Kai watches me, something vaguely amused glinting in his eyes, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and finds it entertaining.
I pick it up one of the notebooks without thinking.
It’s heavier than I expected.
And the second I crack it open, I stop breathing.
It’s beautiful. And completely incomprehensible.
Equations, everywhere. They’re scattered across the page in a cramped, disorganized manner, like he couldn’t write them down fast enough. It feels nearly feverish, obsessive. There are symbols I’ve never seen before, random diagrams that I’m sure mean something inhishead, but certainly not in mine, and arrows looping across margins. I flip a page. Then another.
I always thought I was good at Maths. Not top of the class, but decent enough. But this? I don’t understand a single line.
I didn’t even know Icouldbe humbled with my self-esteem being so embarrassingly low, and yet here we are.
Especially when I notice the majority of what he’s written in here isn’t even in English. There are scribbled notes in what looks like French, and Russian. Even Latin. I don’t even attempt to decipher the others.
“Uh… Kai?” I hold it open, still flipping slowly. “What is this?”
He barely looks up at first, then straightens and comes to stand beside me. His hand brushes against mine as he traces some of the words on the page. “Those are just my notes,” he says, like that explains anything.
“Why are they in, like… five different languages?”
“I like switching. I find it more fulfilling,” he says, still peering over my shoulder. “Some things are easier to think through in other tongues.”
“And the maths?”
“Ah, that goes a bit beyond A-Levels.”
I let out a snort before I can stop myself. “So you really are a know-it-all.”
Kai says nothing to that, just stares at me with an indecipherable look on his face.
I glance away, suddenly aware of how quiet the room has become, as my eyes trail over the workbench again. “You have a lot of talents,” I say, more softly this time. “What do you plan on doing in the future? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Kai nods once, as if considering the question seriously. He reaches for one of his creations that looks a bit like a spider and turns it over in his hands. His fingers move over it absentmindedly, but comfortably. “I’m not sure,” he says finally.
I frown at that. “How about when you were little? Before all the fame.”
He pauses for a few moments, and I notice his posture changes slightly, and he looks almost uneasy.
“I suppose,” he says slowly, “I’d have liked to have been an inventor.” His thumb brushes over the curved edge of the spider. “Somewhere far away from here.”
He says it in such a detached way. Like it belongs to someone he used to be. Someone he doesn’t quite have access to anymore.
And that makes me a little sad. Because for all his brilliance, for all the noise that must follow him everywhere he goes, he looks like someone who’s never really had peace.
“Where?” I ask, gently.
But he doesn’t answer that. Doesn’t even look at me.
Instead, he sets the spider down and says, “What about you? Any lifelong dreams?”
I smile, though it feels a little silly now. “I think… I wanted to be a painter. An artist.”
He cringes at that. It’s subtle, and I would have missed it if only I wasn’t staring at him so intently.
“Sounds… idyllic,” he says at last, tone neutral but clipped. “Rare these days. Rarer still when it survives.”
