Ren Xiyang and Rian’s night as part of the harvest festivities could be considered a last burst of fun before their schedules were completely blocked out. On Monday afternoon, the academy board formally accepted the proposal.
During dinner, Dean Palatinate personally went to the students’ dining hall to announce the new alternative study stream. The academy professional staff would send out official letters with more details soon.
Ren Xiyang was sitting next to Rian in the dining hall when Dean Palatinate gave his announcement. After Dean Palatinate left, the hall was quiet for a moment.
Rian turned to Ren Xiyang and said, “So, are you planning to try out?”
“Yes,” Ren Xiyang said.
And with that, noise in the dining hall burst out.
“What, a new study stream?”
“The rumours were true!”
“I bet I’ll pass if get tested now on history.”
“Wait, that’s possible?”
“I have all of my older sister’s notes, I could pass too!”
“I dare you to go and ask your parents!”
“Eh, I don’t want to do research anyway…Isn’t that even more work?!”
“One month…is that enough time to study?”
“Heh, I don’t need to study!”
At Ren Xiyang’s table, the chatter was no less.
“Prince Rian, are you going to test for the alternative stream too?” Josephine White asked.
Rian nodded. “I will be.”
“This would affect the tutoring groups,” Josephine said.
Neil Edwards nodded. His expression wasn’t as good.
Commoner mages were disadvantaged in this manner. Even if they wanted to, most of them wouldn’t be able to pass those exams to enter the alternative stream.
Josephine looked between Neil and Rian. “We need to re-assess who would be dedicating time to preparing for the alternative stream exams. We might need to suspend or reduce the tutoring group times.”
Neil nodded.
“I’ll leave it to you,” Rian said.
“Maybe I should try out for the alternative stream then,” one of the noble students said.
“Why do you want to take the alternative stream for?” another noble student said. “You’re giving yourself more work. I just want to relax. We just need to pass the academy, there are more important things in our lives…”
That made several students laugh. “Of course you want to relax!”
“If the rest of us enter the alternative stream, won’t you be lonely?”
“Don’t you mean it would be even more relaxing? Not everyone is like Ayden,” the relaxed student said.
This caused gazes to turn to Ren Xiyang.
“It’s true,” Ren Xiyang said.
The relaxed noble student grinned. “Exactly! What do you want to research, anyway? Wouldn’t they mark even more harshly?”
“You’re just saying that because you’ve blocked out most of your time to be spent petting cats.”
The relaxed student hehe’d. “What’s wrong with that?”
More serious—or ambitious—students started talking about what they could research if they hypothetically entered the alternative stream.
Ren Xiyang said nothing, continuing to eat quietly. After some thought, he sent Rian a message.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ren Xiyang: Could you hold a group revision class?
Rian paused from talking by taking a sip of his drink and replied to Ren Xiyang: No. Ren Xiyang, you are my priority. And I’ll talk to the commoner students and see how they’re feeling. It’s not too late for them to start research once they reach the university.
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Fire, water, ice, earth, plant, metal, wind, poison, psychic, lightning, light and shadow attacks and shields—even if Ren Xiyang didn’t know the spell, he could recreate it using direct magic manipulation.
And given that direct magic manipulation was considered much more difficult, Ren Xiyang wouldn’t lose any marks.
“You did very well,” Rian said generously.
“Thank you,” Ren Xiyang said.
“Now, let’s see your current state regarding magical history,” Rian said.
Rian couldn’t get through even a fifth of the exam, since he had to stop to explain.
“See, this is why I’ll fail magical history,” Ren Xiyang said.
Rian gritted his teeth. “Not on my watch! Alright, let’s start learning magical history from the beginning…”
Ren Xiyang’s lack of magical history knowledge was more dire than Rian had expected! He tried to use telepathy to help send thoughts, information and internalised visuals, but it wasn’t effective.
Ren Xiyang was cooperative, he really tried hard; but he was twice as slow at memorising random dates and names as he was at remembering scientific names for different types of wheat.
It was so concerning to Rian that they didn’t even roll around bed that night. Rian had to re-organise Ren Xiyang’s study schedule in order to cram enough information. Ren Xiyang’s failure was not an option!
On the next day, at 4:15 pm in the afternoon, Cassiopeia arrived at the Rosewood house.
A month had gone by since her previous meeting with Ayden.
Today, she wore a green dress with white ruffled sleeves.
Her father had come with her once more. “Cassiopeia…”
“Father,” Cassiopeia said sternly. “We’ve talked about this.”
Duke Schauss sighed helplessly and followed her into the Rosewood house. He was led to a waiting room.
Cassiopeia followed a servant up to Ayden’s office; the door was open.
“Come in and close the door behind you,” Ayden said.
Cassiopeia did so. Ayden picked up a pen and two notebooks and stood up from his desk, directing her to the lounge seating area in the office.
“How are you?” Ayden asked.
“I’m good, thank you. I learnt direct light magic…and I think I was able to do direct healing magic but I’m not really sure,” Cassiopeia said, downcast.
It took her several days to convince her father to teach her direct healing magic, but then he made her learn direct light magic manipulation first. With her meeting with Ayden fast approaching, Cassiopeia had to really ask her father to teach her the most basic direct healing.
“You did well, you learned really fast,” Ayden said. “What direct healing magic can you do?”
Cassiopeia brightened up a bit. “Sore throats, they’re one of the most common symptoms among the patients I see.”
“That’s difficult for me to test right now.”
Cassiopeia nodded. It was true.
“How would you do it?”
“I’m really familiar with the spell to heal a sore throat,” Cassiopeia said. “My father guided me to use direct healing magic to do the same thing as the spell.”
Ayden nodded. “Good, that’s the way I would learn direct magic manipulation too. Keep on doing that, keep on trying to see whether you can directly mimic the actions of healing spells.”
Cassiopeia brightened. “Okay!”
“Do you want to learn how I heal things when I don’t have the right spell?”
Cassiopeia nodded. “Is it related to feeling that something is just ‘wrong’?”
“Yes. I’m not a natural healer, so I need to go through a step-by-step process. Maybe you’ll be able to take this further than me and make healing as natural as breathing.”
Under the praise and encouragement, Cassiopeia felt happy and eager. “I’ll try!”
“There are two parts to my method. The first part is perception, which includes perceiving what is wrong. The second part is the healing, the changing of the body, to remove what is wrong. You can use a mixture of psychic magic and healing magic to analyse what a healthy reference body should be like, and compare it with a body that needs healing. You can also use a mixture of psychic and healing magic to observe in detail how healing magic manipulates the cells, bones, and so forth—”
“Oh, um, can I get some pen and paper, and can you repeat that?” Cassiopeia asked.
“Of course.”
After Cassiopeia got a whole new notebook (from Ayden’s stack of new notebooks) and a new pen (from Ayden’s display case of new pens), Ayden repeated the healing method in greater detail.
Cassiopeia jotted down two pages full of notes and stray thoughts she had. Ayden’s method made a lot of sense to her. It formalised and condensed that gut-feeling healing that she had done once before. Feel what was wrong—which inherently implied a reference that was right—and make the body change.
A healing spell to fix a sore throat couldn’t be used to fix a cut. This meant those healing spells must only ‘register’ or ‘pick up’ a specific class of ‘what was wrong’. Rare diseases or very hidden diseases could feasibly escape the range of known healing spells.
This reminded Cassiopeia of healing poisoned patients. Very potent poisons and poison magic could make someone severely ill or kill them despite very minute amounts. A powerful poison-healer must be capable of detecting very small amounts of poison in a relatively large body.
“Do you want to try it now?”
Cassiopeia made her personal note about checking out the processes of poison-healers, and then nodded.
“Okay. Pool some healing magic on your palm.”
Cassiopeia frowned in concentration. Direct magic manipulation required her to find the pure light-tinted magic within her, and then pulling it out and turning it into light healing magic.
“Good. Now, can you also directly create psychic perception magic?”
Cassiopeia’s frown deepened. It wasn’t as natural, but she had cast psychic spells before. It took more careful thought to turn her inner magic into psychic magic.
“Try mixing it with the healing magic currently on your palm.”
Cassiopeia did so.
“Good. Now use that mix of magic and examine your skin. Your other hand, arm, or your leg would do. Feel the difference between the skin and the air. Then, try to feel the difference between skin, muscle and bone. Take your time.”
Cassiopeia nodded. She moved her palm to her other arm and lightly pressed the magic mixture unto her skin.
It was easiest to sense where her arm started. And she suspected she could determine the bone within. But it was much more difficult feel the different muscles, let alone the layers of skin. After thinking it through, she realised she needed to increase the amount of perception magic.
“The skin itself has many layers, and many parts,” Ayden said. “Try to see if you can distinguish the subtle differences. Don’t rush, and be careful.”
Maybe? Maybe she could sense the difference? She wasn’t sure.
As she practised, Ayden opened up the thicker of his notebooks and started reading. But only briefly. After fifteen minutes or so, he told Cassiopeia to stop.
“Let’s stop here for today,” Ayden said. “You need to recover your magic and you can practice at your own pace later. Aside from deciding our next meeting, after academy alternative stream exams, that’s all I had on my agenda.”
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” Cassiopeia said.
“Hm?”
“I was thinking about what I could do with direct healing magic. Like, curing cancer, and gene therapy…”
“Gene therapy, that would be interesting. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Cassiopeia briefly smiled before becoming hesitant. “And I did some research, and it doesn’t seem like Sedaveria has any magical healing devoted particularly to male-to-female or female-to-male transition…” She tensed, glancing at Ayden.
Ayden’s eyes flickered for a moment. “Is that what you’re interested in?”
“I was thinking that it’s an under-explored area. Are you intending to open a gender transition clinic?”
Cassiopeia’s words evoked a sense of chagrin and guilt in Ren Xiyang.
A gender transition clinic, why hadn’t he thought of that?
It was like how Rian took the lead in taking his hand in public (albeit in disguise). Now, it was Cassiopeia who first raised the issue of making magical medical gender transition available to the public.
Ren Xiyang felt that he should have known better. The Rosewood fief had gay marriage, but LGBT+ matters involved more than just same-gender (same-sex) marriage.
“I wasn’t, but we should,” Ren Xiyang said.
Cassiopeia visibly relaxed.
“But I’m busy at the moment. Can you take the lead in some matters?”
Cassiopeia tensed up again. “I was planning to figure out male to female magical transition. Ah—with your healing method, I could use myself as a reference.”
“Before that, I want you to make a small booklet about trans people. Trans 101.”
“But…”
“I’ll review it afterwards, but it’ll easier if you can try drafting it and arranging it first. It only needs to be very basic,” Ren Xiyang said.
Cassiopeia pursed her lips. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Thank you, Cassiopeia.”
Ren Xiyang wasn’t cruel. During the rest of the meeting, Ren Xiyang briefly verbally sketched what he was thinking regarding the small information booklet, and then moved onto asking how Cassiopeia was going in general.
Not long after she left, Ren Xiyang also left the Rosewood house.
Cassiopeia had raised good points and interesting ideas.
Gene therapy. If Cassiopeia could develop gene therapy, then could Ren Xiyang convert his sex chromosomes from XX to XY? Perhaps, eventually, his body would be indistinguishable from a cis man, from the big details to the smallest details…
Gender transition clinic. Ren Xiyang had the power, and thus responsibility, to set one up in the Rosewood fief. He wanted to give that small information booklet to different staff to see who would be most receptive to picking up this work. He wanted to disseminate it among the public, so that trans people in his fief feel acknowledged; it might help a few people realise something about themselves.
But let alone trans information materials, the Rosewood fief barely had any gay information materials, aside from basic information supporting gay marriage in the fief.
There had now been several gay marriages in the fief. But considering the population, they were definitely under-represented.
In advance of Ren Xiyang and Rian coming out as a couple, there was much more to be done than Ren Xiyang had realised.
Later:
Ren Xiyang: So, Cassiopeia had some good points.
Rian: *grimace grimace grimace* Fine. But you can’t just rely on her! Rely on me too!
Ren Xiyang: *faint smile* Thanks. I’m relying on you to pass the magical history exam.
Rian: *gritted teeth* That’s right!
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And the Rosewood fief once again becomes very progressive on their LGBTQA awareness campaigns.
I’m so curious about the reactions. There’s probably going to be a lot of traditionalists who are going to complain but they can’t doing anything because it’s not their fief.
The Rosewood fief are leaders u_u
Ohh, reactions 👀👀
A relaxed student who likes to pet cats? Are we having someone visiting from Salted Fish? 🤣
Thank you for the chapter.
I was 10000% thinking of Salted Fish when I wrote that 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for the chapter💚
Thank you for reading!
i would also just relax and pet cats- [Ren Xiyang requests LGBTQ+ info stuff and that is literally my volunteer work] …i’d part time that akxhsjfhd
If you can relax and pet cats, why not, right??!! 😆😆😆 OMG that’s such cool volunteer work!!!!
So Xiyang has found himself another work thanks to Cassiopeia 😂
OMG TRUE 😆😆😆😆😆😆 Hey hey, Cassiopeia gets some benefits too even if Ren Xiyang isn’t paying her 🤣🤣🤣
Ren is very nice, he forgave Cassiopeia. Can’t say the same about myself. I’m petty and can hold a grudge! Let’s hope I never get transmigrated back in the old days lol cause everyone would be my enemy.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ren Xiyang might not have technically forgiven Cassiopeia, just forgotten/moved on with his life hahah
This was a sweet chapter 😊 I’m starting to see how those two will get along
Thank you 🥰🥰🥰
Awww your comments are sooo sweet 🥰🫠 Thank yuu for your hard work ❤️
thank you for reading 🥰🥰🥰🥰