Work Text:
Rumors spread quickly at the Sumeru Akademiya.
It is no secret to any student of the Akademiya that Kaveh, the renowned Kshahrewar student, was clever, energetic, and got along perfectly with almost everyone.
It is also no secret to any student of the Akademiya that Al-Haitham, known more colloquially as Some Guy from Haravatat, got along very terribly with almost everyone.
Thus, it can be assumed that the two mix like Pepsi, milk, and ketchup in a blender.
Assumptions are not always correct. This one is lucky enough to be one of those that are.
***
Pepsi, milk, and ketchup do not go well together.
Cyno notes this as he grits his teeth and downs the rest of the concoction - ‘you know full well it’s going to taste like cat puke,’ Tighnari had said, and Cyno replied ‘why would you know what cat puke tastes like?’ - he regrets not listening to Tighnari, and he regrets writing that sentence down in his draft for the first section of his Akademiya Room-Temperature Gossip article. The sentence about Pilkchup (a term coined by himself) was axed immediately when the editor read it, timidly suggesting he keep with the norm and stick to describing the two as ‘oil and water’. Cyno, naturally, still makes a glass of Pilkchup.
***
Our favourite noise machines' story begins on one fateful day in the House of Daena. This encounter, according to multiple sources, is one to be remembered by everyone except the two who were involved.
It starts like this - a blond man sitting at a table, sketching away at his vision for his next assignment. A silver-haired man sitting at a table. Unfortunately for the blond man, the table the silver-haired man sits at is the same one that he is sitting at. Blond man gets angry.
‘This is my table,’ he whisper-yells at silver-haired man.
Silver-haired man scribbles his response onto a piece of scrap paper, and slides it across to blond man.
Blond man reads paper.
Blond man says, ‘Your handwriting is fucking illegible.’
Silver-haired man does not respond. Silver-haired man leaves after half an hour. Blond man leaves too, to chew out silver-haired man.
Both men nearly invoke the ‘Wrath of Minci’, as affectionately named by its unfortunate victims who lived to tell the tale.
***
‘There are more paragraph breaks here than there were acne break-outs on your face in your Akademiya days,’ silver-haired man says to white-haired man.
Silver-haired man invokes the ‘Wrath of Mince’ involving a box of minced meat being thrown at his head by white-haired man. You see, this is a parody on Wrath of Minci, since instead of it being named after the librarian who did it, it’s named after the thing being used to do it-
White-haired man is tuned out by silver-haired man’s headphones.
***
The duo was one to be hated by all who seeked relative quietness. Soon after their meeting, an Akasha program appropriately named ‘Are Kaveh and Al-Haitham Within A One-Mile Radius Of Each Other?’ was added to the system, and was quickly automated to detect any loud conversation involving one of the two’s voices to provide a constant status update. Said program was used widely among Akademiya students who preferred functioning eardrums to plan their routes specifically to avoid the two.
A well-known fact about Kaveh and Al-Haitham is that they are mortal enemies. Kaveh spends most of his free time and not-free time pissing Al-Haitham off, and Al-Haitham does the same but only in his free time. The two, naturally, spend quite some time together.
One incident regarding the two, dubbed the ‘Kaveh is a Medusa kinnie’ incident by its observers, is one where Kaveh tries not to piss Al-Haitham off in order to piss Al-Haitham off. For the entirety of a lunch break Kaveh had eaten his food silently while death-glaring Al-Haitham, and Al-Haitham, said by Kaveh to be ‘playing four-dimensional chess with multiverse time travel’, did nothing but read books and eat. Kaveh, in true Kaveh fashion, got pissed off because Al-Haitham did not get pissed off from Kaveh not trying to piss Al-Haitham off. That unfortunate afternoon, his dear friend Cyno was forced to listen to his ramblings about Al-Haitham.
***
‘He would not beat me in a game of four-dimensional chess with multiverse time travel.’
Kaveh skims over the text, his roommate leaning over to read the same text. ‘You have your own copy, idiot.’
Cyno, sitting across the table from the two, pulls out his very existent four-dimensional chess set with multiverse time travel. ‘Prove it,’ he says, setting up the very existent chess pieces on the very existent chessboard. ‘I have four-dimensional chess right here.’
Kaveh stares at him perplexed. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he questions.
‘It’s a few inches off in the fourth dimension. You see, the thing is, the chess set would now be out of our slice of four-dimensional space and the chess board would seem nonexistent-‘
Cyno earns himself a light slap on the face. ‘I could beat him at regular chess,’ Kaveh says, and Cyno notices a mischievous grin on Al-Haitham’s face.
***
One day, Kaveh turns up to a lecture with a pair of earrings that definitely broke Akademiya uniform rules regarding jewelry, and more rumours begin to spread.
These rumours are, as with most things at the prestigious Akademiya, named after exactly what they are about. Three prominent rumours spawn from this:
- ‘Kaveh’s A Bit, You Know, (frantic pointing at the nearest fruit)’
- ‘Kaveh’s Starting A Rebellion Against Akademiya Rules’
- ‘Kaveh’s Secretly In Love With That Haravatat Guy, Yeah, The One Who Never Talks To Anyone, Yeah The Headphone Guy’
All three rumours are very quickly denied by their subject. In one informal interview, Kaveh states that he ‘fucking loves titties, [he is] all for womens’ rights and all’ and that he ‘is straighter than a strand of spaghetti’, debunking Rumour A theorists.
Rumour B is denied in front of one of the Akademiya staff, in which Kaveh answers that his earrings are ‘to express [his] taste in fashion, and [he] wish[es] no harm on the Akademiya or anyone within it’.
Rumour C is denied most humorously, with Kaveh snorting out his coffee when asked about it by a poor junior. His exact words were ‘no, no, never, I’d never like that guy, hell, he’s the worst person I’ve had the displeasure of meeting, he’s a headache if headaches could speak’.
It is as they say: denial is a river in the desert, you are gay for your ‘worst enemy’.
(An image is attached with a paperclip to the top of the next page. Kaveh is dramatically yelling at what looks to be a briefcase with a face. Text is overlaid on top of both Kaveh and the briefcase: Kaveh, in denial about everything between him and Al-Haitham / Literally everyone else knowing that these bitches gay)
***
Mehrak scans the page in front of her. She seems to chuckle, and then robotically beep out: ‘ THESE BITCHES GAY.’
Kaveh hears this through his couch-nap and immediately springs up and dramatically gasps, ‘Mehrak, do not say that about your parents!’
Al-Haitham continues to have his eyes glued to his book, although not without capturing the scene of Kaveh yelling at a robotic briefcase with a Kamera he had on hand.
Cyno, naturally, asks for a copy of the photo to shitpost with.
***
Some of the hottest gossip sprung at the Akademiya from a night involving a party, a Kaveh, and an Al-Haitham dragged along by a Kaveh. The former, being your average student, was at an at-least-very-drunk stage for the majority of the event, and the latter was immune to social pressure.
At some point, Kaveh had, according to sources, ‘tried to hit on [Al-Haitham] in at least twelve different ways and [Al-Haitham] didn’t realise for the first eleven’, and additionally had also cried to his dear friend Cyno those eleven times that he had ‘no rizz’ and would ‘remain bitchless forever’, before Cyno had slowly disappeared off into the wilderness of a college party.
Another staple of this same party is ‘Spin the Bottle’, during which Kaveh goes off with Al-Haitham as part of the game and comes back proclaiming that he ‘has rizz’ and that ‘the only thing [he] pulls better than bitches is fish on a fishing rod’.
The last remarkable part of this party is when he passed out in a pool and suffered hypothermia. Kaveh does not remember any of this.
***
Dehya, who just so happened to be at Lambad’s at the same time as Cyno, Kaveh, and Al-Haitham, picks up a copy of the magazine from the table.
Her eyes flick through the first parts of the article and slows down at the party. ‘Oh, I remember this,’ she says, stopping to look at the image clipped to the magazine and chuckling, ‘Thanks for not including any detail about the projectile vomits, Cyno.’
Cyno nods in her direction, continuing to think of Kaveh and Al-Haitham’s best moves in their two-dimensional chess game with no multiverses or time travel.
‘I projectile vomited?’ Kaveh asks, eyes also glued to the chessboard.
Dehya hums a small ‘mhm’.
‘Wait. Did you say projectile vomits plural?’
Al-Haitham makes use of Kaveh’s shock-induced blunder. ‘Checkmate.’
Kaveh slams his head against the table.
***
Our story now skips a few years to the present. The hottest rumour involves Honorary Professor Kaveh and Acting Grand Sage Al-Haitham, and Kaveh’s still-questionable choices of jewellery.
Honorary Professor Kaveh’s strange choice involves a ring on a necklace loosely hung around his neck. This ring, a rose gold piece with a green and red gem in the middle, is one that does not directly match any other piece of clothing present in his typical fashion choices, but rather speculated by gossiping students to be more reminiscent of the Acting Grand Sage Al-Haitham.
This rumour is one which is surprisingly well
(The rest of the paragraph is covered up by a folded-up card, kept on the page with a paperclip on the side.)
***
Nahida carefully slides the card out from the paperclip and unfolds it. On it, Al-Haitham’s script-like handwriting reads:
Nahida
You are invited to Kaveh and Al-Haitham’s wedding on June 16th
There’s a bit of formal waffle underneath that which even she, the Goddess of Wisdom, doesn’t bother to read. Nahida hops off her swing and starts walking towards Al-Haitham’s residence, Cyno following close behind.
Cyno knocks twice, and Kaveh almost immediately answers the door.
‘Cyno! Short time no see. How are you doing?’ he greets, seemingly not noticing the child sitting on his shoulders.
Said child reaches a hand out to ruffle Kaveh’s hair. ‘Congratulations, Professor Kaveh!’
Kaveh smiles awkwardly at the child. ‘I don’t think we’ve met. Kaveh, honorary professor at the Akademiya. Pleasure to meet you.’ He reaches a hand out towards her.
She shakes Kaveh’s hand, also introducing herself. ‘Nahida, dendro archon. I’ve heard a lot about you from my baby cousin.’
Kaveh stands there, frozen.
Nahida is lowered to the ground by Cyno and squeezes past Kaveh in the doorway into the house, as Cyno follows her and closes the door. Kaveh continues to stand there frozen and is now staring at the closed door.
Nahida jumps onto the sofa where Al-Haitham sits reading a book, and ruffles his hair too. ‘How’s my favourite baby cousin doing?’ she asks, while standing just high enough above Al-Haitham that he has to move his head up.
‘Nahida, I’m not a baby. I’m twenty-seven.’
Nahida tilts her head in fake confusion. ‘You are?’
Al-Haitham nearly slaps himself in the face, ‘You came here because I am getting married and you wanted to visit. You know I’m not a baby.’
Nahida crosses her arms in mock anger. ‘Don’t talk to your seniors like that!’ She then runs off to give Kaveh a Dendro hat while he’s still frozen at the door, then runs out of the house.
Cyno stands there and snort-laughs when Kaveh finally moves.
‘You’re telling me both of you know God personally?’