I loaded the Mysticism panel.

There's not much time left until the Cicero Cup.

Richard's time was very tight.

The Ashford family's dinner is scheduled for the 15th of this month, and the family needs to go to the capital in advance.

The train journey from Bristol to the capital takes most of the day. With transfers and settling in, he only has less than two weeks left to prepare for the competition at school.

He told Mr. Holland about it after lunch on Monday.

The bald, middle-aged man was holding a cup of red tea to his lips when he heard the word "Ashford," and his brows furrowed immediately.

The steam from the hot tea fogged up his glasses.

He put the cup back on the table and wiped the lenses with the back of his hand.

"I think it's your mother's family home."

"Yes."

Holland wiped the lenses clean and put them back on: "Be careful about what you do in the capital."

His tone was remarkably similar to his father's.

Richard noticed that he was familiar with the surname Ashford.

"The coaching needs to be adjusted." Holland pulled out a memo from his drawer and circled today's date:

"The original plan was to conduct three mock speeches in the last two weeks, but now it has been compressed into five days to complete them all."

The intensity will be greater than before, can you handle it?

"We can hold on."

"Let's start this afternoon."

He finished his black tea in one gulp, stood up, and grabbed a bunch of keys.

"Let's go to the East Wing lecture hall."

The lecture hall was empty from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., as Mr. Holland had informed the academic affairs office in advance.

He asked Richard to stand on the podium, while he moved a chair and sat in the last row.

The distance between them was maximized, with twenty rows of empty seats in between.

"Starting from the first paragraph of the first article, the complete speech."

Richard stopped, took a breath, and began his first sentence.

"Quo usque tandem……"

The chair legs scraped against the ground, making a sharp creaking sound.

Mr. Holland dragged the chair half a foot to the left, the sound echoing twice between the stone walls.

Richard's rhythm was abruptly cut off.

He managed to catch his breath and continue walking after the break.

Just then, the sound of pages turning began again.

Mr. Holland spread his lesson plan on his lap and turned the pages one by one, the rustling sound of the paper traveling through the empty classroom to the stage.

Then he started coughing.

Those light coughs, like clearing one's throat, came one after another, not loud but persistent.

When Richard was using the third paragraph and got to the fourth "nihil" in the parallel sentences, he heard the sound of a chair being moved from the back row.

He closed his eyes and focused his attention on his breathing rhythm.

The four-fold breathing framework works just as well on stage:

Inhale to steady your breath, hold your breath to maintain rhythm, and exhale to propel your voice forward.

"...nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? (Doesn't any of this move you?)"

As the last "nihil" came down, he paused for almost two seconds between the third and fourth, following Mr. West's advice.

The silence filled the classroom, mingling with the echoes, and carried more weight than sound itself.

After all four sections were finished, Mr. Holland walked over from the last row.

"When I interrupted you, you paused for a moment, but you stopped in the wrong way."

He walked to the front of the podium and looked up at Richard.

"You stopped because you were disturbed; the audience could tell."

The correct approach is to incorporate that pause into the rhythm, making it your own.

The audience can't tell which pause is deliberate and which is forced... but you have to be able to tell the difference yourself.

When forced to pause, your shoulders tighten; when you pause intentionally, your shoulders relax.

He patted the edge of the podium.

"Let's do it again, starting from the beginning."

"The Cicero Cup is played at the Chapel of St. Augustine in the capital."

Mr. Holland walked back, talking as he went:

"The stone wall echoed very strongly. There were hundreds of people in the audience, with the first three rows occupied by teachers from various schools and judges from the Classical Society."

He sat down again in the last row, and the chair creaked once more.

"They will hear every pause, every breath, and every vowel's length clearly."

The second time was much smoother than the first.

Mr. Holland continued to make noise throughout, turning pages, coughing, dragging chairs, and doing all sorts of things.

But Richard's shoulders remained relaxed.

He no longer tries to catch up where he's interrupted; instead, he holds his breath for half a beat before releasing it, making the pause part of the rhythm.

After completing the four sections, Mr. Holland nodded without saying anything.

Saying nothing is the best compliment.

On the third time, Hugh arrived.

He pushed open the side door of the classroom and slipped in, crouching down as he sat down in the far left seat of the first row.

He placed his schoolbag at his feet and took out a pencil and a piece of white paper from it.

He's here as a typhoon observer.

Richard assigned him this task: to sit in the audience and observe his posture, gestures, and eye contact, and then provide feedback afterwards.

Hugh took the task extremely seriously, as it was the only thing he could do to help.

Mr. Holland glanced at the new audience members but said nothing.

Begin the third time.

Richard's performance this time was the best of the three, with real audience members sitting in the audience.

(Holland doesn't count; he's a noise-generating machine.)

Even having only one listener is completely different from speaking to an empty chair.

He made minor adjustments to the parallel structure, slightly lengthening the vowel in the fifth "nihil" to make the energy more powerful.

Hugh sat in the front row, pencil in hand, his eyes following Richard's every move.

His expression was very serious, and his mouth was slightly open, as if he were truly being swept up in the speech.

After the four paragraphs were finished, the echoes lingered in the classroom for several seconds.

Mr. Holland walked to the middle and stopped: "Better than the first two times."

He glanced at Hugh, who was sitting in the front row: "It's different when someone is listening versus when no one is listening. Remember that feeling."

The bald, middle-aged man tucked his lesson plan under his arm and glanced at his watch.

"That's about it for today. You two wait a moment while I go to the restroom."

After saying that, he pushed open the side door and went out.

Richard stepped down from the podium and sat next to Hugh.

"How's it going? My typhoon."

"That's fine." Hugh lifted the pencil off the paper.

Richard leaned over to look at his observation notes.

There was a drawing of a fried chicken leg on the paper.

The lines are nice, and the details are surprisingly rich. The bones are shaded, and the outline of the flesh is depicted with short intersecting lines to create a glossy texture.

Next to it, circles marked "crispy" and "salted," and an arrow pointing to the end of the bone said "Gnaw here."

This kid seems to have a talent for drawing.

Why are you drawing chicken legs?

"I'm hungry." Hugh tucked the pencil behind his ear, his expression nonchalant.

"You've been talking for forty minutes, and I've been sitting for forty minutes. Of course I'm hungry."

"And what about your typhoon monitoring?"

"I've memorized it all." He tapped his temple with his finger.

"Your right hand was on the podium at the beginning of the second paragraph, which didn't look very good, but everything else was fine."

"Just one?"

"I'm not Mr. Holland, it's already quite kind of me to be able to see one thing."

He yawned, his mouth wide open, revealing his back teeth.

"Tired?"

"A little." Hugh rubbed his eyes, his perpetually unkempt bangs brushing to one side with his fingers before bouncing back:

"I listened to the radio under my pillow last night when Stanfield played away."

He perked up as he spoke, and his drowsiness was largely dispelled.

Hugh's radio was a secondhand find from a flea market; the casing was chipped, the speaker was burned out, and he could only listen to it through earphones.

He didn't dare shout when he scored, afraid of waking his parents in the next room.

He gripped the corner of the pillow, biting his teeth into the cotton cloth, his whole body tense and trembling along with the narrator's voice.

"You have no idea how exciting that goal was. In stoppage time of the second half, with the score tied at 2-2, Stanfield's center forward received the ball, surged into the penalty area, beat two players, and took a shot..."

He stood up and mimed a shooting motion, kicking forward with his right leg. The pencil flew out from behind his ear and rolled under the table.

"It bounced off the goalpost."

Richard was about to reply when the side door of the classroom was pushed open.