Chapter 32: Chicken Leg

There was not much time left before the Cicero Cup.

Richard was pressed for time.

The Ashford Family dinner was scheduled for the fifteenth of this month, and his family needed to head to the Imperial Capital early.

The train ride from Briston to the Imperial Capital took the better part of a day. Factoring in transfers and settling in, he had less than two weeks left at school to actually prepare for the competition.

After lunch on Monday, he told Mr. Holland.

The bald middle-aged man was just bringing a cup of black tea to his lips. At the name "Ashford," he frowned.

Steam from the hot tea fogged his glasses.

He set the cup back on the desk and wiped the lenses with the back of his hand.

"I recall that being your mother's family."

"Yes."

Mr. Holland finished wiping his glasses and put them back on. "Tread carefully with matters in the Imperial Capital."

His tone was strikingly similar to Father's.

Richard noted the reaction. The man was clearly no stranger to the Ashford surname.

"The tutoring sessions will need adjusting." Mr. Holland dug a memo pad out of his drawer and circled today's date.

"We originally planned to do three mock speeches in the final two weeks. Now we'll condense them into five days.

The intensity will be much higher. Can you handle it?"

"I can."

"Then we start this afternoon."

He downed the rest of his tea, stood, and grabbed a set of keys.

"Let's go. East Wing lecture hall."

The lecture hall was empty from three to five in the afternoon; Mr. Holland had already cleared it with the academic affairs office.

He had Richard stand at the podium while he dragged a chair to the very last row.

Twenty rows of empty seats separated them, maximizing the distance.

"Start from the first paragraph of the first piece. The complete speech."

Richard found his footing, took a breath, and began.

"Quo usque tandem..."

A chair leg scraped across the floor with a sharp, grating screech.

Mr. Holland had dragged his chair half a foot to the left. The noise echoed twice off the stone walls.

Richard's rhythm was severed.

He barely managed to gather his breath, picking up right where he had broken off.

Right then, the sound of flipping pages rang out.

Mr. Holland had spread his lesson plans across his lap and was flipping through them, page by page. The rustling paper carried across the spacious hall all the way to the podium.

Next came the coughing.

It was a light, throat-clearing sort of cough. One after another—not heavy, but persistent.

Just as Richard pushed through the parallel structure in the third paragraph and reached the fourth "nihil," a shifting chair echoed from the back row again.

He closed his eyes briefly, anchoring his focus on the rhythm of his breath.

The framework of Fourfold Breathing proved just as effective on stage:

Inhale to steady the breath, hold to steady the rhythm, exhale to push the voice outward.

"...nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? (Do none of these things move you?)"

As the final "nihil" fell, he followed Mr. West's advice and paused for nearly two extra seconds between the third and fourth repetitions.

Silence filled the classroom, mingling with the echoes to carry even more weight than the actual sound.

Once all four paragraphs were finished, Mr. Holland walked down from the back row.

"When I interrupted you, you paused, but you paused the wrong way."

He stopped directly in front of the podium, looking up at Richard.

"You paused because you were distracted, and the audience could hear it.

The correct approach is to swallow that pause into your rhythm and make it your own.

The audience can't tell which pause is deliberate and which is forced... but you have to know the difference yourself.

With a forced pause, your shoulders tense up. With a deliberate pause, they stay relaxed."

He patted the edge of the podium.

"Again. From the top."

"The venue for the Cicero Cup is the St. Augustine Chapel in the Imperial Capital."

Mr. Holland turned and walked back up the aisle, speaking as he went.

"The stone walls echo heavily. There will be hundreds of people in the audience, and the front three rows will be seated with the escorting teachers and the judges from the Classical Society."

He sat back down in the very last row, the chair squeaking loudly once more.

"Every single pause, every breath you take, and the length of every vowel—they will hear it all with crystal clarity."

The second attempt went much smoother than the first.

Mr. Holland continued to manufacture noise—flipping pages, coughing, dragging his chair—using every trick in the book.

But Richard's shoulders remained completely relaxed.

Rather than rigidly pushing through the interruptions, he held the breath for half a beat before letting it out, allowing the pause to become a natural part of his rhythm.

When the four paragraphs ended, Mr. Holland nodded but said nothing.

Saying nothing was the best possible praise.

During the third attempt, Hugh arrived.

He slipped in through the classroom's side door, hunched over, and took a seat at the far edge of the front row.

Placing his bag by his feet, he pulled out a pencil and a blank sheet of paper.

He was here to act as a stage presence observer.

Richard had assigned him the job: sit in the audience, monitor his posture, gestures, and eye contact, and provide feedback afterward.

Hugh took this task extremely seriously—after all, it was the only thing he could actually help with.

Mr. Holland glanced at the new audience member but didn't say a word.

The third attempt began.

Richard's performance this time was his best yet, spurred on by the presence of a real audience member.

(Mr. Holland didn't count; he was merely a noise machine.)

Having even a single listener was completely different from speaking to a sea of empty chairs.

He slightly tweaked his handling of the parallel structure, drawing out the vowel on the fifth "nihil" just a bit longer to give the buildup more weight.

Hugh sat in the first row, pencil in hand, his eyes tracking Richard's every movement.

His expression was earnest, his mouth slightly open, making him look as if he were truly swept up in the speech.

Once the four paragraphs were finished, the echoes lingered in the hall for several seconds.

Mr. Holland walked to the center of the room and stopped. "Better than the last two."

He looked at Hugh in the first row. "Having someone listen is different from performing to nobody. Memorize this feeling."

The bald middle-aged man tucked his lesson plans under his arm and checked his watch.

"That's about it for today. Wait here a moment, I need to use the restroom."

With that, he pushed open the side door and left.

Richard stepped off the podium and sat next to Hugh.

"So, how was it? My stage presence."

"Pretty good." Hugh lifted his pencil from the paper.

Richard leaned over to look at the observation notes.

Drawn on the paper was a fried chicken leg.

The linework was quite good, and the details were surprisingly rich. The bone was shaded, and crosshatching on the meat gave it a greasy, glossy texture.

Off to the side, he had circled the words "crispy skin" and "extra salt," with an arrow pointing to the tip of the bone reading, "gnaw down to here."

The kid actually seemed to have a knack for drawing.

"Why are you drawing a chicken leg?"

"I'm hungry." Hugh tucked the pencil behind his ear as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"You spoke for forty minutes, and I sat here for forty minutes. Of course I got hungry."

"What about your stage presence observations?"

"They're all filed away in my head." He tapped his temple.

"You rested your right hand on the podium at the start of the second paragraph. It didn't look great, but everything else was fine."

"Just that one?"

"It's not like I'm Mr. Holland. Spotting even one flaw is generous enough."

He let out a massive yawn, opening his mouth wide enough to show his back molars.

"Sleepy?"

"A little." Hugh rubbed his eyes. He brushed aside the bangs that could never quite be combed flat, only for them to spring right back.

"Stanfield played an away game last night, and I stuck a radio under my pillow to listen."

Mentioning this, he perked up, most of his drowsiness vanishing.

Hugh's radio was a piece of junk he'd dug up at a flea market. It was missing a chunk of its casing, and the blown speaker meant he could only listen through an earpiece.

He hadn't dared yell out when they scored for fear of waking his parents in the next room.

Instead, he had clenched his pillow, bitten down on the fabric, and trembled along with the commentator's rising voice, his body taut.

"You have no idea how thrilling that shot was. Second half, stoppage time, tied two to two. Stanfield's center forward took the ball right into the penalty box, juked past two defenders, and shot..."

He stood up and pantomimed a shot, kicking his right leg forward. The pencil flew from behind his ear and rolled under the desk.

"It hit the goalpost and bounced out."

Richard was just about to reply when the classroom's side door was pushed open.