The old man held the box before him.
"Come closer and watch carefully."
"...Yes."
Richard involuntarily quieted his breathing.
He quietly took out his notebook and fountain pen.
Even with [Erudite], he prepared to take notes out of habit.
Mr. Hutton glanced over from the side and nodded in satisfaction.
Professor Mortimer’s fingertip touched the first layer of the Seal.
"This layer is the ’Silence Knot’ from the Weaving Net Tradition."
"The Celts used it to seal the mouths of sacrifices, preventing them from crying out forbidden names during a ritual."
"Its core Inscription begins... here."
The old man’s fingertip tapped lightly.
"To break it, you must start from the ’seam’ at the point of ’closure’."
With a swipe of his fingertip, the Silence Knot, which had appeared as a seamless whole in Richard’s inspiration, unraveled on its own.
The fountain pen almost flew across the notebook.
"Silence Knot... point of closure... extremely fine seam... first stroke..."
His fingers ached from writing, but he was only halfway through when the old man’s hand touched the second layer.
"This layer is a ’Reverse Reading Lock’ added by someone later."
"They were afraid someone would read it forwards, so they made it form a Curse when read backwards, too."
Professor Mortimer flicked his fingertip.
The second layer dispersed, and the dismantling of the third layer began.
"The third layer is a ’Branching Knot.’ One knot is nested within another. If you undo the one on the surface, another will grow back from within."
"To break it, you must first find the ’mother branch’."
"The mother branch is the only stroke that doesn’t sprout child branches. It’s the most inconspicuous one."
Professor Mortimer’s fingertip tapped a spot among the dense Inscriptions.
"Here."
Richard looked over. That stroke was indeed the most inconspicuous one in the entire Seal.
If the professor hadn’t pointed it out, he could have studied this Seal until it fell apart and still not have been able to tell how it differed from the other strokes.
With a flick of his fingertip, the mother branch broke.
The entire layer of the Branching Knot retracted into itself, layer by layer, like the peeling skin of an onion.
Richard’s fountain pen stopped on the paper.
He stopped writing; it was futile to continue.
[Erudite] had firmly stored every Inscription he saw, every explanation he heard.
Just as Richard was about to add a note to his notebook, the old professor spoke without looking up.
"At your level, just being able to remember what a Silence Knot is is already quite good."
Professor Mortimer’s fingertip touched the innermost layer.
"However, your willingness to take notes is a good thing."
"A person willing to take notes, even if they have to leave a section blank, knows in their heart, ’There’s a piece I’m still missing here.’"
"When his Tier rises one day, he can look back and fill in that missing piece himself."
"Someone unwilling to take notes thinks they understand it all after one look. That little bit they understand is all they’ll ever understand in their life."
Richard listened with his head bowed.
By the time the seventh layer of the Seal had completely dispersed, the danger of the box, as felt in his inspiration, had dropped to a level he could handle.
Professor Mortimer pushed the box back in front of Richard.
Aries’s hasty, temporary Seal was untouched; the thing inside was still sealed.
Richard re-wrapped the box, one layer of wax paper, one layer of coarse salt.
Halfway through, he looked up.
"Professor, I’d like to ask you something."
"Just now, when you dismantled this Seal, from start to finish... you barely touched the ’thing itself’."
"I once read that for Scholars appraising Marvels, the most difficult task is to remove the dangers within the Marvel without damaging its inherent value."
Professor Mortimer chuckled.
"Little Hutton, that’s an excellent question."
Mr. Hutton, at the side, showed a hint of gratification, but quickly suppressed it.
Professor Mortimer cupped his ginger water and leaned back in his chair.
"When you reach our level, you’ll understand. The work we Scholars do is, from start to finish, just one thing."
"Just one thing?"
"See."
The old man spoke that one word with great weight.
"Once you truly see something, it is no longer ’mysterious’."
"And when it’s no longer ’mysterious,’ it can no longer affect you."
"This is what’s known as the ’fading of mystery’."
Richard’s breathing grew quiet.
The fading of mystery.
The more one understands, the less "mystery" there is.
At the pinnacle of understanding, all that is supernatural fades.
Professor Mortimer smiled.
"What I’m lacking most these days is a bit of fun. Your box was a pleasure to dismantle today."
"...A pleasure?"
"Yes. The person who laid this Seal is very interesting."
The old man took a sip of his ginger water.
"If you ever meet that person, you can pass on a message for me."
"...What message?"
"You tell that person: ’Old Mo asks, did you copy this Seal from the third Chapter of his 1887 paper?’"
Richard was stunned.
"...He did?"
"More or less." Professor Mortimer nodded. "They changed seven Inscriptions and hid two turning points, thinking I wouldn’t notice."
"And you noticed?"
"It’s my own work. How could I not notice?" The professor swung his cane and gently tapped Richard on the head.
...
It was evening by the time he got home.
Evelyn, wearing her plaid apron, was staring at a tray of something new in the oven with a miserable expression.
"Brother! You’re back just in time," she said without turning around. "Hurry, it’s a disaster."
Richard’s heart skipped a beat.
He had been thinking about the Seal the whole way home and his nerves were still on edge. He rushed into the kitchen in a few long strides.
"What’s wrong?"
"Mr. Rabbit..." Evelyn pointed at the baking sheet, her voice trembling. "He collapsed."
Richard looked down.
On the baking sheet was a row of gingerbread rabbits, each with a round belly and crooked, icing-drawn eyes.
The one in the middle—the one Evelyn had knighted and dubbed "Mr. Rabbit" (the fifth)—had indeed collapsed.
Its round belly had deflated, its two long ears flopped limply to one side, and its entire face was a smear of icing.
"He was supposed to be the smartest one of the litter," Evelyn mourned.
"I added an extra spoonful of sugar to make him a little sweeter, and then he just... melted."
Richard stared at the collapsed, smeared gingerbread rabbit, holding back his amusement for a long moment.
"...My condolences. He was sacrificed for the sake of sweetness."
"Oh, stop it!" Evelyn slapped his hand.
"Now I seriously suspect that it collapses if you add too much sugar."
"Very likely." Richard nodded. "Too much sugar and the framework can’t hold."
He thought of the ebony box.
’In all things, too much is as bad as not enough.’
"Then I’ll use less sugar in the next litter."
Evelyn jotted down a note in her notebook, the one with a cake drawn on the cover.
"Reduce by half a spoonful. Too much and it collapses, too little and it’s not sweet. I have to find that... that spot that’s not too much and not too little."
"Temperance," Richard blurted out.
"Huh?" Evelyn didn’t understand.
"I said, it’s called Temperance."
Richard picked up the collapsed Mr. Rabbit and popped it into his mouth.
"Not too much, not too little. Just right."
"Hey! That was a failure! I was saving it for research!"
"He already collapsed," Richard said, his words muffled. "Time for him to be laid to rest."
Their mother, Margaret, walked in from the living room with an empty teacup and glanced at the bickering siblings.
"It’s still oatmeal for dinner," she said.
"Mom," Evelyn immediately protested, "I’ve been baking rabbits all afternoon!"
"Rabbits are rabbits, and oatmeal is oatmeal," Margaret said, sorting vegetables.
Richard picked up the bowl of warm oatmeal his mother had served him and sat down at the table.
Outside the window, the early spring day was darkening later.
He finished the last mouthful of oatmeal in his bowl and reached for another, un-collapsed rabbit on the tray.
"That one’s the Rabbit Knight!" Evelyn, quick as a flash, slapped his hand away again. "He’s still alive!"
"He’s bound to die in the line of duty sooner or later."
"And it won’t be by your hand!"

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