Chapter Text
Alhaitham had been seeing Kaveh holding a book all weekend, but he did not think too much of it, until Kaveh nearly set their house on fire by trying to read while cooking dinner.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said firmly, swiping the book out of Kaveh’s hands as Kaveh attempted to resume cooking while reading, “Not everyone is capable of multitasking, and unfortunately you fall within that category of people.”
Kaveh’s face reddened slightly. “It was an accident, it was an important scene! It won’t happen again, so give it back to me.” He made a grab for the book, but Alhaitham pulled his arm back, dodging the attempt.
“What is it that you’ve been reading so much anyways,” Alhaitham muttered aloud, turning his attention to the book, when he froze.
It was the last thing he had expected to see.
“Why do you look so surprised? It’s a good light novel!” Kaveh said defensively for some reason.
Alhaitham blinked once, then blinked again.
“’The Impossible Trials of a Broken Heart’, the fourth book in the series ‘When a God Whispers’ by the author Scorching-Wednesdays!” Kaveh explained, as though Alhaitham was a complete idiot and did not know what this was.
“I am aware,” Alhaitham said drily, handing Kaveh back the book. “I just don’t know why you are reading it.”
“It came out yesterday,” Kaveh said, already flipping back to the page where he had left off (when Kaveh had burnt a steak so hard that it had gone from well done to ‘congratulations’). “It’s a popular light novel released by Yae Publishing House, why can’t I read it?”
“I... wasn’t aware that this was your genre of reading material,” Alhaitham said, keeping his tone deliberately even, but Kaveh barely looked like he was listening. “Never mind. I’ll come back when you get your senses back.”
---
Unfortunately, it would seem that Kaveh would not in fact get his senses back.
After bemoaning the terrible cliffhanger that Scorching-Wednesdays had the audacity to leave them at, Kaveh spent the next few days carrying various volumes from the series around the house, and even to work.
He was even reading at the dinner table now.
After all the times he had scolded Alhaitham for reading at dinner.
What was it he had said?
‘Cold, anti-social behaviour.’
“That is indeed cold, anti-social behaviour, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said mildly, as he drizzled some chilli oil onto his rice.
Kaveh barely looked up from the book. “I’m sorry, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said.
Alhaitham gaped. “You are being crazy right now,” he said, shaking his head, as he stabbed his fork into a piece of roast chicken.
“Mm,” Kaveh said in response.
Alhaitham brought the chicken to his mouth, and nearly choked.
The chicken was way too salty. It was as though Kaveh had marinated it for ten years in a bucket of pure salt. What the hell?
Alhaitham looked back up at Kaveh, who was still reading, and making scooping motions with his spoon three inches left of his rice bowl.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham hissed.
“Mm,” Kaveh said again.
Alhaitham sighed loudly, and dunked his chicken into his water, washing it until it achieved a more tolerable level of saltiness.
Kaveh did not even notice the activity of chicken-washing.
Alhaitham shook his head in complete disbelief.
---
When the incident of the book-rereading was over, Alhaitham was relieved, but his relief was short-lived because he realised that the next phase- talking, was way worse than what came before.
“There was this moment in the book- where the main character shifted the winds to let the leaves part for his lover- that I can’t stop thinking about,” Kaveh gushed, setting down his cup of tea.
Alhaitham, having come to terms with the fact that this was his life now, just nodded absently as he continued reading the book in front of him.
It was definitely not from the series ‘When a God Whispers’, not even close, it was instead a biography of an inventor from the Middle Ages of Sumeru, and was a great distraction.
“Alhaitham, you should really go read it some time, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, do you know that there was a huge craze for this light novel when it first came out, that the first edition had been sold out within a week?”
“I am aware,” Alhaitham said, nodding again, as he turned another page of his book. He could hardly remember what the last page had said.
“And then when Tsubasa- that’s the main character, by the way, first discovers that his lover had lost his memories of him, oh archons above, I cried,” Kaveh said, looking up at the ceiling as he seemed to dry imaginary tears, as Alhaitham raised his eyebrow.
“Did you now,” Alhaitham said curiously. “I had not realised that moment was that sad.”
Kaveh whipped his head around. “You’ve read it?” he exclaimed in shock.
“In a sense, yes,” Alhaitham said with a hum, as he turned another page.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier! Then did you like that scene where the demons interrupted Tsubasa and Shinji’s bickering, and Tsubasa tells Shinji to close his eyes, and when Shinji opens them, all the demons are on the ground dead?” Kaveh asked excitedly, his eyes lit up.
Alhaitham chuckled. “I would hope so, since I’m the one who wrote it.”
There was silence.
Alhaitham flipped another page.
Kaveh continued to be silent.
Alhaitham turned to look at him.
Kaveh stared back, his eyes widened in a mix of shock and... was that disbelief?
“No,” Kaveh breathed.
“Yes,” Alhaitham said pleasantly. He used his free hand to gesture at the book Kaveh had left on the table. “I wrote that.”
“No,” Kaveh repeated, shaking his head dramatically. “You couldn’t.”
“Yes,” Alhaitham also repeated, “I could, and I did.”
Kaveh made a strangled noise.
“When I was younger I wanted to find a job to support myself,” Alhaitham explained calmly, barely looking up from the book he was reading. “It was only natural that as a linguistics scholar, I would find a job that tapped into that particular skill-set.”
“But why-” Kaveh stammered, “How-”
Alhaitham continued, languidly turning a page, “I continued doing it, since it was making decent money.”
“But why-”
“I thought I had already explained the why, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, finally turning to give Kaveh an uncomprehending look.
“You have no experience with romance!” Kaveh stammered, “Or even friendship, for that matter!”
Alhaitham raised an extremely incredulous eyebrow. “I had been labouring under the impression that we were at least friends, but please feel free to correct this misunderstanding of mine.”
Kaveh gaped. “That’s not what I meant and you know that!” Kaveh exclaimed, crossing his arms at his side, “I just... you... it’s nothing like you!”
Alhaitham chuckled, oddly amused by this turn of events. “That’s why it’s called fiction, Kaveh,” he said, setting his book to the side. It would seem that as usual, Kaveh was providing a lot more entertainment than any book could give him. This whole business with his light novel writing did not mean much to him, but for some reason it seemed to mean a lot to Kaveh.
Kaveh’s expression contorted weirdly as he struggled to find his next words. “It’s just so... romantic!”
“And so?” Alhaitham asked, raising his eyebrow again. He needed to start alternating which eyebrow he raised- with how intriguing this conversation was going, he might get muscle fatigue from how many times his eyebrow had to move upwards. Absently, he wondered whether Sumeru’s laws would allow him to claim compensation from Kaveh for causing eyebrow fatigue. He sighed inwardly, as he picked up his cup of tea. It would be rather unlikely. Perhaps it was overdue for an overhaul of Sumeru’s tort laws.
“It’s just not like you, Alhaitham!” Kaveh said, now holding up the novel and waving it around wildly. He frantically flipped to a random page, and started to read out, “I would give up a thousand lifetimes for another moment with you. What the hell, Alhaitham!”
Alhaitham choked on the tea lightly. While it had been one thing, to discuss the light novel as what it was, just a book, to hear Kaveh say the lines out... it was mildly disconcerting. Coughing a little, he murmured, “I know what I wrote, you don’t have to read it out.”
“Now that is the more normal Alhaitham I know. The vaguely emotionally constipated one,” Kaveh said, nodding to himself triumphantly.
Alhaitham raised his left eyebrow. “I don’t get why you’re making such a big deal about this, Kaveh. It’s just a book.”
“Just a book?!” Kaveh spluttered in disbelief. “This series won best light novel of the year two times! And just last year, the author- you- had won Most Influential Author of the Decade!”
Unable to help himself, Alhaitham laughed. “You seem to have done quite a fair bit of research on me,” he teased.
Kaveh stuck his chin out defiantly. “I will not be ashamed that I have loved your writing, Alhaitham,” he said firmly, “I just don’t understand why you’re acting so normal about it!”
“What’s there to react to? This has been around for a very long time,” Alhaitham said, “I still work on drafts every night.”
“You’re working on the sixth book?” Kaveh asked, his eyes widening rapidly.
“Yes...?” Alhaitham said, “No big deal.”
“I have been obsessed with this series for the longest time, and it’s been so agonising ever since you left us on that absolutely devastating cliffhanger in ‘The Impossible Trials of a Broken Heart’, and you just... you just said ‘no big deal’?”
Alhaitham’s lips twitched upwards slightly. “If it matters so much to you, I can tell you how it gets resolved.” But he paused, as he reconsidered it. “Actually, maybe you could just find out with everyone else when it’s released next year.”
“Next year?” Kaveh repeated, his voice so dramatically filled with pain that Alhaitham laughed again. “Stop enjoying my misery, Alhaitham!” Kaveh said, “You already offered to tell me, you can’t take that back!”
Alhaitham decided that for today, he would be a benevolent author. “Well, as you know, Tsubasa traded his immortality over to restore Shinji’s lost memories, but then when Shinji opened his eyes, Tsubasa was gone.”
“Yes, that’s where it ended, so what happened next!”
“Calm down, I’m getting to it,” Alhaitham said, taking a slow, deliberate sip of tea. “So after that, Shinji went up to all the gods and tried to find Tsubasa, only to realise that Tsubasa had made the other gods promise not to ever tell Shinji of his whereabouts.”
“WHAT?” Kaveh exclaimed, rushing over to take a seat next to Alhaitham, “Why! What happened!”
Alhaitham chuckled at Kaveh’s rapt interest in the story. “Because Tsubasa was dying,” he said calmly, and he absolutely loved how Kaveh’s eyes, impossibly, further widened.
“Why! How!”
“Because he had been suffering from Hanahaki the entire time,” Alhaitham said, a wicked grin on his face, as he had been particularly proud of plotting this new arc in the story, “Remember? The flowers that were hinted at in ‘The Impossible Trials of a Broken Heart’. And the moment he lost his immortality, he realised he was dying.”
“Hanahaki? On top of amnesia? Alhaitham, what the hell?” Kaveh asked, flabbergasted.
“I’m just giving the people what they want,” Alhaitham said with a shrug.
“But Shinji loves Tsubasa! Now that his memories are back, that should be an instant cure for Hanahaki!” Kaveh argued.
Alhaitham shook his head, a bittersweet smile now resting on his lips. “For a very avid reader, you seem to have misread a very important part of the story.”
Kaveh furrowed his brows, shaking his head. “There is no way,” he insisted.
“You see,” Alhaitham said calmly, “While Tsubasa does love Shinji, Shinji doesn’t love him back.”