I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Richard's heart sank at that moment.

The girl skipped class and went to an abandoned house deep inside the campus, where someone was doing something with tweezers...

Richard almost instinctively thought the worst.

He went around to the back wall of the hut, where there was a ventilation window, the oil paper covering it had several cracks.

Richard bent down and peered through the longest slit.

A linen cloth was spread on the wooden table in the center of the room.

Several items were neatly arranged on the linen:

A scalpel, a pair of tweezers, three glass bottles, a roll of copper wire, and a brush.

There was also a dead bird.

The thing lay in the middle of the linen, disassembled into only a skeleton and a few scattered tufts of feathers.

The girl sat upright at the table, her sleeves rolled up above her elbows.

Her hair was tied up, revealing a section of her excessively white neck.

With her left hand pressing on the bird's breastbone, and her right hand holding tweezers, she was separating a small piece of rib from the bits of flesh.

Richard, who had been on edge, slowly relaxed.

Inside this room, Lillian was doing the opposite of what she had imagined.

She was piecing together a shattered corpse, bone by bone, to make it look alive again.

Richard stood outside the crack for a while, then walked back to the front door of the house.

He raised his hand and tapped the door frame with his knuckles.

The sounds from inside the door suddenly stopped.

"……who?"

The girl's voice came through the door, trembling slightly.

"It's me, Richard."

The door opened a crack.

Lillian stood behind the door, blocking the view inside.

She hurriedly pulled down her shirt cuffs, but there were still traces of medicine on her fingers.

"May I come inside?"

Lillian's lips moved.

"...It's not nice inside."

"I've already seen it," Richard confessed. "The paper covering the back window is torn."

The girl's eyelashes trembled slightly twice.

She hesitated for a while with her head down, but finally turned to the side and moved aside to give way half a body space.

"Please come in."

Richard went inside and closed the door behind him, but didn't lock it.

It was warmer inside the cabin than outside.

The light illuminated the linen and the bird that was half taken apart, making them clearly visible.

The girl didn't speak, she just looked at him.

There was a sense of dejection, like "awaiting a verdict," in those grey-blue eyes.

"Is it a wren?" he asked.

"I haven't seen any wrens on the path outside the house. The nearest habitat should be the woods to the west."

"...You recognize these people?"

Lillian looked at Richard in disbelief.

She had rehearsed countless times the scenes of being questioned and disliked, but she had never rehearsed having someone talk to her about these things.

"I found it by the edge of the woods yesterday," Lillian said, her voice still very soft.

"He hit something, broke his neck, but his body is relatively intact."

Richard walked to the table and noticed something small.

This table has surpassed the level of ordinary cleanliness and tidiness.

It was arranged in a strict order, with scalpels and forceps placed side by side, the distance between the handles of the scalpels and the handles of the forceps being two fingers wide, without any deviation.

The glass bottles are arranged in an isosceles triangle, with the threads on the caps facing the same direction, all towards the side where Lily is sitting.

Richard kept a close eye on things, casually making conversation.

"Did you mix the tools and potions yourself?"

"Three parts naphtha and one part lime water," the girl answered quickly, a little shyly.

"Birds with a lot of oil should have their skin diluted with distilled water, otherwise their skin will turn yellow."

"How long have you been doing this?" Richard continued to ask.

"...It's been several years, since I started middle school."

He looked around the small house.

There was a large wooden crate in the corner, and from his angle, he could see several rows of glass jars neatly arranged inside.

The top row is birds.

Sparrows, tits, a bird that looked like a red-bellied finch, and a small bird whose wing bones were longer than its body bones, whose name he couldn't recall.

Each skeleton is in a different posture.

Some spread their wings and flew, while others curled up and slept.

Not just birds, but all kinds of small animals are included.

Richard squatted in front of the wooden crates, looking at them row by row.

Field mice nibble, shrews climb, hedgehogs curl up, frogs leap, snakes slither, moles dig...

The animals were all frozen in their most vibrant moments forever.

"Were these all found?" he asked.

"They're all dead," Lillian replied quickly, afraid he might misunderstand.

"I don't kill them, I only pick up the ones that are already dead."

Birds from the roadside, from the woods, from the riverbanks... the most are in winter, when frozen birds fall from the trees.

Richard offered no comment.

He glanced at the wooden crate again, his gaze lingering on the top row.

There was a titmouse whose posture was different from that of other small animals.

The other specimens were flying, jumping, eating, and climbing.

The titmouse, however, was perched on a withered branch, its head tilted slightly to one side as if listening to something.

Lillian's gaze followed his.

"...That was the first one. I found it on the windowsill when I was twelve years old. It had frozen to death."

She walked over, squatted down, and gently touched the titmouse with her finger through the glass jar.

"Its head was tilted when it died, and I didn't change it."

"You changed your posture for all the later ones."

"Um."

Why?

"Because they didn't look good when they died."

Lillian kept her head down.

"A bird that freezes to death will curl up, its claws clenched tightly."

The hedgehog that was run over by a car lay sprawled out, while the drowned field mouse was soaking wet and looked only half its original size.

She looked up at Richard.

"So I changed them back."

Richard squatted down opposite her.

"What happens after you turn back?"

"They've been here ever since."

Lillian looked down at the neatly arranged glass jars.

"They won't rot, they won't fall apart, and they won't be blown away by the wind."

She reached out and pushed the lid of the wooden box up to let more light in.

"I often come to check on them, sit for a while, and see if they're still there."

"Why did you come here in the first place?" Lillian suddenly asked.

Richard originally intended to come up with any random reason.

But Lillian had already shown him everything in the house.

"I'm looking for a place where no one will think to come looking for me," he said, as if possessed.

Lillian raised her eyes.

"I have a room on the third floor of the library."

"But someone knows that house belongs to me."

Richard did not say who that "someone" was.

Lillian didn't ask either.

She pulled the linen cloth on the table a little closer, making room on the right side of the table.

"Then you can use this table, as long as you don't mind there's someone peeling bones across from you."

Richard looked at the empty space that had been cleared out.

The desk isn't big; it might feel a bit cramped if you put two people's things on it, but it's enough.

"Of course I don't mind."

He sat down opposite Lillian.

Lillian picked up the tweezers again.

She hesitated for a moment, clearly considering whether to continue in front of Richard.

Ultimately, the tip of the tweezers penetrated the wren's chest cavity and clamped onto a section of rib that had not yet been removed.

The movement was a little slower than before, probably because there was another pair of eyes watching.

Richard took out draft paper and a pencil from his bag and spread them out on the empty space on the table.

He lowered his head and began to write on the draft paper.

The room fell silent, with the kerosene lamp flame flickering occasionally.

The tweezers made a very soft sound when they touched the bone, like someone was ringing a tiny bell.

About twenty minutes later, Lillian put the wren's last rib into the water bottle.

She flexed her fingers, wiped the tweezers and scalpel clean, and put them back into the tin biscuit box.

The placement of each tool was accurate to the millimeter.

"We'll stop here for today. We'll have to wait until the bones have soaked long enough before we can continue."

Richard looked up from the draft paper.

How many times a week do you come?

"It depends. When there are specimens being processed, we come every day; when there aren't, we come two or three times a week."

She placed the glass bottle into a separate small compartment next to the wooden box.

"More things come in winter, and more things die in winter."

Richard stood up and pushed his chair back to the table.

"Where's the key?"

Lillian took a small brass key out of her shirt pocket and dangled it in the light.

"The door can be locked from the inside; this is needed to lock it from the outside."

She thought about it:

"Don't lock the door when you come first. When I arrive and see that the door is unlocked, I'll know you're inside."

I'll lock the door from the inside first; just knock.

"Let's knock on the door to set a rhythm," she added, "so I don't think it's someone else."

"Two short ones and one long one," Richard said.

Lillian nodded and put the keys back in her pocket.

"Um."

Richard stood on one side of the table, looking at Lillian across from him.

He raised his hand and pressed the silver ring on his chest through his shirt.

The lighthouse, now dimmed, saw its flame flicker upwards just a tiny bit.

Lillian's eyes widened.

The light wasn't off; it was just being blocked.

Richard withdrew that last vestige of energy.

He didn't explain what the ring was, where it came from, or why he wore it.

He was just letting the girl know that he was alright.

After they finished packing, the two of them walked out of the small house one after the other.

The cold air rushed in from outside, and the flame of the kerosene lamp suddenly tilted.

It was completely dark, and the boxwood hedges in the garden had become a blurry shadow.

Upon reaching the garden entrance, the path splits into two.

The left side leads to the main entrance, and the right side leads to the side entrance.

At the fork in the road, Lillian paused for a moment.

Richard.

"Um?"

She stood in the twilight, her grey-blue eyes appearing pale in the last rays of daylight.

"Just now... thank you for letting me know you were alright."

Richard put his hands into his coat pockets.

"You didn't even ask what it was."

Lillian smiled, her smile as faint as her eyes.

"I'm not stupid; I know what I should ask and what I shouldn't ask."

See you next week.

See you next week.

The girl turned and walked down the path to the right.

Richard stood at the fork in the road and watched her back for a while.

After walking a dozen steps, her figure was completely swallowed up by the shadow of the yellow poplar fence.

Richard turned and walked to the left.