Chapter Text
The university lecture hall, as Anaxa often liked to remark to himself, smelled faintly of warm printer toner. The windows were too high to look out of meaningfully, and the chalkboards were perpetually stained with the ghosts of semesters past.
Today, he stood at the front of the room, clad in one of his usual loose-knit cardigans in a shade that might’ve once been considered a nice brown before years of chalk dust gave it character. He spoke to a room of philosophy students who had yet to understand that caffeine was no substitute for curiosity.
“The Nousporist argument,” he said, as if he hadn’t already repeated it forty times that term, “is not about beginnings in the empirical sense. It is about the primacy of thought. The supremacy of the mind not over matter, but before it. The world, students, is far too cluttered and filled with distraction. Nousporism—” he paused to sip from a chipped porcelain cup of truly terrible university coffee, “—is the essence of everything. We are all composed of the same essential substance. The same primordial matter shaped only by the presence of nous, mind. It is what elevates the living from the inert, the thinking from the merely existing.”
He paused, clasped his hands behind his back, and gave the room a slow, judging glance. The kind of sweep that made several students instinctively sit straighter.
“Yet, somehow, despite this shared composition and divine spark... I can still feel several of you silently judging me for not using slides.”
There was a mild shuffling of embarrassment in the back row, and Anaxa smiled faintly. It never failed to satisfy. He didn’t use PowerPoint; technology, in his opinion, diluted thought. And in any case, no collection of neatly arranged bullet points had ever been enough to stop him from veering into his inevitable tangents. He paced, slowly, transferring a piece of chalk between his fingers like a rosary of derision.
“To remove the eye does not remove sight. But to remove the mind, even with eyes wide open, is to go blind entirely,” he quoted, drawing the line slowly on the chalkboard like it meant something sacred. It did, to him. “That is from me.”
From the front row, a small voice piped up, light and lilting.
“Um, Professor?” Hyacine, his long-suffering teaching assistant, had lifted her hand halfway before remembering she didn’t actually need to in his class. She dropped it sheepishly, cheeks already pink. “This is really lovely, but… isn’t this supposed to be a lecture on Kant?”
She said it not as a challenge, but with the sincerity of someone who’d likely spent the night carefully reviewing his schedule and lesson plans, the very ones he deviated from without fail every single time.
Anaxa turned, because, well, she was quite correct.
The chalk in his hand paused mid-air, like a conductor’s baton frozen before the final movement. He stared at her, not in annoyance, but because Hyacine had an uncanny way of reminding him what his lectures were actually supposed to be about. And by staring at her long enough, he likely convinced himself he could shirk the responsibility of acknowledging yet another derailment into his theories on the soul.
Hyacine just stared back, as she always did, all bright eyes and an irresistible smile. Her notebook was filled with pastel-highlighted tabs and meticulous doodles in the margins. One corner featured a pegasus wearing a graduation cap.
With slow ceremony, he lifted a single finger to his lips.
“Hyacine,” he said gently, gravely, “you do not interrupt a spell to ask who cast it.”
He let the moment linger like incense smoke curling through a chapel. A few students chuckled; those who didn’t, wrote it down like a quote they’d pretend to understand.
And then, with the sort of finality usually reserved for dropping the mic or slamming a leather-bound tome shut, he added, “See you all next week.”
Half the class looked terrified. The other half looked intrigued. That was usually how he liked it. Students filtered out in murmurs, and Anaxa gathered his notes, scraps of papers, usually, and prepared his apology for Hyacine before she skipped up to his desk.
“You were quite right,” Anaxa began. He shuffled his papers into a neat pile, though the movement itself betrayed his actual unwillingness to face her properly. “I do appreciate the reminder. Now then, what’s next week’s topic?”
Hyacine didn’t even need to glance at her neatly organised notebook or the stack of folders in front of her. She simply beamed, and replied without missing a beat. “Oh! We’re still on ethical philosophy! I remember because I was just thinking about how I’ve heard your explanation of Nousporism three times this month, and that’s actually less than usual.”
Anaxa felt a peculiar sense of clarity. Though it was true that, explaining his work, his theories, gave him a certain thrill. His words always seemed to flow more freely when he was diving into the intricacies of his own theory. And though he might have gone off topic, it was always because he was genuinely interested in sharing his ideas. Perhaps that was the real reason his lectures never followed the script.
“A reality check, then,” he murmured. “Thank you, Hyacine, for your... refreshing perspective.” Anaxa turned back to the board, his voice as dry as ever. “I’ll have to find a way to make it more... interesting next time.”
There was a disapproving hum, and with a dramatic flourish, Hyacine lifted a hand like she was about to recite a Shakespearean monologue, and mimicked his usual tone, “It is what elevates the living from the inert, the thinking from the merely existing.”
Anaxa had turned enough to catch her gesticulating wildly as she spoke, clearly pleased with her impersonation. “I’ve memorised that one line,” she said, stooping her head down into a bow. “I think you deliver it well, Professor!”
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, mild amusement in his face. She is an odd girl, he thought, but undeniably bright. In fact, she was a bit like sunshine on a cold day; warm, unexpected, and somehow able to penetrate the chill of his more cynical moods.
“Oh, and just so you know, I’ll be off next month,” she added, her tone still light and carefree. “But if you ever want to have a chat, I’d be happy to!”
She grinned as she gathered her things, her enthusiasm undeterred by the subtle confusion in Anaxa’s expression. He allowed himself a brief chuckle, though he wouldn’t admit it aloud. Only Hyacine could make everything sound so... pleasant.
“Enjoy your break from this lecture hall,” Anaxa said. “Though, I’m certain it will be hard to find a more elevated environment.”
Hyacine laughed, unfazed, and gave a playful wave. “Oh, I will. See you!”
With that, she dashed out the door, leaving Anaxa standing there, both slightly bemused and, like always, perhaps a little endeared by the light she shone on his particularly drab day. His gaze lingered on the empty space where she had stood, before he adjusted his posture and glanced at the clock.
It was time to return to the bookstore.
His pride, which Anaxa had spent years quietly establishing, was not particularly grand, nor did it strive to be. It was small, intimate, meant for those who sought to truly read, not simply to decorate a shelf. Reviews were mixed at best. Local newspapers occasionally described the atmosphere as ‘oddly dense’ or ‘unwelcoming,’ and it was often implied, with a touch too much honesty, that Anaxa himself had a talent for deterring customers with a little more than his tone. And yet, it remained open. Thrived, even, mostly thanks to generous university funding tied to Anaxa’s research, which baffled most and pleased him deeply.
The walk back to the store, on top was his home, was half an hour at most. Anaxa, however, had never learned to drive. Not out of principle, necessarily, but because those hours could be better spent on writing. But today the city was grey with the promise of rain, clouds sagging low like wet laundry. Traffic hummed like a restless tide, and Anaxa, with great reluctance and a sour expression, found himself on a bus, clutching his satchel like it might leap out the window at any moment.
He did not like buses. Far too much humanity in one place. And the advertisements offended him.
Above the window, one stretched in glossy defiance of good taste: a luxury clothing brand featuring a woman wrapped in the colour of unripe fruit, staring into the void like she’d just discovered ennui. ‘Wear Meaning,’ it read. If fabric now held existential weight, he supposed his threadbare scarf made him a prophet.
Thankfully, as he got inside The Grove, time slowed to a crawl, as it always did.
His shop smelled of old paper, cracked leather, and a long-burning earthy candle. Light filtered in through the front windows like it had passed through several centuries first. Books were stacked in cautious towers along the aisles, some leaning with the wisdom of age, others threatening collapse.
His afternoons often consisted of just this. Castorice, one of his former students, often helped him run the shop on days he was busy. But today it was just Anaxa stood behind the counter, a book open in his hand, spine crumbling, annotations in the margins more interesting than the text itself. He wasn’t reading so much as contemplating the idea of reading, which, he would argue, was a more philosophical pursuit anyway.
And then the bell above the door chimed.
A woman stood framed in the doorway as though the shop itself hadn’t yet decided whether to admit her. She was draped in ivory, a long coat with no visible fastenings, gloves the color of sun-bleached parchment, and sunglasses large enough to border on ridiculous.
Anaxa knew trouble when he saw it. Years of ducking department mixers and deflecting overly clever undergraduates had refined his instincts into something near-clairvoyant. And this woman, this poised disruption, was precisely the kind of anomaly he built barricades of books to avoid.
She moved into the shop without a word, her footsteps quiet but precise, like she’d measured each creaking floorboard in her mind beforehand. Anaxa didn’t speak. She walked past a stack of untranslated papers on metaphysics without blinking. Paused at a display of forgotten poets. Ran one gloved finger along the spines, not enough to feel the texture, just enough to suggest she could if she wanted to.
Anaxa’s breath caught in his throat, turning to lead somewhere below his ribs.
That was Aglaea. It was not a common name. Not a forgettable one either.
It was a name with the weight of adolescent loathing behind it. The very same girl from school, a year his senior, though she often made it feel like centuries, whose presence had haunted the academic rankings like a recurring plague. Aglaea, who always topped every board, every exam, every competition. Aglaea, who wore a different pair of heels to every exam and treated every excellence award like it was a gold sticker.
And what made it unbearable, what truly ignited the ire Anaxa had buried beneath years of obscure philosophy and dry paperbacks, was that she hardly studied. He knew this, not because he was interested, of course not, but because she made a point of saying so while stretching out in the courtyard sun, books unopened beside her, as if brilliance were simply something she inhaled with the morning breeze.
She was far too intelligent for her own good, and yet absurdly, almost obsessively, devoted to fashion. Anaxa, in what he had then considered acts of mercy, used to tell her how much of a waste it was. “You could be doing so much more,” he would say, with all the sharpness of teenage arrogance masquerading as wisdom. He was certain he’d been right. And more certain she’d never listened.
He’d hated that. Hated the way her lips curved just so when her name was announced. Hated that it wasn’t smugness, it was certainty. The sort of certainty Anaxa had only ever found in arguments with himself.
Yet here she was, in his bookshop of all places, dressed like the epilogue of a Parisian ghost story.
“Why do you still stare, Anaxagoras?”
He cleared his throat.
“And why do you haunt me?” Anaxa replied, the words catching awkwardly in his mouth, like he was sixteen again, trying to win an argument he didn’t start.
She turned, and even behind the sunglasses, he could feel her looking at him. Assessing and amused. “Keep your composure,” she said with her faint accent. “I’m only looking.”
Anaxa snapped his book shut. Page 87. What a terrible number to stop on. He’ll remember that; this interruption his reading time, and he’ll remember this terrible feeling after such quick dismissal of his temper.
“What brings you to my corner of the city, Aglaea? This side of town is far removed from your usual haunts. Perhaps you’ve miscalculated the distance?”
“Miscalculated? Hardly. I find it quite fitting, in fact, that a philosopher such as yourself has confined himself to a place so devoid of... proper form.” Her eyes swept over the cluttered shelves, the stacks of books, and the dim lighting. “It speaks volumes of you, Anaxagoras. A mind that dares to challenge yet hides in a space such as this.”
Anaxa hadn’t intended to approach her like a schoolboy squaring up to his old rival, but somehow he crossed the space between them in moments. Truly, that hadn’t been the plan.
He had no interest in what perfume she wore (jasmine, with something colder beneath), or why her coat never creased when she moved. He just thought, perhaps, that his contempt would be better delivered within a closer distance.
“I don’t recall asking for your assessment.”
Aglaea didn’t flinch. She never did. Instead, a smile curled at the corner of her lips.
“No,” she said. “But then, you never did appreciate unsolicited truths. Its what made our debates so delightfully exhausting.”
She adjusted her sunglasses ever so slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. The gesture was maddeningly elegant. “Besides, I did not come here to reminisce with you. Though I see little has changed.”
Anaxa’s brow twitched. “You say that as if you expect me to be thrilled about your return.”
“Oh, not thrilled,” Aglaea said lightly, strolling past a portrait of Spinoza. “Merely civilised. I thought your kind prided themselves on sensible detachment.”
“I’ve been perfectly civil.”
Anaxa shrugged with exaggerated indifference, the kind that practically begged to be contradicted, shoulders rising in mock surrender, as if to say, Who, me? Affected? Never. It was the sort of gesture that might’ve worked, had he not already scowled through half the conversation.
“Mmm,” Aglaea murmured, pausing beside a shelf titled The Mind and Its Machinery. “I can feel you are vibrating with disdain. You’ve missed me.”
Anaxa’s scoff was instant. “I would sooner lecture a room full of first-years on Plato’s cave allegory for the fifth time this week.”
His hands had found their way to his hips, stern, professorial, and entirely too theatrical.
“And yet,” Aglaea said, plucking a book off the shelf and skimming the back cover, “you crossed the room like it was a battlefield.”
He stared at her, somewhere between insulted and… alarmingly unsure. It was only then, in the lull between the biting retort and expected reply, that he truly saw her.
Not just the gaudy attire, no, the details that hadn’t changed over the years were suddenly striking in their persistence. Her hair was still meticulously kept, not a strand out of place. The faintest tilt of her chin was familiar too, a practiced poise that always made her seem taller.
She didn’t meet his gaze. Not really. Those terrible sunglasses remained in place, a sleek barrier between thought and recognition. A shield, a refusal, almost hilariously typical.
Aglaea slipped the book back into place, perfectly aligned with the others. “You should thank me. Your blood pressure’s clearly benefited from the stimulation.”
Anaxa exhaled sharply through his nose, arms folding with a crackle of his thick coat. “Get to the point, Aglaea. I know you don’t hover out of sentiment.”
Aglaea looked delighted by his impatience, as though it were the exact note of music she’d hoped to strike. “Very well,” she said, tapping a gloved finger against her lips once, twice. “I’ve purchased the lot next door.”
Silence fell in the space between them like a guillotine.
Anaxa blinked. “The empty lot?”
“No, the other one floating in the astral plane. Yes, the empty lot,” she replied, her tone featherlight. “I thought it could use some elegance, and thread. Perhaps a little gold.”
He stared at her, trying to decide if this was some elaborate joke crafted just to upend the rest of his week. “You’re opening a boutique next to my bookstore?”
Anaxa couldn’t quite believe his own words. He wanted to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat.
“A studio,” she corrected, turning away from him toward the door, as if the conversation were already concluded. “Amphoreus Atelier. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”
He followed her gaze through the front window. The cursed lot, half gravel, half weeds, all bad history. Now, soon to be adorned with ribbons and overpriced drapery.
“Why here?” he asked, already knowing he’d hate the answer.
Aglaea smiled. “You walked up to me to prove a point, Anaxagoras. Clearly, you like proximity more than you’d admit.” She reached for the door, then paused. “Besides, I find the neighbourhood… intellectually curious.”
The bell above the door chimed as it swung shut behind her, leaving him standing in a silence full of threats. This was, by all measures, Anaxa’s worst nightmare, materialised in silk and sunglasses.
Not war, not fire, not the collapse of rational inquiry itself, but her, setting up shop beside his haven of thought and dust. A walking contradiction, armed with charm and scissors, now legally tethered to the property line of his peace.
He had feared city council interference, funding cuts, perhaps even a roof leak.
But this? This was divine punishment hidden as commerce.
Anaxagoras’ Journal
April. Grey. A betrayal of an otherwise predictable afternoon.I have always believed that certain kinds of people should come with warnings. Not the obvious sort, no flashing signs or melodrama, just a discreet note somewhere, perhaps pinned to their coat. Caution: disrupts peace, immune to social nuance. And there is a particular kind of arrogance in the way such people enter a room. Not loudly, not with spectacle, but with a quiet certainty that the space was waiting for them.
Today, Aglaea, the perfect description of such, entered my bookshop.
She wore white. After all these years, she is still annoying. The impractical kind of white that dares public transportation to touch it. Sunglasses indoors, naturally, because nothing says “I’m above this plane of existence” quite like shielding oneself from 40-watt bulbs and dusty window glare.
She did not engage in pleasantries, which, I suppose, was her only redeeming act. She didn’t even hesitate at the door, but walked in like she’d been here before in a dream and was mildly disappointed to find it smaller. She perused, with deliberation, and to my irritation.
I’ve cultivated my shop to repel this sort of thing, people with curated aesthetics and the expressionless grace of undertakers. I’ve truly gone to great lengths to keep the lot next door empty. I tell ghost stories about the lot to keep fools from settling. I’ve fabricated infestations. Curses. Bureaucratic nightmares. All of them beautifully, carefully constructed.
Aglaea ignored them all, evidently. Bought the lot anyway, and smiled. In which case, she is something far worse than a fool.
She had the gall to imply silent judgement, as though she were the victim of my scrutiny, and not the trespasser in my long-held peace. Aglaea is, regrettably, not wrong. But the correct response to being silently judged is shame and retreat. Not vague poetry and shop acquisition.
Nor am I especially fond of her choice of location, though, in true Aglaea fashion, she had the audacity to suggest it was some deep-seated yearning of mine. A return to our school days, I would assume. Locker to locker then, shop to shop now. How poetic. How utterly insufferable.
As if I’d ever be so soppy. Don’t make me laugh.
And this wretched woman, I predict to be her usual cursed combination. One that invites fascination the way a wound invites infection. I feel, strongly, that she is going to be the death of my routine, inviting in our past that I would much rather keep buried. If my theories could not get worse, I further suspect she’ll be very good at whatever she’s doing over there. The kind of good that draws attention, noise, conversation, and people who linger.
If she returns to my shop, I shall be prepared. I will not offer tea. I will not ask questions. She will build her ugly little tailor shop next to me, despite my efforts, despite the quiet I have protected. And I will hear her hammering, even when she is not here.
I must tell Castorice of this woman’s actions. Perhaps I shall brief her on my plan in her shift tomorrow.
I do not wish to write of Aglaea again. I suspect I will.