His mother slung a dishcloth over her shoulder, came over, and felt Richard's forehead.
"Have you eaten yet?"
"Not yet."
"I left some for you in the pot. The soup is still warm, and there's bread on the rack."
"Thanks, Mom."
He went to the kitchen, brought out a bowl of soup and some bread, and sat at the dining table to eat.
Evelyn sat across from him. Elbows propped on the table, she stared at him like a detective interrogating a suspect.
"So, who's the girl?"
"Grey. She's in my class."
"Grey? Grey who? What's her full name?""Irene Grey."
The girl searched her memory for a few seconds, her lips moving as she silently repeated the name.
"Grey... The Grey family from the South District?"
"Probably."
"Richard!" Evelyn slapped her hands onto the table, making the soup slosh in its bowl.
She leaned forward with dire urgency:
"You aren't... being kept by her, are you?"
Richard nearly choked on his soup.
"Just what kind of books are you reading in your free time?"
"Eight out of ten books I read have the poor boy getting picked up in a luxury carriage by a wealthy young lady!"
"And the other two?"
"In the other two, he gets picked up by a wealthy older woman."
"..."
Their father folded his newspaper, set it on the table, and stood up.
He went to the kitchen for a glass of water and paused on his way back past the table.
"Get some sleep when you're done eating," he told Richard, his tone even.
He took two steps, then stopped again. Without turning back to them, he added, "Making friends is a good thing, but keep your boundaries in mind."
With that, he headed upstairs.
Evelyn watched their father go, then turned back to Richard and jutted her chin at him.
"Did you hear that? Even Dad says so."
"I heard him." Richard finished his soup and mopped the bottom of the bowl clean with his bread. "A classmate just gave me a ride home. You're both overreacting."
He stood to gather his dishes. As he passed Evelyn, he pulled the paper packet from his pocket and set it on the table.
"Grey gave me these scones. Want to try them?"
Evelyn looked down at the packet. She hesitated for barely half a second before her curiosity won out.
A sweet fragrance drifted out when she opened it. The scones were baked to a fluffy golden brown, made with ingredients several tiers better than anything she used in her home economics class.
She took a bite, and her expression grew even more conflicted. "...They really are delicious."
"Not as good as yours," Richard teased from beside her.
"I don't need you to tell me that!" Evelyn blushed and elbowed him.
Later that night, Richard waited until all the lights downstairs had gone out before drawing his curtains and switching on his desk lamp.
Having learned his lesson from when his sister burst into his room, he positioned himself facing the door this time, so he could listen for any movement outside.
Drawing on his memory, he transcribed the two handwritten pages from the library in their entirety.
The memory enhancement from [Learning] made the task effortless. Every Latin word was perfectly clear.
Once the transcription was finished, he worked through the translation.
The steps to the breathing method weren't complicated. Its core consisted of just three elements: rhythm, visualization, and an anchor point.
The first step was to find one's own heartbeat.
Press the fingertips against the artery on the side of the neck or the inner wrist, silently counting the pulse until the rhythm of the heartbeat could be clearly perceived without touching the skin.
From then on, all counting was measured by heartbeats rather than seconds on a clock. The text placed special emphasis on this point:
"A clock is an external object; the heartbeat is oneself. The foundation of the Golden Path lies in seeking inward. All rhythm must be born from the self."
The second step was to enter Fourfold Breathing.
Inhale for four beats, hold for four beats, exhale for four beats, and hold for another four beats to form a complete cycle.
The four stages were equal in length and perfectly symmetrical, like the four sides of a square.
Unhurried and impartial, with no distinction in weight between the four beats, they rested in balance like the two pans of a scale. This was why it was called the Golden Path.
In alchemy, gold did not refer to the metal itself, but rather the state of all things achieving perfect balance: Aurum Philosophicum, the Philosopher's Gold.
With the four stages of breathing divided equally, the practitioner's body and spirit fell into harmony with the rhythm. Within this harmony, Ether would naturally accumulate without the need to seize it by force.
The third step was to introduce visualization during each breath-hold.
During the first breath-hold, focus all attention on the space directly behind the sternum, right between the lungs.
The text referred to this as the Seat of the Sun, written in Latin as Sedes Solis.
In the tradition of Hermes, this was where the "inner sun" resided, and the place where Ether could be most easily intercepted.
The text specifically noted that the visualization did not require actually seeing anything, nor did it require feeling any real sense of light or heat.
Over time, the unseen would become seen.
Richard put his translation notes away, sat on the edge of his bed, and closed his eyes.
Air flowed through his nasal cavity, down the bifurcation of his trachea, and filled his lungs.
The enhancement from [Breathing Lv.2] made the process smoother than it would be for an ordinary person. With low airway resistance, his alveoli expanded more fully.
He held his breath, sinking his focus entirely into the space behind his sternum. This was the hardest part.
Focusing on an invisible, intangible location was simple to say, but extremely easy to lose track of in practice.
Stray thoughts kept popping into his head: tomorrow's classes, the Cicero Cup, Grey's carriage, Evelyn's outrageous speculations... He pushed the distractions down and re-anchored his focus.
The breath-hold ended after a second and a half.
Exhale... one, two. The air pushed steadily from his lungs, his control keeping the release from rushing.
The first complete cycle ended. He felt absolutely nothing.
He continued onto the second, the third, the fourth.
By the fifth cycle, an extremely faint warmth appeared deep within his chest.
It was even fainter than when his Breathing had leveled up—so faint he could barely distinguish whether it was a real sensation or just psychological suggestion.
But his interface flashed.
[Breathing] Experience: +2 (Cultivation Bonus)
Rather than growing in single digits as before, his experience had directly jumped by two points.
He ran a quick comparison in his head.
The experience gained from ordinary breathing was almost negligible, requiring tens of thousands of breaths to stack up.
Breathing in a state of cultivation yielded two points in just a few cycles. The difference in efficiency was on an entirely different order of magnitude.
If he persisted with his breathing method cultivation every day, he would reach Lv.3 much sooner.
Suppressing his excitement, he continued and finished his cultivation for the day.
The numbers on his interface glowed quietly.
[Breathing] Lv.2 Experience: 21/500
A single cultivation session had raised it by nearly ten points—even more than he had estimated.
At this rate, he could hit Lv.3 in about two months.
Lv.3 Breathing - Healing would bring another qualitative transformation and an all-around enhancement.
He switched off his desk lamp and lay down in bed.
Cold air poured in through the crack in the window, making the edges of the curtains flutter slightly.
He didn't close the window. The air tonight seemed exceptionally sweet.
...
The rhythm of campus life over the following days was about the same as before, but his interpersonal relationships underwent a subtle shift.
First was Grey.
After giving him that "convenient" ride on Wednesday night, she shifted her seat during lunch tutoring from Warren's side to Richard's.
She sat several spaces closer, and her notebook had moved from her lap to the tabletop.
Then, there was Lillian.
During the morning, Lillian stopped as she brushed past Richard in the hallway.
"Williams."
"Hm?"
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
After about two seconds of silence, she pulled a page from beneath the textbook in her hands and held it out to him.
"About the suggestion Mr. West gave you last week. I found a passage of Cicero's original text in Pro Murena. The structure is close to the one you used, so you can use it as a reference."
Copied onto the paper was a paragraph of Latin, with stress and pause positions marked beside it. The notes were meticulous.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Lillian hugged her textbook a little tighter and turned to leave. She walked fast, the end of her braid swaying twice behind her shoulder.
Richard glanced down at the paper. The handwriting was completely different from the ornate script Grey had been trained to write since childhood:
Lillian's handwriting was small and dense, like it had been tapped out by a typewriter. Every letter sat obediently within its own box.
This incident was seen by the rest of the class.
By lunchtime, the news had already completed its first round of circulation: Lillian had passed Richard a little note.