Chapter 99: Ka, Ba, Shuyet

Grey sat on a high stool by the window, a recipe book spread across her knees.

The recipe book had belonged to her mother in her youth. Several handwritten notes were tucked between the pages, recording subtle tweaks to various recipes.

The kitchen in Grey's home was about the size of an entire floor of the Williams house.

Copper pots and pans covered an entire wall. The cast-iron stove featured six burners, with a brick oven built right next to it.

She was pondering what to bring to school next.

She had already made lemon scones, butter cookies, and fruit tarts.

Repeating the same treats would lack novelty, but switching things up too frequently might seem overly deliberate.

She flipped the recipe book to the "caramel pudding" page, then quickly turned past it.

Pudding needed to be refrigerated. It took twenty minutes by carriage to get from home to school, and then it would have to sit in her stuffy schoolbag all morning.

By the time she took it out for lunch, both its texture and appearance would suffer.

Flipping further back, she found walnut pound cake.

It could be kept at room temperature, had a dense texture that didn't crumble easily, and suited a boy's appetite.

The oils from the walnuts would seep into the cake during baking, making it taste even better on the second day than right out of the oven.

She made a pencil mark on that page.

She flipped a few more pages and arrived at cinnamon apple rolls.

This was also a good choice, but the smell of cinnamon was rather strong, and many people weren't used to it.

Grey tied on her apron, rolled her sleeves up past her elbows, and got to work.

She loved baking.

She had been learning from the estate's cook since she was seven or eight. She never ate much of the pastries she made, choosing instead to bring them to school and share them with the people at her lunch table.

The cook used to laugh and say, "Miss, you put even more care into making pastries than I do."

Grey didn't think that was right. For the cook, making pastries was a job; for her, it was for fun.

Catering a little to a certain someone's tastes was merely a matter of convenience.

At least, that was what she told herself.

...

During lunchtime, the Greenwood School dining hall was as noisy as ever.

The gentlemen in the portraits looked particularly stern, seemingly dissatisfied with today's menu as well.

By the time Richard walked over with his tray, Warren was already seated in his usual spot.

The plate in front of him held today's standard meal:

A pan-fried steak with slightly curled, charred edges, a bowl of creamy soup, a baked potato quartered and placed on the right side of the plate, and a butter dish resting beside the soup bowl.

Warren pointed with his fork. "Have a seat. A different chef fried the steak today; it's a bit thicker than yesterday's."

"You can taste a difference in thickness?"

"I've been eating this for a whole semester. Of course I can."

Richard sat down and pushed his tray aside.

Grey was already in her seat to his left, a plate of salad and half a glass of milk resting in front of her. A square paper box wrapped in checkered cloth sat on her lap.

She opened the box, revealing neatly stacked slices of walnut pound cake.

"I made too much dessert again today."

Grey pushed the box toward the center of the table.

Warren's eyes lit up, and he reached for a piece.

"Wait." Grey blocked his hand with her fork. "Let Richard take one first."

Warren's hand hung in midair, his expression wounded. "I've been sitting across from you for several semesters now."

"You could sit across from me for a hundred semesters and the order would still be the same."

Beside them, Mason let out a gloating chuckle.

Richard took a piece of cake and bit into it.

The balance of sweet and salty was just right, and the rich flavor of walnuts spread across his palate.

"It's delicious."

Warren was finally allowed to take a piece. He shoved it into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed.

"Grey, with your baking, you could really open a shop."

"Running a shop is too tiring."

"Then what do you plan to do in the future?"

"I haven't decided yet." Grey showed no intention of expanding on the topic.

Just then, two unfamiliar faces appeared beside the table.

"Excuse me... is Mr. Williams here?" a girl with a high ponytail asked.

"That's me."

"Great!" She flipped her textbook to a certain page and pointed at a line of Latin.

"We'd like to ask you a question. The two of us have been discussing the subjunctive conjugation in this clause for a while, but we can't figure it out..."

As she spoke, she leaned casually against the edge of the table.

The girl with short hair was even more direct. She pulled up a nearby empty chair and sat down.

As she sat, she placed the brown paper bag tucked under her arm onto the tabletop.

The bag was unsealed, revealing two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, alongside a small bag of cookies and two apples.

"Oh, this is the lunch we brought."

The short-haired girl smiled and pushed the paper bag toward Richard. "We can't finish it. Help yourselves."

It was a precise push, stopping right beside Richard's tray.

Warren slowed his chewing, his gaze darting back and forth between the two girls and the paper bag.

Mason had already buried his face in his soup bowl, his shoulders trembling.

Grey continued eating her salad, pushing the lettuce leaves around her plate with her fork, showing no particular reaction.

Richard glanced at the subjunctive problem, jotted down two lines of conjugations in the textbook's margins with a pencil, and finished explaining it in thirty seconds.

The girl with the high ponytail looked a bit awkward.

She had prepared at least five minutes of "consultation," but the problem had been instantly demolished, rendering her entire reserve of follow-up topics useless.

"Ah... thank you. So that's how it is."

She flipped through the textbook, trying to find a second question.

Another thirty seconds passed.

The short-haired girl shot frantic looks at her companion, clearly conveying the message: "Ask another one, ask another one."

The high-ponytail girl closed the textbook.

"Thank you, Mr. Williams. Your explanation was really clear."

"You're welcome."

The two girls exchanged a glance, and the short-haired one pushed the paper bag forward again.

"We really can't finish the sandwiches. You take them."

"Thanks, but no need. I have enough here." Richard pointed to the steak Warren had ordered for him and the cake Grey had brought.

The short-haired girl's gaze lingered on the steak and walnut cake for a second before shifting to Grey, who sat quietly eating her salad to Richard's left.

Grey looked up, her blue eyes meeting the girl's gaze calmly.

The short-haired girl pulled the paper bag back.

"Then we'll be going now. We'll come ask for your help again next time we have questions."

"All right."

Mason finally lifted his head from behind his soup bowl. "Richard, hasn't your 'Latin tutoring' business been booming lately?"

"They really did come to ask questions."

"Questions that you finished explaining in thirty seconds. Yet they brought two sandwiches."

Warren wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"I finally understand what my dad means when he says 'invest early'."

"What does that mean?" Hugh leaned over from the side.

"It means I started buying him meals ages ago. By the time these people show up, it's already too late."

Grey took another piece of cake from the box and placed it in the center of the table.

"Last piece. Who wants it?"

Mason and Hugh reached out at the same time.

Grey looked at the two of them. "Rock, paper, scissors."

Mason threw paper, and Hugh threw rock.

Mason contentedly stuffed the last piece of cake into his mouth.

...

After lunch, Richard headed to the school library.

The Greenwood School library wasn't large, but it covered a fairly broad range of topics.

The special bookshelves on the third floor housed Mr. Hutton's secret teaching materials, while the first and second floors held the regular collections accessible to all students.

He paced back and forth several times between the "Religion and Mythology" and "History" sections on the second floor.

Ultimately, he only found three books.

One was a general overview of the funerary traditions of the Black Soil River Basin.

Its cover featured the profile of a linen-wrapped mummy. It was printed by A Popular Science Publisher in the Imperial Capital, written in accessible language, and contained plenty of illustrations.

Another was a selection from the Corpus Hermeticum compiled and translated by a certain professor, its cover worn and frayed from heavy use.

The content was much more serious than the first book, but the translator had clearly taken artistic liberties with the original text's most obscure passages. It was highly readable, but its academic rigor was only so-so.

The third book left him torn between amusement and exasperation.

It was a children's mythology book from the Black Soil River Basin.

The cover depicted a cartoon pharaoh alongside a smiling, dog-headed Anubis, rendered in blindingly bright colors.

These were the only three books in the library related to the Black Soil River Basin. There were no others.

When he crouched in front of the bookshelf to flip open the children's book, a lower-grade student nearby shot him a weird look.

Without batting an eye, Richard tucked the book under his arm and walked over to sit in the corner of the reading room.

Over the next hour or so, he extracted key information from the three books.

The first book was the general overview of funerary traditions.

The Black Soil River civilization believed that the soul was not a single entity, but was composed of multiple independent parts.

The core concepts among these were: ka—life force, granted at birth, which required offerings to maintain after death; ba—personality or spirit, typically depicted as a human-headed bird; and akh—the complete resurrected soul, the final form resulting from the combination of ka and ba.

Beyond these widely known components of the soul, there was another part frequently glossed over by popular literature: shuyet—the shadow.

The people of the Black Soil River Basin believed that the shadow was an independent part of the soul.

It was not an appendage of the body, nor was it a physical phenomenon produced by light.

The shadow had its own existence and its own significance.

After death, the shadow would not disappear.

It would remain in the Underworld and continue to exist.

In certain funerary texts, the shadow was even considered the "vessel" for the deceased to move about the Underworld.

When the physical body decayed, the ba flew away, and the ka remained in the tomb waiting for offerings, it was the shadow that walked through the darkness of the Underworld.