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For Alhaitham, Sumeru City is as much of a city as it is a graveyard.
He remembers sitting in the living room of his old family home as a child, watching the sunlight drift past their stained glass windows in a hushed murmur of reality’s wavering fragility, in prophecy of something monumental yet altogether fleeting and fading. His grandmother had pulled him into her lap with shaking hands and tear-stained cheeks only to tell him that his parents were gone and that it was just going to be the two of them now. Outside, the constantly present, feeble whispers settled into a dim silence.
“They’re not gone,” he’d said in a quiet and firm voice. Then, he lifted his hand and pointed to their doorway, “Mother and Father are right there.”
There his parents stood, not quite present but not quite absent, their two hands intertwined in an unrelenting grasp between their bodies as they remained a modest distance away. His mother smiled at him, warm and pleasant and hollow. When the light fluttered past his parents’ figures, they, too, shimmered beneath the luster.
“Oh, my child,” his grandmother wailed, pulling him closer into a tight embrace, “it’s going to be alright, I promise. Everything is going to be alright.”
Alhaitham didn’t understand. His grandmother’s tears were beginning to stain his shirt as her worn face buried itself in his small and weightless shoulders, mumbling something incomprehensible. But Alhaitham didn’t understand. Why was she crying for his parents when they were right in front of them? Why weren’t his parents saying anything?
Slowly, his parents drifted closer. His father rested one hand against the quivering, hunched frame of his grandmother as the other lifted his first finger to rest against lips in a motion that spoke of secrecy. When his eyes came to rest upon Alhaitham’s own identical ones, his father’s gaze was laced with a tender apology. To his left, his mother caressed Alhaitham’s cheek solemnly, but he could not feel the weathered callouses he typically associated with his mother’s hands. Instead, all that remained in the air between them was the tangible blanket of grief.
“It’s going to be alright,” came the broken record remark. “It’s going to be alright.”
Loss, Alhaitham discovered, means something entirely different to him than it does to everyone else around him.
Here is a fact: everyone is haunted in one way or another.
An elderly man owned the house across the street from his and his grandmother’s old home. The man lived there with his equally aging wife, whose body disappeared from below the waist as she trailed behind him with her hands clasped patiently behind her back. The young lady at the market where his grandmother would buy fresh fruits always had a little infant hanging off her back with tiny, chubby fingers that shone sheer from its clasp on the young lady’s shoulders and cellophane eyes. When the infant opened its mouth to giggle in delight, no noise left its pale lips. The young lady seemed meek with sorrow.
This is another fact: Alhaitham’s parents died when he was very young.
And yet, Alhaitham’s parents resided with him and his grandmother in their home. His mother was often found in their family library, translucent fingers trailing over historical texts and worn book spines, while his father spent most of his time in his parents’ old bedroom, a frown of focus on his austere face as he stared mutely at the crib Alhaitham used to sleep in as a baby.
Sometimes, his mother would point at a book in the library, and Alhaitham would drag the child stool towards her, pull the book from its shelf, and begin reading. When he was finished, he’d find himself in the arms of his mother as she smiled down at him with a proud expression, but he could no longer feel the warmth of her touch on him. Other times, he’d sit obediently next to his father on a pillow beside his old crib. Alhaitham would reach his short, meager fingers upwards, and he’d pretend to hold his father’s hand. His father would curl his own larger, deep-lined palm around his own, as if to cradle him within his hold, and bend his head down low. If Alhaitham stayed there for too long, his father would begin to fade, limbs flickering like a mirage.
Alhaitham’s mother and father watched him grow up, though they did not speak, they did not eat nor sleep, and they no longer left traces of themselves in the way other people commonly would. They were present, but they did not quite exist as they once did.
His grandmother would often worry that Alhaitham spent too much time alone at home with his books.
“I’m not alone, though,” he’d respond frankly. “I’m in good company.”
“Well, I’m glad that you find books and academic journals to be good company,” she chuckled, wrinkles curving around her eyes. Alhaitham elected not to say anything in clarification of his prior statement and simply nodded as he sensed his parents’ hands coming to rest on his back in understanding.
When his grandmother eventually passed away, she, too, came to linger.
She was the one who gently brought her creased and withered hands, fading at the fingertips, around Alhaitham’s trembling ones and steadied his shaking grip on the pen when he signed the statement of inheritance after her death. On every page, there was only one single name listed as heir and only one signature at the bottom of the page: Alhaitham’s.
She was the one who guided him throughout the funeral process, an endlessly enduring smile on her face as she pointed at the items that were needed and led him to the burial grounds with a hand on the small of his back. She used to lead him by the shoulder, but now her hands no longer reached that height, as if to say, oh, how my child has grown.
And when he sat there amidst his family’s old books in the library of their home for a final time before entering the Akademiya, his grandmother settled there with him, alongside his parents, as they held his hands and surrounded him together. Alhaitham felt the wetness glide down his cheeks before he realized that they were tears. Little circles of dampness blossomed down upon the pages of a thick, emerald-covered book, tainting its contents as muffled, nearly imperceptible, sniffles filled the room. Tilting his head towards the ground, he felt a phantom touch of reassurance on his nape, and he almost, almost, thought he could once again feel what it was like to be held. A precious yet fleeting gift of parting.
Alhaitham’s Sumeru is one that is more than twice as large and as loud as it is for others around him, its true occupants and secrets far exceeding what anyone else around him can see or hear. Gradually, he learned how to grow accustomed to the strange noise and sights, and he taught himself how to tune things out for his own peace of mind with his headphones. However, the reality remains that this is the Sumeru only he is privy to; a Sumeru that is all at once a bustling city filled with life and wisdom as well as a graveyard of whispered regrets, unfulfilled ambitions, and souls who linger out of longing.
People are troublesome in that they often bring their hauntings with them.
After he had entered the Akademiya, Alhaitham found himself surrounded more and more frequently by people and phantoms alike. Students fluttered in and out of classrooms and halls, some solitary but others with a mother, a father, a sibling, a grandparent, an old friend, or a lover hanging off the hems of their uniforms. More than half of the Akademiya’s occupants had shadows. On the other hand, the remainder, Alhaitham learned – those who carried themselves in a shadowless afterimage of who they once were – could be unbearably intolerable and intruding.
Hey, you! You there! A nameless student’s wrathful older cousin once shoved the books off Alhaitham’s library space with a gust of wind as her spirit twisted under his nose. I know you can see me! Tell my foolish younger cousin––
Nonetheless, Alhaitham persisted. And he learned the hard way to turn your eyes from things that should not be seen, to narrow your vision solely to the page of the book held in front of you in silence, and that it is much, much more peaceful to simply live an isolated life, away from other people.
Occasionally, he would still catch glimpses of his parents and his grandmother. A flicker of his mother’s braid by the Vahumana study rooms, or a glimmer of his father’s eyes by the entrance of the Haravatat dorms, or the passing form of his grandmother’s gentle hand above his own when he was studying late into the sunset hours, like a momentary illusion molded by the last lights of the day playing tricks on his eyes. Alhaitham knew, though, that it meant he was never truly alone. That he could still glean their presence even when away from home was a comforting thought for someone who is fated to live a life separate from others. Thus, he steadily maintained the belief that other people and their own hauntings were far too much trouble for him to deal with.
Except with Kaveh, of course.
When Alhaitham first met Kaveh, as the older scholar slid into an empty seat beside him at the library with an intense, blinding smile that radiated both intellect and charisma, he’d met someone else, too.
The man who hovered hesitantly behind Kaveh shared much of Kaveh’s own looks. The lustrous blonde locks and the curve of his nose and the slant of his jaw, all of which mirrored features he found in his senior beside him. Brilliant eyes that shone with a profound sense of kindness and humanity, yet drowning in an enormity of sadness, a longing much too large for one soul to hold. Alhaitham would learn not too long later, as Kaveh went through old pictures and drawings of his family that he’d brought with him to the Akademiya, that this was Kaveh’s father.
Kaveh’s father was a kind, sincere, and silent man who did not inconvenience Alhaitham the way many other lingering spirits did. But he was also a deeply troubled soul anchored fiercely by his regret, evident by how clearly the man manifested in his form. Kaveh’s father almost never left Kaveh’s side. Instead, he constantly faltered behind his son’s steps with the wistful expression he always wore. Still, for as much as he was tormented, Kaveh’s father remained a gentle spirit in a manner not unlike Kaveh himself.
Alhaitham recalls one afternoon during their time as Akademiya students when the noise of others’ hauntings had grown especially overwhelming and the constant beckoning had risen to such magnitude it felt as though his own head was going to burst.
Please let me talk to my daughter again for one last time!
It was his fault that I ended my own life… Everything was his fault!
If only I was able to finish my research before my accident…
Someone, anyone, please, can someone see me?
“Alhaitham?”
A merciful, cautious voice wafted smoothly past the others and pulled Alhaitham out of his trance. It had been Kaveh who found him there, in the furthest corners of the House of Daena, sheltered by the looming silhouettes of the tallest bookshelves no one sought out, as Alhaitham trembled silently with his head tucked into his knees and his hands over his ears. Looking up at Kaveh in that moment felt like a breath of fresh air, like the first slivers of morning sunlight cracking through the clouds at daybreak.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Kaveh slipped into the space beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and huddled close. Kaveh was warm and – safe. “Is it the noise again?”
Alhaitham nodded wordlessly.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Kaveh hummed faintly as he took his cap off, placed it on Alhaitham’s head, and softly tugged the edges down to cover Alhaitham’s ears. “I’ve got you.”
And he settled there, wrapping his arms around Alhaitham and leaning in so that when he grinned, Alhaitham could feel the way Kaveh’s cheeks mushed against his temple, “Heh, you look kinda funny with the Kshahrewar symbol on you, Alhaitham. Do you think you could’ve been a good Kshahrewar student? Well, you’d probably be good at anything you set your mind to anyway.”
A subtle smile found its way to Alhaitham’s lips, “If I was a Kshahrewar student, I’m sure I wouldn’t be handing in my designs at the very last minute unlike someone I know, Senior Kaveh.”
“Uncalled for! I’ll have you know the only reason I do so is because I actually put my best effort into each and every one of my designs.”
Quietly, he scoffed, “I’m sure your future clients will be more than satisfied then.”
“Of course! Speaking of which, I haven’t told you about the new changes I made to the designs of my dream project. You remember, right, Alhaitham? The palace I told you about…"
Somehow, it was always Kaveh who found and anchored him. A lighthouse amidst foggy shores, Kaveh’s guiding light would always find a way to pull Alhaitham towards the returning path, the lovely cadence of his voice a soothing lullaby that drowned out all the other noise that frequently plagued his ears. As Alhaitham listened calmly to Kaveh’s insistent rambling, he felt a delicate incandescence blooming within his chest, fond and sacred. And he could also see how another pair of larger, stronger arms came to rest around both of their bodies, one hand around Kaveh’s back and one hand on Alhaitham’s shoulder.
They looked so alike, Alhaitham thought, seeing Kaveh’s and his father’s smiles side by side, even if Kaveh could not see it for himself. Kaveh’s father glanced over at his son then, nodding along to his son’s explanations of the dream palace he’d one day build, and the gaze he wore on his face was infinitely, infinitely warm and proud, like the soundless passing of a flame from one torch to another.
After his and Kaveh’s falling out, Alhaitham had gone to Kaveh’s commencement ceremony. He wasn’t exactly sure why he chose to. Or perhaps he knew but chose not to dwell on it.
He had stood inaudibly behind a large marble column so that most of his figure would be obscured from view and ducked into the shadows there. Kaveh was on the stage in his graduation robes, laughing as he surrounded himself with a multitude of friends. Kaveh was beaming and charming and so, so bright, as he always was. Taking in the vibrant sight, Alhaitham felt his body unconsciously curling in on himself in hopes that Kaveh would not see him. He did not want to ruin Kaveh’s graduation day with sour memories if Kaveh happened to spot him.
Kaveh’s father had been there too, seated in an empty chair at a far corner of the room. Commencement ceremonies often see the moment at which many spirits eventually find themselves moving on. Family members, acquaintances, or lovers, satisfied at the sight of their loved ones starting a new life on their own feet, might suddenly discover their hearts at peace and regrets in life quelled, and their figures would begin to shimmer into transparency before fading completely. It is a moment of many goodbyes in one way or another.
Not for Kaveh’s father, though. He had sat there, whole and still throughout the entire ceremony with a patient, enduring countenance. At one point, he turned around, and his eyes met Alhaitham’s ones knowingly. Kaveh’s father lifted a glassy hand in a wave. Alhaitham tucked himself further into the shadows before ultimately slipping away from the ceremony.
Then, a few years later, his own commencement ceremony came along. Solemn and unmoving, he stood there among his peers, in front of a crowd of families and friends, and saw his parents and his grandmother for the final time.
Alhaitham did not have anyone to invite to his commencement ceremony, but he reserved three seats in a good position within the crowd. For others, the chairs appeared empty. But for Alhaitham, he watched as his parents and grandmother smiled at him with contentment from their seats, their figures growing hazy and uncertain and their limbs dissipating into the light. When he turned around after receiving his certificate, the three chairs were now empty for him, too.
He has grown used to this, he thought to himself back then. To be the one being left and not the one leaving.
That day, however, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a distinct head of blonde hair and an older face by the edge of the crowd. Kaveh’s father lifted a glassy hand in a wave once again, though his son was not present. This time, Alhaitham nodded in response, dipping his head low.
Later, Alhaitham remembers this: when he met Kaveh again at the tavern, years later, there was something soft in the light that descended on Kaveh’s worn and strained face despite the tattered look in those scarlet eyes.
He’d asked him, “How has realizing your ideals gone for you?” finding that Kaveh still burned bright, even if the candlelight flame needed to be rekindled once more – a pair of hands to cradle it from the world for a moment of respite.
As they left the tavern together, to go home, he noticed the distressed look in Kaveh’s father’s eyes while the older man’s spirit floated absently behind them. He kept trying to reach for his son’s hand, only for his fingers to fall straight through solid skin in futility. Still present, still longing.
And later, this: how Kaveh’s father would often hover nervously by Kaveh’s desk at home when his son spent hours upon hours late into the night at work. Kaveh would wake up in the morning and ask Alhaitham if he was the one who placed a blanket over him the night before, and Alhaitham would say no, it wasn’t him. How he would reach his arms over his son’s frame protectively on days when it was raining and Kaveh had left his umbrella at home, yet the droplets would pass right through him, again and again. The way he had looked at Kaveh when his son clutched the Diadem of Knowledge in his hands before shattering it against the ground in finality, fear and dread morphing into hope and pride. And the grateful, knowing smile he flashed in Alhaitham’s direction once the eventful championship fell to an end.
Now, on some days, Kaveh’s father is nowhere to be found, the house remaining peacefully mundane as no traces of its missing third tenant are left to exist. Other days, he wavers with hesitance by the doorway or lingers quietly by the few potted plants at the window.
Regardless, Alhaitham knows something is still keeping the man tethered to this world, unable to truly move on, as though there is some aching burden his heart still yearns to see.
When Alhaitham wakes up, it is the morning of July 8th, and there is a sentence scratched into the notepad he keeps on the table beside his and Kaveh’s bed. The words are faltering and crooked with some letters having been crossed out and re-written multiple times, odd spaces in between them, as if someone penned them carefully through great effort and struggle.
T ommo row my son ‘s bi rth day ! :)
Kaveh has been away on a work trip for a few days now, and he is scheduled to return tomorrow evening – the evening of his birthday. Picking up the notepad with care, Alhaitham languidly blinks the sleep out of his eyes and reads over the words once more for good measure. He re-reads the phrase then swivels to observe the empty space beside him, lacking its typical Kaveh-shaped indent on the bed sheets but still retaining the perennial, sun-kissed scent of his Kaveh, before looking at the note in his hands again. Tomorrow is Kaveh’s birthday.
Kaveh’s father is in the living room when Alhaitham steps out of the bedroom, his nearly transparent hands toying with a few sketches Kaveh had left behind on their dining table before rushing out the door for his trip. Strolling over, Alhaitham nods politely in greeting as he takes a seat across from Kaveh’s father and places the note on the table.
“I trust there are preparations you’d like me to make, is that correct?” Alhaitham says dutifully.
At these words, Kaveh’s father beams at him and gestures in confirmation. These past few weeks, Kaveh’s father has been even more of a transient apparition than usual, an ephemeral glance in the barest corners of the house, and his once defined features have seemed to grow murky, like when you reach as far back as you can into the depths of your mind for a particular memory but can’t quite get the specifics right. Alhaitham recognizes this. The minute details are always the first to go just as how the pale colors wash out first in an overfed watercolor painting.
The note he finds on his bedside table this morning is the first droplet sliding down the painted canvas, and when Kaveh’s father leads him out across the threshold of his home into the sunlight towards the market, it feels a little like farewell.
Kaveh returns home right on the precipice of dusk, erupting past the front door alongside the last rays of the day and soaked in sunlight from hours worth of traveling.
“What’s all this?” Kaveh manages to breathe out at the sight that greets him upon coming home, putting down his bags haphazardly on the floor somewhere for future Kaveh to worry about organizing.
On the dining table, a plentiful assortment of Kaveh’s favorite foods decorate the surface. A plate of the fresh fruits he enjoys best, cut in the specific way that his father used to prepare them in for him and his mother when he was a child, a bowl of the flavorful meat stew he’s always loved, and a large dish of fatteh, the biscuits arranged with meticulous precision to mimic the palace he once only dreamed of building. To the side, there is an expensive bottle of wine Kaveh knows Alhaitham received from one of his rare diplomatic trips during his prior tenure as the Acting Grand Sage, one that he has been saving for a special occasion. In the middle, a modest-sized cake rests atop a heightened stand, the icing at the top having been used to write a very wobbly and somewhat warped Happy Birthday.
And there, in the midst of it all, Alhaitham sits at the table, facing Kaveh. His hands are clasped around a generous bouquet of his favorite flowers, wrapped in elegant papers of red and white, because he knows those are the colors that complement Kaveh best. He has some of Kaveh’s signature red clips in his hair to clip the silvery-gray strands back, so that Kaveh can see the wholehearted sincerity in those turquoise eyes with perfect clarity. The candles around the dining table emit a delicate, heartfelt glow, their mellow light dancing in Alhaitham’s eyes. When he meets Alhaitham’s gaze, Kaveh thinks he’s swimming, drowning, in the fervor.
“Welcome home,” Alhaitham says, “and happy birthday, Kaveh.”
“Wh…” gaping, Kaveh finds himself gravitating towards the table, and he can barely feel the seat beneath him when he sits across from Alhaitham. “You did all this for my birthday?”
They’ve celebrated birthdays together before, but they were mostly simple, casual affairs. Hushed desserts and sweets they’d share together at the end of a long day of classes in their dorm rooms, the crumbs falling on their Akademiya uniforms. Takeout food bought on the way home from work, eaten between breaks from sketching new designs or flipping through the pages of a new book. A serene day filled with afternoon naps and bodies atop each other on the divan, discovering what it feels like to dream. It was never like – like this.
Alhaitham nods at him, “I wanted your birthday to be special.”
“How did you know to get all this?” says Kaveh, still staring at the spectacle before him.
Alhaitham smiles, furtive and fleeting, and sets the bouquet down next to Kaveh to properly arrange the flowers into a vase later on, “I had some guidance as well."
Kaveh may not have noticed through his stupor, but tonight their dining table is set for three – a third plate and set of utensils rest by the seemingly empty seat with a glass of wine half filled. Alhaitham observes as Kaveh’s father fondly places a hand on Kaveh’s flushed cheek with all the earnestness of a father sending his son off, his body fading from sight like a waning moon.
Beneath the table, Kaveh’s fingers find Alhaitham’s own and entwines them between the crevices, squeezing close, “Thank you, Alhaitham. It means alot. I…” Kaveh swallows, “I haven’t had a birthday like this in many, many years.”
Alhaitham squeezes back, “This is your day. I’ll indulge you, for once.”
Laughing, Kaveh throws his head back in mirth, and Alhaitham adores it, enamored by all the ways Kaveh never hides his expressions when they’re around each other, “How sparing!”
“Can’t spoil you too much, after all,” sipping the wine, Alhaitham hides the cheeky smirk spilling into his cheeks beneath the glass. The heat glides easily down his throat, all the way to his fingertips where his and Kaveh’s hands are joined, tingling.
The evening of Kaveh’s birthday is tender and sweet, and Kaveh’s eyes are filled with a joy that seems much too large for one soul to hold. So Alhaitham leans in close, cups the fragile candlelight flame of such happiness with both his hands, and makes a lasting promise from one soul to another: then share this with me. Let me have this with you.
Sometime during the evening, between the second slice of cake and the third glass of wine and the fourth confession of love, Alhaitham thinks he feels the touch of a wistful hand on his shoulder, and a deep, tranquil voice murmuring slowly by his ear. And when he peeks at the third seat of the table, he finds that the seat is finally empty for him, too.
Thank you for making my son happy.
It is the first and final time that Kaveh’s father speaks to him.
The next morning, Alhaitham wakes up with Kaveh’s arms encircling him tightly, and Kaveh asks him if he thinks that ghosts are real, voice breathless and airy as he wades through the aftermath of a dream, of a goodbye Alhaitham is not privy to.
With certainty, Alhaitham tells him that he looks just like his father.
The fabric on Alhaitham’s right shoulder where Kaveh buries his face is damp with precious tears. Kaveh laughs at him then, and in a soft and sleepy whisper, asks him if he wants to build a life together with him.
Alhaitham lives in a Sumeru that is all at once a city and a graveyard, and he’s learned that to build a life with someone – to love endlessly, hopelessly – is to also dig your grave with someone. He’s been left enough times to know that to place one’s heart in another’s hands is to put the first shovel to dirt, the first petals on the mound. So, of course, to Kaveh he responds:
“Yes, I do.”