There wasn’t much time left before the Cicero Cup.
Richard was on a tight schedule.
The Ashford Clan’s banquet was scheduled for the fifteenth of the month, and his family needed to head to the Imperial Capital ahead of time.
The train from Brighton to the Imperial Capital took the better part of a day. Factoring in transfers and getting settled, he had less than two weeks left to prepare for the competition at school.
After lunch on Monday, he told Mr. Holland about it.
The bald, middle-aged man was just bringing a cup of black tea to his lips when he heard the name "Ashford," and his brow furrowed instantly.
The steam from the tea fogged up his glasses.
He set the cup back on the table and wiped his lenses with the back of his hand.
"I seem to recall that’s your mother’s family."
"It is."
Mr. Holland finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on. "Be careful about things over in the Imperial Capital."
The way he said it was surprisingly similar to how his father would.
Richard noticed he wasn’t unfamiliar with the Ashford surname.
"We’ll have to adjust your coaching schedule." Mr. Holland pulled a memo book from his drawer and circled today’s date.
"The original plan was to have three mock speeches over the last two weeks. Now, we’re compressing them all into five days.
The intensity will be much higher. Can you handle it?"
"I can handle it."
"Then we’ll start this afternoon."
He downed his black tea in one gulp, stood up, and grabbed a set of keys.
"Let’s go. To the lecture hall in the east wing."
The lecture hall was empty from three to five in the afternoon. Mr. Holland had already cleared it with the academic affairs office.
He had Richard stand at the lectern while he moved a chair to the very last row and sat down.
The distance between them was now as great as possible, with twenty rows of empty seats in between.
"From the first oration, first paragraph. A complete recitation."
Richard planted his feet, took a breath, and began the first line.
"Quo usque tandem..."
A chair leg scraped across the floor with a sharp CREAK.
Mr. Holland had dragged his chair half a foot to the left. The sound bounced off the stone walls twice.
Richard’s rhythm was cut short.
He struggled to gather his breath and picked up where he had been cut off.
Just then, the sound of a book being opened rang out.
Mr. Holland spread the lesson plan he’d brought with him across his lap and began flipping through it, page by page. The RUSTLE of paper carried across the empty classroom to the stage.
Then he started coughing.
It was a light, throat-clearing sort of cough—one after another. Not loud, but persistent.
As Richard delivered the parallel structure in the third paragraph and reached the fourth "nihil," the sound of a chair shifting came from the back row again.
He closed his eyes and anchored his focus on the rhythm of his breathing.
The Quadruple Breathing framework was just as effective on stage:
Inhale to steady the breath, hold to steady the rhythm, exhale to push the voice forward.
"...nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? (Have none of these things moved you?)"
When the last "nihil" landed, he followed Mr. West’s advice and paused for nearly two extra seconds between the third and fourth repetitions.
The silence filled the classroom, mingling with the echoes, and somehow felt heavier than sound.
After he had finished all four paragraphs, Mr. Holland walked up from the back row.
"You paused when I interrupted you in the middle. The way you paused was wrong."
He walked to the front of the lectern and looked up at Richard.
"You paused because you were distracted. The audience can tell.
The correct way is to absorb that pause into your rhythm and make it your own.
The audience can’t tell which pause is deliberate and which is forced... but you need to know the difference yourself.
When you’re forced to pause, your shoulders tense up. When you pause deliberately, your shoulders are relaxed."
He tapped the edge of the lectern.
"Again. From the beginning."
"The venue for the Cicero Cup is the Imperial City Saint Augustine’s Chapel."
Mr. Holland said as he walked back to his seat:
"The stone walls create heavy echoes. There will be several hundred people in the audience, and the first three rows will be filled with teachers from each school and judges from the Classical Society."
He sat back down in the last row, the chair letting out another CREAK.
"They will hear your every pause, every breath, the length of every vowel—all of it, crystal clear."
The second time was much smoother than the first.
Mr. Holland continued to make noise throughout, trying all sorts of tricks: flipping pages, coughing, dragging his chair.
But Richard’s shoulders remained relaxed the entire time.
When interrupted, he no longer tried to force his way through it. Instead, he would hold his breath for half a beat before releasing it, making the pause part of his rhythm.
After he finished the four paragraphs, Mr. Holland simply nodded without a word.
Saying nothing was the highest praise.
During the third attempt, Hugh arrived.
He slipped in through the side door of the classroom, stooped low, and made his way to a seat at the end of the first row.
He placed his school bag by his feet and took out a pencil and a sheet of blank paper.
He was here to observe Richard’s stage presence.
Richard had given him the job: sit in the audience, watch his posture, gestures, and where he directed his gaze, and then give feedback afterward.
Hugh took this task extremely seriously. After all, it was the only way he could help.
Mr. Holland glanced at the newcomer but said nothing.
The third attempt began.
This was Richard’s best attempt of the three. He had a real audience member sitting before him now.
’Mr. Holland doesn’t count. He’s a noise machine.’
Even with just one listener, it was a world of difference from speaking to empty chairs.
He made a slight adjustment to his delivery of the parallel structure, slightly drawing out the vowel of the fifth "nihil" to build the momentum more fully.
Hugh sat in the first row, pencil in hand, his eyes following Richard’s every move.
His expression was earnest, his mouth slightly agape, as if he were truly being carried away by the speech.
After the four paragraphs were done, the echoes lingered in the classroom for several seconds.
Mr. Holland walked to the middle of the room and stopped. "Better than the first two times."
He looked at Hugh in the front row. "It’s different when someone is listening. Remember this feeling."
The bald, middle-aged man tucked the lesson plan under his arm and checked his watch.
"That’s enough for today. You two wait here a moment, I’m going to the restroom."
With that, he pushed open the side door and left.
Richard came down from the stage and sat next to Hugh.
"So? How was my stage presence?"
"Pretty good." Hugh lifted his pencil from the paper.
Richard leaned over to look at his observation notes.
Drawn on the paper was a fried chicken leg.
The linework was good, and the details were surprisingly rich. The bone was shaded, and the contours of the meat were rendered with cross-hatched lines to give it a greasy sheen.
Next to it, "crispy skin" and "extra salt" were noted in circles, and an arrow pointing to the end of the bone was labeled "chew up to here."
’The kid seems to have a knack 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 were speaking for forty minutes, and I was sitting here for forty minutes. Of course I’m hungry."
"Then what about your observations on my stage presence?"
"It’s all stored in my head." He tapped his temple with a finger.
"At the beginning of the second paragraph, you rested your right hand on the lectern. It didn’t look great. Everything else was fine."
"Just one thing?"
"Hey, I’m not Mr. Holland. Spotting one thing is pretty generous of me."
He yawned, his mouth opening so wide you could see his back molars.
"Tired?"
"A little." Hugh rubbed his eyes. The bangs that could never be tamed were pushed aside by his fingers, only to spring right back.
"Stanfield had an away game last night. I hid a radio under my pillow to listen in."
At this, he perked up, most of his sleepiness vanishing.
Hugh’s radio was a second-hand find from a flea market. A corner of the casing was chipped and the speaker was blown, so he could only listen through the earbud wire.
When there was a goal, he didn’t dare shout for fear of waking his parents in the next room.
He would just clutch the corner of his pillow, bite down on the cotton fabric, and tremble along with the announcer’s voice, his whole body tense.
"You have no idea how exciting that goal was. It was stoppage time in the second half, tied two-two. Stanfield’s center-forward got the ball, broke into the penalty area, beat two defenders, and took the shot..."
He stood up and mimed the shooting motion, kicking his right leg forward. The pencil flew from behind his ear and rolled under a desk.
"It hit the post and bounced out."
Just as Richard was about to reply, the side door of the classroom was pushed open.

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