It was a hindrance, [ alhaitham echoes, repeating the very factual things that kaveh has just stated. ] Now you certainly can buy a house, if that's what you wish to do.
[ in a way, this is reminiscent of the time they'd fallen out over their elaborate joint thesis - all emotional fury unleashed from kaveh's side, and too-blunt, thoughtless nonchalance from alhaitham's. perhaps a haravatat scholar should know better than anyone else in sumeru that history is destined to repeat itself, but dimly, the scribe is disappointed that he's been proven right for once.
logically, the debt disappearing should've been a positive thing, even to someone as loathe to understand social constructs as the scribe. for as long as kaveh had been indebted to dori, the tethers of the obligation had punctuated almost every other conversation, the source of most of the architect's woes. the reason he'd deemed it necessary to move in with alhaitham in the first place. a plight so shameful that he'd even refused to make it public where he lived, as if the discovery of staying in the scribe's second bedroom would be social suicide.
that's why alhaitham had to test this hypothesis.
wasn't that prudent, before they got entangled any deeper? the blonde had already changed him irrevocably over the past two months, mostly in ways that he's only just coming to understand now - and if he was going to let someone in past his guard, wasn't it only sensible to make sure they were there for the right reasons?
the taller man's face remains impassive, but he's quietly surprised to realise how much kaveh's words wound him, each syllable dropping like a dead weight; the one time he'd taken a gamble hoping to lose and clutched at an unwanted victory instead. ]
You're free of any obligation. [ he states, not moving a muscle. ] You can make of your future what you will without an external force holding you back.
no subject
[ in a way, this is reminiscent of the time they'd fallen out over their elaborate joint thesis - all emotional fury unleashed from kaveh's side, and too-blunt, thoughtless nonchalance from alhaitham's. perhaps a haravatat scholar should know better than anyone else in sumeru that history is destined to repeat itself, but dimly, the scribe is disappointed that he's been proven right for once.
logically, the debt disappearing should've been a positive thing, even to someone as loathe to understand social constructs as the scribe. for as long as kaveh had been indebted to dori, the tethers of the obligation had punctuated almost every other conversation, the source of most of the architect's woes. the reason he'd deemed it necessary to move in with alhaitham in the first place. a plight so shameful that he'd even refused to make it public where he lived, as if the discovery of staying in the scribe's second bedroom would be social suicide.
that's why alhaitham had to test this hypothesis.
wasn't that prudent, before they got entangled any deeper? the blonde had already changed him irrevocably over the past two months, mostly in ways that he's only just coming to understand now - and if he was going to let someone in past his guard, wasn't it only sensible to make sure they were there for the right reasons?
the taller man's face remains impassive, but he's quietly surprised to realise how much kaveh's words wound him, each syllable dropping like a dead weight; the one time he'd taken a gamble hoping to lose and clutched at an unwanted victory instead. ]
You're free of any obligation. [ he states, not moving a muscle. ] You can make of your future what you will without an external force holding you back.