Lara's funeral was on a Tuesday.
Lymur was at the back of the small gathering with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. He hadn't known her well enough to stand at the front. He hadn't known her well enough for most of this, really.
But he'd come anyway, and he stayed for the whole thing, and when it was over and the small crowd began to gradually thin, a woman approached him.
She was maybe forty, with the same kind eyes he remembered from her mother, and she'd clearly been crying recently and was holding it together now through dignity and stubbornness.
"You're Lymur," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah." He pulled his hood down. "I'm sorry about your mother. She was a good lady."
"She was." The woman smiled, small and tired. "I'm Bea."
"Lymur."
"I know." She looked at him for a moment. "She mentioned you, actually. Said she'd met this very handsome young man near the fountain once. Helped her with the bags." She paused. "She said you were all strange on the outside but really kind on the inside, and that you looked like you needed someone to tell you to take care of yourself."
Lymur opened his mouth, then closed it.
"She told everyone that story," Bea added.
He looked down at the flowers he'd brought — white ones, nothing fancy, chosen mostly because he'd stood in the shop for ten minutes and eventually just picked the ones that seemed the most appropriate. He'd set them with the others earlier.
"She gave me too much money for carrying the bags," he said. "I always thought I should've said something about that."
Bea laughed. It was short, and it caught her a little off guard, and she pressed her hand over her mouth. "That sounds exactly like her."
"Yeah." He looked at the grave. "I'm sorry I didn't come back sooner. I meant to."
Bea was quiet for a moment. "She would've liked that you came today," she said eventually. "She really would've."
They stood there for a bit in the way people did at the end of funerals, when there was nothing left to say but leaving felt too abrupt. Then Bea thanked him for coming, and he said it was the least he could do, and she walked back toward the remaining family.
Lymur stayed a little longer.
◢◣◢◣◢◣
"This is cool~!"
Lymur had never seen the ocean before.
After Lara's funeral, he immediately decided on a retreat, which brought him here now.
He was standing at the edge of Etistin Bay with his sandals in his hand and just looked at it — at the beautiful view of the water that covered the horizon in every direction in its enormous green-blue-ness. Waves came in and pulled back out with a sound he'd read about and still wasn't ready for, and he just stood there for probably a full minute just taking it in.
"Okay, now I understand why people talk lots about the ocean."
He already booked a week at a beach house right at the edge of Etistin, cozy and close enough to the water that he can hear the waves from his bed, which he'd discovered earlier when he arrived at four in the morning and had decided he liked instead of being annoyed by. He'd planned the trip two months out, second-guessed it maybe around forty times, and now that he was actually here, he couldn't understand what had taken him so long.
The first morning he'd just walked the shoreline for two hours, which he hadn't planned to do, just letting the water hit his feet and pull back. By noon he'd gotten properly into the water and by the time he came out, his fingers were wrinkled and some kids nearby were staring at him and he'd been in long enough that the sun had moved quite a lot.
He'd felt genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy the entire time.
Now it was late afternoon and he'd set up his umbrella and spread his pretty little towel and arranged the picnic he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time preparing during dawn. Sandwiches of three different kinds because he'd been indecisive, a small container of sweet fruits he'd found at a market in Etistin that morning, and a cold drink to top it all off.
He was sitting with his legs stretched out, working through his second sandwich, watching the water do its thing.
"This is the life."
He'd noticed the staring within the first twenty minutes.
The first hour had been genuinely awkward in a way that not much was genuinely awkward for Lymur anymore. He was alone, shirtless and in shorts, which was fine and normal for a beach, except that alone-in-shorts at a beach when you looked like Lymur apparently resulted in a certain quantity of attention that he hadn't fully anticipated. He'd kept his eyes on the water and eaten his fruit and had the distinct social experience of being a lighthouse the way he was stationary, unavoidable, and drawing eyes from a big enough radius.
By the third hour, he'd gotten used to it. There wasn't anything to do about his own face, he'd realized that conclusively over the past three years, so he'd made peace with it and moved on.
He bit into his sandwich and looked at the horizon.
A seabird landed a few feet away from his towel and looked at him with assessing eyes.
"Oh no, you don't," Lymur said.
The bird considered this.
"I mean it. I made these yesterday. I'm not sharing with you."
The bird tilted its head.
"Unbelievable," Lymur muttered, and tossed it a piece of crust, which it grabbed and was gone with in about a second. He watched it fly away. "Extortion," he said, to no one. "That's what that was."
He looked back at the water.
A group of kids ran past the waterline, completely unhinged with beach energy, one of them faceplanting spectacularly and getting back up the next second. Lymur watched them with a smile.
Further up the shore was a group of four adults, all fit and loud and looking to be very comfortable with each other. One of them was being buried in sand by the other three, complaining but offering zero actual resistance. The burying party was treating this as serious work. The buried one eventually gave up complaining and just started laughing, and the laughing made it hard to keep burying them, and the whole thing collapsed into a sand pile.
Lymur watched this for longer than he meant to.
"Man, that looks fun."
What would that be like?
He hadn't planned to think about it. He looked at the group — one of them had successfully escaped the sand and was now dumping an armful of it on one of the others — and felt something in his chest that he found a bit uncomfortable.
He'd been in this world three years and in that time he'd been, functionally, completely alone. That was a choice, he reminded himself. Other people were variables. Variables were liabilities. Lymur had always done his best work when the only person he had to account for was himself, and his best work had gotten him to S-rank in under a year, so by any measurable standard, the choice had been correct.
He still believed that.
He did.
And yet, he thought, watching the group, that looks really fun.
He wondered what it would be like to have someone who just showed up at his door without warning and was annoying about it, who asked what he was doing this weekend, and who he could visit at ten in the evening about something stupid, and they'd go on a late-night walk around the quiet city streets.
The image in his head was strange and weirdly appealing.
He whispered to himself, "Or even just someone to bring to the beach..."
He looked at his very well-prepared solo picnic.
He made three kinds of sandwiches. All of which were for himself, alone.
He took another bite and finished the second one.
The group of four was playing in the water now, throwing each other around. A couple walked past Lymur's umbrella hand in hand, close enough that he could hear them talking about things like where to eat tonight, whether the fish place was still open, and bickering about directions that neither of them was taking seriously.
Lymur watched them go.
Love, huh.
And then he immediately felt weird for thinking about it, like he'd caught himself doing something embarrassing.
But he followed it anyway because he was curious about most things and this was no exception.
He'd had Alea, and that had been what it was, and he didn't regret it, but it had been a single night of sex that ended when he left in the morning and that was — that was a different thing from what he was thinking about now.
He was thinking about the before and after. The knowing someone thing. Waking up next to the same person enough times that you started to understand their sleep schedule and their mood in the morning and which things were worth bringing up and which weren't.
He'd never had that.
He wasn't sure he knew how to get it.
People found him unsettling to top it all off. He wasn't stupid so he was aware of that. He knew that his face did something to people that he couldn't see himself and therefore couldn't fix. Too much of something, not enough of something else, causing unease alongside the attraction rather than instead of it. Alea had said something to that effect once, and he'd shrugged it anyway, not knowing what to do with it.
"Maybe I'm just not — "
"That's an awfully lonely look. Are you talking to yourself?"
Lymur turned his head.
An old woman was standing at the edge of his umbrella's shade, looking down at him. She was really old. She had grey hair, wore long robes that had absolutely no business being at a beach, and an enormous wide-brimmed hat that somehow made the whole outfit... cringe.
Lymur looked at her.
"Ugh, just great. Really great."
"You're very rude."
"Did I say something?"
"You did."
He had nothing for that. He just looked back at the ocean.
She sat down in the sand next to his umbrella like she'd been invited, fixed her robes and the enormous hat, and looked at the water as well.
"I'm Cynthia Goodsky, by the way," she said.
Lymur glanced at her. "...Never heard of you."
She laughed, not offended in the slightest. "Hahaha. No, I imagine not."
She was quiet for a moment, looking at the horizon. The wind moved her hat brim and she held it down without thinking.
"Again... that's an awfully lonely look you've got on you, Brightburn."
Lymur turned to her slowly. "What did you just call me?"
"Brightburn. I think it suits you."
"It's cheesy," he admitted with a disgusted look. "It's genuinely, profoundly cheesy. Please don't do that again."
"Brightburn," she said, apparently testing it.
"I'm asking you respectfully," Lymur said, "as someone you just met and have no reason to antagonize."
"Brightburn."
Lymur put his sandwich down and looked out at the ocean with the expression of a man trying to gather patience from nature.
Cynthia had heard the stories. Lymur had bad social instincts, no filter, apparently immune to normal social pressure. She'd expected something difficult. She hadn't expected to find it this immediately engaging. He wasn't being intentionally rude, wasn't doing it for effect — he just genuinely didn't have whatever it took to make people tone down their words when talking to someone they'd just met. He'd looked at her with absolute zero recognition of her name and had responded with never heard of you so sincerely that lying was out of the question.
He treats everyone exactly the same, she thought. Which is, apparently, like this.
She found herself smiling.
"You know," she said, "I'd heard about your personality. I thought the stories were exaggerating."
"They probably were," Lymur said. "I'm usually far more charming."
"Is that right?"
"It is. You just caught me on vacation. I'm off the clock."
"Mm." She looked at him sideways. "Is that why you're sitting here alone talking to a seabird?"
"You saw that!? W-well, it was the seabird that approached me," Lymur said, trying to maintain dignity. "I didn't invite it either. You two seem to have that in common. Can I call you seabird?"
Cynthia laughed properly this time, a warm sound, and Lymur glanced at her despite himself.
"That's why you don't have any friends, you know," she said.
Lymur opened his mouth to rebuke, but instead found himself closing it.
He looked down at his picnic. It was all prepared for one person for a solo vacation he'd planned by himself and done by himself on a beach where everyone else seemed to have someone.
He put his hand over his chest.
"...That was a bit much," he said quietly.
"Was it inaccurate?"
A pause.
"...No."
"Then there's no problem." She reached into the folds of her robe and took out a cup of tea, common sense be damned. She took a sip out of it.
Lymur stared at the cup. Then at her. Then at the cup again.
"Where the hell did that come from?"
"Hey, Lymur," Cynthia said, looking at the ocean. "How would you like a job?"
...
"Ha?"
Lymur looked at her funny.
"A job," he repeated.
"A job," Cynthia confirmed.
He looked at the ocean. Then back at her. The expression on his face was the universal expression of someone who had just been told something they didn't want to hear and was trying to be polite about it... except Lymur wasn't really trying.
Cynthia laughed a little. "It's really not that complic—"
"Ain't no way," Lymur interrupted. "Absolutely no way I'm waking up at nine in the morning, going to work, spending the whole day stuck in an office surrounded by equally depressed people, going home, sleeping, and then doing it all over again the next day." He shook his head. "No. I'd much rather die."
Cynthia stared at him.
"That's not what I'm offering," she said gently.
"Okay but you said job."
"It's not that kind of job."
Lymur squinted at her. "... Is it prostitution, then?"
Cynthia made a very distorted sound that was not quite a word. "It is even more so not like that—"
"Okay, okay—"
"Absolutely not—"
"I said okay!"
She stopped, took a breath, and adjusted her hat. She smoothed her robes and coughed once into her fist like that would undo the last fifteen seconds.
"I would like you," Cynthia said, back to her original calm tone, "to work as a professor at Xyrus Academy."
Lymur had just picked up his last sandwich. He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. "A professor?"
"Yes."
"Me?"
"You."
"At Xyrus Academy?"
"Correct."
He kept chewing. "Oh... what course?"
"Ethics and Magic. It's a philosophy track."
Lymur stopped chewing.
He looked at her. "...Philosophy?"
"Philosophy."
"Not combat? Not a practical course? Not something where I actually show off my—"
"Philosophy," Cynthia said again, pleasantly.
Lymur finished the sandwich. He brushed the crumbs off his hands and stared at the ocean for a second. "I mean. I expected to be scouted for something that at least involved hitting things."
"I know."
"Why philosophy? Ethics specifically?"
Cynthia was quiet for a moment. "Call it a gut feeling," she said.
Lymur looked at her like she'd said something in a language he didn't speak.
"A gut feeling?"
"Yes."
"You're offering me a professorship based on a gut feeling."
"Among other things."
"What other things?"
She sighed and set her teacup down in the sand.
"I've been looking into you for a while, Lymur. Your decisions, your record, the incidents you've been involved in. Your morality is — " she paused, choosing her words, "— controversial, I'll grant you that. Your methods are questionable. Your social skills are absolutely horrible." She glanced at him. "But the reasoning behind what you do, and the framework you use when you decide what's right or wrong. It's more coherent than most people give you credit for. You think about it properly and the whole process is good enough, it's just that you arrive at conclusions that make people uncomfortable."
Lymur was quiet for a second. "Okay but I should tell you upfront," he said, "that I killed a guy last week."
"I know."
"And I don't regret it."
"I know that too."
"And you still want me teaching ethics to a bunch of would-be-mage kids?"
"Yes."
Isn't that a hazard? He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the ocean again. University life though, he thought. He'd always been curious about it — the campus, the classes, the atmosphere of a place built entirely around learning things. He'd imagined being a student at some point, maybe, when things settled down.
But the idea of being a professor had genuinely never occurred to him.
Although, strangely, now that he thought about it, he seemed to think himself more fitting for a teaching position than a learning position — and he wondered why that was so?
He absolutely did not have any experience teaching kids.
He looked down at himself. He was aware that he didn't age. Three years and nothing had changed. Anybody who didn't know him would look at his face and think seventeen, maybe eighteen at a stretch, nineteen if they were generous.
I'll be standing in front of a lecture hall, he thought, and everyone will think I'm a lost senior student.
He almost laughed at the thought.
"Alright," he said. "I'll think about—"
"Who knows," Cynthia said once more, looking at the ocean. "Maybe you won't be so lonely anymore."
Lymur closed his mouth.
He sat there for a moment.
The waves came in and pulled back out.
"...That was low of you. It's cheating."
Cynthia didn't say anything, only smiled and picked up her tea.