Library of the Scarlets

Scene 8

The room I am in right now was totally different from what it was before I almost fainted. Now that Kosuzu is here, I am now sure that this place is where the illusion is strongest. And right now, it seems that there is only one culprit in this incident.

“Alright, Kosuzu, what did you do?”, I asked her from behind.

Kosuzu fidgeted and froze as I asked her a question. She slowly turned her head to me as if she had a rusty robot neck.

            “A…ah… eh… I… did… absolutely nothing…”

            “Are you sure about that, Ko-Su-Zu?”, I put a tempting smile on my own face and looked at her creepily while saying her name with pauses in the synonyms.

            “…ah…. It was….”

            “Hmmm?”

            “….I…”

            “…I give up….” Kosuzu’s face was teary and embarrassed. “Yeah, it was me.”

            “Tell me what happened so that we can cure this incident,” I demanded with a deep voice that Kosuzu’s crying became cuter.

“Well, I tried summoning the rest of libraries in Gensokyo…”, Kosuzu started explaining.

 “...and…?”

 “Please let me say everything I have to say first!”, she reacted. “Well, I… um… I tried summoning them because…”

            “…because…?”

            Kosuzu angrily puffed her cheeks and turned away.

            I tried to grab her by the shoulder and said, “Okay, okay, I will stop, continue with your story.”

            It took me a while to convince here to continue telling the story.

            And it seemed to go like this:

            Kosuzu tried to gather all libraries in one place, but not for a bad intention. She just wanted to sneak in the youkai books she translated by hand to these bookshelves throughout Gensokyo. After that, she would return everything back to normal.

            Using a certain magic she learned from youkai books, she summoned and gather bookshelves from any place inside her range.

            She can only gather the bookshelves in a certain area at a time, and started distributing her own books first in the Human Village, then the Shrines, and so on. She started doing this since last night.

            The last place she could think about was the Misty Lake. Completely unaware of the giant library Patchouli owns, Kosuzu tried summoning all the libraries in the said area inside the Suzunaan.

            With her magic not yet fully mastered, Kosuzu was unable to fully summon the whole library, and thus creating a distortion in gaps both in the Suzunaan and Patchy’s library, where everyone in the Scarlet household (except Flandre because she was sleeping), Cirno, Kosuzu and I got stuck in.

            And also, the youkai living in the misty lake were also affected due to their trait of being easily attracted to gap distortions.

            “Ah, to think that distributing books would go this far…”, I sighed while scratching my back.

            “I’m very sorry, Marisa…”, Kosuzu apologized for the hundredth time.

            I looked back at the items that she took out of my pocket, and started to look for something—

            Ah, found it.

            I picked up another wooden hakkero and blew off the dust on it. The mirror in the middle shined with a steady yellow glow. I poured down a few amounts of a certain powdered fungi and the glow in the mirror became a faint blue.

            “Cirno, Patchy, can you hear me?”, I asked on the hakkero.

            “Master, is that you?!”

            “So, how did the investigation go?”

            I heard Cirno’s worried voice and Patchouli’s flat tone through the hakkero. Kosuzu watched me talk to them from behind me.

            “Someone calls you master? That is new,” she exclaimed.

            “Shut up.”

            I said that Patchouli and Cirno must leave already to the mansion. Kosuzu herself allowed Patchy to own several of her books, because Patchouli said that she won’t leave until she learns something new.

            And soon, the glow of my hakkero returned to its golden gleam, telling me that they already left this library.

            I turned back to the red-haired girl behind me.

            “Kosuzu,” I spoke to her as she flinched.

            “Y...yes?”

            “Can you use youkai magic to allow me to talk to someone? Like how I talked with the two earlier using the hakkero.”

            Her nervous face slowly faded and became serious as she started thinking deeply.

            “Depends, who is this that you want to talk to, Marisa?”

            “Reimu. Hakurei Reimu.”

            Kosuzu blinked.

            “And what would I tell her?”

            “First and foremost, tell her to postpone the Flower Viewing even for just five minutes.”

            She blinked twice.

            “Srsly?”, she said in a quick manner that I didn’t get to hear the vowels.

            “I said first, right?”, I said. “Second is to ask her if the Youkai of Sleep is in the party. Third, if Reimu says yes, then ask her to help us here.”

            “That is all?”

            “Yes,” I answered.

            Kosuzu walked to the edge of the room and meditated to start with her spell.

            The Youkai of Sleep I was talking about earlier is actually a youkai named Yakumo Yukari. I called her the Youkai of Sleep because she is always sleeping, morning or night, in her dimension.

            Yes, I said her dimension. Her own dimension.

            This is because Yukari’s ability is to control gaps.

            Yukari is the one helping Reimu repair the Hakurei Border*4, and can easily manipulate and travel through gaps.

            She can literally see everything happening in Gensokyo if she wants to.

            Yukari can make a gigantic gap from scratch and destroy one if she wishes, so fixing this distortion must be easy for her.

            “O…kay, I established mental contact with Reimu!”, I heard Kosuzu’s voice behind me.