J_Is_Drowning
At the Akademiya, architecture student Kaveh and theoretician Alhaitham are everything rivals should be: brilliant, competitive, and infuriatingly inseparable.
When circumstance - and an unfortunately convenient housing arrangement - forces them to share a dorm room, their debates spill out of lecture halls and into midnight arguments about design, philosophy, and the meaning of purpose.
Kaveh builds toward the world outside, sketching towers of light and possibility.
Alhaitham prefers the quiet of knowledge, content to stay within Sumeru's walls forever.
Somehow, between blueprints and thesis drafts, what began as rivalry starts to shift into something softer - something neither of them knows quite how to name.
With Cyno and Tighnari (partners in both work and life) watching their slow transformation over weekly game nights, Kaveh and Alhaitham learn that building anything worth keeping - a home, a career, a relationship - means learning how to compromise without losing the truth of what they are.