Silent Crown

It was already the fourth day of school. At noon, the bored Bai Xi lay on the library’s sofa, yawning. When she felt bored, she would roll over and say, “Ah, I’m so bored.”

Before the blackboard, Charles sighed awkwardly. “Sister, don’t be like this. I’m trying to teach you.”

“I don’t want to learn. We agreed that I just have to enroll, and don’t have to learn!” The little girl rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. I want to go shopping! I want to play…”

“No, wait!” Charles waved helplessly. “Look, the professor told me before he left to take his place. You don’t want to learn, but it’s okay if you want me to teach you something else. We’re both experts on music theory. I charge a couple hundred per hour when I tutor. Can’t you give me some respect?”

“In my old home, you wouldn’t be qualified to be my teacher if you weren’t at least an Imperial Nine Musician. And I had everything you’re teaching memorized by the time I was thirteen-years-old.”

“Thirteen? Wait, that can’t be right!” Charles froze, getting confused. “Sister, how old are you?”

“Don’t you know that you can’t go around asking a girl’s age?” Bai Xi huffed. Eyes filling with resentment, she muttered, ” I hit puberty late. I’ll grow tall someday…even taller than the white lotus!”

Charles had good ears and heard what she had quietly muttered. “White lotus? Who?”

“Why do you care? Anyway, it’s the pure little girl that you men all like. Pitiful and makes parents like her, has big boobs, and can make you have dirty thoughts just by wearing a white dress. That kind!”

“How is that possible? A pretty girl like that that I haven’t met before?” Charles was suddenly infuriated. “Don’t let those girls ruin junior! Let them come to me, and I’ll teach them!”

Bai Xi glanced at him and quickly looked away disinterested. “Senior, you’re so weak. Even if there were ten of you, you’d still get played.”

“No way. I’m the famous prodigy of the Royal Academy of Music!” Charles’s expression was serious, but his words obviously had no substance, and Bai Xi burst into laughter.

Charles’ expression turned helpless. He sighed, shaking his head. “Ugh, I was brave before, but a coward now. Whatever. If you want to go walk around, wait for junior to come out and we can go play together.”

“Who knows when he’ll come out?” Bai Xi suddenly became upset. “I called him for a long time last night and he ignored me. What is he even doing down there by himself? Can you learn the notes just by locking yourself up?”

“I doubt it. That feeling isn’t that easy to get.”

“Is it really that hard? Didn’t I learn it easily?”

“That’s what you think.” Charles could not help but sigh. “Here’s an example. Notes are just like pretty girls. They are cold and beautiful, and their personalities and moods are always changing. You need to have the charisma of a wanderer, the inheritance of royalty, the stubbornness of a fool, and the enthusiasm of a lunatic to be able to achieve resonance. But sadly, in the eyes of the notes, junior is just plain, poor, and has a weird personality. He probably can’t even get onto the waiting list for reincarnation. There’s no way he can achieve resonance.”

“…Is it that bad?”

“It’s worse than bad.” Charles shook his head. “If it were, say, a pretty girl, it’d be easier. At least there are other ways.”

“What ways?” Bai Xi asked.

Charles smiled crudely. “Use force.”

“Go die!”

A book whacked Charles in the face, knocking him straight to the ground. Charles crawled up and sighed. But before he could say anything, loud barking came from the hall.

“Old Phil?” Charles looked over in suspicious, but finally realized, “I know, it must be spring.”

“Spring your *ss!” Bai Xi jumped down from the sofa and ran out without even putting on her shoes.

As an evil dog, Old Phil always followed the rule ‘silence is golden,’ and never barked no matter what. If the problem could be solved with teeth and claws, then he would use his teeth and claws to solve it. Problems that could not be solved with teeth and claws…well, he never ran into them. Old Phil was too powerful, and never ran into those problems. If there was nothing, Old Phil would never bark. That was why Bai Xi started to worry. What happened to Old Phil? Had he brought back something weird again?

On the second day of school, there had been a mysterious theft in the academy. All of the doorknobs on the School of Revelation’s first floor were stolen! Who knew what the thief was thinking, stealing only the doorknobs and nothing else. The academy could only conclude that it was some student’s prank. Only Bai Xi knew that when Charles found all of the doorknobs in his bed, he almost peed his pants.

After giving its welcome gift to his new servant, Old Phil turned and walked away without letting anyone know his name, as a hero should. So Charles and Bai Xi could only dig a ditch in the middle of the night and bury the doorknobs.

Bai Xi walked down the hall with the same worry that Ye Qingxuan once had. And just as Ye Qingxuan had, she froze.

“…” Bai Xi stared blankly at Old Phil, who was panting, and at the thing that he had dragged from the basement and down the hall. Her expression twisted. “What the heck, Cousin?”

“Hey, Cousin,” the bedraggled youth on the ground said weakly. There was a trembling smile on his pale face. “Do you…have food?”

—

Charles and Bai Xi sat in the big hall of the small building, carefully watching the youth stuffing his face at the table. Their expressions were unreadable.

“I went down to the basement to check. This guy hadn’t moved at all for the past three days.” The horrors he had seen flashed before his eyes. “Nothing that had been covered by dust had been moved in a long time, but the bottle of ink on the table had been used up. There was a sign of struggle by the door. I guess he was too weak to open the door and had to be dragged out by Old Phil,” said Charles.

Bai Xi’s mouth twisted. “Was he trying to kill himself?”

“The draft paper had been used up too. I found these on the table,” Charles gave Bai Xi a thick stack of paper filled with words. Bai Xi took two glances and felt dizzy.

The stack of paper, at least one finger’s width thick, was filled with cramped handwriting and some confusing math symbols. Only some of the words were from the lingua franca, most were from other languages, all jumbled together.

“What is this?” Bai Xi asked.

“Some are the Runes of the Asgard language, some are Latin used by the church. It looks like he was trying to organize something.” Charles tapped the papers. “Seems like these days hadn’t gone to waste. It’s hard work to organize all this.”

“This has nothing to do with notes.” The little girl rolled her eyes.

At the table, Ye Qingxuan was finally done shoveling food into his mouth and licked his fingers with satisfaction. He could not help but say in awe, “I never thought that pizza left out overnight could taste this good.”

“It’s not just overnight.” Charles slapped his knee. “That pizza’s been there for three days!”

“Senior, I just finished eating. Can you not ruin the mood?” Ye Qingxuan said.

Bai Xi pursed her lips and threw the papers onto the table. “You spent three days just to do this stuff?”

“Oh, that’s useless.” Ye Qingxuan glanced over and waved casually. “Toss it.”

“Toss it?” Bai Xi’s face grew pale in disbelief.

“Yeah, I’ve memorized it all anyway.” Ye Qingxuan cracked his stiff neck, making popping sounds. “I just wrote it down as a habit, but I realized after I organized everything that it’s pretty easy to memorize, so it’s useless now.”

Bai Xi was so angry she could not speak. “What about the music notes? The notes?” She pounded on the table, shaking in rage. “Didn’t you say that you found the way to learn the notes? Don’t tell me you spent three days writing a book for fun.”

“Ah, cousin, you think too highly of me.” Ye Qingxuan scratched his face coyly. “Writing is such a high class thing, I can’t do it yet.”

Bai Xi did not reply and just cracked her knuckles in silence. She looked up and down his body, trying to decide where she should hit first.

This guy locked himself in the basement and did nothing! She had been waiting and anticipating for nothing! She had even been a bit worried!

“Don’t hit me yet!” Seeing her eyes, Ye Qingxuan immediately raised his hands to surrender. “I have results!”

“Then show me.” Bai Xi slammed a fist on the table, her eyes flashing. “But let me say this first—if you take out another weird thing, just wait to be riddled with holes. I’ll have red blades go in and come out white!”

“Uh, Sister, it’s actually the opposite way,” Charles reminded her quietly. “The white blade goes in and comes out red… Ow!” Charles cried out in pain as Bai Xi cut him off and stomped on his foot. But amidst the painful cry, one could hear the youth’s murmurs. The notes that floated out of his throat had Charles raising his head in shock.

—

In the sudden silence, the bedraggled youth raised a single finger, his eyes shining with the light of the aether. As his mouth opened and closed, both crisp and heavy syllables overlapped in his throat, turning into a faint voice. As if someone thrummed a nonexistent instrument string, the weak sound with a metallic feeling filled the room.

It was no longer jerky and choppy. This time, the syllables flowed out like running water. Clear runes appeared from the light and transformed into the blazing sun, moving with his heart and soul! In his senses, the sleeping aether had finally been awoken under the bright light. The pieces of light combined from all directions, grouping on the youth’s fingertip, and transformed into a substantial light. The light on the fingertip was being threaded together, wrapping together and finally forming a tiny ring of light.

This was the Rune · Light!