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“Alhaitham, have you checked your taxes lately?”
Alhaitham looked up from his packet of funding applications and sighed. “No. I work this job so that I can afford to pay someone else to do my taxes.”
“Okay, yeah, whatever. Did you know your tax guy has us filed jointly?”
Alhaitham set down his pen. “That doesn’t make sense. We aren’t married.”
“That’s what I told him!” Kaveh threw his hands up in frustration. “And do you want to know what he said?”
It started, actually, all the way back when they were students. Specifically, it started one day when they were walking down the main street on the outskirts of Sumeru City.
Two old ladies were sitting on woven chairs, sipping cups of masala chai. Like old ladies are wont to do, they watched the streets, looking for something to feed the flames of gossip.
“Do you see those two?” One of them asked. “I hear they’re some of the brightest at the Akademiya right now. How wonderful for their parents!”
Too far away to hear, Kaveh continued needling Alhaitham over his shoulder, talking about something that probably didn’t matter that much until Alhaitham elbowed him in the stomach and he folded in half.
“Oh, to be young and in love. With how they’re acting, I wouldn’t put it past them to be married in short order.”
“Sorry?” Asked the first old lady, who was more than a little deaf. “Did you say those two boys are married?”
“No, you old fool! I said they’re getting married!” She cried, tripping over words in her vehemence.
Her mistake probably wouldn’t have mattered that much, had there not been a librarian for the Akademiya sweeping the porch of the next house over. But rumors traveled fast in Sumeru, especially when they were about people who try to stay out of the gossip circles. After all, they tended to be the ones with something to hide.
The next step in their comedy of errors involved sixteen oranges.
Kaveh, being a generally social person, had befriended a large portion of people in his age group at the Akademiya. More specifically, he befriended a group of Amurta scholars doing a research project on growing non-native fruits in climate-controlled greenhouses in Sumeru.
As to how he befriended them? Well, it was very useful for them to have an on-call architect known for his craftsmanship in stained glass and glasswork when working on a greenhouse. Kaveh thought the job seemed pretty cool, so he went along with it!
In the end, what he got for his blood, sweat, and tears was a fruit basket every week for four months. He supposed he hadn’t signed a contract or anything, and he probably should’ve, but the fruit was better than nothing. And it was a large amount of fruit. More than he could eat on his own, at least.
So, once every week, Kaveh would stroll up to Alhaitham and hand him a Natlan orange. Or he would roll it across the long table in their lecture hall. Or he would chuck it at him from the opposite side of the House of Daena. Or he would—well, you get the point.
And all of this was because Alhaitham hated oranges.
The first one he’d ever eaten was taken with caution, because Kaveh giving gifts was a strange occurrence, at least for Alhaitham. But he carefully unwrapped the rind and broke off a piece to put in his mouth. It was very much like a mandarin, but it had a yuzu-like tartness that offset the sweetness.
He took another slice. The pith that stuck to it was filmy and didn’t add much to the flavor, but it was generally inoffensive.
Another piece. Largely, the fruit was quite nice. A pleasant taste and a fairly convenient size for a snack, without the issue of a Zaytun peach wherein the juice would dribble onto whatever paper he was working on.
Then Alhaitham finished the orange, and he noticed for the first time the tacky residue on his hands.
If he touched anything, including the book he was currently working on, it would get sticky and bear pale orange stains. For all that Alhaitham was willing to bring a book onto a battlefield, food stains and dog ears were two fully unforgivable sins.
He debated wiping his hands on his pants, then shuddered. Washing his hands in the bathroom would be better, even if he had to leave sticky handprints on the doorknob. At least they would no longer be his problem.
When he returned to the desk he’d been working at, his book was gone. All that remained was a whiff of floral cologne.
Kaveh, for months, continued his taunting. Alhaitham, only willing to put in effort when it came to matters of spite, responded in turn.
At first, he lobbed the oranges back at Kaveh.
“How adorable!” Some of their juniors cooed behind their backs.
“You know, I hear that in Natlan, oranges symbolize passionate love.” One of them wiggled her eyebrows.
Another snorted. “They are married, after all. At least, that’s what I heard my professor say.”
A riotous round of murmurs exploded in the corner of the library, only to be hushed by a librarian.
Fifteen weeks and fifteen oranges later, Alhaitham enacted his plan. He walked back to his dorm, clutching the orange in his hand so hard it would’ve split if not for the peel. Then he pulled out some ingredients.
For those who may not know, Natlan oranges and their close cousin the lemon both contain large amounts of citric acid, the chemical compound that makes them taste sour. If a person were to take the juice from an orange and a lemon and mix it with milk, it would create a curdled, sour mixture.
And if that person could stand the smell of that buttermilk for long enough to make something from it, they might end up with a drink called orange thandai, an… interesting variation on a usually fun, sweet drink.
Alhaitham brought his concoction out to where Kaveh was sitting at his evening study group with some other students in his Darshan and placed it before him.
“…What is this?”
“Orange thandai, from the fruit you gave me. Try it.”
Kaveh smelled it, but due to the usual overwhelming rose-and-cardamom scent, no hint of sourness peeked through. He took a sip, and…
He didn’t spit it out, which was what Alhaitham had been expecting. He did wrinkle his nose, though.
There was a stand-off for a few moments as Alhaitham expected Kaveh to make a scene and Kaveh expected Alhaitham to make a pointed jab. Regardless, neither did, and Alhaitham only flicked on his soundproof earpieces and walked off.
Had he not turned those on, or had Kaveh been focusing on listening to the whispers around him instead of not throwing up, their issues might’ve stopped here.
“Alhaitham doesn’t seem to be a good cook, but it’s sweet how he made something from his husband’s gift.”
“And it’s sweet how Kaveh drank it and pretended it was good!”
“What a cute couple.”
One day, both Kaveh and Alhaitham showed up to their classes wearing gloves that covered half their hands. And they didn’t take them off for several weeks. They wouldn’t take them off in public for the rest of their lives, in fact, but the good people of the Akademiya didn’t know that yet.
Rumors began to fly, because they were in Sumeru.
Lambad at the tavern let slip that the two men had gotten unreasonably drunk the night before, to the point where he had to cut them off. That wasn’t abnormal for Kaveh, but for Alhaitham, the stoic Haravatat genius? Well, nobody had ever heard of him doing such before.
Then an Eremite dockworker on her way home had watched as the two of them, stumbling drunk, had wandered through the tunnel into the Grand Bazaar. Again, not a usual haunt of theirs.
The rumor mill followed their path to Jut the Spice Merchant, who then pointed them to the west dais of the Bazaar, where they found Anjali, a tattoo artist.
“I did give them tattoos,” she admitted, “but I can’t tell you what they are.”
The company all groaned.
“Come on,” one reasoned. “There’s enough gossip around here that they’ll never know who spilled it first.”
“No, I literally cannot tell you,” she stressed, and started digging through the cabinet behind her. She pulled out a scroll and unraveled it to show them.
Written on fine vellum, the scroll was embossed with the official seal of Morax. An Archons-forsaken official Liyuean contract signed under the three parties with Azra from the Corps of Thirty as a witness.
“For the Greater Lord…” Someone whispered, flabbergasted.
Anjali rolled the scroll back up. “Now, leave. I don’t want to face the Wrath of the Rock.”
From that moment on, rumors flew about the tattoos day in and day out. Finally, the city came to a consensus.
Both men were known for their capabilities in combat. They regularly went on long trips living rough for research projects, and Kaveh had begun to get involved with the construction of buildings he designed. They also knew Alhaitham cooked, if not very well.
Ergo, wedding band tattoos. It just made sense.
But in the peace of his dorm room, Kaveh pulled his glove off to look at the shitty little Aranara doodle inscribed on his right hand. After the drunken realization that both he and Alhaitham could see the little forest creatures, they’d stumbled down to the tattoo stall in the Bazaar and drawn little characters for each other on paper that the artist had transferred to their skin.
The one Kaveh drew for Alhaitham showed a little more artistry than the one Alhaitham had put on Kaveh’s skin, but the latter was still cute, even with its lumpy head and misshapen eyes. The arms were about twice as long as they needed to be. Kaveh was almost sad he had to cover it up for professional reasons, but tattoos were frowned upon in higher society and Kaveh’s goal was to pick up clients that were as rich as they were inspiring.
Three years into Alhaitham’s Akademiya career and four into Kaveh’s, they were assigned to a project together.
Normally married couples weren’t allowed to participate in projects together, due to the possibility of favoritism or fights, or… other distractions getting in the way of work, but the two of them had never had any issue with PDA on or outside of Akademiya grounds, so the Sages found it fine to put them together. After all, they were the two most brilliant minds in their respective Darshans, and a survey project fell right in the overlap of their areas of expertise. What could go wrong?
A lot.
A lot could go wrong.
A month in, an argument broke out between the two of them, and Kaveh left for the desert. Alhaitham continued to work on the project until his supervisor showed up a week later and asked where Kaveh had gone.
The project was disbanded, and Kaveh and Alhaitham weren’t seen in the same vicinity for the greater part of two years.
Greater Lord, the Akademiya officials thought. We caused a divorce!
The rules were changed back, and no married couples have worked on a project together since, but the damage was already done.
Their story faded into the background, and Kaveh made a name for himself as the Light of Kshahrewar, Architect of the Palace of Alcazarzaray. In the meantime, Alhaitham quietly worked his way up the ranks of the Akademiya administration until he became the Scribe. Things were… not good, but stable.
The opening reception at the Palace of Alcazarzaray after its completion was quite possibly the biggest event for the upper class of Sumeru in the past few decades, if not centuries. Dori Sangemah Bay had invited almost, if not all, of the upper echelon, and even international visitors like the Kanjou Commissioner and a representative from the Liyue Qixing had shown up to rub elbows.
Everyone with a notable title in the Akademiya was invited, too—which came out to be a lot of people, considering the Akademiya’s love for fancy titles. Everyone showed up, from the Grand Sage to the Mahamata, including one specific person: the Scribe.
The architect of the building was also present, naturally. It was his accomplishment, after all.
This possible interpersonal conflict wasn’t noticed when the invitations were sent out, because very few people had thought about the relationship between the Scribe and the Light of Kshahrewar since the aftermath of their apparent divorce a few years prior. Honestly, it shouldn’t have been much of an issue, because there was such a small chance of them bumping into each other at the party at all.
But as far as the people knew, Sumeru was a nation that never forgot.
Sometimes a massive change in the path of fate starts as simply as a matra on her break needing to use the bathroom, because within ten minutes the news was all over: “Keep your kids and your innocents away from the East Guest House, because the Architect and the Scribe are making up—and making out. Heavily .”
The Akasha system pulled knowledge from the brains of the people of Sumeru. This didn’t, however, mean that the information was necessarily correct.
The Akasha itself was a marvel of neurological and mechanical engineering. It compared the data from every single piece of information it took in and extrapolated from those to find the answer that was most likely to be correct.
A small glimpse at the source information stored on Kaveh and Alhaitham of Sumeru City would show this:
Kaveh and Alhaitham are widely believed to be married.
Kaveh and Alhaitham are widely believed to have gotten married within the first two years of the latter’s schooling.
Kaveh and Alhaitham have matching tattoos, widely believed to be wedding bands.
Kaveh and Alhaitham had a major argument during their joint project at the Akademiya, widely believed to have caused a rift that may have culminated in divorce.
Kaveh and Alhaitham were caught in a compromising position at the reception for the Palace of Alcazarzaray’s opening, implying a positive romantic shift in their relationship.
Kaveh and Alhaitham have been living together since said reception, though Kaveh claims they are not roommates.
So the Akasha, the beautiful, fallible piece of machinery that it was, took in all that information and published this:
Kaveh and Alhaitham of Sumeru City are in a romantic married relationship.
While the first half was likely correct, depending on the specific definition of “romantic” used, the latter part, both legally and actually, was incorrect.
The Akasha didn’t know this and continued displaying the false information. After all, only two sources dissented the information, and what could two sources mean against the masses?
Most people didn’t look themselves up on the Akasha because it was weird and disorienting, and Kaveh and Alhaitham were no exception to the rule. But it was perfectly normal for a student to notice a discrepancy between the information on the Akasha and the information in a paper book while creating a report on the life of the Light of Kshahrewar.
And it was perfectly normal for her to bring this information to a librarian.
Unfortunately, it was perfectly normal for a librarian to default to the information on the Akasha rather than take a further look at what might’ve caused the discrepancy. He followed protocol, though, and escalated the issue to an administrator to fix the problem.
It was a little abnormal, and certainly broke protocol, for the administrator to see the discrepancy, and, because everyone knew Kaveh and Alhaitham were married, file for a marriage certificate for them after not finding one in their personal data. It must’ve gotten lost during the divorce, she thought.
The Akasha, believing that they were married, used the signatures saved in its database to fill out the certificate. Because the Akasha presided, there was no need for a witness.
For 238 days straight, Kaveh and Alhaitham of Sumeru City were both legally and factually married, without having heard a single word of it.
“And that’s why we were able to file you two jointly,” the accountant laughed nervously. “I apologize for the… misunderstanding. I’ll contact the administrator we work with at the Akademiya to have that fixed and the marriage certificate expunged.”
“Don’t bother. I do quite like the idea of tattooed wedding bands,” Alhaitham mused.
“Wait,” said Kaveh.
“Anyway, we’ll be off.”
“Wait, Haitham. Alhaitham. You can’t just drop that on me and walk off! Get back here!”