Chapter 556: What is a Virtuoso?

When no response came from inside for a long time, the old gentleman of the Montagu Family lost his patience and struck first, probing his sunlight into the Domed Reading Room.

No one sat in the chair at the center; only that old overcoat remained draped over the back.

The old gentleman's light swept around the reading room before tracing the bookshelves outward.

Eventually, it found him in a bunker in Yorkshire, sitting beside a corporal who had spread a newspaper over an ammunition crate;

In the library of a girls' school in Cheltenham, he watched a little girl meticulously copy dictionary entries;

On a military train heading to Dover, he sat next to a second lieutenant sleeping with a booklet over his face... across hundreds of thousands of locations in total.

The light flickered, and the figures in those hundreds of thousands of locations looked up at it simultaneously.

The Lady forcefully thrust her parasol into the ground, causing the paving stones of the entire street to collapse downward at once:

"If that is the case, then evict him from every single location!"

"Wouldn't we have to tear up the books page by page?" The lord of the hunt shook his head with a cold sneer. "How could we possibly tear them all?"

While the few of them argued, a sudden thump rang out from the Circulation Desk in the reading room. They turned their heads simultaneously to see a stamp pressed onto a blank book slip.

"No loud noises in the reading area!"

The librarian's voice echoed in the ears of every Virtuoso.

On the other side of the veil, the area cleared instantly.

The sunlight was forcefully expelled out the window; The Lady snapped her parasol shut, lifted her skirts, and ran outside;

The reins of a hansom cab jerked, and the carriage quickly turned around to speed out of the street;

Matthew, standing among the bookshelves, froze in place upon hearing those words, then tiptoed backward step by step out of the reading room.

The hands of the clocks on Great Russell Street spun rapidly, making up for the lost minute.

The pigeons perched on the square's railings erupted into the sky with a flutter of wings.

A patrolman chasing a pickpocket stopped and stood dumbfounded for a moment, completely forgetting what he had just been shouting.

Ashford House, third floor.

Since returning, Richard had leaned against his headboard, recalling the glowing lines in the reading room. He couldn't fall asleep at all, and before he knew it, the entire night had passed.

Seeing the approaching dawn, he had just decided to close his eyes for a moment when the wardrobe door suddenly swung open.

A salty, fishy smell of river mud mixed with the stench of something burnt wafted out.

It was even more burnt than last time!

Sure enough, he turned his head to see Matthew poking his head out from inside the wardrobe.

He held an iron pot in both hands, the fish inside long reduced to charcoal.

"Hey, little brother!" Matthew kept his voice low.

"Look, this is my congratulatory gift for the old professor. I spent all night preparing it!"

Matthew crawled out, set the pot down, and looked around. "Where's the old professor? Where is he? I'm waiting to shake hands and say hello to my new peer."

"He isn't here," Richard shook his head.

"Then where is he?"

Matthew closed his eyes and carefully sniffed the air. He suddenly opened his eyes, his face full of excitement. "Found you!"

He snatched up the pot and dove back into the wardrobe. The door remained half-open, leaving the state of that pathway visible.

But Matthew was quickly bewildered.

The path would suddenly shift to the study of a certain apartment, then to a bunker, then to a girls' school reading room...

Every location had a dictionary, and sitting beside it was a hunchbacked old man.

Matthew tried to shake hands every time he encountered one, but his hand simply passed right through the words again and again.

"Where are you, exactly?"

His anxious voice rang out from the wardrobe. "It feels like you're everywhere! Which one am I supposed to look for?"

Richard smiled and pulled the covers over his head.

Soon, the rapid patter of footsteps echoed from outside the door.

A moment later, the door was pushed open. Evelyn poked her head inside, sniffing the air.

"The smell of coal? No!" Evelyn frowned. "This is the smell of fish, and it's burnt... Brother, did you sneak a midnight snack last night?"

"How is that possible? I did dream about it, though."

Evelyn cast a suspicious glance at the nightstand, which still bore a faint ring of soot.

River Thames, downstream of Gate Three, beside the seventh piling.

There was no wind on the river, yet the water slowly began to swirl into a vortex, carrying a hint of briny seawater.

MacFie sat on the rock his old friend used to frequent, holding a tin can filled with bait.

He hadn't brought a fishing rod; he simply tossed a bit of bait into the vortex every now and then.

A string of gaelic emerged from the vortex, dripping wet. "Are you happy?"

MacFie replied in gaelic as well.

"What is there to be happy about? From now on, there's no one left to argue with me."

The speed of the vortex seemed to quicken slightly.

MacFie remained noncommittal. "You say he used to come here to fish often?" "Mhm. But he never caught a single one in ten years. Every time, he just bought two on the way back to fool Pendleton."

The vortex spun a bit faster, and the salty tang grew heavier.

MacFie dumped the rest of the bait from the tin inside, stood up, and brushed off his trousers.

"Alright, stop spinning around here. He still needs to use this stretch of the river."

Inside the director's office at the Cairo Museum, Halaf looked at the telegram draft before him:

"On behalf of all colleagues at the Cairo Museum, congratulations to Mr. Mortimer on ascending to the pinnacle of the Classics.

The lamps of Great Russell Street burn bright once more; it is truly a blessing for the academic world. May his name reside forever in every page turned.

— Yusuf Halaf."

He read it over several times without finding any faults, finally handing it to the secretary beside him with instructions to send it off.

Halaf took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair with a long sigh of relief.

Deep within the veil, inside the Inverted Pyramid.

The writing on all the Mirrors still had not faded: "This library is temporarily closed to this reader." The priest could only listen, not look.

He could hear the sounds from Great Russell Street, and he had also heard the three verses of the honorific name.

And inside the Museum where his Esoteric Fragment had been slain, this Virtuoso specializing in naming had taken up residence.

At the thought of this, the shadow the old priest hid within his wrinkles couldn't stop shivering.

Apophis looked at the Mirror hanging on the wall, a faint smile at the corners of his eyes, seemingly calculating something.

In southern Franc, Hecate sat by a loom, her hand holding the shuttle suspended in midair for a long time.

The old pedant who had seen right through her 1887 paper at a glance and claimed she had "plagiarized the third chapter" was now a Virtuoso.

And his student was none other than the Hermes sitting at her table.

...

Tuesday morning, in a small conference room on the second floor of the Museum.

Kasalis and two new clerks were studying the young man sitting across from them in a wheelchair.

Taking the seat of honor was the new Chief Inspector. He was an old Hunter from the Cumberland Moor, his thick beard peppered with gray.

The new Chief Inspector was naturally a Major Adept as well. The oppressive weight of his ether field was so intense that the nibs of the other two clerks' pens were slipping across their paper.

Yet he remained very polite when facing Richard:

"Mr. Williams, the General Administration needs you to provide specific records of the advancement..."

Richard leaned back in his wheelchair, adopting the posture of a frail patient unable to withstand the ordeal:

"I am the recorder; I must answer to the advancer and the witness.

It is inconvenient for the advancer to sign, so if the General Administration wishes to review the records, they should seek out the witness."

He gave a gloomy, deliberate smile. "The witness is the president of the Royal Anthropological Institute. You may submit an application over there."

The Chief Inspector looked at the young man. As a Major Adept, he could naturally tell there wasn't a single thing wrong with this young man's health.

Still sitting in a wheelchair—who was he putting on an act for?

Kasalis gave a light cough from the side:

"Chief Inspector, last year someone tried to look through the Institute's books. He only read one page, and after he came back, he could only speak in double-entry bookkeeping. The day he proposed to his wife, all he said was, 'Debit: Love; Credit: A Lifetime'..."

The Chief Inspector slowly retracted his ether field. "I will seek out the Institute."

"Suit yourself," Richard shrugged.

The Chief Inspector gave him a deep look and stood to leave, tossing back a single sentence as he reached the door:

"That uncle of yours... A telegram from the East Coast said there was a burst of moonlight over the sea in broad daylight. The gunners said they fired more accurately that day than on the practice range."

Seeing that the Chief Inspector had left, the other clerks responsible for record-keeping naturally gave Richard a nod and departed one after another.

That afternoon, in a certain conference hall on Piccadilly.

Sir Muller sat in the center, flanked by Wyndham and Hale.

Further to the sides sat a full professor from Trinity College in charge of numismatics, his hair completely white but his eyes still bright;

A full professor of anthropology from Edinburgh, who liked to rap his knuckles against the table when he spoke;

and several others he couldn't name, all dressed in rather old-fashioned styles, though their ether fields were aggressively overbearing.

Usually, these Major Adepts were as elusive as dragons hiding their tails, but today they were seated in full attendance without a single absence. At the far end of the long table sat a civilian colonel in a crisp uniform.

On a chair by the wall sat a middle-aged man in his early forties wearing a suit, his head bowed as he sharpened a pencil.

"We are the special review committee from the Academy's side. Today we merely want to understand the details of the ritual, without touching on other matters."

Sir Muller had barely finished his opening remarks when the full professors lost their patience, throwing questions one after another:

Which names were chanted that night? The source of the Cochineal Red?

Which merchant vessel brought back the knotted cords? Why did the bark paper have to be completely unwritten? Why was the section for the compiler left blank?

Their questions fell within standard procedure, so Richard didn't hide much.

He spoke the truth about whatever he could share. For the things he couldn't, he simply deflected by stating, "The record has already entered the Institute's notarized archives."

As the questioning dragged on, the professors grew somewhat impatient with Richard's evasiveness.

The professor from Edinburgh knocked forcefully on the table.

"Mr. Williams, I would like to ask a hypothetical question."

"Please go ahead." "If someone were to start a new dictionary with the exact same format and materials, and similarly invite a witness of sufficient weight... would the result be the same?"

The room went quiet. The civilian colonel picked up his pen.

Richard glanced at the blank notebook at the end of the long table.

'As expected. Why didn't they just ask this sooner?'

He could certainly read between the lines. They had asked so much just to find out one thing:

Could the Empire invest resources to replicate a similar ritual and great work, thereby producing a Virtuoso directly under official jurisdiction?

"It won't work," Richard shook his head.

"Why?" The opposition was thoroughly surprised.

Richard scoffed inwardly, but outwardly, he explained the most difficult points exactly as they were.

He broke down the various factors: securing a nod of approval and a degree of assistance from a Master of the same tradition, eighty years of teaching experience, students and grand-students spread across the entire Empire, the personal friendship between the old president and the professor, and so on.

In short, the right time, the right place, and the right people were all required. Not a single element could be missing.

The professors looked at one another in dismay after hearing this, and eventually, only sighs echoed through the conference room. After the meeting concluded, Sir Muller deliberately hung back a couple of steps to walk beside Richard.

"Good answers today. Airtight."

"Thank you for the praise, Sir."

Muller gestured with his chin toward the man who had been sharpening his pencil. "His name is Fairfax. He works at Wellington Palace."

Richard, of course, knew Wellington Palace.

Although it hung the placard of the National Insurance Committee, the building housed a flock of writers, professors, and researchers from various academies, exclusively working for the Wartime Propaganda Bureau.

Last year's Bryce Report, detailing enemy atrocities in the Low Countries, had been printed in dozens of languages and distributed across the world.

"He didn't ask a single question today," Richard remarked, finding it a bit strange.

"He doesn't need to."

Muller clasped his hands behind his back. "He observed the 1914 Angels of Mons incident without missing a single day, and Wellington Palace has a hundred times more relevant documentation than you do."

As if hearing something, the man smiled and nodded in their direction.

At eleven o'clock that night, the gas lamp outside the gates of 13 Chelsea Road suddenly flared with an eerie brightness. The butler moved to draw the curtains, only to discover a piece of paper slipped beneath the door.

"Black Soil River Gallery, tonight, invite him alone..."

Gerard looked at the paper. "I will take you."

"Grandfather, I..."

"I'll just escort you to the door." Gerard added, "Don't worry, I won't go in."

The Black Soil River Gallery was on the second floor of the Museum. The lights were off, leaving the area pitch black.

Relying on the sensory enhancement brought by [Perception], he could faintly make out two rows of glass display cases extending deep into the darkness.

The mummies, Canopic Jars, and painted sarcophagi inside the cases were all slumbering.

Last summer, inside this Museum's Storeroom, he had obtained that Esoteric Fragment of the old Black Soil River priest.

It was precisely because of this fragment and the true name within it that he had been able to gradually brush against high-level circles like Virtuosos, laying the foundation for all his subsequent networking and resource acquisition.

And tonight, it was likely those two Virtuosos who had torn off the fragment wanting to see him.

Richard felt completely at ease and nonchalantly wheeled his chair inside. Standing in the room was an old gentleman in a tailcoat, and sitting atop a sarcophagus lid was a Lady in a light purple dress.

"Come sit, child!" The Lady in the purple dress spoke with an exceptionally intimate tone.

"Oh, right, you're already sitting."

The old gentleman watched him without saying a word.

A beam of light shone down from overhead, piercing through Richard's circuits straight to the glowing tree behind his sternum, traveling all the way down...

At the same time, a scorching heat roasted the soles of his feet, causing his ether to constantly boil and heat up.

Richard gritted his teeth and held on tightly, until a small slip of paper floated in midair before the two Virtuosos:

"Creator: l.

Off-site viewing: Request denied.

Just this once."

The Black Soil River Gallery fell silent as the two Virtuosos simultaneously took a half-step back.

"'Just this once'... Still so sparing with his words, leaving us absolutely no room for negotiation..." The Lady hopped down from the sarcophagus lid, leaving behind two little steaming butt prints on the stone.

The old gentleman tapped his cane lightly on the ground, and the light in the room dimmed a little.

Yet they still laid down the rules:

Mortimer was permitted to maintain only two "seats" in the city: the reading room and the Institute. All other matters had to be handled by a proxy.

"Handle what as proxy?"

"Everything."

"What if the professor refuses?"

"Then you take the scolding for him," The Lady said, playing with her hair.

"That's just how being a proxy works."

Meanwhile, Isabella, Clara, Wetherby, and others had all been called in for questioning.

When his aunt returned, she said the clerk kept asking the same few questions over and over:

Before his advancement, did the old professor ever mention what he planned to do afterward? Did he ever express dissatisfaction with any organization?

Had he ever stated his stance on the nation?

"I told them his stance on the nation is that the tea here is too weak."

Isabella slapped a candy wrapper onto the table.

Clara didn't say a word when she returned, only copying manuscripts that night much faster than usual.

The General Administration held two meetings in Whitehall. The minutes of the first meeting read: "Resolution: Observe," and the second read: "Resolution: Continue to observe."

That afternoon, Richard, guided by some unknown impulse, pushed his wheelchair to Imperial Capital University by himself.

The third-floor corridor of the Petrie Building was long, with most of the doors on both sides closed.

The Easter holiday wasn't completely over yet, so there were barely any people in the building.

He wheeled his chair, rolling from one end of the corridor to the other.

Rolling to the door of his aunt's Room 314, he stopped and peeked inside.

The door was closed. His aunt was probably sound asleep in the faculty dorms right now. She had helped out plenty with the dictionary's compilation, and it had genuinely exhausted her.

Senior Sophia was probably curled up somewhere slacking off with a novel, while Senior Clara was perhaps playing her violin.

With a mind full of tangled thoughts, Richard arrived at Mortimer's office. The door was also closed.

Previously, this place had been stuffed full of notes and official business meant for the old professor to handle, but now it had all been cleared away.

For over a hundred years, the Classics had never produced a Virtuoso, but the professor had succeeded.

At forty, he had figured things out and stopped striving. It wasn't until he was one hundred and twenty-three, given a push from behind by Richard, that he finally managed to take this last step.

One hundred and twenty-three—the prime age to fight for one's ambitions!

Richard suddenly couldn't help but burst into laughter.

Holding onto his wheelchair with one hand and propping himself against the wall with the other, he laughed until his shoulders shook and his eyes stung.

Back then, Mr. Hutton had lectured him, saying he didn't have a great tree behind him to rely on. Did he have a great tree now?

The porter poked his head out, saw a young man in a wheelchair laughing in the hallway, and silently pulled his head back.

Come evening, the dinner at Ashford House was exceptionally lavish, even more so than the night he had woken up after Christmas. Evelyn had roasted a chicken, and Grey had dropped off a basket of cardamom shortbread but didn't stay to eat, saying she had guests at home;

Sophia came to freeload a meal as usual, asking if there was any Yorkshire pudding the moment she walked through the door;

The butler brought up a twenty-year-old bottle of vintage port wine from the cellar...

Gerard sat at the head of the table, with Isabella, wearing a new dress, seated beside him.

An extra set of cutlery was laid out at the far end of the long table. Beside it sat a chipped teacup, freshly brewed with Darjeeling.

"Who is that for?" Evelyn blinked.

"For an old gentleman!" Gerard smiled. "Unfortunately, he cannot make it today."

"Then why pour the tea?"

"He said that whenever there was tea from now on, we should pour him a cup," Richard picked up the conversation.

Evelyn still didn't quite understand, but she saw her grandfather, brother, and aunt were all smiling, looking even more relaxed than they had at Christmas.

The young girl smiled along with them. If everyone was happy, she was happy.

She reached into the basket, picked up a piece of shortbread, and placed it on the empty plate. "Then when he gets back, he can have some dessert."

"That's mine!"

Sophia's voice was muffled as she chewed on a chicken leg.

"You've already eaten three pieces!"

"..."

Ultimately, it was Gerard who made the two of them quiet down.

The old man raised his wine glass and glanced at the teacup at the end of the table.

"To the absent."

The glasses around the table clinked together.

Evelyn had no idea who they were toasting to, but she drained her cup of cider in one gulp and let out a very cute hiccup.

After dinner, Richard returned to the study and sorted through the notes on his desk.

Although the professor had already advanced, the compilation of the dictionary had not stopped. Various materials from the front lines were still being mailed over, bundle by bundle.

He arranged them in alphabetical order, took out the proofs for the first fascicle, and began to verify them.

The desk lamp suddenly flickered, its light gathering onto the proofs.

"Crater Sludge, usage three, source error..."

Richard stared blankly. "Professor..."

"Change it!"

He picked up his pen and began making the correction.

Mist gradually rolled in outside the window, and a hunchbacked silhouette reflected against the glass.

Richard had just cracked a smile, ready to chat with the professor about everyday life, when the study door was kicked open.

Evelyn carried a baking tray holding a fragrant soufflé, still steaming with sweet heat.

"Brother, look, it's standing up!"

His sister's voice trembled with excitement. "This is the third batch I've made today! The first two failed. I spent over forty minutes making this one..."

The hunchbacked silhouette on the glass slowly lifted its head, and Evelyn's words ground to an abrupt halt.

Holding the baking tray, she stared straight ahead, her tone flattening out like she was reciting a textbook:

"Soufflé, noun. A specialty dessert made by whipping egg whites and baking them into a base... Best consumed within five minutes of leaving the oven..."

The smile vanished from Richard's face. He frowned and shouted, "Hey! Evelyn?!"

Evelyn didn't answer him, simply continuing her recitation as if no one else were there:

"Evelyn Williams, seventeen, female, currently a pastry apprentice, born in Briston's Slag Alley, father is an engineer..."

Her eyes were hollow and completely unfocused.

Richard immediately stood up, using his right hand to block her line of sight toward the window pane.

The gaze from the other side of the glass felt slightly scalding as it brushed against his palm, and it quickly retreated.

Only then did Evelyn's eyes refocus.

She looked at her brother's hand raised in midair and frowned in confusion. "Why are you holding your hand up at me? Asking for a tip?"

"I mean... this soufflé is standing up very straight."

"Right!"

The young girl instantly became ecstatic again. "I told you! It finally worked this time! Eat it quickly, or in a few minutes it'll—"

Before she could finish speaking, the soufflé collapsed with a soft poof.

Evelyn and Richard stared at the deflated egg whites in silence for a long time.

His sister's lips began to turn downward.

"Um... it was definitely standing up just a moment ago. You saw it, right?"

"Yeah, I saw it."

"Then you have to testify."

"No problem."

Evelyn gave a soft hmph and scooped out a large chunk with a spoon, stuffing it into his mouth. She scooped a piece for herself as well before carrying the baking tray away in a huff.

"Hmph, I'll make another one tomorrow..."

The study fell silent.

Richard looked at the window pane, where the hunchbacked silhouette slowly closed its eyes. "If I stare at people for too long in the future, remember to remind me."

The old professor's voice was as lethargic as ever, as though he hadn't fully woken up.

Richard sat back in his chair, brought the empty teacup over, and refilled it with hot tea.

"Professor, from now on..." He thought about it, then probed with the least serious phrasing he could manage.

"Will we students be able to walk sideways in the Empire from now on?"

"Crabs... end up getting steamed," the professor replied instantly.

Richard let out a laugh.

The silhouette in the window pane trembled as well, though it was unclear if he was laughing too.

Richard continued, "Professor, do you consider yourself a crab now? On this little acre of turf in the Imperial Capital, you should be able to walk sideways, right?"

"As for me..." In the glass, the silhouette tucked its chin slightly.

Richard was very familiar with this posture.

Whenever the old professor prepared to take a nap during a meeting, he would look exactly like this.

"My shell, my pincers, and a few of my legs have likely already been divided up among the old president, Isabella, and you students."

As Richard laughed, his gaze landed on the notebook at the corner of the desk.

With the old professor's success, that crowd hadn't even dared to deliver a notice.

If their Ashford House also had one...

"You're thinking about whether you should push your uncle or your grandfather further up."

Richard's laughter hitched.

"...You guessed?"

"I didn't have to." The voice was languid. "Let me test you: What is written in the third verse of the honorific name?"

Richard opened his mouth.

[Erudition] laid out every third verse he had heard over the past two years right before his eyes:

Blood sealed within the saddle, bones forged into the bow, leaving only the sound of hooves eternally hunting across the world;

Feet carved into the path, bones forged into the bridge, leaving only the journey home eternally suspended in the world;

Blood transformed into ink, bones forged into the pen, leaving only the texts eternally recorded in the world...

"...They all speak of what is 'already' done, and end with 'leaving only'."

"Correct," the hunchbacked silhouette reflected in the glass nodded.

"When the veil finishes taking its due, it tells you: the lungs are taken, the bones are taken, the blood is taken, the tongue is taken."

"These are just the visible things. It takes the invisible things too: hunger, pain, fear, cravings, nostalgia, soft-heartedness, the ability to taste tea... It leaves absolutely nothing."

"What follows 'leaving only' is what cannot be taken—the one thing you've been doing your entire life, the one thing you simply cannot stop doing."

The old professor spoke very slowly, as if terrified Richard wouldn't understand. "Gale's breath can never sit still; a certain miser is forever chasing, forever collecting debts; Matthew is left with a road home, always hoping someone will walk down his path."

"You've interacted with them for a while now; you must have figured out their fixed behavioral logic... The folks over at the School of Engineering would probably call it being wound up like clockwork."

But a different phrase popped into Richard's mind: base code.

"Then... is the one who comes back still the same person?"

The professor remained silent for a long time before answering, "That... even I do not know."

The excitement that had initially been building in Richard's heart plummeted to rock bottom.

"Hey, compiler... No, little Richard."

The old professor paused, his voice tinged with helplessness:

"Let's put aside these serious topics for now. Look at your Brady spelling—it's spelled wrong!

Even the soldiers holding guns on the front lines would do a better job than you with such a rookie mistake."

Richard checked it, only then realizing he had written one letter twice.

"Your eyes are quite sharp." He rubbed the note, then suddenly looked up and asked, "Professor, let me tell you about something new that happened."

"What is it?"

"Yesterday morning, Mr. Matthew popped out of my wardrobe holding an iron pot.

The fish in the pot had been reduced to charcoal, yet he claimed it was a congratulatory gift for you and wanted to shake your hand."

He deliberately dragged out his vowels, imitating the accent of the New Continent.

"I told him you weren't here, so he sniffed around, dove back in, and searched the whole world for you, just to shake your hand.

He ended up going to a lot of places—Yorkshire, Cheltenham, and even a military train in Dover... In the end, he could only stand in the middle of the road and shout, asking where you were."

A line of penciled text appeared beside the proofs, faster than the old professor's voice:

Shake hands, verb. Two people grasping each other's hands to express greeting, reconciliation, or the closing of a deal...

Old domestic custom: Shake hands once upon first meeting, twice when reuniting after a long separation.

Note: Both parties must each have a hand available to shake.

Richard's smile stiffened for a second. The voice quickly sounded out, "Alright, alright, I'll log this entry for him, lest he run all over the world trying to shake hands with people."

Richard tried hard to convince himself—he had heard Mr. Hutton talk about this back in the day.

When Mr. Hutton was still a graduate student, a classmate of his had been late.

As a result, the old man hadn't said a single word. He simply made the student write the dictionary entry for "late" on the chalkboard—from its etymology, to its usage, to its source—writing all the way until class ended.

"By the way, Professor, my aunt called Harley Street this morning. The dentist appointment for Wednesday has been canceled."

"Good."

The voice pondered for a moment. "That old man treasured that tooth the most; he had it filled three times over..."

"Sigh... Why does it sound like I'm talking about someone else when I talk about myself? I'm exactly like my Mentor.

When he grew old, he used to call himself 'the copy-editor'... Canceled is fine. That dentist causes more pain than Greer does."

For the half-hour that followed, Richard failed to find any faults.

The other party, however, either pointed out that his transcription of "shell shock" was too short, or that his alphabetical sorting for "operator" was incorrect...

By the end, he had even begun to complain that the tea on the desk was flavorless, that the coal burning in the fireplace wasn't up to grade, and sniped about how Evelyn's soufflé collapsed too quickly... Striking at the heart of the matter at every turn; unpleasant to hear, yet entirely factual.

Richard found it increasingly anomalous.

Usually, the professor's entire mind was buried in his books—the sky could fall and it wouldn't have mattered to him. How was it that he could suddenly chime in on everything now?

Furthermore, he had never paid attention to Richard's mood before. If Richard had something on his mind, the old man rarely noticed.

Yet today, the professor had acutely sensed the pauses in his laughter and the speed of his pen strokes as he transcribed, reacting to them instantly.

He had a rule in hand, one that was perfectly suited for testing this.

It was originally something he had written for everyone in the country. Since the Day of Mourning, he had compiled it into the Collection of Strange Tales, dedicating it specifically to those hoping for their loved ones to return home.

At the time, after finishing it, he had felt that those words would likely never be used on himself.

"Professor."

"What is it?"

"Do you still remember which road you took to get here, and how you came?"

"From the Petrie Building, riding in the coal cart with you to see the old president," the voice answered without a second thought.

"It's only been a week, have you forgotten? The bumps made our bottoms ache fiercely."

Not a shred of a smile remained on Richard's face as he asked again, emphasizing every single word:

"Professor, think about it carefully. Which road did you actually take to get here?"