “It always is.”