"Yes, and in fact, it has already been made public to some people. All the students in the advanced class know, and most of them have met the Banshees."
Zoe looked shocked. "What!? You just revealed it like that? But they're... they're..."
"They are also Castel's subjects." Theus picked up the tea from the table and calmly blew on the steam. "Miss Zoe, after your parents passed away, you went to work as a maid at the ducal residence, correct?"
"Yes. Back then, you were still very young, Young Master..."
"So you have not seen much of the people at the bottom, have you? Even your students—though they wear tattered clothes, they are at least passionate about learning to read and study, aren't they?"
Zoe nodded. Her understanding of poverty was limited to having no money—no money for food, no money for clothes, and then... dying of illness or starvation. That was how novels always described it.
"Miss Zoe, perhaps you should go and see what the people at the bottom are truly like." Theus looked into Zoe's eyes. He wore a simple outfit of coarse cloth, specially made for workers. It had many pockets for storing various parts. He had just been dismantling a steam engine on-site, and the clothing was both durable and convenient.
"Those people at the bottom do lack money—but who does not? I lack money too, desperately so. But there is one thing I do not lack."
"Hope."
"It is something very intangible, isn't it? It cannot fill your stomach or cure your illness. You feel that it is precious, yet you do not know what makes it precious. You want to cherish it, yet do not know how—because you possess it."
"Go look at the numbness in the eyes of the poor."
"When despair