The dealer and I met at one of the usual spots, a lonely corner of the library at the local uni. It was early morning, a few minutes after opening and scarcely anyone was there, just the universal hum of AC and the ugly smell of matted carpet and old books. I sat cross legged on the floor fiddling with my phone when I saw him holding a book in one arm. His walk was slow and casual. He stopped a row or two away from me and took out his phone.

He texted me the details: yo i got the kush near jorges taco truck u gettin higher than heaven lol. The fuck does that mean?

The dealer took the book he held, pressed his finger on one page, then he thumbed through one of the books on the library shelf before stamping one of its pages with the same finger. I watched this strange ritual at least a couple dozen times.

He gave me a nod and left, and like always, I waited a couple minutes before I searched for the product. It was on a sticker the size of a rice grain, and the text he sent had a hint for the page it was on but I learned long ago how to smell it out. The drug smells like salty coins and lemon. It was on page seventy-nine of a book called "Ficciones". Sounds french. I checked the book out and left.

Money was exchanged online, everything encrypted. There were different libraries, different lonely corners, but the procedure stayed the same. Why he chose libraries instead of trading at the mall like a normal person always irritated me.

I went home, twelfth story of a crumbling tower block, peeled the tiny sticker and dropped it into a tea cup. It was heat activated, you couldn't stick it in your eye. The drug revolved around ritual, and most sites recommended tea, "boiling not boilt", to make it the most potent. Honestly I'd drink it from the shitter. All the text hints and books and tea, it all seemed like a crock of shit. Why anyone couldn't just sell it as a pill and make billions didn't ever seem to cross the mind of the hipsters who made this shit.

I took a sip of the drugged tea. All of a sudden there was this calm that came from inside me, that wasn't there before but now filled all my cells like a battery. Nothing bored me. I looked around at the dimly lit hole where I lived and felt at peace. It was the cure for ennui, an end to boredom that gave life the value it so lacked. At least that's what the site said. It was the inner nirvana that all those Confucianists got riled up over. Other highs, they were like rollercoasters made out of heroin, but this, it didn't feel so good that you knew some pain was coming in the future.

I felt like I was third in line at Disneyland. I felt like I just found a twenty dollar bill in my pocket. Like watching the really good part of a movie when all the pieces are coming together, like going to bed on a Friday night, or the feeling of the last page of a good book on your thumb. And it felt like this for hours.

When I was in this altered state, I took to reading the books I checked out, doing chores around the apartment, going outside for walks and whatnot. Boring trivial crap that now felt a lot easier now that all the existential baggage had evaporated, now that I didn't feel the weight of every step I took.

But for this tea session, I decided to take a nice, long nap.

I woke up from what sounded like a heavy fist banging on my door. On the other side were the indistinct screams of gruff and bitter uniformed men. I heard fragments of sentences, "illegal possession", "surrender", "forced", "goddamn hedonist", before they kicked the flimsy door down and came inside. I was in bed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the great, big pile of unreturned books that I'd left in the corner. Oh, shit. The drug had wore off, and all that inner peace left with it, now replaced with the sinking feeling of fear and anxiety. I doubted those men were librarians.