Kiyora the Shinobi Librarian (Naruto)
Kiyora gazed upon the bookshelf of the library with the eyes of a man who had seen death and bloodshed and found that his fate was in the hands of the battle's song as he forged onward into the fight anyways.
He's paid many visits to these shelves over the years, and he knows their contents better than the back of his own hand.
(Seriously he found out he had a mole on it like, just yesterday. It had been there his entire life, apparently.)
Like a religious fanatic - when in any sort of peril, he found himself finding solace in the towering shelves and the contents displayed in them. So much so in the general public, he was known most commonly as "that library guy." An epithet he's sure strikes fear and intrigue in the ninja populace.
One may assume that was meant to be sarcastic, but sadly his life was never that easy - and lo and behold, being the library guy did tend to genuinely strike fear and intrigue in the general ninja populace.
A normal library was not anything special - books never really do much when you aren't staring at them. The ninja library though..it really couldn't help but be extra.
Back when founding the village, Hashirama put mokuton wood any and everywhere. Like superglue, it held most structures together in the village during the founding years - and it wasn't all that odd to find remnants of to even this very day. The Library though? It took a mokuton structure to a whole new level.
Imagine a library made entirely of sentient wood - one that no one knew the rules of, and one that had the ability to fight back when rules were broken.
It sounds like the concept of a horror novel, and to many that was quite what it was. Aspiring horror authors came more often then not from Konoha - and they had a small niche of 'sentient building tearing you apart limb by limb for breaking the rules of the building you didn't know about' with enough of a following to be an actual genre.
Kiyora would know, he's seen the shelf on it.
The exception to a vast majority of library rules was children - not that anyone really knew that. Children were never heavy readers anyways, and it's not like any sane person would redirect their toddler to the giant person eating building.
But Kiyora, in all the egotistical pride of a child and all of the reckless abandon that came with being a shinobi child and all of the lack of adult supervision that came with being orphan during wartime - well, he found himself very comfortable in the library the day he learned how to fully read.
Kiyora didn't have many memories of his parents - but he did remember one phrase being told to him many times over when he asked them something they didn't have the answer to.
"I don't know Kiyochin, let's check the library."
(Of course in hindsight, they were most likely referencing the civilian library that was made not even eight months after the shinobi one after several complaints were lodged, and was generally the much better known of out of the pair. Five year old Kiyora did not know this difference, and just went into the nearest building with the words library near it.)
And Kiyora was a very very curious child.
Over the years he realized some things.
One, the Library was pretty gentle with him compared to other people - sometimes he'd forget not to bring food into the library and would take a riceball with him as he was going to walk in. The door blocked itself up and nudged him away every time. Once Kiyora saw a random ninja try and enter the library with a cracker in his pocket.
The library tried it's hardest to tear the offending party directly in half.
Two, the Library generally wasn't mandated by anyone. There's an open Librarian position - but it was an SS class mission, and civilians know better than to try for a job that even the bravest shinobi wouldn't dare take up. The ones that did never made it out in one piece either - and almost every one of them were jonin.
Three, as long as you didn't break a rule upon entry, you could read the rule book found in the center of the library. A book he found roughly at the age of nine, and explained the first point pretty well.
It was a really big rule book - some of them made sense, and some..really really didn't. He understood why food and drink wasn't allowed in the library - humans were messy, and could do damage to the books, or attract wildlife. It was fundamentally understandable.
Convoluted ones like - just to grab an example here - Rule 67; no genin may enter the library until three weeks after their first C-RANK mission along with explicit permission to enter granted by their jonin sensei.
Sure, he can understand that logically there was probably a specific person this had been targeted at - but considering the fact that most genin never actually asked their jonin sensei about entering a library, let alone the ninja one? Well, they're locked out for..basically forever.
A lot of the rules are like that, actually. It seems the Library reacts more violently based on how many rules are broken - and considering how many rules there are, and most people not knowing them?
Yeah, most people aren't getting in the Library any time soon.
Of course, being a toddler when he first went into the library means that - he didn't really have the chance to break any rules.
A fun loophole, in his opinion.
His talents were mostly unnoted upon - seeing as he was the only person who spent more than five minutes in that Library since it's creation, and the ones that got deep enough in to catch a glimpse of him while he was actually in it rarely ever made it out.
Kiyora himself knew quite a lot about the rules of the library - he can name them off the top of the head, and some would genuinely kill him for that knowledge alone. He dismissed that thought though, because he lived in a ninja village - and everyone was willing to kill everyone all the time.
An unfortunate rule was tagged on at the very end of the book - Rule 968 clearly states that the Librarian selected by the Hokage has to be at least Jonin level.
This driving force propelled his entire ninja career, but that is not what this story is about. This story is about how, at long last, almost 17 years after he first entered these hallways - he was officially their keeper. He actually cried a little at the announcement.
Yeah Announcement. Apparently being the only person in the entire village to actually be able to enter the Library makes you a bit of a Big Deal.