Inspired by Haruki Murakami's The Strange Library. I'm posting the draft first; I may make major revisions later.
At the Myriad Library, Lin Chen is a cataloguer who doesn't fit in. That's because he can "taste" stories.
Stories of despair taste like rusty iron, joyful stories like poisonous honey, and stories on the verge of collapse give off an enticing, dangerous scent.
This gift gets Lin Chen shunned, but it also lands him the strangest assignment of all: deal with five original stories that are "rotting." But when Lin Chen touches them, he sees something even more terrifying: a file titled The Life of Lin Chen, sitting quietly in the library database.
They call him a freak, not knowing that his empathy is the only eye capable of seeing the truth behind every story.
Theme: His gift is reading, but he is the book being read.
