Chapter Text
The midday sun in Sumeru was not warm so much as insistent. An ever-present pressure that seeped through layers of clothing and crept along stone corridors like it belonged there. The Akademiya, for all its pretenses of order and prestige, was alive with that heat: steam rising from copper domes, beads of sweat trailing down students' brows as they hurried from hall to hall, books pressed to their chests like sacred texts, voices colliding like birds in a cage.
He stood at the top of a wide stone staircase, a shallow breeze tugging at his sleeves, the hem of his uniform gently fluttering. His blue hair tugged against the breeze, covering one of his blue eyes. Around him, students streamed by in waves, robes trailing, sandals slapping, the ever-present green glow of Akasha Terminals blinking faintly at their ears like watchful eyes. The devices whispered to their wearers in inaudible tones, filling in forgotten names, reciting definitions before questions were even asked, and suggesting arguments before the user could formulate one themselves. He watched them pass without expression, with hands in his pockets and an unbothered posture. One student bumped into him without noticing. Another gave him a puzzled glance, as though surprised by the stillness in the current. He had grown used to that glance.
They all wore the Akasha Terminals like it was a part of them. He had one too, of course. Every student was issued one during orientation: thin as thread, meant to be worn discreetly and constantly. Most students never took it off. Why would they? To access the knowledge of centuries with a thought? To never forget a fact again? It was the cornerstone of their learning, their research, their identity. He kept his in a small, folded cloth in the back of his drawer. He wore it sometimes, when lectures required it or when he needed to submit something formal enough that records needed it, or when it would draw too much attention not to. Even then, it felt foreign, like placing a mask over a wound. The moment it clicked into place, the silence in his mind felt disturbed, intruded, like an uninvited guest decided to make themselves at home. There was no malice to it, but he couldn't shake the feeling that the Akasha System took something, even if it didn't say so, and that was enough. Instead, his only accessory rested around his neck: slim, black, and scratched in places. An old MP3 player. It still worked. He still charged it. The earbuds, tucked into the collar of his uniform, trailed like ivy as he walked. He wasn't playing music now, just listening to the sounds of the Akademiya, like a museum with living exhibits.
The courtyard below bustled. A group of researchers huddled near a shaded garden, gesturing animatedly over a chalkboard filled with equations and diagrams in a script he did not recognize. Two undergrads argued over an old text one of them was certain had been mistranslated from an ancient tongue. A pair of merchant scholars loaded up a wooden cart with stacks of scrolls, shouting to one another about shipping timelines.
He stepped down the stairs at his own pace, feet silent, body weaving between conversations without disrupting them. He didn't carry any books. He didn't need to. Everything he'd read, he remembered. Not perfectly, but well enough. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he glanced once at the statue of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. He tilted his head in observation. Sumeru was loud in a way Iwatodai had never been. Not with voices or noise, but with intellectual hunger. Everyone here was pursuing something: status, discovery, validation. Knowledge was power, and ambition came with academic citations. No one simply existed. They had theses, goals, theorems. They chased meaning through formulas and doctrine.
By contrast, he was content to walk through it.
A bell rang softly through the corridors. Students began to hurry, conversations breaking off mid-sentence, sandals and boots slapping against stone in rhythmic urgency. A flyer drifted across the courtyard in the rush, catching on his ankle before tumbling off. He bent down, picked it up. An advertisement for a faculty-sponsored thesis duel: "Witness brilliance collide in the Great Hall. Fungi Psychology vs. Historical Leyline Consciousness Theory! Guest snacks will be provided."
He stared at it for three seconds before folding it neatly and placing it in a nearby bin. The hallway leading to his lecture hall smelled of sandalwood and aged paper. Light filtered through stained glass windows, painting the walls in soft greens and blues. His footsteps were near soundless as he passed a row of bulletin boards and turned into the lecture hall. Half full already. As always, a few heads turned. He ignored them. Taking his usual seat, he removed one earbud, slid it into his pocket, and leaned back into his chair. His desk was empty, save for a pen and a worn leather notebook.
He waited for the professor to enter and while he waited, he listened to the murmurs of students eager to prove themselves, to the hum of ancient wisdom layered over fresh ambition, to the way the pages turned as if the building itself were breathing.
It didn't matter that he wasn't from here or that his past no longer existed, or even that he was in a world where all laws he was familiar with may as well have been swallowed into silence.
Here, in this strange city in the midst of a forest of truth, Minato Arisato had found something resembling peace.
And for now, that was enough.
The Sumeru Akademiya cafeteria was not glamorous, more like a barely-tamed ecosystem.
Spoons clattered against trays. Students rushed to snatch the last servings of the day's special. Discussions spilled over from classrooms into lunchlines, where 'I disagree with your thesis premise' was just another way to ask someone to pass the salt. And in the very back, through a swinging double-door that barely held up on its hinges, was the staff-access cooking station, where Minato was currently ladling soup into shallow ceramic bowls.
He wore a plain apron, slightly oversized, with a faded cartoon shroomboar on the front that someone had left behind weeks ago. His hair was tucked behind his ears, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the heat of the kitchen condensing lightly on his face. It smelled like saffron, cumin, crushed tomatoes, and stewed lamb – somewhere between dormitory stew and restaurant perfection, and it was not the first time it had come out like that. He just didn't know how. When he'd first offered to help in the kitchens – mostly to get out of doing peer reviews – he'd expected to bumble through like anyone else. But the head chef, a perpetually exhausted woman named Laleh, had stepped back after watching him stir one pot and asked,
"...You've done this before?"
He had not. On his life, he really had not. It was bizarre. He did not follow recipes. He did not taste the broth midway. He just... knew when to add the turmeric. When to lower the flame. When to take the pot off the heat. Like something whispered in his ear, but not the Akasha. Not knowledge. Not thought. A timing that came from somewhere deeper than memory. Something… meta, so to speak.
He stirred the ladle once more, steam coiling upward, and glanced at the wall-clock. Three. Two. One. He turned off the heat and poured out a serving. Perfectly golden. The tired woman passed behind him, paused, and squinted at the color.
"You know I hate this, right?" Minato raised an eyebrow. "I've been cooking here twelve years. You've been here... what, four months? And people keep requesting your soup. It's offensive."
He blinked and nodded solemnly.
She sighed. "Fine. You're on serving duty today. Try not to upset the grant applicants again."
He did not respond, just picked up the trays and stepped into the serving line.
…
The cafeteria buzzed like a hive, especially around mid-lunch. People from every Darshan – Amurta, Haravatat, Spantamad, Vahumana, Kshahrewar, and Rtawahist – all sat in pockets, some openly ignoring one another, others deep in cross-disciplinary flame wars.
Minato approached a corner booth after serving, tray in hand, earbuds half-dangling, and took a seat against the cafeteria walls.
He spooned into the soup.
It was good. Better than he expected, actually. A soft balance of warmth and umami, with a mild burn at the end that lingered just long enough to remind him it was real. He did not smile proudly, but he did take another bite.
Across from him, a table of four students had entered the critical phase of a shouting match.
"You can't seriously believe sentient fungi can possess emotions!"
"They exhibit stress responses and social clustering! That's baseline emotive function! Read Saini et al., year 415!"
"Correlation isn't cognition! At best, it's mimicry. Mi-mic-ry! That's not sentience!"
"Oh, please, says the guy whose grant pitch was about 'Aesthetic Leyline Disruption in Pre-Cataclysm Musical Artifacts.'"
"That was cultural resonance theory!"
Minato kept eating.
Their voices passed over him like wind through reeds. He didn't engage, didn't flinch when one of them slammed the table hard enough to shake the pepper shakers.
Instead, he pulled a pen from his pocket and jotted something in the corner of his napkin.
'Aesthetic Leyline Disruption' could be a band name.
He folded it and tucked it into his sleeve.
One of the students stood up abruptly, muttered something about "intellectual dishonesty," and stormed out. Another, a girl with copper glasses and a Spantamad crest, slumped over the table and groaned, "This place is going to kill me before I get tenure."
Minato finished his soup and pulled one earbud in. The soft hum of his MP3 player buzzed to life. Faint, haunting piano layered under rain-like percussion. Not unlike the weather he used to watch from dorm windows. Just, back when everything had felt like it was just beginning.
Now, things just were. No highs. No tragedies. Just the soft rhythm of another day.
He stood, tray in hand, and carried it back to the kitchen. Laleh greeted him with a frown that almost passed for approval.
"They liked the soup," she muttered.
He gave her a small bow. Not mockingly, just polite. He took off his apron, folded it neatly, and returned to the cafeteria entrance where his shoulder bag waited.
There was still time before the next lecture. Enough time to sit under the main dome and pretend to read, or maybe head to the east balcony where pigeons gathered in the shade. But instead, he lingered by the bulletin board near the dining hall exit.
New grant flyers were posted. The words swam before his eyes: quantum cognition studies, geo-alchemical fission theory, leyline dream mapping. He wondered idly, if he submitted a proposal on "The Emotional Resonance of Regional Cooking Patterns in Post-Cataclysm Societies," if anyone would blink.
Probably not.
He left. Tomorrow, he might try cooking rice with orange zest and basil. He didn't know why, It just sounded right.
…
The lecture hall was cavernous in the way only old institutions could justify. Its high domed ceiling crisscrossed with bronze fixtures and faint traces of ivy that had long since been removed, though their ghostly impressions still clung to the arches like memories. The stone steps were worn smooth by decades of footsteps, and the seats, while refurbished often, creaked all the same when students settled into them with a familiar mix of fatigue and anticipation.
Minato took his usual place in the third row from the back, left side, tucked into the corner beneath a tall slit-window that let in a shaft of filtered afternoon light. His desk particularly bore no projection interface, no voice recorder, no pads for the Akasha Terminal to sync to, just a leather-bound journal scuffed along the corners and a pen. He clicked it once, turned to a blank page, and waited. Around him, the quiet sound of students syncing their Terminals filled the room with a chorus of light clicks and digital chimes. Thin green tendrils of code shimmered briefly over their ears before fading into soft pulses, always watching and listening. Heads nodded in recognition of lectures that hadn't yet begun. Summaries were preloaded. Questions predicted.
He opened his journal and wrote: 'Week 12: Seminar on Applied Metaphysics and Societal Perception' The professor entered moments later, an older scholar from the Haravatat Darshan with a flowing pale green robe and a voice like a broom sweeping through sand. She placed her datapad on the lectern, activated the surrounding glyphs, and began to speak without preamble.
"Today's focus," she began, "will be the shifting perception of metaphysical structures in the post-Archon establishment era, specifically how emotional filters shape individual interpretation on divine nature."
A dozen heads were nodding before she finished the sentence. Minato's pen moved across the paper with precision. He did not write down her opening quote – something flowery about the inheritance of gods – but he did record her breakdown of emotion as epistemic lensing. That was new. She backed it with citations from two lesser-known pre-Cataclysm scrolls, which he underlined. The lecture continued, branching into a discussion of bias inheritance models and divine moral artifacts. Students began silently updating their notes via mental interface. Some barely looked up. Others whispered side-thoughts into the air, letting their Akasha Terminals index them for later refinement.He just kept writing, pen scratching quietly against the page as he transcribed a passage on recursive empathy frameworks. He skipped a diagram explanation entirely; it was redundant if you'd seen it once before. His lines were neat, narrow, but far from sterile. His notes read like a conversation he was having with the lecture, not a copy of it. Distinct enough that he understood what it was about, entirely rubbish to those without context.
Then came the tangent. The professor, midway through describing divine-symbol recontextualization during early Archon transitions, paused. Then she stepped away from the lectern entirely and said,
"On that note, let's talk about cognitive truth fracturing."
He didn't stop writing, but he didn't write that down. It was not part of the lecture plan, he knew instinctively. This was one of those moments when the professor got too swept up in a side-theory and decided to ride it into abstraction. The class leaned forward. Some Akasha Terminals blinked to life, automatically tagging the new topic and appending footnotes from archived journals.He tapped the side of his pen once. Then again. He listened. The idea was interesting: that the closer one tries to define an absolute truth, the more fragile that truth becomes in cognitive space. That repeated observation reshapes the observed. That truth, in some metaphysical sense, wanted to evade definition.
Interesting, yes. Relevant? No.
He let the theory drift over him like water. A wave worth watching, but not worth catching. Instead, he glanced sideways at the window. A canary had landed on the sill outside, feathers puffed against the warmth. Its eyes met his for a moment. For a moment, its eyes seemed to flicker with lucidity, but then returned to its rest. A trick of the light? He looked back down and pen resumed writing, carefully continuing where the lecture had left off before the tangent began. As the professor spiraled into metaphoric interpretations and began invoking the idea of "truth behaving like a borrowed body," a few students near the front eagerly raised their hands. Not just for questions, just to extend the metaphor, to show they were riding the same wave.
He wrote a single line in the margin of his journal: The louder the crowd, the easier it is to disappear inside it.
No one called on him. No one ever did. He preferred it that way. After forty minutes, the lecture realigned. The professor circled back to her original topic, collecting the scattered threads and retying them into a somewhat organized close. A few students took off their Terminals with the relief of someone removing a tight-fitting glove. Others kept theirs on, unaware of the transition at all. Minato closed the journal. A rustling chorus of feet and robes signaled the end of the class. Students filed out in conversation clusters. Some debated the truth fracturing tangent with wide eyes and too much caffeine in their veins. One pair argued about whether recursive empathy contradicted or reinforced their own research on memory constructs.
He stepped quietly into the aisle, shoulder bag at his side, and walked toward the exit. His next class was not for another hour.
…
Minato was on his way to the central archive hall, a leisurely walk timed perfectly between lectures. The stone corridors were mostly empty this time of day, sunlight dripping in slanted beams through the latticed ceiling. It was warm, but not uncomfortable. A rare kind of silence hung in the air – the Akademiya between debates, a city of scholars catching its breath.
And then a body flew past him.
It happened just to the right of his shoulder, close enough that the scholar's left foot skimmed his coat's hem before the rest of him slammed into a stack of flyers posted to a nearby column with a thwack.
The man groaned. Then slumped.
Minato paused not in surprise, more in consideration.
He looked down at the crumpled scholar, who clutched his ribs with the solemnity of someone contemplating a minor life decision. The man blinked up at Minato once, opened his mouth as if to say something, then groaned again and rolled onto his side.
Minato nodded slightly. He'll live.
A yell drew his attention forward.
Two scholars, one thin and wiry with frizzled hair, the other stout with an elaborate beard that trembled when he shouted, stood nose-to-nose in front of the Sumeru Akademiya Grant Allocation Board.
Dozens of flyers had been ripped from their push-pins. Two chairs had been knocked over. A student assistant crouched under a nearby desk, clutching a clipboard like a shield.
"You sabotaged my proposal, Tawan!" The bearded scholar screamed, finger jabbing toward the other's face like a wand readying a curse. "You moved my submission slot by ten minutes! That's submission tampering!"
"I did not!" The wiry man snapped back, voice high with indignation. "Your application was clearly derivative of last cycle's 'Mycelial Cognition Interface' proposal! It would've been rejected on principle!"
"I've been researching that interface for six years, you sanctimonious inkblot!"
"You plagiarized your own student!"
"Lies and slanders! I raised that student!"
Minato blinked as one of them threw a punch. It missed. The return slap did not. Within seconds, the two men were fully engaged. Sloppy, awkward, loud. Arms flailed. Robes tangled. A stack of evaluation forms fluttered into the air like snow. One of the scholars slipped on a dropped quill and hit the ground with a yelp. The other dove after him with all the grace of a falling bookshelf.
He did not bother to intervene. No one else did, either. A pair of junior researchers stood a few meters away, sipping tea and watching with mild interest. One took a bite into a pastry. "This is better than yesterday's botany dispute," he murmured.
"Mm," the other agreed. "More kinetic tension. Though less legal risk."
He walked closer to the pair, slow and deliberate, hands in his pockets. He stopped about three paces from the brawl, just far enough to avoid catching a stray elbow. The man on the ground was trying to pin the other with what resembled a very poor imitation of a chokehold. The other kicked at his shin, then bit his robe, and both rolled toward the leg of the grant board.
It was... passionate. Unskilled, but deeply emotional. Minato watched them tumble again, heads knocking together with a muted clonk. His head tilted slightly.
If they had dedicated themselves to martial theory instead of theoretical thaumaturgy, they could've invented an entire branch of jujitsu by now.
He didn't write it down, But the thought pleased him.
Eventually, two Matras arrived. Not in a rush, just walking with the weary gait of people who'd seen this sort of thing more often than policy allowed them to admit. One of them sighed as he pulled out a scroll of disciplinary citations.
"Dr. Izat," the Matra said, kneeling beside the bearded man. "That's three infractions this month."
"I'm defending my professional integrity!" Izat wheezed, one sandal now fully missing.
The other Matra helped the wiry scholar to his feet. "Dr. Tawan, would you like to press charges?"
Tawan spat out a bit of robe thread. "Not unless I can press it into a brick and throw it."
"Noted and denied."
As the two combatants were gently escorted away – still grumbling, robes torn, hair wild – Minato stepped up to the now mostly-empty grant board. Many of the postings were half-ripped or smeared with what might've been egg curry. He scanned the remaining flyers. One caught his eye:
"Proposal Submissions for Cross-Regional Studies – OPEN" We are especially interested in submissions that blend culinary anthropology, musical ritual, and socio-legal performativity. Deadline: Ongoing.
Minato considered it. He could say something about the tonal cadence of Sumeru vs. Liyue street vendors. Or compare how different cultures mourn over soup. Or just write a paragraph about dumplings and call it "post-ritual memory transference."
He tore off the bottom tab with the submission number and slid it into his sleeve.
Then, as if nothing had happened, he turned and walked away.
Behind him, the janitor arrived to sweep up a discarded grant folder.
"Same time tomorrow?" One of the tea-drinkers asked the other.
"Oh, definitely."
The stone of the rooftop was still warm beneath him. It radiated a soft heat from the afternoon sun that had baked it for hours, as if holding onto the light just a little longer before letting the evening take over.
Minato sat cross-legged near the edge, back against one of the sculpted columns that lined the Akademiya's upper library terrace. He had come here without really thinking about it, as he often did when the halls became too noisy, or when class ended early and the sky looked particularly worth watching. Above him, the soft rustle of leaves stirred on the high-growing vines that had found their way up the sandstone walls. Far below, he could faintly hear the echo of sandals on stairs, the muted call of a street merchant in the Grand Bazaar, the occasional clatter of carts and crates.
He adjusted the wire running from his collar and slipped the second earbud in, and pressed a worn groove on the surface of the MP3 player.
A familiar track began. 'Memories of You.' The notes were gentle. Familiar. Nostalgic. It settled into him like the breath between two thoughts.
He looked out across the city. The sun was low now, a molten orange disc hovering just above the canopy of the distant forest, its light fractured by the sharp outline of the Akademiya's towers and the surrounding rooftops. The forest beyond Sumeru was a rich, endless green, stretching out toward the horizon like the curve of an ocean made of leaves. The gold touched everything: window panes, stone balustrades, his sleeves. His eyes remained half-lidded, but attentive. He was not tired. Just… still.
The MP3 player hummed quietly in his pocket, unchanged after all this time. He didn't understand how it had survived the transition between worlds. How its battery still charged properly. How it had not corroded, glitched, or vanished. The earbuds had frayed once. He'd fixed them with borrowed tools and a bit of focus. The player itself had been dropped at least twice. Once, into his own soup as he was cooking. And yet, it still worked. It still played the same song, as though this small device – more than anything else – refused to forget what had come before.
He didn't smile, but he did close his eyes. The melody rose then dipped into a minor key. His thoughts moved slowly, shifting like clouds.
He wondered, briefly, about SEES. He wondered if they were alright. If Junpei still cracked jokes in places he shouldn't. If Yukari still tried to act tougher than she felt. If Akihiko found something worth punching that wasn't just a shadow. If Mitsuru ever let herself rest. If Fuuka still brewed tea too strong and didn't know why. If Aigis still tried to understand what it meant to feel. He wondered if Ken had grown taller. If Koromaru had stopped growling at birds.
But most of all, he wondered if any of them still remembered him: the version of him that had smiled, nodded, said little but meant everything.
He didn't know.
He couldn't know.
He would never know, most likely.
But perhaps he didn't need to.
Minato leaned his head back against the column and let the music play through.
The sun was halfway gone now. A long shadow stretched across the rooftop, and the stone beneath him began to cool. His eyes drifted open just long enough to watch a canary land near the edge of the terrace. The same canary that had perched itself near the windowsill in the classroom. It looked at him, and he looked back. The MP3 clicked softly, track ending. He let it repeat.
Maybe they were doing well. Maybe they had moved on. Maybe they were living full lives, finishing degrees, finding places to belong, falling in and out of love, doing all the things they once thought they wouldn't have time for.
He hoped so.
In his own way, he was living too.
He pressed the edge of the earbud a little deeper and pulled his knees up to his chest.
The sun disappeared entirely behind the trees.