(6) Patchouli Knowledge (ft. Koakuma) ～ The Unmoving Great Library

Girl of great knowledge
Rests in the quarter of books
Needs an inhaler

From knowledge comes power; with power comes responsibility. The mistress had two of those, the last one was a thing that she wasn’t concerned about in general.

To attain the vast knowledge needed for great power, the mistress had built, over a hundred years ago, the greatest library in all of Gensokyo. Of course, this library was not a public one, and only a select few from the mansion were authorized to enter, with a few unwelcome guests sometimes barging in.

Today, the library had a new visitor. She wasn’t a willing one; she had been dragged here on a whim by the ever-shifting whimsy of the mistress. “Here it is, Licorice: the biggest and greatest library in Gensokyo- nay, the bestest in the entire world!” Remilia proudly presented the Magic Library toward her new maid.

The library was certainly magical, in terms of scale. Shelves towered high and above, looking like skyscrapers of wood and paper. They were filled with books, of every kind and size, some of them would make an ordinary human either die or go insane. About as common as books was mold, which had also made its home here. Licorice couldn’t help but agree on Remilia’s statement upon observing the library in person. “So… Mistress, may I ask why we’re here?”

“To consult a friend, of course!” Licorice was surprised to hear the mistress have any friends. “O’, Patchy! Where art thou?”

“I’m here, Remi.” A girl with purple, in loose pajamas and a night cap, slowly floated toward her guests on a makeshift sofa constructed out of books. She could rival the mistress in terms of ‘looking like a walking corpse’, with skin that looked like blood rarely visited it and black bags under her eyes. This girl placed herself right in front of Remilia. She noticed Licorice standing behind the mistress. “…is that a new employee or someone you dressed up in a maid outfit for fun?”

Remilia stepped sideways to present our heroine. Licorice bowed down to greet the library-dweller. Patchouli couldn’t rise up to greet her as her legs were cramped after sitting for who-knows for how long. “Yes, she’s the new maid. Patchy, meet Licorice Meidou. Licorice, meet Patchouli Knowledge.”

Patchouli responded by simply raising her hand. “Ah… Hello.” She seemed reluctant while speaking to a stranger, Licorice figured that she must be the introverted type. Her speech was quiet, quick and brisk, a habit she had gained from reciting spells over and over again. “What kind of youkai is she?”

“She’s a completely natural, homegrown, free-range human, not to mention B positive. My favorite flavor of human.” It seemed that Remilia had been affected by Outside World advertisements of food while describing her employee.

Patchouli raised her brow. “So, what powers does she have? Controlling time, shooting webs, eye lasers… Which is it?”

“Eh… I’m not sure.” Remilia turned to Licorice for help. “Do you have anything at all?”

Licorice was now put on the spot. She tried to think of something that might impress the people in the room. “Uh… I can calculate fractions and do calculus?” She vaguely remembered doing a lot of the aforementioned.

Patchouli was intrigued. “What’s the derivative of…” She quickly thought of something random that should be hard to calculate. “…cosine-squared theta plus sine-squared theta (cos2(θ) + sin2(θ))?”

Licorice paused for only a second, quickly arrived at conclusion. “It’s zero.”

Patchouli was suspicious of how quickly she had calculated, while Remilia was confused as to how you could get zero by adding a bunch of sins up. “How did you calculate that just now? Show me how you got to the answer.”

“It’s simple, really.” This was one of the rare times Licorice got to feel superior over the people of the mansion. “Cosine-squared theta plus sine-squared theta equals one (cos2(θ) + sin2(θ) = 1). It’s the Pyth… pyth-somethingoranotherian theory expressed with trigonometric functions, pretty simple stuff really. You get zero by taking the derivative of that 1 you just acquired.”

Patchouli nodded, she seemed satisfied. “I see.”

The mistress stared at them both, not having gotten anything that was just communicated between the two. “Patchy, how do you use your sins in math?” She had been much more impressed when Licorice was able to calculate the fraction properly back in Kourindou, calculus went way above her head.

“Not sins, sine.” Patchouli, while she liked to lecture and talk to the mistress, felt that this conversation would not bear fruit. Vampires were not made for calculus, after all. “It’s pretty advanced Outside World magic, though you need to be well-versed in mathematics to even begin comprehending it."

The mistress suddenly looked disinterested. "Peh, math! What good has that ever done for anyone?” With this, she casually dismissed an entire field of science. “Isn’t counting to ten not enough for those mortals? They have a limited time to live, perhaps they should focus on things that matter while they do.” And with this she dismissed the entire field of human psychology.

Patchouli was used to the mistress dismissing her intellectual pursuits. “This whole place is built using mathematics, but we digress. Why have you come here today, Remi?”

Licorice raised her hand. “I’d like to know why I’m here as well…” Maybe the mistress just wanted to show off her wealth?

“Ah, right. I did have a reason… What was it?” Remilia turned to Patchouli looking for an answer. She had kind of forgotten the reason for her visit.

“Mistress, I’m a magician and a librarian, not a mind-reader. Those two are separate fields of expertise.” Though, it wouldn’t be a lie to say that Patchouli had looked into entering mind-reading at some point.

“Hm…” Remilia’s eyes wandered to poor Licorice. “I remember! I was going to ask if Licorice was sick.”

“Mistress, I’m very much fine.” Except for her sense of normality being shattered each passing day, Licorice honestly felt fine. “I don’t think I’m sick at all.”

“Yes, but have you looked at a mirror?” Licorice wasn’t sure whether the mistress was trying to insult her, but she did her best to keep calm around the child that could pulverize her at moment. “You humans only tan when they’ve been out on the sun, but you’ve kept your tan despite mostly staying inside. I was wondering if you had some sort of rare disease.”

The library suddenly fell silent. The trio stared at each other. In the background, a red-haired devil with a sharp suit ran by, carrying a stack of books. A tumbleweed figuratively passed by the scene. You could hear a pin drop. Licorice blinked. Patchouli blinked. Remilia had no need to blink, she gazed at the two wondering what might have been wrong about what she had just said.

“Pfft-” Licorice couldn’t keep her calm, and she began laughing boisterously. “I- What-” Patchouli attempted to laugh too, but that only caused her to enter a fit of wheezing and coughing that caused Licorice to shut up in concern. “A- Are you fine, Miss Patchouli?”

Patchouli was clutching on to her chest while also trying not to fall off from her stack of books. “Cough- wheeze- I’m…” She slowly came back to normal, though it looked like she still had trouble breathing. “…okay, I’m fine. Just a little bit of asthma, nothing to worry about.”

Licorice thought that almost suffocating to death would count as not ‘nothing to worry about’, but she also wasn’t an asthmatic immortal witch. She tried to return the conversation to where it was. “Mistress, the color of my skin is something that’s genetic. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Je-ne-tik?” That’s a word that Remilia hadn’t heard about. “What’s that, Patchy? Another form of Outside World magic?”

“Genetics… How to put it…” Patchouli always had to simplify things for the mistress, which was ironic considering that the mistress was a couple times older than her. “It means the traits you inherit from your parents. Genetics is the reason why humans look different to each other.”

“Ah, so Licorice’s parents were chocolate-flavored then!” Remilia nodded as if she had made a profound point. “How curious, are all the people in Gensokyo vanilla-flavored? Is the color determined by the amount of vanilla and chocolate in their skin?”

“Mistress, as I’ve said before, I’m not chocolate-flavored…” Licorice sighed. Children really were a bother, especially those who were over 500-years old.

“What she said. I’m pretty sure humans normally don’t have vanilla or chocolate in their skin. Umm… What was it exactly called again?” She turned around to her assistant, who had been watching the conversation from a distance. This assistant was the little devil that had passed by the background earlier. “Koakuma! Bring me the volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica that has the articles starting with the letter ‘M’.”

After a brisk wait, which was surprising considering how hard it should be to find just one book in such a large library, Patchouli had the relevant volume in hand. “M… me… ‘melanin’! That’s what it was called. Ahem. ‘Melanin, a dark biological pigment found in skin, hair, feathers, scales, eyes, and some internal membranes…” She read the passage describing this commonly found pigment. “…It is a barrier against the effects of the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. On exposure to sunlight, for example, the human epidermis undergoes gradual tanning as a result of an increase in melanin pigment…”

Remilia raised her hand and interrupted Patchouli’s reading session. “Wait, you can protect against sunlight with this?!” To a vampire, sunlight was the biggest foe. Hearing mention of an ally had caught her attention. “Patchy, can I extract some from Licorice’s skin? It’d be very useful during my walks; I wouldn’t have to carry a parasol!”

“…Mistress, the one who carries your parasol is either me or Sakuya. Also, please do not steal my skin!” It felt to her as if she had to avoid being butchered every day of her life.

“That’s not how it works, I’m pretty sure of that… I don’t even know if youkai use the same chemical.” Patchouli did her best to prevent Licorice from being skinned alive. This wasn’t out of pure altruism: she didn’t want the only other person with knowledge of high-level mathematics to be killed.

“Aww…” The mistress dropped her head in disappointment.

“Remi, if your question is answered, I’ll now excuse myself. I have some important reading to do, as always.” The throne of books she sat on slowly floated upwards, carrying her along with it.

“See you Patchy!” The mistress waved goodbye as Patchouli disappeared amongst the shelves of the library.