"Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone was in here," a soft, feminine voice apologized, startling Alex as he was busy bent over, trying to clean up all the broken of glass. "Here, let me get that for you," the unknown girl told Alex, as she briskly stepped forward with a broom and began sweeping.
All Alex could see from his position was a long set of shapely, tanned legs and bare feet, before he quickly turned his back, stood up, and pretended to be messing in a nearby cabinet. "Thank for that," he told the girl, trying to make his voice sound gruffer and harsher than usual. "And you and the other's don't have to worry about cleaning my room this break. I'm going to stay here in the dorm this semester break to try and finish up the new formula I'm working on," Alex lied nervously, trying had not to twitch uncontrollably from his nerves. If he got busted here, he could be kicked out of the school and lose his chance at a new life, forever!
"I… I'll clean my room myself," Alex stuttered, almost biting his own tongue, "and I'd prefer if all the cleaners would just stay out for me. I really don't want to be disturbed with my research."
"Of course, milord," the girl responded respectfully. "I'll make certain to let the others know." Sweeping the broken glass into a dustpan, she bowed once and then quickly turned and walked back out of the room.
It wasn't until hearing the outer door to the room close, before Alex's knees started knocking together and he slowly sank down to sit in the floor. "Gods, that was close!" Letting out a deep breath of air, Alex couldn't help but admit that she'd almost scared him to death, to himself.
He'd known they'd be coming in to clean and check the room, of course, but Alex had thought that he'd hear whoever enter into the other room first. He was just going to yell at them and tell them they weren't needed, and never actually see them in person — after all, he was too well known as the "girly toy in the boy's dorm" already! If that girl had recognized him, there's no way she wouldn't have known he was in the wrong room!
"Let me take that, and the last few days as a lesson," Alex told himself sternly, slapping himself hard upside his face. "I'm too inexperienced and overlooking too many common things! I knew silver silkhair cut. Why didn't I think about it cutting through old cloth? I should've thought to fill the flask before heating it, and I shouldn't have been surprised that the nobby cleaner was barefoot!
"Just because I'm wearing heels, and all the boys here normally wear boots, that doesn't mean the cleaners do! I *knew* all of these things already," Alex berated himself. "I just didn't think about them enough and overlooked them."
"I've got to do better," he promised himself firmly.
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The next several hours were spent with Alex carefully attempting to reproduce all the steps that he'd read about in various alchemical texts, but never performed before. Carefully, he used tongs, pinchers, and uniquely made scalpels to gingerly pick out all the strands of Silver Haired Silkgrass from amongst the rest of the gathered clumps of dirt and grass. A few strands of ordinary grass and weeds were separated to the side, and the Silver Mercurial Grass was divided into two piles – one for the stems of the grass, and the other for the roots.
The roots of the Silver Mercurial Grass were carefully placed inside another flask, and then set to boil and cook under the heat of a blue-white flame. At this point, Alex went out of the room to make certain that the outer door was locked, and then dragged a chair from the private kitchen/dining area over to wedge beneath the handle. Just as the sap of the Silver Mercurial Grass was poisonous and deadly to anyone with spirit capability, so was the fumes from the extraction process! If one of the school's cleaners were to accidently walk into the room while the grass was being processed, chances are they'd end up deathly sick – or even dead!
"I still don't trust it," Alex muttered softly to himself, staring at the blocked off door. Frowning heavily, he walked over to the bed, tugged the top sheet off it, and then used it to shove around the bottom of the door, in an attempt to seal any crack at the bottom. "That'll have to do, I hope," he prayed fervently, before going back over to the bed and pulling the bottom sheet off it as well.
Going back into the alchemy room where he was processing the silver grass, Alex made certain to shut that door firmly as well, before stuffing the bedsheet he was carrying around the bottom of it as well. "That's all I can do for an extra little layer of safety measures," Alex reassured himself. "Let's hope it's not needed." Biting his lip with worry, he walked back over to the countertop he was using and rubbed his hands several times back and forth on a pure white stone.
In the school, many of the tools used for the practice of alchemy and elixir making were quite standardized. Most work areas had several important arrays installed which were vital to the practice of alchemy, and various colored stones controlled those arrays. Generally speaking, red stones produced fire, or enhanced fire to make it hotter or larger. Dark Blue stones were for creating water, Green stones for growing plants, and Sky Blue stones created air.
Yellow stones, normally placed directly beside another base stone, worked to dampen the associated array, or to reduce it. For example, a yellow stone, placed beside a red stone, was used to reduce the heat, or cut down on the size of the flame, that a red stone array might produce.
Black stones were always placed beside other stones, and they basically were used to simply turn off whatever array they were associated with.
White stones, on the other hand, were a little different as they weren't one of the 'elemental control' stones, nor were they one of the 'modification control' stones. White stones were generally used to control and activate a purification array, which could be used to remove impurities for anything placed within it.
By rubbing his hands across the white stone several times, Alex caused a small shimmering globe of flickering energy to appear and float over the center of one of the countertops. If he had need to attempt to purify stale water, for example, so that it'd be suitable for drinking, he could place a pot of it inside that globe and let it sit, in an attempt to purify it.
"What I'm hoping," Alex muttered to himself, biting his lip with worry, "is that the purification array will cleanse the air in here, since I'm not actually putting anything else in it instead." Theoretically, it *should* work, but Alex had already learned from the earlier flask how reliable theoretical knowledge was.
"It's the best I can do for now, anyway," Alex shrugged, reminding himself again. Sometimes one just had to take a chance if they ever wanted to move forward in life.