Chapter 319 - 252: Sweet Aftertaste

For the next two days, the lights in the dormitory burned bright.

The thirty-odd students in the special class were, for the most part, working tirelessly.

Some would be in the middle of a meal in the cafeteria, only to push their plates aside and pull those few sheets of paper from their pockets to study.

Others wouldn’t even leave the classroom during breaks, hunched over their desks, poring over their own assignments.

There were a few exceptions, however, and Philips was one of them.

On Thursday evening, Richard passed by his dorm room and saw the door was ajar.

He pushed the door open and went inside, finding Philips propped up on his pillow, reading a new leisure book.

The assignment lay at the foot of the bed, held down by an empty teapot.

"...Have you even done it?" Richard couldn’t help but ask.

"I’ve looked it over," Philips said, his eyes still on his book. "Looked it over carefully."

"Looking it over isn’t the same as doing it."

"I know."

Philips closed his book and looked over at Richard.

"I’ve thought about everything you said."

"Those old-timers went to so much trouble to tailor a set of problems for each of us. They definitely weren’t just bored."

"They’re seeing who will take the initiative to fix their own shortcomings, and who will just glance at the problems and toss them aside."

"So if you understand all that, why aren’t you doing it?" Richard raised an eyebrow.

"Because I don’t really want to."

Philips set the storybook down beside his pillow.

"Hear me out." He held up a hand toward Richard.

"As for me, I’m not bad at textual criticism, and my rhetoric is decent enough. In other subjects, I’m just average."

"If I were to do those problems they gave me, really do them, I could probably get sixty or seventy percent right."

"For the remaining thirty percent, I know exactly where my weaknesses lie. I’m well aware."

"But what’s the point, even if I do it?"

Philips glanced up at the ceiling.

"If I finish it, my shortcomings will be shored up a little, true.

But is that little bit enough to take me from ’above average’ to ’excellent’?"

"Probably not."

"There you have it." He covered his forehead with his hand.

"Richard, I’m not you.

You want to be the best at everything, leaving no cracks in your armor.

You’re Aeneas, rowing through a storm. You have the skill, and you have the drive."

"I don’t. All I want in life is to get by as a lecturer and read the books I want to read in peace."

"Do you really think that’s enough?"

"Are you asking if this is all I want for my entire life?" Philips chuckled.

"Richard, do you know why Ovid’s *Metamorphosis* is such a good read?"

Richard looked at him.

"Because everyone in it is always changing."

Philips was very serious when he said this.

"Some turn into laurel trees, some into stone, some into constellations."

"Transformation isn’t the destination. Transformation is a way of life."

"The laurel tree doesn’t need to envy the constellation, and the stone doesn’t need to envy the river."

"They are each their own thing."

He lay back on the bed and reopened his leisure book.

"I know I’ll never reach the highest rung in this life, but at least I can live comfortably."

"I appreciate you worrying about me, but this is not something you can help me with."

Richard stood in the doorway, watching the guy.

"...Then at least do the two textual criticism problems."

The hand Philips was using to turn a page paused.

"Alright," he said slowly. "I’ll do the two textual criticism problems. As for the others, let me think about it."

Richard knew that "let me think about it" was tantamount to "I’m not doing it," but there was nothing more he could say.

He closed the door and left.

In the hallway, the light in the women’s dormitory across the way was still on.

He glimpsed a shadow cast on the wall.

Edith had fallen asleep at her desk, a thick stack of materials piled high beside her.

That girl worked even harder than Richard; he reckoned she hadn’t had a single night of sound sleep during the entire summer seminar.

Richard returned to his own dorm, switched on the light, and continued to tackle the materials from his aunt.

He had already finished the first three sets; the last four were the real challenge.

By two in the morning, he was completely stuck.

He had pulled up and cross-referenced every comparison chart, resource, and document he could find, including every relevant page stored in Erudite.

But he was still missing something.

What he lacked was a certain "feel" and "intuition" that he hadn’t yet developed.

This kind of intuition couldn’t be gained just by reading books.

It required time, required being immersed in a field for years, even decades.

Immersed to the point where rules that once required looking up tables became second nature.

His aunt herself had been immersed in that field for over a decade.

She had that intuition, but Richard didn’t.

That was why she had posed this problem here—to let Richard know just how far he still was from that level.

Richard put down his pen.

Averaging all seven sets of materials together, his score would be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy percent.

This was the result of his absolute best effort.

...

On Friday, Croft entered the classroom.

There was no box on the lecturer’s desk for collecting assignments, nor were there any red pens for grading.

Croft brought out a stack of new manila envelopes.

"The answer keys." He placed the stack on the edge of the desk.

"There’s one for each of you, with your name on it. Come and get it yourselves."

"Take it back and compare it with the work you did."

He pulled a piece of chalk from his lecture notes folder and wrote the topic of today’s lecture on the blackboard.

"I’m not collecting them, and I’m not grading them. It’s enough that you yourselves know where you stand."

Then he began the lecture, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Richard took the envelope with his name on it back to his seat.

He planned to look at it more closely back in his dorm.

He glanced toward the back of the classroom.

Edith was tucking her answer key under a textbook, her expression heavy.

Philips wasn’t there. Richard figured he had stayed up all night reading his novel and overslept.

Halfway through the lecture, the classroom door was pushed open a crack from the outside.