Sakuya’s handwriting was tiny and neat, but as the note went on it became increasingly coarse.

The air is deadly. Hold your breath as long as you can, starting now. You do not have much time. There are three critical things you must accomplish.

The first is that no matter what happens, you must activate the seal that resets time. It is on your stomach. Do that now so that it can charge in a few minutes.

Second: you must add one tally to track this iteration. Therefore, protect this book with your life.

Third: the woman in a purple dress is named Yukari. Keep her within arms’ reach and keep a hand on her until the end.

You must stop time and wait out your supply of air. I’m sorry.

Monsters are coming. Run or hide. Stopped time can save you.

You will be rescued eventually.

Seal modified for maximum stasis after charging

Air is worse than before

They can be killed

Avoid the red and black monster

Out of air now

Good luck

—

There was a drop of blood next to the final note, but it faded quickly. The text changed back after barely ninety seconds. There had been tons of other hastily-scrawled notes, and a large part of the notebook was full of tally marks–the word ’correct’ repeated over and over, a symbol that changed after the automatic translation.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Patchouli, who had copied the text with one hand while leaving through my notebook with another. “Did she alter the seal to… oh.”

Remilia nodded.

“I am surprised at her recklessness,” said the librarian.

“They are in Makai,” said the vampire. “She had no choice.”

“Can we back up a second?” I asked. “This is a lot to take in.”

“We cannot back up any amount at all,” said the librarian. “We need to move to a secure area before we discuss this. I’m sorry, Mister Thorne, but please forget everything you just read.” She’d seen me reaching for my other notebook.

Remilia rolled her eyes. “Sakuya usually resets herself every day at midnight,” she told me. “Helping Yukari get enough rest has been her primary job for several months. When she found herself suffocating in Makai, she was forced to reset herself more frequently, and we just read her reminder to herself about what to do when she resets.”

I let my mouth hang open for a bit too long, trying to come up with a followup question.

“Remi, please stop revealing our most important secrets,” said Patchouli.

“Oh, that’s not even close to the most important secret we have,” said the vampire.

“Wait, so she’s dying in Makai?” I asked. “Over and over?”

“Yes…” said Patchouli. “Approximately once every five minutes, it would seem.”

“And she’s trapped in a time loop?” I continued, my voice rising.

“Quiet,” said the librarian. “We need to go to a secure area. Jake, I’m going to retrieve a mnemovore so that you can forget about this.”

I involuntarily stood up. I most certainly did not want to forget that Sakuya was dying every five minutes in an alternate dimension full of monsters, while trying to protect Yukari from said monsters until she woke up.

“I don’t think so,” said Remilia. “Jake’s on our side now, isn’t he?”

“I am?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve thought that for a while, but–”

“Yes,” said the vampire. “You are, because your notebook is the only reason Yukari might return to save us, and your connection to it is the only reason we know what’s going on with Sakuya.” She flicked my hat, which I was still wearing. I always wore it. “In fact, if that notebook wasn’t a part of your identity, I bet the miasma would have melted it already.”

“Holy shit. My lady.” I looked at the copy of the notes that Patchouli had made. My notebook–the version of it in Gensokyo–had shown some regenerative abilities, like being waterproof. The idea that the fate of Gensokyo rested on whether my somehow-still-connected earlier notebook could resist miasma was terrifying.

“Well,” said Patchouli, “Either way, we need to go to a place with a permanent ward before the banishment wears off. I need not remind you, Remilia, that each warded room has a corresponding secret.” She snapped her book shut, and I admired her dedication to reading a few sentences while we talked. “What other secrets are we willing to tell him?”

“None that are important,” said Remilia.

“Then there’s only one place I can imagine us going.”

Remilia smiled and waggled her eyebrows. “To the bedroom!”

—

We walked through a hallway to the Great Hall, from the Great Hall to a staircase, from the staircase to another hallway, past an empty larder and a quiet kitchen, from that area to another hallway, and finally to a door covered in sigils.

Or rather, I walked. The other two flew. I couldn’t think about anything, except that if the journey took five minutes or longer, Sakuya had died somewhere while we were walking.

And had been brought back to life.

We approached the sigil-loaded door. It opened when Patchouli turned the knob. Remilia seemed unwilling to go near the sigils, and carefully pulled in her wings so I copied her behavior. I knew that Patchouli liked booby-trapping things to immolate would-be intruders.

As we entered her bedroom it seemed to me that Patchouli Knowledge had a fondness for oversized cushy pillows, incense, and solitude. The librarian already practically lived in the Great Library, but if this room had been a studio apartment in the outside world the tenant would call it a personal library.

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The place was a bit dirty. The room tidied itself automatically.

Books fell into neat, ancient shelves like gravity-defying dominoes. Plates covered in crumbs disappeared into a wooden box behind a dresser. Spent ash from incense vanished from existence entirely. The carpet got a little more purple. The bed sheets folded and arranged themselves. Some fine clothes that actually weren’t pajamas disappeared into a closet before I could get a good look at them.

A fragrant incense stick lit itself. I assumed the incense was fragrant. I couldn’t smell it, not since having my sense of smell obliterated. Remilia’s nose wrinkled; I wondered what she smelled.

“Are you cleaning with telekinesis?” I asked.

“I prefer that to other methods,” said the librarian as she walked around her bed. “Less physical strain.”

“More mental,” said Remilia.

Patchouli’s bed was a plush four-post sort of thing, with glass crystals hanging from all the sides. She also had a desk and a chair. She duplicated the seating so that Remilia and I didn’t have to sit on the bed. Patchouli must not have expected company that evening, I thought.

The door closed behind us when the librarian gestured at it.

“We’re secure,” she said.

“Good,” said Remilia. She turned toward me. “To make this quick, Mister Thorne, Sakuya was giving an extra sixty years to Yukari for sleep every night, so she could be maximally awake in Gensokyo. Don’t tell anyone because the duration of her rest is a major vulnerability.”

“Sixty years,” I said. “Every single night.”

“That’s right,” said Remilia. “An entire human lifespan. That’s the most that Sakuya can use per reset.”

“Oh my God.”

What did Sakuya do during those years? Walk around Gensokyo while twiddling her thumbs? Read? Practice juggling knives? And no wonder Yukari was so willing to micromanage everything–she spent decades sleeping for every single day of work!

“The boundary between days is a time when Yukari absorbs power most effectively,” said Remilia. “So naturally, she lingered there as long as possible.”

“Poor Sakuya…” I said.

“Don’t worry. Sakuya spends most of that time being dead.”

“Oh, that’s a huge relief,” I said, not meaning it at all. Remilia’s eyebrow went up. “My Lady.”

“When my maid leapt after Yukari to save her she knew she was likely to die. Sakuya must have adjusted her resetting seal as a response to the toxic air. But that somehow went wrong and probably isn’t working as intended.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because,” said Patchouli, “if Sakuya had frozen time for Lady Yakumo for sixty years every five minutes, she’d be awake and back already.” Patchouli shifted in her chair. “Especially if she was sleeping in Makai, where magic is more powerful.”

Makai was a distinct realm full of deadly acidic miasma and monsters. It was a place where magic was extraordinarily strong, a realm steeped in paranormal forces. It was perhaps a good place for a youkai to rest and recharge, but also an extremely bad place for humans, who could only survive there for minutes at best.

“She’s going to be gone for about five thousand years,” I said, glancing at my notebook. “Not that I know how I know.”

“I suspect Yukari is messing with your notebook…” said Remilia, her eyes narrowed. “It certainly isn’t behaving like an ordinary notebook.”

“Okay,” said Patchouli, who was better at mental math than almost any human. “Five thousand years? Then after seven hours of resetting every five minutes, Miss Yakumo should have come back.” Patchouli shook her head. “It’s been months, so clearly something isn’t working as intended. Even in Makai, a full sixty years every five minutes must not be attainable. That is too much compression, too much power.”

“But how is sixty years possible every day?” I asked.

“Can I tell him?” Patchouli asked Remilia.

“Go for it,” she said.

“Reddit,” said the librarian.

“Huh?” I asked. “That old social media website?” I pretended to be less familiar with it than I was, reflexively. It had been banned as a hotbed of extremism and political unrest, and there was still a stigma against Redditors.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m all but certain that Lady Yakumo somehow figured out how to collect emotive power wasted on social media, and that she capitalized on this by posting enraging memes all day. With her large store, she can spend that power on other things.”

“That only raises more questions,” I said. “Like ‘how does one store emotions and later convert them to time magic?’ or ‘what memes?’ or ‘why doesn’t technology interfere with this bullshit’?”

“Lady Yakumo is extraordinarily powerful,” said Patchouli with a shrug. “It’s just one theory. Time magic is a domain that we haven’t fully mastered yet, and Yukari doesn’t share notes.”

“With you,” said Remilia. She waved her hands. “But look at this stud!”

“We aren’t even sure exactly where Miss Izayoi’s power comes from,” said Patchouli. “It works even when Lady Yakumo isn’t supplementing it. My best theory is that she’s stealing time from nearby people in imperceptible amounts.”

“Oh, so that’s why time started flowing normally again in Gensokyo,” I said. “Because Sakuya left.”

You could hear a pin drop in Patchouli’s bedroom after I said that. It amazed me that the possibility hadn’t occurred to the vampire or the librarian. On the other hand, it was a fresh mystery to me, with recent evidence, so I was better able to make new connections like that. Maybe they’d exhaustively thought about it before, then failed to notice that the change in the flow of time might be relevant. Gensokyo had been slowed for an indeterminate number of years, and suddenly it matched the Outside World (although it was still off by about twelve hours).

That was the meaning of seeing with fresh eyes, and my eyes were fresh compared to theirs. Perhaps literally, since they’d been recently healed.

“I’m starting to see the wisdom of bringing Jake fully on board,” said Patchouli. “Perhaps if we somehow closed the hole in the sky…”

“It won’t work the way you are thinking,” said Remilia. “That would destroy the entire Outside World.”

“Better not, then,” said Patchouli.

“Eh?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Remilia, waving a hand. “Or if you can’t stop, I can go get the mnemovore. It’s great for overcoming trauma.”

“Okay then,” I said. “I have more questions.”

“Shoot,” said Patchouli. She made a finger gun at me, then awkwardly put it down. “This is one of the few places we can speak candidly.”

“Why are the tally marks so important?” I asked. “That’s why ‘correct’ is repeated ten thousand times, right?”

Patchouli nodded. “Those are Japanese tallies translated to English. One of the tenets of time loops is that they must all be different. Another way of stating that, is that time loops must be constructed so that they eventually come to an end.”

“So?”

“So by adding tallies the loops are made distinct. Eventually your old notebook will fill up, and the loops will stop.”

She produced a pencil and a piece of paper from her breast pocket (or more accurately, the extradimensional space in the side of her dress) and started doing some figuring.

“Between fifty and two hundred days remain until then,” said Patchouli. “So that is how long we have to rescue Sakuya. And we must rescue her, because Miss Izayoi messed up her seal when she altered it, and isn’t providing Lady Yakumo with any accelerated rest at all.”

Remilia nodded. “That sounds right to me.”

“I should have gone,” said Patchouli.

“Then you’d be dead,” said Remilia.

“But Lady Yakumo would be back,” countered the librarian. “I’d have remade the seal correctly.”

“Because you’re super good at dealing with toxic gasses,” retorted Remilia, rolling her eyes.

“If she remains absent for five thousand years of objective time, Gensokyo’s barrier will fall and we will die all the same.”

“She won’t be,” said the vampire. “Can you can draw up a seal that would function correctly?”

Patchouli rubbed her chin. “I believe so. I don’t have the same time constraints, so I can figure out a way to work with the abundant-but-limited energy of Makai.”

“Good,” said the vampire. “It’s time for me to leave. I’m going to go back to find Sakuya. Make sure your seal is ready before I find her.”

“Make sure you find her fast enough for us to give Yukari a full five thousand years,” responded Patchouli. Remilia got to her feet, and walked toward the door.

“Oh, two things,” said the vampire. “First, Jake, make sure you ask the question on page one hundred and thirty nine of your notebook.”

“Okay,” I said as I started flipping pages.

“Second, nothing at all,” she said.

The door opened in front of Remilia and she left. Patchouli’s head tilted. “Was that message for you?” asked the librarian.

“I think so,” I said, my hands trembling. “I’d been about to ask her what I should do to help.”