Enigma of Sin

Kayn proceeded to start brainstorming ideas in his current grimoire, in English still of course. Time flew by as he became engrossed in his new project and at some point, Lara came over to his desk from her play area he had set up in the same room and stated that she was hungry. Only now realizing the time, he thought about Kinzie and how she had yet to call him.

While he wasn't exactly worried that she would ghost him now, he was still a little sad he hadn't heard from her yet. However, she is a student, a Prime student at that. She had to prioritize her grades and performance in order to maintain her status and privileges.

If Kayn didn't have Maria as his teaching assistant, he would probably have to spend a lot more time grading student's work at home rather than letting her do it during class with him reviewing her grading.

Fortunately, she saved him a lot of time, and even gave him ideas when she was bouncing her own theories off of him during his private sessions with her.

Finally, after dinner and as he was putting Lara to bed, he saw the glow of the communication crystal he had been checking on and off all day long.

"Good evening, Kinzie." Kayn said as he connected their call.

"Hey Kayn. Sorry I'm calling so late. It was a long day. Since I spent two of my evenings with you, I fell behind on my classwork a bit. I need to get back to my studies again soon unfortunately, but I just wanted to say hi at least and schedule the next time we can meet up. If I plan out my studying and training time correctly, we can probably see each other for an entire evening every seven days or so if that's okay with you."

On Kinzie's end of the call, she was pouting to herself as she really wanted to spend more time with him, but studies came first as she had worked hard to get to where she was at.

"That's fine Kinz. You can also call me whenever you would like to during the evenings. I mostly do lesson planning and training of my own during this time, so I should be able to talk if you'd like to. Anyways, if you have time before you have to go, would you like to tell me about your day or do you need to get back to it right away?"

The more Kayn thought about it, even talking with her every now and then would be good. It would be like back before cell phones and texting when lovers had to call each other every now and then to communicate.

"That sounds great! I'll call you every day if I can!" Kinzie sounded far too excited about it, but it only made Kayn smile. She then proceeded to give Kayn a summary of her day, even bragging about how the student she shared her home with marveled at the flowers she had placed in their living room.

When he asked if she told her housemate about him, she said that she had received the flowers from someone, but didn't mention who as she didn't exactly want it known that she was becoming romantically involved with a professor, even if his age was below hers, most people wouldn't assume that.

While age gaps usually wouldn't matter in a world where people could live for thousands or even millions of years, a professor who was most likely 60 or above becoming intimate with someone who was just sprouting as an adult and that they had power over would be frowned upon.

Kayn himself refused to see anyone below 18 as an adult, even if 16 was the age of adulthood in Talganoth. He also had his previous knowledge from 22 years of life, so he was still about twice Kinzie's age if he accounted for that. This was another reason why back when his older sister's friends had tried to hit on him, he blatantly ignored their attempts.

He had certain moral objections to them being so young as he felt like he would have hated himself because his moral compass told him it could be seen as grooming. He definitely would have felt like a pedophile if he had made a move, and that was unacceptable for him. Fortunately, he had little troubles controlling his hormones during puberty even if they were trying to tell him act otherwise.

However, now that Kinzie was in her 20s and he was also 18 and things had developed naturally, it didn't concern him much. He could now be seen as just a mature 18-year-old rather than adult in a child's body and she was old enough and had been through enough experiences to also make her own informed decisions.

When Kinzie finished telling Kayn about her day and what she was currently learning, she asked him about his and he happily recalled his own day, leaving out his call with Charlotte for obvious reasons. While he would explain everything to her eventually, this early on in the relationship was not the time.

Regrettably, there was one thing Kayn had overlooked when he told her about his day, which was the amount of time he spent alone with another young woman who had similar interests to him.

He had completely overlooked the fact that she would probably be jealous about this as he was her first relationship, only proving to Kayn that he was correct in taking this whole thing slow. She was mature in many aspects, but she still needed time to adjust and get used to how relationships worked.

Sure, there were many polygamous families in this world, but Kayn always intended for himself to only ever look at one woman once he dedicated himself to them. It would just take time and effort for Kinzie to build this type of trust in him.

Kayn did the best with the current situation by explaining things to her from a practical and rational perspective, but he should have learned in his last life that sometimes the logical approach made things worse.

He eventually just shut up to stop digging himself a deeper hole. The conversation went on for a little while longer before Kinzie said good night after telling him she would call tomorrow.

Little did he know that answering her call tomorrow would lead to an even bigger misunderstanding. But since he didn't know that, he continued on with his research throughout the night, even beginning to channel the Void Star technique in order to further improve himself.

He had gotten to the point where he could perform the technique while doing monotonous chores such as reading and writing, but it wouldn't be as effective as when he sat or went through his martial forms while concentrating on it.

Even though he had been at the 4th stage for a little over four months now, he couldn't help but feel that his progress was non-existent. He was moving light years faster than normal mages, but it still wasn't good enough for him.

Kayn wanted, no he needed more power as soon as possible, not for just himself, but everyone he wanted to protect as well. Not to mention the promise of having a way to get his family back.

Once the sun began to shine through the window in his study, he stood up from his chair and stretched his body out before doing his usually morning routine.

Constantly using the Void Star technique while formulating other spells and theories was actually quite mentally taxing. But using it while only going through the motions of his martial forms was quite relaxing and placed him into a more meditative state, refreshing his mind and erasing his exhaustion.

After he finished, he freshened himself up, changed into a clean uniform and woke up Lara to feed and get her ready for the day. Time seemed to breeze by as his class and small tutoring session barely registered in his thoughts as his mind was running a million kilometers an hour trying to solve all of his problems.

Just after dinner, he received a call that he had a visitor. Knowing that it was Charlotte, he went to receive her and brought her back to his home. They had a lot to talk about, and more importantly, Kayn was excited to look through the collection of treasures that she had gathered over her lifetime!