I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The next day was Saturday.

Richard got up half an hour later than usual.

Last night's divination was exhausting, and the "sleep" method made him wake up with a clear mind, but his body still honestly stayed in bed a little longer.

When he came downstairs, the kitchen was already bustling with activity.

Evelyn, wearing her checkered apron, was tiptoeing as she took the baking tray out of the oven.

The plate contained a row of gingerbread rabbits, each with a round, bulging belly, and the eyes drawn with icing were crooked and uneven.

"Brother! You've finally come up with something." Without turning her head, she said, "Come and be a taste tester, it's something I just came up with."

Richard leaned over and took a look at the plate of rabbits with crooked eyes.

"Why... is this one cross-eyed?"

"That's it thinking." Evelyn moved the cross-eyed rabbit to the center.

"It's the smartest one in the litter, so I gave it a title and called it Mr. Rabbit."

"A gingerbread cake, and a title?"

"Of course it does! Look how knowledgeable its eyes are."

Richard picked up the "Mr. Rabbit" and took a bite.

The spiciness of ginger, the sweetness of sugar, and the aroma of butter melt in your mouth, with the edges baked to a perfect crisp.

"...Hmm, that's really good."

This taste of home-cooked sweetness is so comforting.

Evelyn's eyes immediately curved into crescent moons.

"Right, right! This time I used brown sugar instead of regular sugar, and added a tiny bit of cinnamon measured with the silver measuring spoons my aunt gave me..."

She suddenly leaned closer mysteriously: "Brother, if Mr. Rabbit sold them, how many pennies could he get for one?"

"You've asked the wrong person. I don't even know how many cousins ​​Mr. Rabbit has."

"It has eleven cousins."

Evelyn counted on her fingers.

"Unfortunately, one got burnt. Now there are ten. I'll rename the burnt one 'The Rabbit Knight Who Died in the Line of Duty'."

Richard was amused by this remark.

Mother Margaret walked in from the other end of the living room, carrying an empty teacup.

She glanced at the brother and sister laughing together, then at the plate of rabbits with crooked eyes, and said nothing.

When Richard came out of the kitchen, a bowl of oatmeal porridge had already been served in front of him.

"Eat your porridge first, then you can have those sweets." She put the bowl on the table. "Eating sweets first thing in the morning will ruin your teeth."

"Okay, Mom."

Richard sat down and picked up the bowl of warm oatmeal.

Evelyn was still sorting her gingerbread bunnies, muttering to herself.

The mother sat to the side, picking out vegetables for lunch while occasionally correcting her daughter, saying, "Too much cinnamon will make it bitter."

The snow outside the window has stopped, and the soft warmth of the spring sun shines in, landing on the plate of gingerbread with crooked eyes.

Richard sipped his porridge, one mouthful at a time.

Those things behind the curtain have their own way of living.

Those in high positions make their moves on a chessboard they cannot see.

But this moment is more precious than anything else.

That's why I need to protect them well.

He finished the last mouthful of porridge in his bowl, then reached for the "fallen rabbit knight."

"Ouch... that one's burnt!" Evelyn slapped his hand on the back of his head.

"Burnt flavor is even better."

"I'm keeping that to study why it failed!"

"It has died in the line of duty and should be laid to rest."

Richard stuffed the charred gingerbread knight into his mouth with a serious expression.

"I will see it off on its final journey."

Evelyn stomped her feet in anger, and her mother, who was standing nearby, finally couldn't help but chuckle softly.

After breakfast, Richard returned to his room.

I have important business to attend to on Saturday.

First, there's the tutoring at the Dawn family's house; second, we had arranged to go to the Coleman family's backyard that afternoon to give him that injection.

He first checked the items he had received the previous night again.

Nemesis's hook, moon-bathed silk, and silver marrow water.

Eagle Hook used his spiritual vision to look again. The ether was indeed depleted and no more points could be extracted. However, the effect of the "misidentified" amulet and the silver ring with the mark left by Lady Mary on his neck were exactly two parallel paths.

One makes it impossible to discern rank, the other makes one mistakenly believe they are dead.

Using both on top of each other will make walking outside much more stable.

In exchange, Ares received an ebony box, a bronze mirror, three front canine teeth of a Soul-Gnawing Beast, and two Shadow Eater scales.

The canine teeth and scales were emitting etheric radiation, and he had already sealed them last night in a small cloth bag filled with salt, separated by oil paper.

Both of these are excellent mediums for casting spells.

He already has some ideas and is preparing to turn them into equipment.

Prometheus… Richard added a line to the “Portraits” section of his notebook:

Behind it is most likely a traditional alchemist with connections to the New World.

After taking inventory, he packed his schoolbag and went out to wait for the Dawn family's carriage.

The air was very clean after the snow.

At both ends of the alley, several neighborhood children were building a snowman that had collapsed on one side.

An old man selling coal pushed his cart around the street corner, the wheels leaving shallow ruts in the thin snow.

Briston is a city that, by day, is characterized by its industry, chimneys, and wheels;

As night falls, the old alleys, abandoned mines, and canal banks that no one pays attention to slowly reveal their other side.

At 9:30 a.m., the Dawn family's carriage stopped at the alley entrance on time.

The driver pulled open the carriage door and tilted his head slightly inward.

The roads were slippery after the snow, and the horses' hooves made a series of crisp, cracking sounds as they stepped on the thin ice.

Charlotte greeted him at the door, wearing a simple gray tweed dress and her hair loosely tied up.

"Tom is already waiting for you in the study." She stepped aside to let him out.

"The editor-in-chief has replied regarding the manuscript."

Richard wiped his snow boots clean on the porch and looked up.

"How is it?"

"I'll tell you after class," Charlotte said, unusually keeping him in suspense. "It's good news."

Richard went into the study.

Tom is becoming more and more obedient.

He sat at his desk, on which lay two copies of the homework Richard had assigned last time.

He copied the eight suffixes of the second declension into three full lines, his handwriting crooked, but not a single one was missing.

"Look, sir, I've memorized it all." The boy pushed the notebook over, puffing out his chest.

"insula, insulam, insulae..."

Richard scanned the entire screen until he stopped at the "Extra" column.

"You forgot the long vowel mark for insulā."

"It's just a small leverage," Tom said, scoffing.

"A small deal can decide life or death." Richard added a horizontal line above the "a" with a pencil.

"Without it, the island becomes the subject, turning 'on the island' into 'the island is'."

In Roman courts, a single note of varying length could determine which side a will should be awarded to.

Tom's eyes widened.

"Really?"

"Really." Richard opened the old textbook he had brought and pointed to a page.

"Cicero once represented a man named Quintius in a lawsuit, who was fixated on a certain word in a document."

The ownership of the entire family fortune hangs precariously on the vowel at the end of that word.

He didn't finish the second half of his story; in that lawsuit, Cicero eventually forced the other party to change his story in public.

Language is a weapon, but the real blow often doesn't come from the language itself.

This is too early to explain to a twelve-year-old.

In today's main lesson, Richard talked about persona, and he slowly wrote it down on the desktop.

"Guess what this word originally meant?"

Tom stared at the string of letters on the table for a while.

"Human? Personality?"

"Well, these are pretty much the only two meanings you can find in the dictionary right now."

Richard took a small notebook out of his bag, turned to a blank page, and drew a very simple ellipse.

There are two holes inside the ellipse, and a horizontal line is drawn below it.

It was an extremely crude mask.

"This is the oldest version of Persona."

"...A face?"

"It's a mask."

Richard tapped the two holes with the tip of his pencil.

"The ancient Romans performed on stage without microphones or the kind of stage sets that modern theaters have to amplify the sound."

"Actors must make sure that the audience in the last row can hear their voices."

"So they came up with a solution: to wear a mask made of wood or leather on their faces."

The mouth section of the mask was deliberately hollowed out, like a funnel.

Richard added a small, outward-opening funnel to the horizontal line below the ellipse.

"When an actor speaks his lines, the sound comes out of his throat, goes into the inner wall of the mask, and then comes out through this funnel."

"His voice was amplified and focused, and even the furthest row in the entire amphitheater could clearly hear what he was saying."

Tom's eyes slowly widened a little.

"Persona originally came to be a wooden mask that could only allow sound to pass through."

"Later, masks were borrowed to describe the 'roles' people played on stage."

"Later, the word 'role' was borrowed to describe 'the self' that people play in life."

Finally, it was borrowed to describe the very thing called "human being".

The boy's brain was momentarily overloaded.

After a while, Tom asked a question.

"...Why start with masks?"

"Think about it, actors wearing masks standing on stage."

Richard placed the pencil horizontally on the mask drawing.

"The audience cannot see the real face beneath the mask."

"What the audience hears is the sound coming out of the funnel."

"But where did the sound come from?"

"...in the throat."

"Whose throat is it?"

"...The actor's own."

"so what?"

Richard looked at the boy.

"The mask doesn't speak on its own; it's the person underneath that amplifies their voice through the mask."

"But the audience only remembers the mask, not the person behind it."

Tom silently repeated the sentence to himself.

"...So, is Persona a mask, or the person beneath the mask?"

Richard smiled.

"You've hit the nail on the head."

"For two thousand years, everyone who has read this word has been arguing about it."

"But I personally think that what makes a person who they are is that they have both the sound that comes out of the funnel and the face that lies beneath the funnel, which refuses to be heard by anyone."

A hint of confusion slowly crept onto Tom's face.

Richard pushed the little notebook with the crudely drawn mask from the desk all the way to Tom's side.

"Take this page with you when get out of class ends, and put it away in the box."

"Take another look at it when you're thirty."

"Then tell me, in your view, is a persona a mask, a face, or a combination of both?"

"...Thirty years old? I still have eighteen years left."

"I can wait."

When class ended, Charlotte, as usual, came to see him to the door.

Today she had something extra in her hand: a folded copy of "Northern Literature Review".

"Your manuscript." She handed me the magazine and turned to the middle page.

"It's already been published; it's the headline of the 'Young People's Pen' column."

Richard took it and glanced at it.

The washerwoman's observation, the people coughing up blood represented by Burns (a pseudonym), the hidden thread of the poor system that is "secondary to the principle of eligibility"... all are there, not a single word was cut, and the signature is his own.

"One pound for the manuscript," Charlotte added. "It was approved by the editor-in-chief; that's the maximum I've paid for an essay."

Thank you.

"Don't thank me yet." She closed the magazine, not letting go immediately.

"The editor-in-chief called me personally yesterday and specifically asked who wrote this article."

Richard waited for her to continue.

"He said..." Charlotte carefully chose her words.

"This piece had a chilling undercurrent," he said. "After so many years of editing, this was the first time he had ever felt a tightness in the back of his neck while reading an essay about laborers and laundresses."

Richard's fingertips paused on the magazine cover.

"A chill, another chill," Charlotte said after reading it.

"He likes it, but he also has his doubts."

Charlotte spoke very slowly.

He said that if this article were published, most people on the Poverty Relief Committee and the owners of the mines in the western suburbs would probably find it uncomfortable.

You didn't name names, didn't shout slogans, and didn't mention a single improved recipe... Article 34 of the Albion Publications Act can't hold you accountable.

But the more you do this, the more people will resent you.

"What do you resent me for?"

"I resent that you let someone 'see' it."

Charlotte shoved the magazine back into his hands.

"A landlord can ignore a thousand such people dying on the docks, but he cannot ignore a piece of writing that makes the whole city's readers feel a tightness in the back of their necks."

You've let that bit of coldness they pretended not to see see into someone else's nose.

She stood on the porch steps, her breath dissipating in the cold air.

"The editor-in-chief asked me to pass on a message to you. He said, 'This kid has potential, but potential is sometimes a signboard, and sometimes it's a target.'"

Richard rolled up the magazine and put it into his shoulder bag.

He remembered the star cards Mrs. McNeil had turned over that night.

The woman, kneeling by the water, poured the water from her jug ​​back into the river. The water returned to the river, and her hands were empty.

It can be logged out, and the effect is quite good, but what do you have to pay to log out?

Right now, the outline of the cost is beginning to emerge.

People are starting to remember his name, though not in a very friendly way.

"I understand." He nodded to Charlotte. "I'll be more discreet about what I write in the future."

"Don't hide it too much," Charlotte waved her hand.

"If you hide it too deeply, you won't be able to express the meaning. You need to find the right balance yourself."

She turned and went back into the house.

Richard stood at the bottom of the steps, weighing the magazine in his hand.

A pound in royalties, plus a name that might catch the attention of the admissions offices of several liberal arts colleges in Beijing;

A chill ran down his spine, along with several unknown employers who were already starting to dislike him.

Whether this deal is worthwhile or not is still unclear at the moment.

………………

After lunch, he went to Coleman's house.

Coleman swept the snow along the wall to a corner, making room for practice.

"Still wearing a brace today?" He rolled up his sleeve, revealing part of his left forearm.

"Stab." Richard took out a long box of silver needles.