Fortune Favors the Bold

Gray sat to the left of Richard, eating a roasted chicken leg with salad today.

From start to finish, she didn't join the discussion, simply eating her meal quietly.

She had seen what happened during physical education class; or rather, almost everyone on the girls' side of the field had seen it.

She had seen those few steps Richard took to cut out from his position even more clearly from her angle.

Clean and decisive, without a hint of hesitation, his timing was as precise as if he had calculated it in advance.

A month ago, no one had noticed Richard Williams.

She was the first, starting from that afternoon with the God-Descending Disk, when Richard explained the scientific principles to them.

This feeling of caring about someone was hard to describe.

Calling it a heartbeat was too exaggerated; they hadn't even spoken more than a few sentences in total.

It was closer to... finding a stone with a different color in a pile of dull, gray pebbles.

When you picked it up and held it to the light, something inside was faintly shimmering.

In that moment, it belonged only to you, because no one else had discovered it but you.

Then, slowly, more and more people began to notice the light of this stone.

Mr. Hutton praised him in class, Mr. Holland recommended him for the Cicero Cup, and Warren began to actively recruit him.

With every additional person who noticed, her sense of exclusive ownership—the "I saw him first" feeling—was diluted a little more.

Gray knew this feeling wasn't exactly noble.

He wasn't hers, so what difference did it make who discovered him first?

But knowing was one thing, and emotions didn't care about reason.

What happened in physical education today pushed this feeling a step further.

The entire cafeteria was chatting, everyone was discussing Richard, and even the lower-grade girls were asking, "Which Williams is it?"

The gem that belonged to her was now completely exposed in the broad daylight, where everyone could see him shining.

Gray popped the last piece of chicken into her mouth and wiped the corners of her lips with a napkin.

She stood up and carried her tray to the return station.

As she passed behind Richard, the girl asked, seemingly in a casual tone:

"Williams, do you still want those scones from last time?

I'll bake a few more this time; take them home to share with your family?"

Richard looked into the girl's blue eyes and chose to accept the kindness: "Sure... thank you, Gray."

"Mm."

She walked away.

Warren watched Gray's back disappear at the return window, then turned back and pointed his fork at Richard:

"If I hadn't kicked the ball off-course, where would you have gotten the chance to play the hero saving the beauty?"

"Is that what you call it?" Mason thought about it seriously:

"To be accurate, Richard was cleaning up your mess; you almost got that girl hurt."

"My foot slipped!"

"Right, right, your foot slipped. If you can kick it that far while slipping, you're even more impressive than Stanfield."

Warren glared at Mason, and Mason shrank his neck back.

Hugh dragged a chair over from the next table, his left leg still a bit lame, with a bandage wrapped around his knee.

He set his tray on the corner of the table and took a piece of bread from it.

"What are you guys talking about?"

"Talking about Richard playing soccer."

"Oh, that." Hugh took a bite of bread, chewed twice, and swallowed.

"I saw the whole process from the sidelines, and honestly... it was pretty cool."

He turned to Richard, his expression a mix of admiration and bitterness.

"When exactly did you start becoming like this? Didn't we used to stay in the corners together?"

"Actually, the way you rub your knee is also quite cool," Richard comforted him.

"Thanks, I don't feel comforted at all."

In the corner of the cafeteria, by the window.

Lillian had already finished her lunch; her left hand pressed down on a notebook, while her right hand held a pencil, writing something.

The tip of the pencil moved across the paper at a slow pace, occasionally stopping, then continuing to write.

After writing a few lines, the pencil lifted from the paper.

She tapped her lower lip lightly with the end of her pen, her gaze resting on a spot in her notebook as if scrutinizing the words she had just written.

After a few seconds, she reached out and tore that page from the notebook.

The paper was folded once, then folded again, and crumpled into a ball by her fingertips.

The paper ball was stuffed into the right pocket of her school uniform.

Lillian Hayward closed her notebook, picked up her teacup, and took a sip of water.

When the cup was set back down, ripples were still gently swaying on the surface of the tea.

Her gaze traveled across half the dining hall, slipping through the gaps between people's heads.

She took only a single glance at someone before pulling her gaze back, lowering her head to continue drinking her tea.

Since then, the frequency of Lillian Hayward appearing on the second floor of the library had increased.

Previously, she had only gone to the third floor.

She had spent who knows how many afternoons squatting in front of that special row of bookshelves, the number of pages she had flipped through likely exceeding the number of words she had spoken to her classmates.

The second floor was another world.

It had good lighting, neat tables and chairs, and was always crowded with students during lunch breaks and after school.

Lillian had rarely stayed here in the past, finding it too noisy.

But recently, she had started sitting for a while at a spot by the window in the second-floor study area.

That seat was diagonally across from the staircase; by lifting her head from her seat, she could see exactly who was going up or down.

Richard occasionally did his homework on the second floor as well.

The copy of From Temple to Podium in his hands was too thick to carry back and forth conveniently, so he simply locked it in a library storage locker and came here to flip through a few pages whenever he had the time.

There was no substantive conversation between the two.

If they ran into each other, they would exchange a glance and a nod.

Richard would continue flipping through his book, and Lillian would continue writing her notes.

Occasionally, their gazes would land on each other's faces at the same second, and once they collided, they would each look away, much like strangers making eye contact on a tram.

On Thursday afternoon, only five or six people remained in the second-floor study area.

Richard was flipping through that reference book at the second table by the window, his right hand recording etymologies in his notebook.

He wrote for about twenty minutes, and when his hand grew sore, he set his pen down to stretch his fingers.

When he looked up, he discovered that Lillian, who had been sitting diagonally across from him, was already gone.

Her chair was pushed back under the table, and the tabletop was wiped very clean.

However, a small, twice-folded slip of paper was resting on the top left corner of his own desk, though he didn't know when it had been placed there.

The note was made of ordinary notebook paper with neatly torn edges.

It contained only a single line of Latin, the handwriting small and dense, with every letter sitting properly in its place:

"Qui audet adipiscitur."

This was a famous proverb; it sounded like a cheer for his upcoming competition, yet as Richard pinched the note, he thought of something else.

The row of bookshelves on the third floor of the library—both he and Lillian took books from there.

The two of them had never exchanged a single word about this matter.

But that encounter at the stairwell corner, the heavily worn old book in her arms, and the fact that Mr. Hutton refused to reveal any information about her...

With these clues placed together, "Qui audet adipiscitur" took on another layer of meaning.

Only those who dare to step to the edge of The Veil can obtain what lies behind it.

Was she talking about the competition, or was she talking about something else?

Richard tucked the note into his notebook and continued with his homework.

Some signals were enough just to be received; a reply would only be superfluous.