I Loaded the Occult Panel

This time, Kasalis—the clerk from the Department of Internal Affairs—called ahead to make an appointment before seeking Richard out.

It was a stark contrast to their last encounter, which had involved nothing more than a white envelope stamped with an official seal, dictating an exact time and room number for Richard to appear.

This time, he asked over the phone, quite politely, which day would be most convenient.

When Richard arrived, Kasalis was already waiting for him in the corridor outside the classroom, hat in hand.

Upon seeing him, the clerk extended a hand, noticeably more enthusiastic than before.

”Mr. Williams. Apologies for my abruptness last time.”

Richard naturally waved it off. ”You were just doing your job. I understand.”

”A new restriction cover was placed on your Auxiliary Investigating Scholar file last week.”

”What does adding a cover mean?”

”It essentially means that from now on, reviewing your file will require authorization and a signature from a higher level.”Kasalis felt the weight of his own words as he spoke them.

”Additionally, we’ve just established a new administrative agency.”

”It’s called the Wartime Abnormal Affairs Coordination Administration. The plaque just went up last Wednesday.”

He then pulled a purchase order from his briefcase.

”We would like to procure a batch of your booklets.”

”The Collection of Strange Tales.”

Richard frowned, unsure of the clerk’s intentions. ”Which volume specifically?”

”The special Mourning Day edition.”

”How many do you need?”

”Five thousand copies.”

If they were only buying one or two hundred, they might just be reviewing it internally.

Five thousand was a rather large order.

Kasalis explained, ”We are going to distribute them to every patrolman in the Imperial Capital so they can carry a copy with them at all times.”

Richard told him to take the purchase order directly to the printing factory.

He didn’t handle those details himself anymore; his only responsibility now was collecting the revenue at the end.

Duckworth Printing Factory in Manchester had never dealt with the government before. Duckworth was so shocked when he received a check from the Ministry of Finance that he made a special trip to the bank.

Upon returning, he told everyone he met that it was the most beautiful piece of paper he had seen in his entire life.

Mr. Dawn still refused to accept payment. He wrote a single line in his letter:

”Richard, you are dealing with the government now.

The paper for these five thousand copies is nothing to me. Consider it a gift.”

Charlotte’s telegram arrived that same evening.

”The editor-in-chief is now saying that the Northern Literary Review is your ’maternal home.’”

She added her own complaint: ”Just two months ago, he was saying your Collection of Strange Tales wasn’t fit to be published in this magazine.”

By the first week of March, little girls jumping rope on elementary school playgrounds everywhere had begun to sing a new rhyme.

”No answer to the first knock, no answer to the second, on the third knock she’ll try another door.”

”Don’t claim the wet, don’t claim the cold, don’t claim what’s brought inside.”

Several new spirit-medium shops popped up in the west of the city, their signs specifically advertising: ”Specializing in homecoming sequelae.”

They reportedly charged five shillings a session, claiming they could politely escort ”guests who had already been invited inside” back out the door.

Richard had heard about this trend.

The so-called ritual consisted of splashing a basin of water over the threshold and having the homeowner shout ”Leave!” three times into the empty house.

When he later mentioned this to Mrs. MacNeil, she remained noncommittal.

”Splashing water isn’t entirely wrong.”

”Does it actually work?” Richard asked in surprise.

”It doesn’t do much, but it doesn’t do any harm either.

This business caters to the living—just giving them peace of mind.

And since the churches are overwhelmed right now, this kind of comforting work has fallen into the hands of these frauds.”

”What does Madam Marie think of this?”

”My teacher took down her closed-door notice last week.

But now she only takes one kind of request: escorting guests away. She absolutely refuses to call anyone back.”

”What’s her price?”

Mrs. MacNeil smiled again.

”She doesn’t charge a penny.”

Richard held his coffee cup, staying silent.

Mrs. MacNeil saw right through his thoughts.

”Don’t overthink it. My teacher isn’t acting out of the goodness of her heart for no reason. She’s establishing rules.

As the greatest Major Adept spirit medium in the Imperial Capital, driving the price of escorting guests down to zero means those rogue mediums charging five shillings won’t be able to survive.

Once they can’t survive, they’ll have to change professions on their own.”

”As for the actual business of soul-calling...”

”None of the students under her purview are allowed to take it. Anyone who does will be expelled from her tutelage.

But if those outside her circle think they can handle it, that’s up to their own abilities.”

By the time they finished their conversation and Richard stepped out of the cafe, a light drizzle had begun to fall again.

He walked down the alley to the main street, which was quite crowded.

People seemed to have moved on from the heavy atmosphere of the Mourning Day.

An old woman selling flowers crouched at the base of a wall, her basket full of white chrysanthemums.

Even though she had priced them quite high, more than half the basket was already sold.

As Richard passed by, she habitually looked up and called out, ”Sir, would you like to buy a bouquet?”

”Who do you think I should give it to?”

The old woman blanked for a moment. She had been selling flowers for days, and no one had ever asked her that.

She looked down at her basket of white flowers.

”Give it to the people who can’t come back this year.”

Richard considered it. Although no one in his family had suffered any misfortune, he still dug out three pence and bought a bouquet.

He carried the white chrysanthemums to the riverbank and placed them beneath the railing.

The rain continued to fall softly, quickly speckling the petals with water.

...

As March arrived, the rain fell even harder than in February.

It pelted the old sycamore trees in front of the academic building, pressing last year’s withered leaves into the mud piece by piece to slowly rot.

More than half a month had passed since the Mourning Day.

Books on how to speak with the dead had been pulled from bookstore shelves, replaced by newly printed memorial poetry collections from the parishes.

The lines outside candy shops had shortened, and the black crepe business had faded.

On this day, as Richard came out of his morning Ritual Languages class, he was stopped by the mailroom staff.

He received a letter.

It was a thick, creamy white envelope, stamped with an oak leaf crest in the bottom left corner.

He walked back to the classroom, which was now empty.

Taking a seat by the window, Richard popped off the wax seal and found two pieces of paper inside.

The first was a notice informing him that Our Island, the thematic essay he had submitted last December, had been selected.

Tucked inside was a check for a fifty-pound prize and a gold-plated badge.

There was also a certificate granting permission for nationwide public distribution, recommended by the Imperial Publishing Administration.

The second piece of paper contained only a postscript from the judges. It read:

”The one who wrote of the island has stood by the sea himself.”

Richard folded the paper and tucked it into his notebook.

He had finished this Our Island thematic essay around mid-December of last year.

At the time, he hadn’t anticipated there would be a Mourning Day like this, but he had faintly felt a storm brewing.

During the second class, Fischer slapped a newspaper down on his desk.

The bandages on his head had long since been removed, but the tender pink scar on his forehead still throbbed.

”Williams, you’ve kept this hidden quite well,” he said with some exaggeration.

Richard glanced down. It was the entire top column of the Imperial Capital Evening Post supplement, printed with a massive headline.

”On This Year’s First Prize Youth Essay: A Northern Boy’s Mournful Prophecy”

He was somewhat surprised. How did this end up in the newspaper?

Fischer looked at him in disbelief. ”Have you really not seen the reaction yourself?”

Richard flipped through the paper.

”I’ve been busy lately. I haven’t kept up with this.”

The supplement had published excerpts from all the winning essays, and his was listed third.

He skimmed the first two. They were mostly full of grandiose rhetoric that made one want to sit up straight after reading.

The writing skills in the selected pieces were all quite good, but the one he had written was completely different.

Fischer pointed to the excerpt:

”The day of the funeral was the first time we stepped into this house.

In the lit room upstairs, four sets of knives and forks sat unused on the table.

Three pairs of men’s boots rested at the foot of the bed. If the owner of the smallest pair were still alive, he would be fifty this year.

There was a ring of salt on the windowsill, and the lamp wick had been freshly trimmed that morning.

Of those men, even the last one to leave had been gone for nearly forty years.

We were going to laugh at her foolishness, but standing in this room, no one could.

Only when we left did we realize—over these forty years, how was she the foolish one?

She alone had stood guard over everything the entire island should have protected, freeing the rest of us to live our own lives in peace.”

”That night, no one knows who started it, but first the row of low houses by the fish market at the base of the cliff lit up. Then the back street of the pier, and soon, window after window across the whole island began to glow.

Looking down from the cliff top, the entire island had become a single lamp.”

Fischer waited for him to finish reading, staring at him.

”How did an article you wrote in December include details about scattering salt, leaving a light on, and not rushing to open the door?

Did you foresee the night of the Mourning Day all along?”

Richard laughed it off, not giving him a direct answer.

At the time, he really had caught wind of something through Mrs. MacNeil and the intelligence exchanges at the Theogony Salon gatherings.

This essay was essentially his attempt to guess the topic beforehand, but he never expected the subsequent reaction to be this great.

At the end of the supplement, the editor had written a commentary.

”Author Richard Williams, 18, from Briston, is currently a preparatory student in the Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University.”

”When the committee reviewed this manuscript at the end of last December, it sparked debate among several judges.

Some felt the tone was a bit too somber, not quite fitting the original intent of boosting public morale.”

”But after the Mourning Day, we reread this piece and realized its somberness is exactly its profundity.

The author uses the endurance of a single island to portray the mourning of an entire nation, and beneath the undercurrent of sorrow, he buries another layer: when dawn breaks, they will return.”

”Sorrowful without being wounded, grieving yet capable of rising—this is exactly what the citizens of our Empire most need to hear in this time of national crisis.”

Only upon reading this did Richard understand why the piece had become so popular.

It wasn’t entirely because it was well-written; the timing of its publication was also perfect.

Hundreds of thousands of families had just bowed their heads in tears for those who would never return, and the newspapers were filled with long casualty lists every day.

This sorrowful era needed someone to weep on their behalf, and it also needed someone to wipe their tears and stand back up.

His prose encompassed both.

Of course, it wasn’t just the article itself. If it truly were just the essay of an ordinary Northern boy, no matter how movingly written, it might not have actually won a prize, let alone been elevated to the front page of the Imperial Capital Evening Post.

To put it bluntly, background still mattered.

Richard folded the newspaper and handed it back to Fischer.

Fischer was still muttering beside him, ”You’re really going to be famous, Williams.

Not just in our little circles—people out on the street might even start talking about you.”

On the fifth day after the essay took off, the editor-in-chief of Century Review sent him a solicitation for an article.

Century Review and Northern Literary Review were not on the same level at all.

A publication of Century Review’s caliber was read by upper-class gentlemen and officials.

The editor was very polite in the letter, saying he had read Richard’s essay, found it quite good, and asked if Richard would be interested in opening a regular column in their journal.

No limits on subject matter, no limits on word count, and generous remuneration.

Richard decided he wanted the generous pay, but he equally desired the reputation and influence it would bring. He intended to seize both, and keep a firm grip.

Collection of Strange Tales was written for the lower class, Northern Literary Review for the middle class, but the readership of Century Review was a completely different crowd.

They flipped through newspapers in the leather armchairs of their clubs, or signed and stamped documents in the Department of Internal Affairs and the War Office.

A single word from these people could make a whole circle of subordinates nod in agreement.

If he could leave an impression on them and even cultivate a degree of influence, Richard’s future path would become much broader.