Academia calls him Professor Sehet, a senior scholar of the inscription department. Yet he hardly seems an archaeology professor—more like someone sent to handle the things that can't be written into the news.
Background / motivation / observation stance
Around sixty, with short grey-white hair, a dark wool coat over a turtleneck sweater, no tie, and on his left hand an antique bronze-ringed watch that looked impossibly old. In academia they call him Professor Sehet; at that academy not open to outsiders, he holds another title.
Calm, keeping three parts of his words in reserve, his bearing is less that of an archaeology professor than of a diplomat—a man who specializes in cleaning up 'things that must never see the light.'
He drove a black sedan, picked Ren Yi up in the back alley, and circled around once before getting to business. He named her ability: Echo-Read—the ability to make out complete sentences in the residual echoes of artifacts; in three hundred years she was the fifth.
He gave her 3 short-term prohibitions: stay out of museum storerooms, stay away from auctions, don't go to overseas ruins. As for where that academy is, he only said: you don't need to know now; when you're ready, we'll let you know. With that, the sedan drove off, as if it had never come.
The antique bronze-ring watch on his left wrist is older than seems plausible, its face densely scratched, the strap replaced more times than anyone knows. It does not keep time; it loses several minutes a day.
He has not had it repaired and has not replaced it. In conversation he occasionally presses the face once with his thumb, and carries on.
His dress has not changed in decades: a dark wool coat over a turtleneck, no tie. The outfit is unremarkable at a university and unremarkable elsewhere, which is presumably the point.
He holds a third of what he says in reserve. Students who ask him something get an answer complete in itself. It is simply never all of it.
What the academic world knows is Professor Sehet of the inscriptions department: published, supervised students, attends the conferences he ought to attend. That identity checks out, and stands up to checking.
At the academy that does not appear on any list, his title is another one. The two identities do not intersect, and he does not intend them to.
His way of doing business is not quite scholarly. Meeting people in back lanes, a black car, a loop driven before anything is discussed—the loop is not for secrecy. It is to keep the other person in the car long enough to hear it out.
When he issues a prohibition he gives the items and not the reasons. If the reasons could be given, he would have given them already.
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