Chapter 412: A Rare Commodity

After healing the younger generation in his family, Richard started thinking about how to treat Clara.

Clara's injuries were much worse than the hidden ailments of the young people back home, but they were easier to deal with than his mother's ruined circuit.

One evening in late March, Richard visited the sanatorium where Clara was staying.

The sanatorium sat in a quiet alley south of the Academy District, flanked by two old elm trees at the entrance.

In March, the elms had just sprouted tender buds. The leaves were barely the size of fingernails, trembling in the wind.

He knocked, and a duty nurse opened the door.

"Miss Fairfield is on the third floor."

The nurse checked the visitor log.

"And you are?"

"Her junior."

"Oh, head on up. The tall blonde girl from earlier just left."

Sophia had just been here.

Richard went up to the third floor and walked down the hall.

At the far end of the corridor was a half-open door. Intermittent sounds drifted from within.

It was a violin.

The piece was Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor, heavy and full.

But the playing was disjointed. A few notes would sound before stopping, followed by a pause, then another brief burst of music before faltering again.

Richard stood by the door, not stepping inside.

Through the gap, he saw Clara sitting in a chair by the window, her left side facing the glass.

Sunlight streamed in, catching the rosin dust on her bow and making it faintly gleam.

The bandages around her left ear had been removed, exposing a fresh pink scar behind the shell of her ear.

She held the violin tucked between her chin and collarbone as she drew the bow across the strings.

After a few measures, she stopped, tilting her head to bring her right ear closer to the instrument.

Richard could tell she was straining to listen.

But when the notes rang out, the left half of her world remained utterly silent.

Clara pulled the bow away from the strings and rested it on her lap.

She lowered her head. The fingers of her left hand looked thinner than he remembered, and the calluses on her fingertips had faded.

Richard knocked on the door.

Clara looked up.

She froze for a moment when she saw him standing there, but quickly masked her surprise.

The corners of her mouth curled into a perfectly natural smile.

"What brings you here?"

She lowered the violin from her shoulder.

"Just passing by," Richard said, stepping inside.

"Passing by the third floor?" Clara smiled.

"The Department of Classics is in the north. You'd have to detour across half the Academy District to pass by here."

Richard did not take the bait. He simply set the bag of apples he was holding onto her nightstand.

He glanced at the violin. It was quite old, its varnish worn to a dull shine at the shoulder.

"What piece was that?"

"Partita No. 2." Clara closed the lid of her violin case.

"My parents actually met at a concert."

"My mother played the cello, and my father played the clarinet.

They sat next to each other in the orchestra. During rehearsals, my father was constantly throwing glances her way, until the conductor singled him out and chewed him out in front of everyone."

"That very night, my father asked her out to dinner."

She gently snapped the latches of her violin case shut.

"I started learning the violin when I was five. My mother taught me."

"Later, they both started taking jobs on the mystical side, and something went wrong during a field operation.

I was already in university by then. The family provided enough support, so my life wasn't disrupted too much."

"It's just the violin..."

She looked away from the case.

"Now I can't even get through a complete song."

"I can barely hear the low frequencies. The mids and highs are alright, but the lows are just a buzzing noise."

She smiled.

"I can't even distinguish the pitch anymore, much less capture the proper tone."

Richard looked at Clara's face.

The brunette's smile was picture-perfect, but there were no laugh lines at the corners of her eyes.

"Senior."

"Hmm?"

"My supernatural item evolved recently, and I gained a new ability."

Clara looked at him.

"It can heal injuries. It acts slowly, but there are no side effects."

He was careful not to promise too much.

"I've already tested it on a few Hunters in the family. The results are stable."

"You want to try it on me?" A glimmer of light returned to Clara's eyes.

"If you're willing."

Clara was silent for a few seconds.

"I have no objections. We're on the same side."

Richard had her tilt her head slightly to the right, exposing her left ear to him.

The tree of light within the Seat of the Sun began to exude beads of light.

Clara let out a soft gasp.

"It tickles..."

A breath of life seeped into her ear.

After a while, Richard pulled his hand back.

"Is it done?" Clara opened her eyes, letting out a breath. The corners of her eyes were slightly damp.

The ear was one of the most sensitive parts of the body. The continuous infusion of Gushing Spring felt no different from having a feather wand repeatedly tickling deep inside her ear canal.

She had gritted her teeth through the entire fifteen-minute session, enduring the maddening sensation until tears literally welled up in her eyes.

"That's all for today. I'll come back in three days for another session."

Clara lightly touched her left ear.

"I don't feel any different yet."

"You will. Try playing that piece again in a couple of days."

Clara looked at him. Her polite, plastic smile was completely gone.

Her large, dark brown eyes blinked.

"...Thank you, Richard."

She spoke softly, but the emotion carried in her words was entirely different from the polite pleasantries exchanged at dinner tables or train platforms.

"No need to thank me. We're on the same side." Richard returned her earlier words verbatim.

Clara smiled softly.

When he returned for the second session, Clara was already waiting for him in the corridor.

She had traded her hospital gown for a set of clean clothes, her hair neatly tied back.

"Feeling any better?"

"Come inside."

She pulled her junior into the room and shut the door behind them.

Then she walked over to her violin case, opened the lid, and played the Partita.

She played seamlessly from the first measure all the way through the ninth.

The B-flat on the D string rang out perfectly this time.

Clara pulled her bow away from the strings and turned to look at him.

She didn't say a word, but her eyes were startlingly bright.

She gently placed the violin back into its case, snapping the latches shut firmly this time.

"I started noticing an obvious change yesterday."

"The people from the Solar Tradition told me that the inner ear hair cells in this ear were dead and gone, and I couldn't afford any higher-level treatments."

"Richard, this ability..." She looked up at him.

"Do you have any idea how valuable this is?"

Richard didn't reply.

The sheer gratitude and shock in Clara's eyes were gradually replaced by something much deeper.

This brilliant senior was already thinking ahead on his behalf.

"A single Healing session from a Minor Adept of the Solar Tradition costs at least fifty pounds to start.

And even then, what they can cure is limited. They can't handle anything too severe."

"Ordinary alchemical potions take forever to work and come with side effects. Not to mention, their raw materials are only getting more expensive."

"But this..."

She tapped a finger against the latch of her violin case.

"It requires no external cost, takes effect in three days, and... at least from what I know, there isn't a second person in the entire Empire who can do this."

Richard leaned against the wall, watching as she jotted a few points down on a piece of paper.

"If you went around the Imperial Capital bragging that you have a cost-free healing ability, what do you think would happen?"

Richard thought about it.

"Too many people would want it," he said.

"Too many people would want it, and you wouldn't be able to treat them all."

Clara picked up where he left off.

"If you turn them away, you offend them. And the people you'd be offending are high-Rank individuals desperate for a cure."

"But worse than that, how do you think the Solar Tradition and the other healing-focused traditions would look at you? Those are people who make a living through treating injuries."

Richard understood.

"I'd be destroying their livelihood."

"Destroying their livelihood," Clara nodded.

"You, a mere Practitioner, would be crashing the market overnight.

These organizations have hundreds of years of deep roots. Do you think they wouldn't try to make you... disappear?"

A slight chill ran down Richard's spine. He had vaguely considered the risks, but he hadn't analyzed it as ruthlessly as Clara just did.

"So," Clara said, setting down her pen.

"You cannot run this as a business."

"Then what do I run it as?"

"Favors."

She tapped the notes she had just written.

"You only heal two types of people." She held up a finger.

"Your own people. The Ashford House, or people like me whose backgrounds you know inside out.

Healing us permanently cements our loyalty and builds a web of connections for you."

"The second type: people who are worth associating with and who have the power to repay the debt.

You save them, and they'll owe you for life. When you inevitably run into trouble, they'll have to shield you."

"Anyone outside of those two categories, you absolutely do not treat."

"No matter how much they offer, and no matter their background."

"You turn this into an exclusive service—'gifted, never sold.' You deal strictly in favors, never slapping a price tag on it."

"Senior," Richard said. "You really ought to go into business."

Clara looked up at him.

"I used to manage research funding for my mentor."

"Managing money and managing people aren't so different."

"You're too young. There are twists and turns in this world you haven't considered, or perhaps disdain to think about."

"Let me do the thinking for you."