Chapter Text
Dear Kaveh,
Logically, this is an exercise in futility. You are not here to read this, and the dead do not keep up with correspondence.
Yet, the house is too quiet. I caught myself setting two plates at dinner this evening, and instead of admitting to a lapse in concentration, I decided to write to you instead. It seemed the lesser of two absurdities.
Your drafting table is exactly as you left it. The ink has dried out, and the blueprint for your latest project is still pinned to the wood, corners curling slightly in the humidity. I have half a mind to throw it away just to rid the room of clutter, but I suppose I will leave it for now.
You always accused me of having no heart, Kaveh. I wonder what brilliant, dramatic critique you would have for me now, seeing me sit at my desk, wasting perfectly good parchment on a ghost.
- Alhaitham
Alhaitham sets the pen down. The soft click of the polished metal meeting the desk is the loudest sound in the room, vibrating through the heavy silence of the empty house. He closes his eyes, but the dark behind his eyelids offers no comfort—only a sharper, more vivid mental image of the dust slowly settling on Kaveh’s untouched things.
He doesn’t look back down at the paper. To look at it would be to acknowledge the raw, uncharacteristic desperation that drove him to pick up the pen in the first place. Instead, his gaze drifts toward the high window, watching the pale Sumeru moonlight cut stark, geometric shadows across the floorboards.
Grief, he decides, is not an emotion. It is a physical weight, an inefficiency in his daily routine that he cannot optimize away or resolve through rigorous study. He still wakes up at the same exact hour every morning. He still walks the familiar, stone-paved paths to the Akademiya, carries out his duties as Scribe, and reads his books until the candles burn low. But the internal rhythm is entirely off. Every action feels like a heavy, calculated imitation of life. He copes the only way he knows how: by turning the absence into a study of facts, cataloging the silence as if understanding its precise dimensions could somehow lessen its gravity.
He stands up from his desk, the sharp scrape of the chair legs against the floor cutting through the stillness like an accusation. The house has always been an architectural marvel of space, light, and symmetry, things Kaveh used to praise and critique in the very same breath. Lately, however, the walls only serve to echo Alhaitham’s own footsteps back to him, magnifying the lack of another voice.
Walking out into the dimly lit hallway, Alhaitham pauses by the front door. On the small wooden ledge sits the brass key to the house, attached to its familiar lion keychain—the symbol of Kaveh’s darshan, Ksharewar. It hasn’t been moved in weeks. He reaches out, his fingers brushing the cold, textured metal, before pulling his hand back and balling it into a loose fist in his pocket.
He wanders into the kitchen, driven by habit rather than actual hunger or thirst. The tea leaves sit in their ceramic container, untouched. The routine of boiling water, of letting the leaves steep until the aroma filled the corridor, used to serve as the background hum to Kaveh’s morning complaints—usually about a missed deadline, a difficult client, or Alhaitham’s choice of reading material at the breakfast table. Now, Alhaitham simply pours himself a glass of water, drinking it as he stares into the dark, motionless living room.
There is no logical framework for this kind of missing. Language, with all its vast vocabulary and intricate grammar, fails to capture the exact dimensions of a void left by a person who took up so much space. Kaveh was loud, disorganized, and entirely too bright for a house designed for quiet contemplation. Yet, the absolute quiet Alhaitham always fought for now feels less like peace and more like an intellectual defeat.
He walks back to his study, picking up the single piece of parchment. He folds it carefully, twice, creasing the edges with a sharp, precise flick of his thumb until the corners are perfectly aligned. He doesn’t burn it, and he doesn’t throw it away.
Instead, he opens the bottom drawer of his desk, the one that holds old, outdated Akademiya records and architectural tax codes, and slides the letter inside, hidden safely beneath a heavy stack of historical texts.
Tomorrow, he will wake up, put on his earpieces to block out the noise of Sumeru City, and go to work. But tonight, he sits back down at his desk, pulls out a fresh sheet of paper, and simply stares at the blank space, wondering what he should write next.