Early Thursday morning, after checking on the renovation progress, Shade set off for Doctor Schneider's clinic with Mia. He had assumed the doctor would have no work so early, but to his surprise, the man had actually begun seeing patients at eight in the morning.
Shade waited two hours before meeting the yawning doctor. He wore a clean white shirt and sat behind his desk with a fountain pen, writing medical records. When he saw Shade enter, both his greeting and the look in his blue eyes made him seem utterly exhausted.
The room carried the strange scent of burning spices, and a sphere secured in a wooden frame sat atop the desk.
"Doctor, is your work really that exhausting?"
Compared to him, Shade was practically the embodiment of sloth.
"Oh, I'm not sleepy. I just used hypnosis during a consultation. Can you smell the scent in the air? It's a spice used to aid sleep. Didn't Alan give you a bottle when we met him at Saint Song Square last time?"
The doctor gave a brief explanation, invited Shade to sit down, then added quietly:
"I really like hypnosis as a treatment method."
"Why?"
Shade asked curiously, his eyes examining the psychology books on the desk that had clearly been read often. They were not Saint Byron's textbooks, but the doctor's own professional books.
"Because I charge by the hour."
Doctor Schneider smiled and tapped the alarm clock beside him. The delicate brass mechanism was making a pleasant ticking sound.
"Ten minutes costs one shilling and three pence, so an hour is seven shillings and six pence. In two and a half hours this morning, I made nearly a pound."
Shade immediately looked even more impressed. What the doctor earned from a single consultation was more than an ordinary