In the end, there was no escaping oatmeal for dinner.
Evelyn, while stirring the pot, righteously declared that her gingerbread rabbits had eaten away a corner of the family budget.
Brown sugar, cinnamon, good butter—none of it was cheap.
His Mother, Margaret, added from the side, "We’ll have to keep a tally of the waste," though her tone was indulgent.
Richard didn’t mind. His appetite had grown so much these past few months that even his father was taken aback. He could wolf down two large bowls of oatmeal with pickled radishes.
The [Eating] skill, with its ability to wring out every last drop of nutrition, kicked in, making his body meticulously break down even the blandest food as if it were a treasure.
After finishing his oatmeal, he returned to his room and turned the gas wall lamp to its brightest setting.
Richard opened the leather case and took out the book, *Divination and Spiritual Vision: From Entry Level to Grand Mastery*.
The thread on the spine had been resewn. The stitches were fine and even; the person who’d mended it had skillful hands.
He opened it to the first page.
The main text was written in a hand so neat it was almost rigid, each stroke aligned as if to an invisible grid.
This was a handwritten copy made by his teacher, Lady Mary. It started with the definition of inspiration, laying out each point one by one.
Richard read half a page and nearly yawned.
He flipped further.
On the third page, things started to change.
The main text was explaining the fundamentals of "Fixed Gaze."
It said a Caster should "use inspiration to stably adhere to the target, maintaining constant contact without letting it shift."
’Correct, but useless.’
But right in the margin next to this paragraph, another line of text was squeezed in.
It was written in pen, the ink lighter than the main text, the handwriting much sloppier.
"Don’t try to ’grab’ it. When you try to grab a bean, the harder you squeeze, the farther it jumps.
You should be like someone sticking their hand into a bag of flour... stay loose, and let it stick to you on its own."
Richard stared at that line for a long time.
He had practiced his Spiritual Vision’s Fixed Gaze countless times—on the candlelight on the Copper Disc, the old wax in the wall cracks, the metallic stress within the Silver Needle...
He’d always felt he was staring, using his inspiration to clamp down on a target and not let go.
The seventh shuffle of the cards, the twelfth application of stress—he’d done it all with a grim determination, holding on tight and never letting go.
But Lady Mary said to stay loose.
He tried to follow the advice in that line, changing his inspiration from "biting" to "sticking."
His inspiration spread out, landing on the edge of the Copper Disc on the table.
He no longer tried to pinch it or press down on it. He simply let his inspiration rest there, allowing the faint residual Ether from the Copper Disc to slowly creep up on its own.
The stability of his Fixed Gaze quietly ticked up a notch.
Richard sat up straight.
The main text was a proper, rule-bound outline, copied word-for-word from a Grand Mastery’s own teacher—the lineage of a Spirit Medium tradition that had lasted for centuries.
But the margins, the spaces between lines, every blank spot, was densely packed with annotations Lady Mary herself had accumulated over decades of fieldwork.
The ink varied in shade; some was from a pen, some from a pencil. In certain places, you could even see where red ink had been added later.
’Reading this book is like reading someone’s entire life.’
Richard flipped a few more pages.
In the section on "Stone Reading," the main text grandly listed the standard interpretations for over twenty Talisman Stones, which Old Big had already taught him.
But at the bottom of this page, Lady Mary had written a sentence in pencil:
"The stones don’t lie. The one who lies is you, when you’re desperate to hear good news."
Richard remembered the first time he’d performed a Divination on whether his manuscript would be published.
He had read "a price to pay" back then, but he’d been reluctant, wishing he could have poured just a little less water from the kettle.
He read on.
Lady Mary’s analogies were all simple, everyday examples from the kitchen, the pharmacy, sewing, and clotheslines.
On preparing for fieldwork, she wrote:
"Tie your shoelaces twice before you go out. The first time is for your feet, the second is for your heart."
On inspiration overload, she wrote:
"If you hang too many wet sheets on a clothesline, the line won’t snap right away.
When you see it start to sag, you should take a couple of sheets off. Don’t wait for the SNAP."
On the need to break in a new deck of cards, she wrote:
"A new deck of cards has the same temper as a new pan. The first few times you cook with it, everything has a metallic tang.
Don’t complain about it. Just use it a few more times, and the tang will go away on its own.
But if you resent it, it’ll give you that tang for the rest of its life."
When Richard read that line, he laughed out loud.
As he continued to read, he realized something.
The very act of reading this book was increasing his [Perception].
In the corner of his status panel, the progress bar for [Perception] Lv. 2 was rising faster than when he normally practiced Fixed Gaze or performed Divination.
Lady Mary’s annotations, throughout the entire book, were all about one thing.
How to "feel" something more finely, more slowly, more loosely.
The process of reading her notes was like being trained by her personally, line by line, across decades and hundreds of miles.
[Erudite] allowed him to "save" the entire book into his mind.
Every word of the main text, every correction and red mark, every crease in the paper stood out in his mind, ready to be recalled at any moment.
This book was the life’s work of someone who, while perhaps not top-tier, was diligent enough to record every mistake she could make and every lesson she could learn in tiny script in the margins.
Richard flipped to the very end of the book.
He tried reading a couple of pages, but the density of the text changed abruptly, with jargon piled on top of jargon.
[Erudite] could memorize the words, but [Rationality] struggled to keep up.
He could understand each individual word, but he couldn’t piece together what the sentences were trying to say.
Stranger still was one particular Chapter.
Its title had been blacked out with ink.
It was completely blotted out. The black ink obscured the entire line of the title, not even leaving the outline of a single letter.
The one who did it was clearly Lady Mary herself.
He looked at the bottom of the page.
"This Chapter... when you truly need it, you will naturally be able to understand it."
...
Over the next few days, Richard settled into a reading routine.
He would read for half an hour after his morning jog, and for two hours after dinner.
There was one sentence from Lady Mary that appeared again and again in different Chapters.
"A Divination Master is a Detective, not a Prophet.
A Prophet asks, ’What will happen?’ A Detective asks, ’What has already happened?’
You can only ever read what has happened and what is happening.
Anyone who promises you the ’future’ is either a liar or... something far more terrifying than a liar."
Richard thought of the anonymous Round Table at the Divine Pantheon Salon.
What Hecate had promised was precisely the "future."
He didn’t dwell on it and started searching the book for cases relevant to his current needs.
In the middle of the book were two Chapters, their titles side by side.
Chapter One: *How to Interrogate an Uncooperative Sealed Object Through Divination*.
Chapter Two: *Three Attitudes for Dealing with a "Curse Object": Coax, Deceive, and Endure*.
The main text categorized "Curse Objects" and outlined the three methods of handling them.
In the margins of this Chapter, Lady Mary’s annotations were denser than anywhere else.
She had recorded a case from when she was young.
That evening, Evelyn barged into his room and refused to leave.
His sister’s recipe for her batch of gingerbread rabbits had already been iterated to its fourth version.
But she could never get the oven temperature right, and she was frustrated and wanted someone to talk to.
"Big brother, tell me a story." She sat on her brother’s bed, hugging her knees. "That worn-out book of yours must have something worth telling."
"It’s not a worn-out book."
"Then does it have stories?"
Richard thought for a moment.
"It does, actually."
"Then tell me!" Evelyn rolled over on the bed, waiting for him to begin.
"Alright..." It took Richard a moment to think of an opening.
"Once upon a time, there was a fishing town by the sea.
In the town lived a bride whose boat capsized on her wedding day. She and her entire dowry sank to the bottom of the ocean.
Only one of her jewelry boxes washed back ashore."
Evelyn’s eyes were fixed on his lips.
"...And then?"
"And then the townspeople all said that whoever touched the box would be cursed with bad luck.
In the homes of those who touched it, pots would burn, cows would get sick, and clothes hung out to dry would be blown into the mud.
So everyone pooled their money and hired a very famous old woman to ’cleanse’ the box."
"Was the old woman powerful?"
"Back then, she was still young and full of ambition.
She thought, ’How hard could this be?’
She set up a grand ritual, intending to drive out all the ’bad energy’ from the box in one go."
"Did she get rid of it?"
"It led to a huge disaster," Richard said, lowering his voice.
"That night, the mooring ropes of the fishing boats in the harbor snapped one after another, and the boats began to drift out to sea on their own.
In their sleep, every household in town heard someone calling their name from the bottom of the ocean.
Two men got up in the middle of the night and started walking toward the sea. By the time they were stopped, the water was already up to their knees."
Evelyn let out a small "Ah!", buried her face in her knees, then immediately looked back up.
"Why did that happen? Wasn’t the box supposed to be ’cleansed’?"
Richard looked at his sister.
’This was exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for.’
"Because... the box didn’t want to leave.
It had lost its master at the bottom of the sea, and then it was shunned by everyone on shore. It had no one left.
When the old woman set up her grand ritual, it was like saying right to its face, ’I’m going to drive you away.’
It had nowhere to go, so it thought... ’If I have to go, then everyone goes with me. No one gets to stay behind.’"
The room was quiet for a moment.
Evelyn didn’t move for a long while.
"...So what did the old woman do after that?"
"Later, she came to understand a principle."
Richard continued, recounting the lesson he had read in the book.
"When something doesn’t want to leave, the more you posture and try to force it out, the more it will try to drag someone down with it. You can’t force it."
"Then what are you supposed to do?"
"You have to be more patient than it is. Don’t chase it. Stay with it, slowly, and wait for it to be willing to leave on its own."
After listening, Evelyn was quiet for a good while.
Richard thought she had taken something profound from the story.
But then his sister looked up, a serious expression on her face.
"Big brother, my oven is just like that."
Richard’s mind filled with question marks. "...What?"
"My oven." Evelyn held up her recipe book and pointed to a crossed-out line.
"I’m always complaining that its temperature is off. I’m always thinking about how to ’fix it.’ I try putting towels under it, opening the door to let heat out, messing with it constantly.
And as a result, it just works against me. The more I rush, the more it burns things."
She put the book down, her tone firm.
"I should stay with it, learn its temperament. Let it be hot when it needs to be hot, and let it cool when it needs to cool.
If I don’t work against it, it won’t work against me."
Richard opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
He had originally wanted to tell his sister a story about "obsession" and "patience."
A lesson about the ebony box that even he was still slowly digesting.
Instead, Evelyn had taken that lesson and applied it, perfectly and securely, to her oven.
"...Something like that," he finally said.
"It must be!" Evelyn was already on her feet.
"I’ll try again tomorrow. I won’t rush it. Big brother, your book is actually pretty useful."
She hugged her recipe book and skipped downstairs, muttering to herself—probably making peace with the oven in advance.
Richard sat at his desk, looked at the empty doorway, and smiled.
He had been worried his adaptation wasn’t artistic enough, worried his sister might read something else into it.
’Now he could relax.’
He looked down and continued reading his book.
He came to another annotation where Lady Mary had written:
"Tell a case to a layman, and you’ll find they always manage to hear things you didn’t say.
Don’t laugh at them. Sometimes, what they hear is more correct than what you said."

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