Down the hall, a short haired girl in the light blue healer uniform was taking the word “Naiouyubi” off the letter board on the wall. Seeing this, Yubi himself was a bit thrown.

  “Hey… uh… what’re you doing?”

  “Hmm?” The healer looked over at him. “Taking the label off a vacant room?”

  “Vacant? Isn’t that my room?”

  Now the healer was confused too. “It was my understanding that you’ve been discharged. If there’s been some mistake I could-”

  “What do you mean discharged? This is my-” Yubi suddenly stopped. A bit of thought later, he began again. “Do… I not live here?”

  The healer’s eyes widened with a sudden, surprised understanding. “My apologies. I forgot to consider your amnesia. This is the fortress medical wing, nobody lives here permanently. Since you’ve been… Wait, did the doctor not tell you…?”

  “Kyuzu didn’t tell me a lot of things.”

  The healer grimaced. “On behalf of the entire field of medicine itself, I beg that you find a way in your heart to forgive her.”

  “Uh… okay?”

  “Anyway, we already cleared out your possessions. Your wife has already received them so-”

  “I have a wife?”

  A look of pity filled the healer’s eyes. She began to speak, but Yubi got there first.

  “I get it, I get it. I’ll take the pills and get over it. Now could you tell me where I live?”

  Leaving the medical wing, Yubi emerged from a stone hut onto the surface. The surface itself consisted of a wide clearing filled with stone huts, each of which led down to, he assumed, different facilities in the so-called fortress. At the edge of the clearing, just before the land became forest, was another anonymous-looking hut shaded by the trees under the afternoon sun. Following directions, he climbed down the staircase inside it.

  As he walked, the thought occurred to him that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Then, another thought reminded him that he was in a body two decades younger only two days ago. He shivered a bit as he went down the stairs.

  Apparently he lived on the third floor down from the surface, in the second unit from the stairway door. It’s like an apartment complex but upside-down.

  The healer had lent him an emergency key to his front door, so he had no trouble getting in. His main room seemed to be a large combination of living room, dining room, kitchen, and an office/study. One wall had a sparsely filled bookcase and a large chalkboard. The opposite wall had cooking equipment and a fireplace. Between these was a long table with a box on it. Glancing inside, Yubi found the pouch of dream powder pills.

  He heard a pair of voices from another room. They weren’t talking… laughing maybe? At that volume, the joke must be hilarious. He walked further in and opened a door. This one was evidently a bedroom. It had clothing storage and a bed. On the bed were two startled naked women tangled around each other. Yubi couldn’t recognize which one was his wife.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I’ll come back later.”

  As he left, he considered hitting the wall with his head.

  Before “later”, Yubi opted to run an errand anywhere other than his home.

  “You must be getting better,” the Librarian said, “if you remembered the way here.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Yubi shrugged his shoulders. “I asked for directions.”

  “Yes,” she said, eyes down as she drew, “and you remembered the location to ask directions to.”

  “I just asked where the library is. It’s obvious.”

  She chuckled. “Yesterday you’d forgotten more obvious things than that.”

  He winced, turning away.

  “Wait here a moment.” She left her desk to go consult a reference.

  Upon arriving, he’d asked for copies of the diagrams used in his treatment. They’d allegedly been misplaced during the delivery from the medical room to his home. Whether or not that was true, he’d find out later.

  The library itself was a labyrinth of unlabeled shelves which Yubi lacked the courage to enter. Some of the shelves had little locked doors built in, giving the library a slight air of hostility.

  “Here you go,” the Librarian said upon returning. She placed a second paper on the desk.

  Yubi moved one diagram beside the other. He took out the pouch of pills and set it on the desk.

  “What… exactly do these things do again?”

  She pointed at the pills. “Roughly speaking, these access your body’s memories.” At one of the diagrams. “This accesses your soul’s memories.” At the other. “This… it basically lets you see what you’re thinking about. It’s not strictly necessary, but it makes the memories more vivid and easier to control.”

  He picked it all up. “Hmm… could you… um… would you mind answering some stupid questions?”

  “I think it would be quicker to get the answers from those.”

  “Maybe… but could you answer anyway?” His voice was shaking ever so slightly.

  The Librarian nodded her hand. “Alright.”

  Yubi took a deep breath. “How many days are in a month and how many months are in a year?”

  “A month is thirty days, a year is twelve months.”

  “So three hundred sixty. Right. Obviously.” He held up the papers. “How do these work?”

  “...do you mean those specifically or diagrams generally?”

  “Diagrams.”

  “A diagram is an image drawn in mana conducting material. When mana passes through a material, it sometimes interacts with the shape it passes through. Those… actually, have you remembered mana yet?”

  Yubi shook his head.

  The Librarian waited a moment. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “You made a motion like a dog drying off.”

  “This?” He shook his head again as an example.

  “Yes.”

  “It means ‘no’.”

  “Does it? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “I’M JUST SAYING ‘NO’, OKAY?” He took another deep breath. “Sorry. I still don’t know what mana is. Far as I can tell, you just push it out your fingers and a diagram does something.”

  “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  “No, that’s not it! That’s how you use mana, not what it does.”

  “Mana does lots of things.”

  “Okay? Like what?”

  “It cuts things, moves things, produces light… obviously it can help with memory loss… If we were demons we could also use it to speak silently at a distance, possess humans, change our bodies’ shapes-”

  “How about the diagram to Kassia?”

  “That’s the sort that moves things. It can send you or an object to the kingdom of Kassia. Long distance diagrams like that are operated at the teleportation facility in the city and are used for travel, trade, mail, things like those.”

  “Right. Teleportation. Of course.” His voice was growing very thin. “Now… um… for the royal court… what would someone’s name have to do with whether they… need an invitation?”

  “That’s… hold on.” She pulled a small blackboard and a chalk from under the desk. “Could you write down some names for me?”

  He took the chalk and wrote the following list: Naiouyubi, Rioshkaltis, Sailokyuzu, Toinoioeo, Aiyaloya. They’re all so strange.

  “Good. Now, it’s a long story, but a long time ago there was a king who decided people’s names should reflect how close they were to God in rank. Being the highest mortal rank, the king, whose name was Louis, changed his name to Louiya. The name Ya has no consonants in it, so he wanted to only have one consonant in his name. Then those nobles immediately below him were mandated two or three consonants, like you and Toinoioeo. Below that, the ranking is by proportion of vowels to consonants so it would go Sailokyuzu and then, lowest on your list, Rioshkaltis. So the name reflects someone’s rank and the rank determines whether they’re allowed to… are you okay?”

  Yubi had dropped to his knees. He didn’t respond.

  The Librarian went around the desk to him. “Hey… uh… are you feeling well? Is there something wrong?”

  “I don’t know…” he sniffed. “I don’t know how to eat. I don’t know who I am. I don’t… I didn’t know where I live. I didn’t know how names work. I…” He looked up at her. “I don’t even know my own wife’s name!” His chest heaved as tears flowed down his cheeks.

  “Uh…” the Librarian made panicked gestures in the air. “If it’s any consolation, neither do I?”