Need further education
On Cyrillic script
Dust. Mold. Dusty mold. Dusty, moldy books. The great library under the Scarlet Devil Mansion contained all of the aforementioned, and more.
Amongst those who fell into the “and more” category was Licorice, who had headed down there to deliver tea to Patchouli on Sakuya’s orders. Her poor lungs were protesting with every step taken down to the library; ventilation wasn’t exactly a primary concern for a library predominantly visited by immortals and their ilk whose lungs were resistant to petty concerns such as mold and dust.
The library, just like everything else in this convoluted mansion, was hell to navigate. The towers upon towers of bookshelves blended in at one point, and Licorice would be totally lost if not for the occasional fairy maid to ask directions from.
Eventually, our heroine found her way down to where Patchouli was supposed to be. She did find Patchouli, but she also found another magician of the ordinary kind accompanying her.
“Hey! Cough, hack!” Patchouli was struggling to stand up and breathe while struggling with Marisa over a book. Her usually pale face had gone red, becoming almost indistinguishable from a ripened tomato. “I was reading that! This is Remi’s property!”
“Eh?” Marisa tugged on the poor book that was stuck between their hands. “You’re immortal; you can read it whene’er I croak!”
“…but won’t you-” Patchouli seemed distracted by the prospect of Marisa dying. The ordinary magician gave all her strength on a final tug, but this was not enough to separate the librarian from the book. She instead ended up tugging Patchouli along with the book, and the librarian speeding towards her ended up knocking Marisa to the ground along with Patchouli.
“…it’s hard to breathe with you bein’ on top.” Marisa ended up being crushed by Patchouli after their “unfortunate” little “accident”.
“Huh? Cough, are you implying that I’m heavy?” Still, the pair stayed like this without any attempt to separate. Both of them were smiling, and Marisa had joined Patchouli in looking like a tomato.
Licorice awkwardly stared from a distance, debating whether she should ruin their little moment. It’d be a whole lot awkward if they were the ones to notice her though, since it’d look like Licorice was watching them like a creep. “Umm, excuse me?”
“What th-” Patchouli jumped off from Marisa, though “jump off” was an exaggeration considering her sluggish movements. “Since when were you here?!”
“’Tis the ordinary human. Yo.” Marisa was a whole let less flustered. She raised her hand to greet Licorice.
“Here’s the tea from the head maid.” Our heroine went on as if she had seen nothing, calmly putting the teapot down to a nearby table that Patchouli had set up. There was something odd on the table however: a set of old books which were definitely not in Japanese.
Licorice picked up one of the books, inspecting the writing that looked a whole lot familiar compared to what little Japanese she could read. “What are these?” They looked out of place among the usual books of the library.
Marisa got up from the ground. She helped Patchouli raise herself up too while replying to Licorice’s query. “Those are some of them foreign books that Remilia’s dog fetched from Kourin.”
Patchouli dusted her clothes before continuing to explain where Marisa had left off. “Yes, those are magic books written in some enigmatic language. I was trying to decipher its runes before someone arrived.”
Marisa bashfully laughed at Patchouli’s last comment. “Ah… I couldn’t help myself when I saw mushrooms in one of those books.” She picked up the book with a green cover and flipped to the page she was referring to.
“Don’t they look real delish?” Marisa’s mouth had already began watering at the sight of the mushrooms illustrated in the book. “There be magic circles and whatnot illustrated in the other pages, maybe it’s talking about a way to summon shrooms? I’d find out if someone wasn’t interferin’. Marisa’s elbow dug into Patchouli to emphasize who she had a problem with. Patchouli retaliated by striking Marisa’s elbow with a thick book right in her ulnar nerve (a.k.a. the “funny bone”) which caused Marisa to jump in pain.
Licorice however, was interested in the book for reasons other than mushrooms. “Could I take a look?” Marisa obliged, and Licorice flipped to the front page of the book.
“…M.A. Gu… Guranova. Applikatsiya. Appliqué?” Licorice suddenly had the full attention of all the magicians in the room (which were only the pair in front of her).
“Ha?! Ya’ can read them magical runes?!” Marisa suddenly flew right next to Licorice. Patchouli followed soon afterwards. “I thought that you din’t know magic!”
“Sssh. Let her read!” Patchouli put her finger in front of Marisa, which shut her up. “Come on, what does it say?”
Licorice did her best to continue reading. “Dopushcheno Ministerstvom prosveshcheniya Sŭyuz na Sŭvetskite Sotsialisticheski Republiki v kachestve uchebnogo posobiya. ‘Approved by the Ministry of Education of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a textbook’, I think.” The language of this book was odd. She could read the writing easily, but the language itself was equally foreign and familiar. Our heroine had to slowly and carefully translate, mostly from the context gathered from the words she could understand.
“The USSR?” Patchouli got even closer to the book, as if she could read the writing. “I didn’t know the Soviets delved into magic.”
Marisa looked at both Patchouli and Licorice, awaiting exposition. She didn’t find any exposition, so she had to act proactively to learn. “…What’s a ‘Soviet’? Are they a covenant of witches?”
“No, the Soviets are… or, more accurately, were a state in Eurasia.” Patchouli still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that the Soviets had fallen, especially due to the fact that most material in the library was from before the 90s. “I’ll lend you, emphasis on lend, a book on the Soviet Union if you wish to learn more.”
“Mm. I’ll take a look later.” Marisa tapped on the shoulder of Licorice. “Come on, I can feel that we’re getting to the good parts!” She could already taste the mushrooms she’d be summoning with the spells from the book.
“Ahem. Dlya uchashchikhsya pedagogicheskikh uchilishch po spetsial'nostyam "Doshkol'noye vospitaniye" i "Vospitaniye v doshkol'nykh uchrezhdeniyakh. ‘…for students of teacher training collages in early childhood education’ and ‘education in early childhood’? I think that’s the gist."
“They taught children magic?!” Marisa was surprised to see what the Outside World had been up to. “I thought that magic was a dying art in the Outside World. Maybe those Sowyuhts were trying to revive it.”
“Hmm… So that’s what the Cold War was about.” Patchouli nodded her head as disconnected bits of modern history began coming together in her head. An immortal witch like her didn’t bother to learn information on petty topics like ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’, so her knowledge of the reasons behind the Cold War was surface level at best. “The United States were angry at the Soviet Union for trying to revive magic, and that’s why they were at conflict for so long. The United States won, which is why magic isn’t practiced anymore on the Outside World.”
“The United States? Those were the guys who landed on the moon and fought the moon rabbits, right?” Marisa said something that made no sense to Licorice, but she was used to this by now. Patchouli nodded at Marisa to confirm that what she said was true.
“Izdaniye vtóri pererabotannoye i dopolnennoye. Moskva "Prosveshcheniye". ‘Revised and enlargened 2nd edition, Moscow "Enlightenment"’. That’s it for the front cover.” Licorice took a quick peek at the following pages. “Hmm… I think I get what this book is about...”
Marisa jumped in excitement. “It’s Soviet magic, right?!”
“…This is a book for prospective art teachers.” Licorice showed some other pages, containing simple examples of collage and appliqué meant for children. “These are some examples for activities to do in class. They are definitely not magic circles.”
Marisa and Patchouli were in shock. All their hypothesis about communist magic were shattered. “So… no shrooms for me?” Marisa seemed most shocked of all.
“Hmm… This could be a pretty good danmaku pattern.” Patchouli wasn’t all too miffed. “What are the other books about?”
“This one’s ‘Tips for Women’, the other is ‘Wild Fruits and Medicinal Remedies’, and the last one is ‘A Brief Historical Guide to Bulgaria’.” Clearly, none of them were related to magic in any way or form.
“Oh, that one could be useful.” Patchouli picked up the book about wild fruits before immediately realizing a huge problem. “Actually… The flora in Gensokyo probably differs wildly from where these were published. I don’t think it’d be of much use.” She handed the book over to Licorice. “Could you find where this was published?”
Licorice headed for the cover page, where she quickly found the answer. “Sofia.” That was a pretty familiar name. “Sofia… Sofia, that’s a city in Bulgaria.” She flipped through a few pages. The language in this book was a whole lot familiar compared to the other one.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Bulgaria is pretty far away. It’s right next to Yugoslavia, if I remember correctly.” Patchouli knew not of Yugoslavia’s fairly recent demise. She suddenly raised her head toward Licorice. “Wait, if you can read their language, then does that mean that you’re from that place?”
Licorice slowly nodded. “…Yes, I think I’m from Bulgaria.” It made sense, considering that Licorice had been speaking and thinking in the Bulgarian language. She also vividly remembered scenes of Sofia, of grand churches and run-down Khrushchovka-like apartments in tandem. What she did back there, however, was still unknown even to herself.
The librarian tilted her head in confusion when she realized the origins of Licorice. “How did you end up all the way in Gensokyo then?” Gensokyo was somewhere in Japan; Bulgaria was somewhere in the Balkans. Those two places might as well be completely separate worlds. “You even know Japanese. How did you…”
Licorice shrugged. She honestly didn’t know the answer to such a complicated question. “I don’t know. Stuff happens.”
“Is this the work of Yukari?” Patchouli stared up into the ceiling while pondering a question that Licorice could definitely not comprehend. “What’s she planning?”
“I dunno. Thinkin’ too hard is bad for your health!” Marisa slapped Patchouli on the back, making her enter another fit of coughing. “Oops. Sorry.” She tended to forget how fragile the librarian was.
“Cough, hack, blech, be a bit gentler, won’t you?!” Patchouli gently pushed Marisa away. “You don’t know how to treat a lady properly.”
“Hey, I treat myself pretty well.” Patchouli was about to strike back at Marisa’s cheeky response, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it once she saw the ordinary magician’s casual smile directed towards her. Marisa inched closer to Patchouli. “C’mon, you’ve got a long life to live. Don’t fret yourself over the little things, ya hear?”
They completely forgot about poor Licorice, and her Bulgarian troubles. Our heroine had completed her task, of delivering tea, so she headed out to let the magicians do magician things.
Here are more images from Applikatsiya, if teacher's material from the 80s Soviet Union interests you in any capacity:
Fun activity for children: make a battleship out of paper for the Motherland!
The kid on the left would have gone on to work on the Ministry of Propaganda if the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed before they grew up.
Scenes from the various states of the Soviet Union. People do tend to forget that the USSR wasn't just Russia.
The Soviet Union collapsed when they couldn't pay the legal fees after Disney sued them for the image on the right.
Thanks for the chapter!
Thank ye for reading!