Chapter 95: I'm Still Learning to Swim

The footsteps stopped in the aisle beside his desk.

After a brief silence, something was gently placed on the tabletop.

He caught a glimpse of a slender object from the corner of his eye.

Richard looked up.

Lillian stood at the desk, holding a book to her chest.

Their eyes met.

Richard shifted his gaze to the top right corner of the desk.

It was a handmade bookmark crafted from thick watercolor paper, painted with a sprig of laurel.

Laurel carried many layers of meaning in classical literature.

Peace, victory, wisdom... which one it meant depended entirely on the context.

But receiving a laurel bookmark like this right after the Cicero Cup left the context perfectly clear.

She must have started making this bookmark the moment the Cicero Cup results were announced.

The ink lines on the paper were completely dry, and a very faint watercolor wash still blended around the edges of the laurel leaves.

It was something made with time and care.

Richard looked up, ready to thank her.

"This doesn't mean anything special."

Lillian spoke before he could, her words tumbling out quickly.

"It's just... you did very well in the Cicero Cup, and I thought someone should say congratulations."

The girl stayed where she was, her long hair hiding her slightly flushed earlobes.

Catching sight of the introductory Ancient Greek textbook on the table, she changed the subject. "You're learning Ancient Greek?"

"Yeah." Richard carefully tucked the laurel bookmark into the title page. "Just started."

Lillian absently rubbed her fingertips against the spine of her book.

"The pronunciation for this letter—the book has it wrong."

Richard paused.

"This textbook teaches the reconstructed pronunciation based on the Attic dialect, the one from around Athens..."

She silently mouthed the shape of it.

"But everyone uses the modern pronunciation now. If you read it the way the book says, it might cause problems during oral recitations later."

Richard took out his pencil and quickly jotted it down in his notebook.

"I need it for my studies." He didn't elaborate on why he was learning it.

It had appeared in the Gargoyle's inscriptions; there was no avoiding it.

Lillian hesitated for a moment before pulling a folded sheet of paper from her pocket. It contained two pages of densely packed, handwritten notes.

"Here. It should be useful."

Richard nodded and slipped the paper into his notebook.

"Thanks. I'll give it back once I finish copying it."

"No rush," she said. "I don't need it anymore."

Richard didn't press the matter. He got the feeling that if he asked even one more question, she would retreat back into her shell.

He took a different approach.

"So what are you reading now?" He tipped his chin toward the book in her arms.

The girl glanced down, only just realizing she was still holding a book to her chest.

She turned it around so the cover faced Richard.

It was an Illustrated Guide to Medicinal Plants of the Albion Isles (Expanded Third Edition), with a hand-drawn foxglove printed on the cover.

"...You like plants?"

"Yeah." Her voice was a little lighter than before. "I draw them, too."

"You draw plants?"

"Anatomical diagrams." Her fingertips rubbed against the spine again.

"Drawing a plant layer by layer, from the roots all the way to the stamen, and labeling each part with its Latin scientific name."

Richard raised an eyebrow.

Botanical anatomical drawing was not a common hobby for girls in this era.

Baking, painting watercolor flowers, playing the piano... those were the extracurricular activities most middle schools designed for girls.

Botanical anatomy was scientific illustration, the domain of early naturalists.

"Why draw that?"

"...It's pretty." She thought for a moment before adding, "Plus, they don't move."

"Any chance I could see your drawings sometime?"

"Okay."

Just like that, the two of them sat down at the table, one after the other.

Lillian had originally intended to drop off the gift and leave, but she ended up taking a seat after all.

She sat diagonally across from Richard, the open textbook sitting between them.

Richard remembered Mr. Hutton's earlier instructions and deliberately adopted a casual, conversational tone.

"Actually, I've been thinking about something lately."

"Hmm?" Lillian flipped through her botanical guide, looking at him with slight confusion.

"It's about these things."

Richard pointed at the textbook, then at his own notebook.

"The more I learn, the more this strange feeling sometimes hits me."

"What kind of feeling?" The girl closed the book in her hands.

"It's like every author of these classical texts—Cicero, Virgil, Pindar... there's some kind of barrier separating the world they wrote about from the world we live in now."

As he said this, he kept his eyes fixed on the illustration of the Parthenon in the textbook, not looking at Lillian.

"When they wrote about the Age of Gods, about fate, about exploring the world, it doesn't look anything like how we write today.

It's as if they weren't just making those things up. They were describing them. As if they had actually seen them."

"..." Lillian said nothing.

"And then you start to wonder if those things they saw are still around today, and it's just that our generation doesn't know how to look past the barrier."

Richard paused deliberately after saying that, waiting.

The third floor of the library was very quiet.

The sky outside was a hazy gray. It wasn't raining, but the air carried a heavy dampness, as if a downpour could start at any second.

The girl's fingers lingered on the corner of a page, completely still.

Her head was lowered, her gaze resting on the cover of the botanical guide, though she clearly wasn't looking at the foxglove.

"This barrier you're talking about—what do you think it is?" Lillian asked.

That kind of counter-question was a response in itself.

If she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, her normal reaction would have been confusion, or a polite nod before changing the subject.

But she wasn't confused, and she didn't change the subject.

She was pressing further.

"I'm not sure." Richard left some leeway in his answer.

"Maybe some kind of... membrane? Something that separates the world we can see from the world we can't."

He used a very vague term.

The two of them were discussing secrets in a room where a third party might be listening, relying entirely on code words and metaphors.

Lillian's fingertip lightly scratched the edge of the page.

"A membrane?"

"Yeah."

"Have you read anything about that in those books on the third floor?"

When she said that, Richard's heartbeat quickened a half-step.

Mr. Hutton had said that Lillian spent even more time on those books than he did.

"I've read a little." Richard nodded, not denying it.

"Appendix C?"

The term was delivered lightly, as if she were asking whether the cafeteria had tomato oxtail soup today.

"Yes," Richard said.

Lillian gave a small nod, confirming something herself.

It was as if two people, fumbling blindly down the same dark alley for a long time, had suddenly bumped into each other at a corner and found the other person was also holding a candle.

"How far did you get with the decoding?" Richard asked.

"All of it."

Richard was somewhat surprised.

Mr. Hutton had mentioned that Lillian spent over half a year on the books on the third floor, painstakingly translating the exact passages he himself had skipped, word by word.

Over half a year to fully decode all twenty-six books.

That progress was indeed much slower than his own, but considering she didn't have the [Learning] skill to back her up and had chewed through it entirely on her own, the speed was quite astonishing.

"You read all twenty-six books and decoded Appendix C... but then you stopped there."

Lillian lowered her head even further.

Richard maintained his casual rhythm.

"After finishing those books, the normal next step would be to head deeper in."

"But you didn't keep going."

He looked at Lillian. "Why is that?"

The library window wasn't shut tight. A cold breeze slipped through the gap, ruffling the corners of the notebook on the desk.

Lillian's expression didn't change much.

But her posture did. She leaned back against her chair, pulling her shoulders back and folding her arms across her chest.

It was a defensive posture.

"I think that's enough," she said.

"Enough?"

"Enough to understand what the other side of this world looks like."

She chose her words carefully.

"Understanding and participating are two different things."

"I can know there's something in there, but I don't need to walk over and see it for myself."

Richard didn't immediately argue.

In his mind, he compared Lillian's words to what Phillips had said in the Imperial Capital University Library.

Phillips had stood at the edge of the hole, taken one look inside, decided the risk-to-reward ratio wasn't worth it, and walked away.

He had an excellent family background, a respectable future, and plenty of reasons to stay in a safe place.

His decision not to keep going was a calculated choice.

But Lillian seemed different.

Richard decided to probe one step further.

"You're right. Understanding and participating really are two different things."

He agreed with her first before shifting the direction of the conversation.

"I've read a few books lately where the author compared working in that field to diving."

"The shallows are near the shore. Sunlight reaches the seabed, the water is clear, and you can see exactly what's beneath your feet.

Most divers spend their entire lives in the shallows. It's safe enough there, and interesting enough too."

"But as you dive deeper, the water gets darker. Sunlight can't pierce through anymore, so you have to rely on the headlamp you brought with you.

You can only see as far as your light reaches. When the light goes out, you can't see anything at all."

"And further down—"

"Enough."

Lillian cut him off.

The girl took several deep breaths before regaining her composure.

"Sorry."

"Right now... I don't really like talking about this."

Richard nodded and didn't press the issue.

"It's getting late." Lillian glanced at the sky outside.

The clouds hung even lower than before. The rain was about to start falling.

"I should go. I still have a Latin translation assignment I haven't finished."

It wasn't a very clever excuse.

Given her proficiency in Latin, a translation assignment wouldn't take her long at all.

But Richard didn't call her out on it.

"Alright."

Lillian stood up, pulling the botanical guide back to her chest.

She lingered by the desk, hesitating.

"That bookmark..."

"It's beautiful. I'll take good care of it."

"Okay."

She turned and walked toward the stairs.

"Richard."

"What is it?"

"That metaphor you just used. About diving."

"The one about the shallows and the deep water?"

"Yeah."

She stood in the aisle between the bookshelves, her profile cast in shadow by the dim, gray light falling from the sky.

"How deep do you plan to dive?"

"I'm only just learning to swim. I still need a swim ring even in the shallows."

Richard answered with a deliberate joke:

"I'll decide that once I don't need the swim ring anymore."

"Pfft..." The odd metaphor earned a laugh from the girl. "Good luck, then."

Lillian waved at him and quickly disappeared around the corner of the stairs.

Richard looked out the window. The clouds pressed down heavily from above, yet the rain still hadn't fallen.

...

Over the next few days, he devoted all his daylight hours to Ancient Greek and his daily coursework, reserving his nights for the Sphinx Oil Lamp.

His daytime progress went smoothly.

He finished memorizing the basics of the Ancient Greek alphabet by the third day, and on the fourth, he began to chew through noun declensions.

Richard copied the dual declension table separately into his notebook, using a red pen to circle a few high-frequency suffixes that had appeared in Mr. Hutton's new reference chart.

The nighttime work was much more mentally taxing.

He had analyzed the oil lamp's seal a long time ago.

A circle enclosing a triangle, with short lines extending from the triangle's three sides—a priest's inscribed seal from the Black Soil River Basin.

The designer had been highly professional. Every symbol was in its correct position, and the curvature of the short lines perfectly matched the writing habits of the middle-reaches priests.