When Yubi returned the second time, he knocked and waited. One of the two women from earlier answered the door.

  “Ah, Yubi, you’re back!”

  Of the two, she was shorter and a bit more tan. She moved forward with what seemed like hugging intent. Yubi pulled away since this person was basically a stranger to him.

  “I do live here, right?” he asked, voice a bit tired.

  Her eyes widened but her voice stayed composed. “Come in, you look exhausted.”

  She led him over to a sort of asymmetrical couch-bed looking thing. The two sat next to each other.

  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she said. “It’s been almost a month and a half over here, so it must’ve been quite a while over there, huh.”

  “Uh-huh,” he started to nod but then stopped, remembering the gesture may not exist in this world.

  “They said you’ve got some kind of memory loss. That must be pretty stressful, huh?” She started reaching up Yubi’s clothes.

  He jolted away. “What’re you doing?”

  Startled, “Oh, do you not need it today?”

  “What? I-” It was getting harder and harder to collect himself. “About the memory loss. Could you tell me… Are you… They said I have a wife…?”

  “Do you not remember me?”

  “I’ll remember eventually, but I need to know now.”

  “Um… okay. My name is Voilauisan, Lau for short. We’ve been married about ten years.”

  Ten years…? She looked… She was definitely an adult, but he was afraid to find out what she was a decade ago.

  “The other woman you saw me with earlier was Dalishnkater, or Dali. She’s technically your concubine but you two don’t talk much.”

  “Lau and Dali… Together you’re definitely louda.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind. Uh… Tell me, Lau, what do you… do? Like, with your time?” Agh, it’s like a bad first date! He considered leaving again, but wasn’t sure where he would go.

  “Thanks to you, I study mana conductive plants and fungi.”

  “Thanks to me?”

  “Well yeah. I don’t think I would’ve entered the academy without your support.”

  “Ah. That’s good then.” He didn’t remember doing it, but it was one of the first things he’d heard of himself doing which he was glad to hear about.

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  “So that’s who I am, but how about you? Who was the great Naiouyubi in the other world? Surely you didn’t keep going by that name.”

  “Well, I was reborn in a woman’s body over there.”

  “O ho ho ho! And the lady’s name pray tell?”

  “Patricia… something or other. Trish for short. In the other world everyone has two names. One is given and the other is passed down from the father.”

  “Hmm, why is that? Wait, don’t tell me… If two people share a passed-down name then they’d probably be pretty closely related, right?”

  “Right. That was very quick of you.”

  Lau grinned. “I learned from the best!”

  Yubi smiled too. Whoever his wife was, she was a very comfortable person.

  She scooched close again. “So… what did Trish find?”

  “Basically nothing. I lost my memory on the way there so I didn’t know what to look for. They don’t use mana over there anyway.”

  “Hmm… you were over there a long time, surely you learned something or other.”

  “Well, I- hold on.” He pulled out the pills and the diagrams. “I don’t remember much, but I have the tools to check. Would you mind if I…?

  She got up. “It’s fine. Take your time, I’ll put together something to eat.”

  He watched her walk over to the kitchen side of the room. Part of him wanted to help, but then he remembered that he probably wouldn’t even recognize any of this world’s cooking tools. Thus he sat back and activated the diagrams.

  Yubi was more intentional with Trish’s memories than he had been previously. He was looking for knowledge and skills, so he tried to focus on Trish’s working life as much as he could. This wound up being a lot of memories of driving around, following people, and digging through documents.

  Breaking from this, Trish sat across from her mother at a dinner table. She’d just asked what her father was like.

  “Well, that was a long time ago, but he was-”

  Yubi looked around. Lau knelt, dejected, beside a large pot in the fireplace. He looked down at the soul memory diagram. Right, this thing cuts out if my mana isn’t consistent.

  He went back in.

  Trish took a photo and then sent it to her boss. A couple minutes later, the phone rang. When she answered, the voice of the man she’d sent the image to came out.

  That’s interesting. The Librarian said demons can talk at a distance, so if we could do that too that would weaken their advantage.

  Trish attached a string to a can and then pulled it taut.

  “Ready mama?”

  No, that’s not it.

  Trish typed out an email summarizing observations she’d made on the job. Her hands were illuminated by the screen. When she was done, she pressed some buttons and the text disappeared from the screen.

  Interesting, but how does it work?

  The lights in her apartment suddenly went dark.

  “Power’s out again?”

  Trish went to look at the circuit breaker.

  Right, they’d mastered the power of lightning. But how?

  Yubi searched and searched, but the secrets of electricity remained elusive. Trish evidently had a lot of experience using phones, computers, and a number of other appliances, but none in how to build such a thing. Thus the rest of his time was spent analyzing other skills.

  When he was finished, he looked around for metal wires and then turned to Lau.

  “I want to try something. When I step outside, please lock the door. If I knock, unlock it, but don’t unlock it before I do.”

  His wife agreed, though not without confusion.

  Outside, Yubi knelt next to the door. He’d picked up a small pair of tongs from the table. There had been a badge on the shelf with a long needle-part. He’d broken this off and bent it up a bit. Using the tongs, he applied a rotational pressure to the lock. Using the belt needle, he dug around inside and pushed up the key pins. Because of the pressure from the tongs, each pin stayed up when he adjusted the next. Before long, he was able to turn the lock the rest of the way and open the door.

  “Wow,” said Lau. “That’s neat. Were you a thief in the other world?”