Chapter Text
“… Psst.”
Something thin touches his arm. A finger. And then, a deeper poke.
“Suisen,” says a whisper in his ear, no softer than the morning breeze that rustles past tree leaves. “The professor’s looking our way.”
The guy called "Suisen" lifts his head from the cradle of his arms, casting a brief glance at the professor, who continued to drone on about errors in argumentation, all the while keeping one eye at the back of the class. “Let him stare…” he mumbles, promptly burying his head in his arms once again.
The girl next to him lets out a stifled giggle. “Someone hasn’t gotten enough sleep, it seems.” If nothing else, Nahida’s mastered the fine art of being playful while not being noticeable enough to punish. Suisen still has a long way to go in that regard.
“It’s just… really… boring…”
“Perhaps the kid in blue hair at the back will be willing to answer my question.”
That effectively wakes the sleepy youngster, blinking repeatedly to clear the haze in his eyes. He throws a sideways look towards his friend, who only returns an innocent shrug, batting her wide, green eyes. None of the other students seem keen on helping him out—not that it should be their sin to bear. Suisen wishes more than ever that he has a hood to bury his face under.
“Umm…” He quickly scans the pages on his textbook, which proved effectively useless in trying to figure out what the question was in the first place. “Could you repeat the question? I couldn’t hear you.”
A snicker from his friend, and a sigh from the professor. “Being immortal means you cannot die. All gods are immortal. Hence, gods cannot die. Is this correct?”
“... The conclusion is valid, but it is not true."
"What is the difference?"
"The construction of the argument contains no contradictions and thus makes the conclusion valid, but the premise—that one who is immortal cannot die—is false. So it is logically correct that if gods are immortal and immortals cannot die, then gods cannot die. But we have evidence that immortals can die; if immortals can die and gods are immortals, then gods can die, rendering the aforementioned conclusion false."
"And what are the major implications of a false premise?"
"Informal fallacies—drawing conclusions from false assumptions."
Professor Goggles (that’s not his name; they’ve just been calling him that since his spectacles, paired with the dark circles under his eyes, give off the uncanny impression of him wearing goggles) holds his stare for a moment, before resuming with his lecture. Nahida blows out a stream of air in lieu of a whistle, flashing him a wicked smile.
“Not even a moment’s hesitation! A bona fide genius, aren’t you?”
Suisen clears his throat. If his skin flushes as easily as the average person, his ears and neck would have been red by now. “I just happen to have heard of it. It’s not a particularly hard concept to grasp.”
“Says you. Thinking about the principle of explosion and whatnot still stresses me,” sighs Nahida. Instead of using her notebook to jot down whatever Professor Goggles is saying, she is instead folding butterflies out of torn pages, coloring them with blue markers. "What do you mean, anything can be proven from a contradiction? Just because "dreams are real" and "dreams are not real" are both true, so "the sky is red" is true? How does that conclusion even follow?"
“He honestly isn't the best at explaining these concepts. Or it’s just his terribly dreary tone that sends you off to dreamland within five minutes’ time,” Suisen mutters. The airy sound of Nahida’s giggles sound like music to his ears as he swells with unreasonable pride.
“Suddenly I’m thinking of tiramisu. Coffee with the sweet mascarpone cream…” Nahida slumps against her chair, casting her face towards the dome ceiling of the lecture hall, the little circular hole appearing white, like a sun that overlooks the sky. “I’m blaming you for this, Suisen. And you’re treating me some tiramisu once class’s over.”
Leaning his cheek against his hand, Suisen stares at his best friend. Nahida, who never seems to understand what people are saying, but always listens attentively regardless. Nahida, who dances with the birds and leaves, just as much as she sings along with the crowds on the chorus. You do not belong in the monotony of the lecture halls and the tall towers of the Akademiya, he often thinks to himself, of her. You belong out there in the world, admiring everything there is to be seen, being loved by everyone there is to see you.
“We don’t have to wait until class is over, do we?”
Nahida’s verdant eyes light up with unabated mischief. It sends another meaningless spark of excitement up Suisen’s chest, like it’s some extraordinary thing to suggest cutting class, like it’s so hard to entertain the ever happy-go-lucky girl. He does not keep his gaze on her for long, already packing up his textbook and swinging the bag over his shoulder. Nahida quickly slides her own books in her bag, which Suisen promptly picks with his hand.
And it’s not like they’re invisible to Prof Goggles or anything, but really, who can stop them from running?
“Who gave people the brilliant idea of trying to overcome a heatwave with more heat? Look at those people utterly dying because of their terrible judgment.”
There’s been a trend lately, along with the rise of fire fried rice—which, as its name implies, is rice fried in a “fire sauce” pioneered by one of the local street vendors which tastes like, well, raw fire in your mouth—as well as the increasing heatwaves in the summer, to combat the heat by ingesting fire. “Now you’re clearly just facing two problems at once,” is Suisen’s unyielding opinion.
But Nahida is very good at talking back—meaning, rebuttal: “With that logic, you could argue it’s based on relativity, no? Now the heatwave comprises only about half of the total ‘heat’ they actually experience, thus giving the illusion of less—just like dividing your eggs into two different baskets to sell them all the same.”
“But this is not division—it’s addition; your eggs don’t halve in price when you add another basket of eggs. It’s not like pain, or heat, is an either-or thing where you feel it or you don’t; it’s a value that increases, scaling with the strength of the stimulation.”
“You can’t directly add them if they’re not on the same dimension,” Nahida points out, taking a spoonful of her tiramisu. She hums pleasantly, repeatedly pointing her spoon at the tiramisu in strong endorsement. “It’s reasonable to imagine the spice we feel from chili to be ‘heat’, but it doesn’t reflect an actual difference in temperature. Even if you argue them to be perceived in the same way, they are not perceived in the same place, and we know perception is local to the area where stimulation is experienced.”
“But that’s what I’m saying—now you’re just feeling the pain in two places at once.” The mascarpone cream is too sweet for Suisen, but upon seeing Nahida’s expectant gaze for his reaction, he takes another bite of it.
“It may be that very fact that takes away the perception of pain attributed to the heat. Because you’re now attending to the sensation in a different location, you’re processing less of the heat on your skin and more to that on your tongue.”
“Even if that were the case, then again, it would just mean you’re displacing one problem with another. You’re not ‘combating’ anything per se. What’s the point?”
Nahida shrugs, but as always, it does not take her long to respond: “Maybe the point is that it’s a more enjoyable way to sweat. Do you think people eat fire fried rice purely by virtue of it being pain-inducing? They would all have to be masochists for that to be the case.”
Suisen takes a sip of his iced coffee. “For all I know, they could be.” She lets out a loud snort at that, nearly spitting out her hot cocoa—Suisen very nearly does the same, having to exercise effortful restraint to prevent that from happening.
“Ah, this is also possible: eating hot food in general increases your internal body temperature, which then makes the contrast between the inside and outside environments less drastic, hence a lesser perceived heat.”
“Sure, but like you’ve said: the ‘heat’ for spice is only relevant on our tongues, and doesn’t actually impact the heat of the food itself.”
“So maybe all it takes is the perceived heat of the internal/external environments to obtain a relative contrast, which then informs you of what we are more likely to perceive. Which kind of makes sense intuitively, doesn’t it?”
For someone who was concerned about understanding fallacious structures of classical syllogism, she sure finds no problem constructing arguments that benefit her. “… I guess it does,” Suisen concedes, stuffing his mouth with more tiramisu. God forbid Nahida teases him for displaying an obvious pout from having yet lost another argument to her.
“It’s just baseless conjecture, not a formal argument,” she says like she knows just what he’s thinking. Nahida, in contrast, hardly ever seems particularly perturbed by their theoretical arguments—she doesn’t seem to hold on strongly to any particular worldview grounded by truth, preferring instead to let her imagination take course. Even Suisen, whose world is nearly entirely contingent on her, finds it hard to follow her footsteps into taking aimless flight, finding comfort in the earth she has made for him. Humans, after all, are grounded in logical reasoning, bound by what they know and fearful of all that they don’t. In that sense, he sometimes think she is wiser, a better scholar than anyone else can ever be—that she is always open to different realities from the ones she already knows, and embraces them with just as much affection.
She reaches out a hand to smear some of the cream left above his upper lip, giggling before she can even finish the job. “Now you truly look like a kitten!”
He does not need to look into the mirror to imagine the trail of cream on his face. “At this point, I’ll have to beg you to just get an actual kitten. Surely it’s not that hard to get one?”
“Why should I, when I already have the adorable-est kitten?”
“That’s…” Suisen only groans. He should probably not be feeling as flustered as he is, but Nahida’s teasing has a way of getting under his skin unlike no other. Again, he’s unable to deliver the final argument—this time because he understands, in a sense, why Nahida would see him as a kitten. A stray she picked up by the side of the street, well-trained since day one to become her companion for the rest of their academic degrees, one who shies away from her coddling but wouldn’t last a day without her.
It’s not a nice comparison to be made, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to him how she sees him—as long as he can see her again, come morning.
“Oooh, ooh! Did they already release the next volume of Anekdota en Nyktí? I can’t believe the long wait is actually over!”
In an instant, Nahida weaves across the crowd to get to the pop-up bookshop, her crown of white hair shining like the moon in a pool of predominantly dark hair. When Suisen catches up to her, she is already holding two books in her hand: the aforementioned light novel, as well as one titled Marcescent Floret. “This one’s from a writer I’ve been following for a while now; I didn’t realize she’s released a standalone novel! The synopsis alone already sets up waterworks, so I can’t imagine just how much the book will wreck me…”
“It seems to me you maybe devoting too much time on entertainment reading, and too little on actually revising lecture material…”
“I would argue there is much to be learned from fictional material, too!”
“I’m not saying there isn’t, but…” Suisen exhales in resignation. “Well, do whatever makes you happy, I suppose.”
For some reason, Nahida turns to him in genuine surprise. The corners of her lips drop for a split second before she quickly assumes a smile once more, the question still in her eyes. “That’s exactly what I will do, yes,” she affirms. “You’re not going to nag me about it?”
“It’s not like it’s ever worked,” Suisen mutters. Another giggle, and the inexplicable sense of satisfaction that follows.
“Now it sounds like you’ve just given up on me, Suisen.”
“I’m not going to stop reminding you about it just because it hasn’t had an effect,” he asserts, “especially if it’s something significantly impacting your life.” But truly, nothing has ever impacted her so significantly it warrants a harsh reminder. It’s such a paradox, that she engages with the world so passionately and still manages to make it out unscathed, both so grounded and transcendent.
There is never a shortage of things to be fascinated about, when it comes to her. Suisen supposes it’s one of the reasons he finds himself consistently drawn to her.
“Are you getting anything? Or perhaps the better question is, have you been reading anything interesting lately?”
“… Last time you mentioned enjoying The Dream that was Tollan,” says Suisen. “I’ve caught up. It’s a pretty decent read.”
“Come on! Surely you have better things to say than just ‘it’s a pretty decent read’?” Nahida says, imitating Suisen’s tone when echoing him. He lets out a scoff at her poor imitation, but the echo of a smile remains on his lips.
“I think it’s a bit… ambitious, the concept and the worldbuilding—which I suppose makes the whole series one filled with utter ambition, both within and without—but the author pulls it off well. You can tell they’ve poured their passion for the golden age of Tollan into the series, but is written in a simple yet engaging manner that people of our age are still able to empathize with these ancient themes. Not to mention it has quite the unique art style, very pleasing on the eyes.” She probably doesn’t need to know he’s spent a single all-nighter going through five volumes. Not that it’s particularly harmful, anyhow; Suisen’s long realized his body doesn’t exactly need sustenance and rest the way average mortals do, even if he doesn’t understand it so.
“I’m so glad you agree! Stories about human ambition always captivate me more than anything, but with this one, there’s an incredible ambition beyond ones like Bona’s—the imaginative, implausible desire—one that lies in the techniques: the unconventional way the story is written, the under-researched matter of the Ancient Mountain… it’s those details that make it really such an overwhelming, in a positive way, read.”
Suisen hums, already taking out his pouch of Mora—earnings from his spare hours of working at the local cafe, as well as helping out as a research assistant here and there. “What is it about ambition that you like reading about? You don’t strike me as someone who cares for ambition.”
“That’s not true! I think ambition is enchanting, almost magical. Without ambition, it would be hard to achieve half the world’s wonders,” Nahida patiently elaborates, all the while refusing his Mora to hand her own stash for payment. “Isn’t that the fun in reading these hero stories? Because they have some grand ambition that drives them to do the impossible?”
Suisen frowns. “Huh.” It’s a hard notion to reconcile, because to him, Nahida is so… free of desire. She is not unfeeling per se—in fact one would be hard pressed to find something she cannot love—but the way Nahida loves is like a watering can, a love that pours without chaining the object of its affections. Ambition, on the other hand, is almost like the grasp of fire, seeking to claim more and more to satisfy its flames, at risk of burning everything in the process. Nahida doesn’t have that kind of selfishness—sometimes Suisen thinks she hardly adopts enough self-importance, always putting the world before her—to know what ambition is like.
But perhaps that’s exactly what it is—that she doesn’t know how it feels like to desire, and to that end, it appears only beautiful, and it, too, is admirable. “Even if it one day ends up killing them? Is it still enchanting then?”
“Whoa. That’s a grim hypothetical, don’t you think?”
“Stories love to highlight the magics of ambition, but how many times has one dared to fly and crashed because of it? Just like the publication bias in research, no one wants to read about failures, so you don’t see much of it in literature. That’s not to say there aren’t such instances—in fact, one could argue that there are more cases where ambition ends up with one in a ditch.”
Nahida looks at him, her long lashes casting a shadow over her green eyes, yet they are nonetheless bright. “Hmm… well, that doesn’t make it any less interesting and valuable, does it? In essence, it’s something powerful enough to make or break you, like a double-edged sword the protagonist needs to learn how to wield. Ambition that is nurtured with wisdom can birth miracles, while that handled carelessly can cause utter destruction… I’d say that’s part of its intrigue, if anything.”
The look on her face is so genuine, so innocent, that Suisen cannot resist the urge to pat her by the head. “You would fall in love even with a tragedy. Is there even anything you cannot find beauty in, in this world?”
“If there is, I hope I never find it!”
Suisen shakes his head, laughing. He hopes so, too—for it is thanks to her that he’s learned to admire this world along with her, and been able to enjoy life without so easily falling to despair and loneliness. His eternal best friend, Nahida.
“Ooh, I see a card game stand over there! It’s been a while since we’ve played Genius Invokation, hasn’t it?” Nahida beams, already taking his hand in hers, leading the way. “Try to beat me this time, Suisen!”
If he has any ambition in life, it will simply have to be this: that he does not ever lose her, his sun, his reason. As always, he follows her, never once letting go of her hand, of her bright smile that lingers in his mind.
So when she pushes him into the sea of people, the first thing he registers is the spike of that spark behind his chest, that inexplicable wave of shudders up his nerves. He regains his balance easily, of course, and realizes Nahida is still there, letting out high-pitched cheers for him to start dancing already. Suisen thinks he can never recover from seeing such unbridled joy in her countenance—the feeling she immerses in even with her eyes closed, grinning ear-to-ear with each of her teeth perfectly reflecting the spotlight, and the laughter she throws so freely, knowing it will be consumed by the crowd's noise, like the ephemeral light of a firefly.
And then he realizes he’s just been thrust upon the very spotlight, a makeshift stage, where he is meant to be the night’s entertainment. His reverie dies, replaced with an unimpressed deadpan; the neat arch of an eyebrow, the thinly pressed lips.
But the music has started with the beating of the drums, and the eyes of the crowd are honed in on him alone. All Suisen can do is send a laser-like glare Nahida’s way as he begins, very hesitantly, side-stepping left and right along to the beats.
“Impeccable sense of rhythm!” yells one of the uncles, along with several whoops of agreement. “Don’t be so shy!” says another. “You’re doing great!” “Come on! You youths gotta learn to let loose a little more!” “Move your arms, scrawny boy!”
… Awkwardly, Suisen bounces his elbows up and down. He is still glaring at his “best friend”, that cursed betrayer. Nahida is, very courteously, trying to refrain from laughing entirely as she continues to whistle.
Before anyone else can instruct him some ridiculous dance move, he begins twirling along the four-step move to the left, and again back to the right. The Akademiya gown is the silver lining in all this, being baggy enough to hide most of his body that his moves just look like a lot of sage green fabric swishing in the air. “Ooh, he’s just warming up all along!” someone cheers excitedly. “Show us what you’ve got, child!”
Oh, he’s going to show them alright.
Right as the ukelele starts to play, the music shifting into a festive pace, Suisen shoots his hand into the crowd, and pulls Nahida onto stage with him.
He revels in the little yelp from the back of her throat; the wide, flustered eyes that reveal the whole of her green irises in all their glory. Having just pulled her, their faces are way too close—their noses are nearly touching, and he can see the faint flush on her cheeks and the curve of her ears—but he holds her firmly in place, unwilling to let go.
“Best friends do everything together,” mutters Suisen, only for her to hear, “do they not?”
He feels just the slightest regret, knowing Nahida avoids the spotlight whenever she can help it. But he slides one hand down to hers, taking her fingertips with his, rubbing his thumb over the back of her fingers.
“Sometimes, we gotta think before doing things—and then we gotta be responsible for our actions. That’s what you taught me. Remember?”
Nahida’s every expression is animated: Suisen watches with much satisfaction as she visibly melts, conceding defeat, and her tension gives way to a helpless smile. “Using my words against me… you’re a foul—”
The accompaniment does not wait for her, so Suisen quickly pulls away from her, jerking her into a dance sequence she barely fumbles through.
“—a foul player, you know that?!”
“That was also one of the many lessons you taught me, teacher.” He lets out a tongue obnoxiously, relishing her astonished scoff.
“I—did I never teach—you to—never outdo your teacher?”
Perhaps it’s the rush from having her hand in his, or simply just from having bantered with her—Suisen’s moves are no longer restrained, and he just starts waving his hands around like a madman. Who cares who’s watching, anyway? The world is theirs, and has always been theirs alone. “Mmm… I think you said, ‘It’s only when you start questioning your teacher that you can truly grow’. Herbology class, first year.”
“You, and your incredible memory—ah!”
His hands move before he can even register what’s happening: Nahida stumbles upon him, apparently having tripped over her own foot. It almost feels natural, how her back fits in the curve of his arm, even though he’s sure he’s never held her like this before, and Suisen cannot help think, just in that split-second, that this might well be what he was made for. To be the sun’s shadow, to complement her radiance with calm, her boundless imagination with his touch of reason. He think the crowds are cheering, but nothing enters his mind as he stares, solely upon his guiding light.
“Are you okay?”
It takes a second, no more than a split-second, for Nahida to recover from her shock, but she nods. “I… uh… mhm!”
“Wanna get out of here?”
“… I’d appreciate that, yeah.”
With a single shared look, they sprint past the crowds and make their way out the Grand Bazaar, heading straight for the outskirts of the city, where nothing blocks the sight of the starry sky above. It is only then that Suisen can finally let go his urge to laugh, and Nahida, despite her eventual embarrassment, joins in his mirth, giggling sweetly with the wind as she catches her breath.
“Please, let’s live peacefully next time,” she says, between pants. “Adrenaline is good in moderation… that was a lot.”
“Bear in mind you started it. I only follow your lead, as I have always.”
Her eyes soften at that. She is bright and pure like the morning sun, but there is something about her that makes her particularly well-suited to be adorned by the moonlight, something he can’t quite pinpoint.
“Did you have fun?”
“There’s never a dull moment with you, Nahida,” smiles Suisen. “Of course I had fun. Did you?”
She nods, she smiles, but—maybe it’s the shadows of the night—there’s something mellow about it. “Mhm! Thanks to you, of course.”
“That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. That is all that matters.”
It may well be an empty statement, born of the rush of the night’s excitement, born of two friends’ overconfidence in facing the world ahead of them. But—perhaps because Suisen himself is, technically, no older than a newborn, and no wiser—he truly believes in it: when he has Nahida, nothing else matters.
She is stubborn on her counter-stance. You will meet so many more people to love, and many more homes to live life with, she once told him—once prayed for him. Perhaps such a change will strike him unwittingly, and one day, far into the future, Suisen will learn to let go of her, learn to stand on his own two feet. That is what a "normal" life entails, after all. That is what being human is supposed to look like.
But until such divine intervention arrives, she is his only direction, his only reason, his only axis—his everything. He cannot imagine any reality where she is not before him, shining in place of the sun, of tomorrow.