Fortune Favors the Bold

Gray sat to Richard's left. Today's lunch was roasted chicken legs with salad.

She had not joined the discussion from beginning to end, merely eating quietly.

She had seen what happened in PE class too. Or rather, almost everyone over by the girls' field had seen it.

From her angle, she had seen Richard cut out from his position even more clearly.

Clean and decisive, without hesitation, his timing as precise as if he had calculated it beforehand.

A month ago, no one had paid attention to Richard Williams.

She had been the first. It had started that afternoon with the God-Descending Disk, when Richard explained scientific principles to them.

The feeling of caring about someone was hard to describe.

Calling it a flutter of the heart would be too much. They had only exchanged a few words in total.

It was more like... finding a stone of a slightly different color in a pile of dull gray pebbles.

When you picked it up and held it to the light, something inside it seemed to glimmer faintly.

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

Then, little by little, more and more people began to notice the stone's glow.

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

With every new person who noticed him, her possessive feeling of I saw him first was diluted a little more.

Gray knew that feeling was not particularly flattering.

He was not hers. What difference did it make who noticed him first?

But knowing that was one thing. Feelings were not reasonable.

What happened in PE class today pushed that feeling another step further.

The entire cafeteria was talking about it. Everyone was discussing Richard, and even younger girls were asking, "Which Williams?"

The gem that had belonged to her had been completely placed in broad daylight, where everyone could see it shining.

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

She stood, carrying her tray to the return station.

As she passed behind Richard, the girl seemed to ask casually:

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

"I'll bake more this time. Take some home to share with your family?"

Richard looked into the girl's blue eyes and chose to accept her kindness. "All right... Thank you, Gray."

"Mm."

She left.

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

"If I hadn't kicked the ball off course, how would you have gotten the chance to play the hero and save the damsel?"

"Was that really playing the hero and saving the damsel?" Mason thought about it seriously.

"More accurately, Richard cleaned up your mess. You nearly got that girl hurt."

"My foot slipped!"

"Yeah, yeah, your foot slipped. Your foot slipped and you still kicked it that far. You're better than Stanfield."

Warren glared at Mason, and Mason shrank his neck.

Hugh dragged a chair over from the neighboring table. His left leg still limped slightly, and his knee was wrapped in a bandage.

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

"What are you talking about?"

"Richard kicking the ball."

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

"I saw the whole thing from the sidelines. Honestly... it was pretty cool."

He turned to Richard, his expression both wistful and bitter.

"When did you become like this? Didn't we used to hide in the corner together?"

"Honestly, you looked pretty cool rubbing your knee too," Richard comforted him.

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

In a corner of the cafeteria, by the window.

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

The pencil tip moved slowly across the paper, pausing occasionally before continuing.

After writing several lines, she lifted the pencil from the page.

She lightly tapped her lower lip with the end of the pencil, her gaze falling on a spot in the notebook as though examining what she had just written.

A few seconds later, she reached out and tore that page from the notebook.

The paper was folded once, then folded again, and crumpled into a ball between her fingers.

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

Lillian closed her notebook and lifted her teacup for a sip of water.

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

Her gaze passed across half the cafeteria, slipping through the gaps between people's heads.

She only glanced at someone once before looking away, lowering her head to continue drinking her tea.

After that, Lillian Hayward began appearing on the second floor of the library more often.

She had previously gone only to the third floor.

She had crouched before that row of special bookshelves for who knew how many afternoons, and the number of pages she had turned was probably greater than the number of words she had spoken to her classmates.

The second floor was another world.

It had good lighting and neatly arranged tables and chairs, and students always gathered there during lunch break and after school.

Lillian had rarely lingered here before, finding it too noisy.

But lately, she began sitting for a while in a window seat in the second-floor study area.

That seat stood diagonally across from the staircase. When she looked up from her seat, she could see anyone 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 and inconvenient to carry around, so he simply locked it in a library storage locker and came here to read a few pages whenever he had time.

There was no substantial conversation between them.

When they ran into each other, they met each other's eyes and nodded.

Richard continued reading his book, and Lillian continued writing her notes.

Sometimes their gazes landed on each other's faces in the same second. When their eyes met, they each looked 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, using his right hand to note word origins in his notebook.

He wrote for around twenty minutes until his hand grew sore, then set down his pen and flexed his fingers.

When he looked up, he found that Lillian, seated diagonally across from him, had already left.

Her chair had been pushed back beneath the table, and the tabletop had been wiped clean.

But a small note, folded twice, lay at the upper left corner of his own desk. He did not know when it had been placed there.

It was made from ordinary notebook paper, with neatly torn edges.

There was only one line of Latin on it. The handwriting was small and dense, every letter properly in its place:

"Qui audet adipiscitur. (Fortune favors the bold.)"

It was a famous proverb. It sounded like encouragement for his competition, but as Richard held the note, he thought of something else.

That row of bookshelves on the library's third floor—both he and Lillian borrowed books from there.

They had never exchanged a single word about it.

But their encounter at the stairway landing, the heavily worn old book in her arms, Mr. Hutton refusing to reveal anything about her...

Put those clues together, and "Qui audet adipiscitur" carried another layer of meaning.

Only those who dared step to the edge of The Veil could obtain what lay behind it.

Was she talking about the competition, or something else?

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

Some signals only needed to be received. Replying would only be superfluous.