Chicken Leg

Time is running out for the Cicero Cup.

Richard is pressed for time.

The Ashford family banquet is scheduled for the fifteenth of this month, and his family needs to head to the Imperial Capital ahead of time.

The train ride from Briston to the Imperial Capital takes over half a day; counting transfers and settling in, the time he actually has left at school to prepare for the competition is less than two weeks.

After lunch on Monday, he told Mr. Holland about this matter.

The balding middle-aged man was just raising a cup of black tea to his lips when he heard the word "Ashford," and his brows furrowed instantly.

The steam from the tea fogged up his lenses.

He set the cup back on the desk and wiped his lenses with the back of his hand.

"I recall that being your mother's maiden family."

"Yes."

Holland wiped his lenses clean and put them back on: "Be mindful of your boundaries regarding matters in the Imperial Capital."

His tone when saying this was surprisingly consistent with his father's.

Richard noticed this; he was no stranger to the surname Ashford.

"We need to adjust your tutoring." Holland rummaged through his drawer for a memo pad and drew a circle next to today's date:

"The original plan was to do three mock speeches in the final two weeks, but now we have to compress them all into five days.

The intensity will be higher than before; can you handle it?"

"I can handle it."

"Then we start this afternoon."

He downed the rest of his tea in one gulp, stood up, and grabbed a set of keys.

"Let's go, to the East Wing Lecture Hall."

The lecture hall is empty from three to five in the afternoon, and Mr. Holland had already cleared it with the academic affairs office.

He had Richard stand on the podium while he moved a chair to the back row.

The distance was stretched to the maximum, with twenty rows of empty seats in between.

"Start from the first paragraph of the first piece, full speech."

Richard stood firm, took a breath, and opened his mouth to begin the first sentence.

"Quo usque tandem..."

The legs of the chair scraped across the floor, emitting a sharp, screeching sound.

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

Richard's rhythm was sliced in half.

He struggled to gather his breath, connected the broken segment, and continued downward.

Just then, the sound of page-turning rang out.

Mr. Holland spread the lesson plan he had brought on his knees and flipped through it page by page; the rustling sound of paper friction traveled across the empty classroom to the podium.

Then, he began to cough.

That throat-clearing type of light cough, one after another, not heavy but persistent.

When Richard reached the fourth "nihil" in the third paragraph's parallel structure, the sound of the chair shifting came from the back row again.

He closed his eyes, anchoring his focus on his breathing rhythm.

The framework of Quadruple Breathing worked just as well on the podium:

Inhale to stabilize the breath, hold to stabilize the rhythm, exhale to push the voice forward.

"...nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? (Does none of this move your face or expression?)"

As the final "nihil" landed, he followed Mr. West's advice and paused for nearly two seconds between the third and fourth.

Silence filled the classroom, mixing with the echoes, becoming even heavier than the sound itself.

After all four paragraphs were finished, Mr. Holland walked over from the back row.

"When I interrupted you in the middle, you paused, but the way you paused was wrong."

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

"You paused because you were distracted; the audience can tell.

The correct way is to absorb that pause into the rhythm and turn it into your own pause.

The audience can't distinguish which pause is intentional and which is forced... but you must distinguish it yourself.

When you pause under duress, you tighten your shoulders; when you pause intentionally, your shoulders are relaxed."

He tapped the edge of the podium.

"Once more, from the beginning."

"The Cicero Cup venue is at the St. Augustine Chapel in the Imperial Capital."

Mr. Holland walked back, speaking as he moved:

"The stone walls have a heavy echo, and with hundreds of people in the audience, the first three rows are occupied by the faculty advisors from each school and the judges from the Classical Society."

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

"Every pause you make, every breath you take, and the length of every vowel—they will hear it all with perfect clarity."

The second run-through was much smoother than the first.

Mr. Holland continued to create noise throughout, flipping pages, coughing, dragging his chair, and finding all sorts of ways to be a distraction.

But Richard's shoulders remained relaxed the entire time.

Where he was interrupted, he no longer forced his way through; instead, he held his breath for half a beat before releasing it, letting the pause become a part of the rhythm.

After the four segments were finished, Mr. Holland nodded, saying nothing at all.

Saying nothing was the best possible evaluation.

By the third run-through, Hugh had arrived.

He pushed open the side door of the classroom and slipped in, hunching over as he walked to the seat at the very edge of the front row.

He placed his schoolbag by his feet and pulled out a pencil and a sheet of white paper.

He was here to act as a stage presence observer.

This was a task Richard had assigned to him: to sit in the audience and watch his posture, gestures, and eye contact, then provide feedback afterward.

Hugh approached this task with extreme seriousness; after all, it was the only thing he could do to help.

Mr. Holland glanced at the new listener but said nothing.

The third run-through began.

Richard's state in this round was the best of the three, as there was a real audience member sitting below.

(Mr. Holland didn't count; he was a noise-making machine.)

Even with just one listener, it was a completely different experience from speaking to empty chairs.

He made a slight adjustment to his handling of the parallel structure, slightly lengthening the vowel of the fifth "nihil" to make the buildup more resonant.

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

His expression was very focused, his mouth slightly agape, as if he were truly being swept along by the speech.

When the four segments were finished, the echoes lingered in the classroom for several seconds.

Mr. Holland walked to the center of the room and stopped: "Better than the first two times."

He looked at Hugh sitting in the front row: "Having someone listen is different from having no one; remember this feeling."

The middle-aged man with the bald head tucked his lesson plan under his arm and checked his watch.

"That's enough for today. You two wait a moment; I'm going to the restroom."

With that, he pushed open the side door and walked out.

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

"How was it? My stage presence."

"Pretty good." Hugh lifted his pencil from the paper.

Richard leaned over to look at his observation notes.

On the paper was a drawing of a fried chicken leg.

The lines were decent, and the details were surprisingly rich; the bone was shaded, and the contour of the meat used short, cross-hatched lines to convey a greasy texture.

Next to it, he had circled areas labeled "crispy skin" and "add salt," with an arrow pointing to the end of the bone labeled "gnaw to here."

This kid seemed to have a bit of a talent for drawing.

"Why are you drawing a chicken leg?"

"I'm hungry." Hugh tucked the pencil behind his ear, his expression matter-of-fact:

"You spoke for forty minutes, and I sat for forty minutes; of course I'm hungry."

"What about your stage presence observation?"

"It's all recorded in my head." He tapped his temple with his finger:

"At the start of your second segment, you rested your right hand on the podium; it didn't look very good. Everything else was fine."

"Just one point?"

"I'm not Mr. Holland. Being able to spot one point is already doing you a huge favor."

He let out a yawn, his mouth opening so wide that even his back molars were visible.

"Sleepy?"

"A little." Hugh rubbed his eyes, his bangs—which could never be combed flat—pushed aside by his fingers before springing back into place.

"Stanfield played an away game last night, so I tucked a radio under my pillow to listen."

He perked up as he said this, his sleepiness mostly dispelled.

The radio Hugh used was a piece of junk he'd scavenged from a flea market; a corner of the casing was missing, the speaker was blown, and he could only listen through the earphone cord.

He hadn't dared to shout when they scored, fearing he would wake his parents in the next room.

He had just gripped the corner of his pillow, biting down on the cotton fabric, his whole body tensed and trembling along with the commentator's voice.

"You have no idea how thrilling that goal was. Deep into stoppage time in the second half, tied at two-all, the Stanfield center forward broke into the penalty area, dribbled past two defenders, and took the shot..."

He stood up to mimic the shooting motion, kicking his right leg forward, and a pencil flew out from behind his ear, rolling under the desk.

"It hit the goalpost and bounced right back out."

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