The part that irked him a little was that Imaya seemed to consider them living at her place a done deal already. He only agreed to check the place out, nothing more!
Once Imaya returned with Kirielle (who had changed her clothes and mostly dried her hair at this point, and seemed completely unaffected by the fact she had been running through the pouring rain less than an hour ago) they started talking. Zorian had to steer the conversation back to the topic of their stay every once in a while, since both Imaya and Kirielle were content to let the conversation wander around if he let them. He also had to kick Kirielle a few times under the table to get her to shut up — Ilsa had told him never to broach the topic of marriage and husbands in front of Imaya for… some unspecified reason. Zorian liked it when people respected his privacy, so he was content to do the same of Imaya, and had warned Kirielle to abide by the rule as well. Something she evidently had problems with, due to her tendency to babble.
Their arrangement was not exactly to his liking, in all honesty. Imaya’s house clearly hadn’t been designed for rent — it was a normal, if large, family home that had a bunch of empty sleeping rooms on the second floor. Zorian and Kirielle would be getting one of them, and they would be sharing the rest of the house facilities with Imaya and 2 other tenants that were scheduled to arrive in the next few days. That was a lot less privacy than he was comfortable with. Not to mention that their room only had one bed, meaning he would have to sleep together with Kirielle. Zorian had actually spent a few nights with Kirielle when she had been younger, and knew for a fact that Kirielle was a restless sleeper and a cover hog, so he had big issues with that. Thankfully, they were the only tenants at the moment, so Imaya allowed him to claim an additional room for himself at no extra charge, with the stipulation that he move back in with Kirielle when she found a proper tenant for it.
Zorian decided to quietly look into other places to rent tomorrow. Just in case.
Despite his novel living arrangements and Kirielle’s presence, the next few days were fairly standard. He applied for the job at the library. He went to talk to Ilsa about advanced instruction and chose divination as a discipline he was interested in. He practiced various shaping exercises whenever he had some free time, concentrating mostly on the north finding one since that exercise was supposed to help with divinations. Taiven tracked him down, despite his change of residence, and Zorian notified her about the ‘rumors’ about mind magic using giant spiders running around the sewers to make sure she’d survive the encounter. Despite his misgivings, he decided not to leave Imaya’s place, since Imaya did a masterful job of keeping Kirielle happy and off his back. For her part, Kirielle was remarkably well behaved. She spent a lot of her time drawing things. He didn’t even know she liked to draw. She never did it at home as far as he knew. Maybe the trip had inspired her to take up a hobby?
In any case, once those first couple of days had passed, everything just… went off the rails. For one thing, the restart hadn’t ended at that point and instead just kept going, which was noteworthy by itself. More importantly, however, he was once again asked by Ilsa to greet Kael and his daughter at Cyoria’s main train station… only to find out that Kael had also rented a room at Imaya’s place. For pretty much the same reason that he had, too — Ilsa had recommended the place.
So now he was living in the same house with his little sister, a teenage morlock and his daughter, and a landlord that didn’t really act like a landlord. He was finally going to meet his divination instructor, Xvim would be throwing marbles at him again come next Friday, Ilsa apparently visited her friend’s house on a regular basis, and Imaya invited Taiven to eat with them next Sunday while she was trying to talk Zorian into following her into the sewers. Clearly this was not going to be your average restart.
«I still feel like I’m taking advantage of you,» Kael said, pouring a fist-full of blue powder into a transparent glass container.
«And I still can’t imagine why,» Zorian said, not taking his eyes off the tiny blue mushrooms he was currently grinding into more powder. «I stock your lab with ingredients, and you let me be your assistant while you do your work. You get to save a little money on reagents and I get some practical alchemical experience. What on earth is predatorial about that? Here.»
He thrust the powdered mushrooms to the white-haired boy, who sighed in defeat and went back to work. Zorian took the time to look around the workshop without being too blatant about it.
Kael’s workshop was pretty amazing considering it was really just a basement that Imaya donated to the boy so he could convert it to his purposes. Setting it up was the first thing Kael did after moving into the place, with Imaya being surprisingly unconcerned about a mere academy student working with dangerous magical concoctions right under her home. ‘Ilsa assured me Kael knows what he’s doing,’ she said. Well, he probably did, but still. As for equipment, it was loaned to Kael by the academy authorities. According to Kael, it was rather outdated, but the morlock couldn’t afford to be picky and was lucky to get anything at all.
«I just don’t think the price of restocking my workshop is worth whatever experience you’re going to get,» Kael said, pouring boiling water into the powder-filled container and adding some weird little black balls that Zorian didn’t recognize. «In fact, considering how good you are at this I should probably be paying you for the help.»
«Don’t worry about it,» Zorian repeated, hoping this time it would stick. He couldn’t exactly tell the boy that his savings account would spontaneously refill when the loop restarted, so it was hard to explain why money wasn’t too important for him.
Overall, his interaction with Kael was a lot friendlier this time around. Grudgingly, he had to admit Kirielle had a lot to do with it — she hit it off with Kana pretty quickly, despite the other girl being practically a baby, which seemed to put Kael at ease with both of them. After that, the two of them discovered they got along pretty well and Zorian decided to help the morlock with his alchemy and learn something at the same time. Which led to their current situation.
«This whole situation is terribly strange,» Kael said after a minute of silence. «Not in a bad way, though. Kana is the happiest I have seen her in a while. I really am grateful to your sister for everything she has done for her, by the way.»
«To be honest, I’m not sure how long it’s going to last,» Zorian admitted. «For now she finds Kana cute, and probably finds it pleasing to have someone pay attention to her with such rapt attention. She tends to get bored really quickly, though. And in any case, she’s only in Cyoria temporarily while my family is off visiting my brother in Koth.»
«Well that’s too bad,» Kael sighed. Then he smirked at Zorian. «Though I supposed you’ll be relieved when she finally leaves.»
«Well, who knows,» Zorian said. «We’ll see how things go. She’s not so bad right now, so maybe she won’t be a total pest like she usually is. I’m hoping some of your daughter’s attitude will rub off on her in time.»
«Oh, that would be such a pity,» Kael said. «It would be a shame for such a lively girl to lose her spark of life. I myself wish Kana had some of that boundless enthusiasm.»
«Shall we trade, then?» offered Zorian.