Work

Ryan took the silver coin, his fingertips cold.

He thanked him in a low voice and left the office, clutching the parchment scrolls.

The moment the door closed, he leaned against the hallway wall, panting for breath.

The cold wind in the hallway cleared Ryan's head a little.

He didn't linger in front of the supervisor's office; Pete's malicious eyes were still hovering behind the counter.

He walked quickly down the hallway, descended two flights of stairs, and returned to the communal work area for temporary clerks.

Though called a work area, it was actually just a long, narrow room converted from a basement warehouse.

Rows of rough pine tables were piled high with dusty files.

Due to the lack of sunlight, the room was perpetually lit by a few low-quality wall lamps that gave off a pungent smell of kerosene.

Ryan found his seat based on his memories.

It was a wooden desk in the corner, leaning against a cold stone wall, its surface slightly cracked.

He placed the heavy stack of St. Jude's Church registries on the corner of the desk.

Around him, the other clerks began pulling out the dry rations they had brought.

Most of it was hard black bread and cold potatoes.

A damp, moldy chill always hung in the basement, and the dim, yellow glow of the oil lamps flickered, casting long, distorted shadows of the clerks hunched over their desks.

The scratching of quills on paper and the occasional soft sound of swallowing dry food were exceptionally clear in the silent underground space.

Ryan kept his eyes downcast, his fingers continuously flipping through the thick registry. The dense handwriting made his eyes sting and ache.

His stomach was completely empty, waves of hollow hunger rising up through his gut, a dull ache that left his entire body feeling weak.

He could only tense his back slightly, forcing all his attention onto the words on the paper, letting the cold and hunger envelop him as he endured the long working hours.

The surrounding light grew dimmer by the minute, and the fog seemed to seep thicker through the cracks in the stone, making the chill of the wall beside him even more bone-piercing.

Before long, the daylight outside the window faded completely, and it was finally time to leave.

Bong... Bong... Bong...

The muffled tolling of the distant Greybell Church bells drifted through layers of thick fog and granite walls, faintly reaching the basement.

At five in the afternoon, the end-of-day bell chimed.

As if granted a grand pardon, the surrounding clerks stopped their aching quills one after another, their chairs scraping harshly against the wooden floorboards.

Pete was the first to put on his overcoat, obsequiously cradling his completed ledger as he headed toward the supervisor's office.

As he passed Ryan, he let out a loud, mocking sneer.

Ryan ignored him.

He was staring at the parchment scrolls on his desk, of which a full third remained unfinished.

Supervisor Morton's dead-fish eyes flashed through his mind.

He had indeed promised to “have it on your desk first thing tomorrow morning,” but staying here to work overtime was absolutely a foolish decision.

This basement was growing colder and colder, and the colleague responsible for turning off the lights had already begun impatiently jingling his keyring.

And most importantly—in the logic of 《Cultist Simulator》.

Staying near an obviously suspicious source of the extraordinary at night was no different from seeking death.

He had to leave and take his work back to his drafty attic, which was at least relatively safe.

Ryan silently pulled over a piece of coarse linen used for wrapping documents.

He wrapped the remaining parchment scrolls and two blank sheets of copying paper together, tucking them into the inner pocket of his worn black overcoat.

He pocketed his quill and inkwell as well, keeping his head down.

He walked quickly out of the basement, which was beginning to exude a strange, eerie chill.

The moment he stepped out of the archive's entrance, the freezing, toxic fog rushed into his lungs, forcing Ryan to support himself against the iron gate as he coughed violently.

“Damn it...” He pressed his handkerchief tightly over his mouth until the wave of rusty-tasting, sharp pain slowly subsided.

Hunger gnawed at his stomach even more fiercely than before.

He felt the coins in his pocket.

In this late Victorian East End, the actual cost of living was like a noose, precisely tightening around the neck of every lower-class worker:

A loaf of coarse, moldy black bread cost at least one penny.

If one wanted something hot, the cheapest street-side porridge or hot pease pudding cost one penny a bowl.

As for the lung disease that constantly plagued him, a dose of cough syrup from the worst neighborhood clinic would cost at least four pence.

He currently had twenty-four copper pence.

And the rent Irene would collect next Monday was three shillings (thirty-six pence).

He had absolutely no extra money to squander.

If he dared to eat slightly better or buy a small bottle of medicine, he would definitely fall short of the rent for next week or the week after, falling into an endless vicious cycle before being ruthlessly evicted by Irene's father.

His only solace was that the original owner's memory had finally become entirely clear in the cold night wind—the archive's wages were not paid on Friday, but on Wednesday afternoons.

Wednesday.

That was the day after tomorrow.

This meant he only needed to use a very small portion of these twenty-four pence to grit his teeth and survive Monday night, all of Tuesday, and Wednesday morning.

Ryan did the math in the fog:

It was Monday night. He would buy a bowl of the cheapest hot oatmeal porridge (one penny) and a small piece of black bread (one penny) as tomorrow's rations.

This way, he would spend one penny tonight, eat the black bread tomorrow, endure Wednesday morning, and hold out until he received his wages in the afternoon.

To survive these two days, he would only need to spend one or two pence.

He would still have twenty pence left in his pocket.

And the weekly wage of twelve shillings (one hundred and forty-four pence) paid on Wednesday afternoon could be used for his subsequent medical expenses, food, back rent, debts, and next week's rent.

Provided, of course, that he could survive the long nights of these two days and finish copying the life-threatening ancient documents in his breast pocket.

“As long as I can survive these two days...”

Ryan tightened his overcoat, handed a penny to a vendor wearing a dirty apron at the street corner, and received a bowl of steaming oatmeal porridge that was so thin he could see the bottom of the bowl.

Standing in a sheltered corner of the wall, he braved the cold wind to gulp down the porridge. It had almost no sweetness and tasted like sawdust, with only a coarse texture of grains.

As the warm liquid entered his stomach, the constant, tight emptiness in his gut eased slightly.

But this was far from enough to sustain the energy consumption of his weak body.

He took out another penny, bought a heavy, rock-hard loaf of black bread, and stuffed it into his coat.

Moving his worn-out old leather shoes, he walked quickly along the wet, slippery cobblestone path toward St. Blaise Street.

By the time he returned to the damp, moldy attic, the sky had turned pitch black.

The hallway was silent. Irene didn't show up tonight, and there was only the sound of someone's child crying like a cat in the room next door.

Ryan locked the door, and without even taking off his overcoat, sat straight down at the lopsided wooden desk.

He lit the kerosene lamp, which had only a shallow layer of oil left at the bottom, and turned down the wick—every drop of kerosene was money, and he had to use it sparingly.