Hello and thank you for playing! So sorry for the delay in my response - my raven must have gotten waylaid.
The longest delay in this essay passage is hardcoded at 5 seconds - if you're stuck waiting, try exiting the game with the back button on your browser or refreshing the page. It'll begin the passage again, but that seemed to fix any timing problems when I tested it. Also, if you've previously played and have an old save file from before November/December 2021, please make sure you refresh before starting the game! Sometimes browsers won't load the newest version without that.
Thank you for playing!