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-Göte caught him before I did. By the time I found them, he was yelling at Sune and telling him the two others had probably already been eaten by trolls. When he noticed I was there, Göte started yelling at me, wouldn't listen when I pointed out I could only go after one kid at a time if they split up and acted as if it were more important for us to stay and get his lecture than to start looking for the others. As soon as he was done, someone took me aside and told me that I should bring Sune home and that the properly-equipped people were already looking for Håkan and Anna. I'm very grateful both of you found them.
After explaining the situation to Lalli and Helena, Emil turned towards his cousins, who were all silently sitting on the same couch:
-Listen, the three of you. What you did was really, really dangerous. You could have died. If the three of you are lucky enough that nobody you know well has died yet, just know that it would make your parents really, really sad if it happened.
Håkan said something Emil didn't see coming:
-Would they really? We are always in the way of whatever they are doing.
The question hit home for Emil, and the more he thought of the current situation, the more he saw the mere fact that he was currently caring for him as concrete proof that there was at least a kernel of truth in what Håkan had just said. The words came out of his mouth before he realized he was thinking them:
-I can't speak for your parents as much as I would like, but I would be sad if something happened to the three of you.
Emil knew what it really was. He was mostly clueless by adult standards, but animals and children too young to have acquired proper standards didn't mind that side of him anywhere near as much as most fellow adults. Because of this, he tended to quickly get attached to young children and animals he spent enough time around. This was almost certainly a bigger factor than their – still quite new to all four of them – family ties. He suddenly realized something:
-Lalli, if you want to leave, go ahead. There no reason for you to stay here any longer if you do not want to or need to for a reason I'm unaware of. And thanks again.
Lalli left without a word. He wanted Helena to stay for what he wanted to do next, however:
-I want to ask the three of you something after what happened with Sune and the man who yelled at him. And also after what Håkan just said. What kind of things make your parents yell at you? Ah, if your parents don't take care of you much, you can talk about the people who actually watch you, as well. To give you an example of what I'm talking about…

He was barely a day into giving a try at not treating Stefan as a future partner, and Lalli was already eavesdropping on a conversation in which Emil was a participant with the secret hope that it would either definitely confirm or definitely contradict his assumptions about the other man. Fortunately, his own memory kept him from lingering for too long. Roni also had wanted to have conversations about what their respective guardians yelled at them for. Some of the content of the rumors Stefan had heard could be traced back to things Lalli had shared during such conversations. Reminding himself that Emil's conversation with his cousins could very well have a similar purpose, despite giving every sign of being born of worry, was what got him to leave. Then stop walking when he had already left the Solberg's house upon the realization that he should maybe do something if Emil's intent was identical to Roni's. Between the fact that Helena was in the room, that his reason to want to re-enter the house probably wouldn't work with whoever would open the door and the existing chance that Emil's reasons for having the conversation were different from Roni's, he continued walking until he reached the old man's house and his bedroom; he was definitely going to need a wash and a clean set of clothes before dinner.

While warming himself up in the sauna, Lalli thought about the conversation he had overheard the beginning of and found himself musing about his trouble pinning down when yelling at a person who had done something wrong was a disproportionate response, and when it was an appropriate response. Onni, Tuuri and Roni all having several behaviors that reminded him, on some level, of Emil's fury toward the shop clerk who had short-changed him didn't help matters. Meanwhile, they all treated quite a few behaviors Lalli felt shouldn't be allowed as acceptable. He also found Reynir and Cecilia to have a quite high threshold for when a behavior became unacceptable, but didn't really want to think too long of how much more yelling there may have been around him if they didn't. While he didn't like to interact with people much, he had watched what many were doing from a distance to get an idea of what people outside of his family considered to be acceptable behavior. Aside from the fact that the perceived gravity of many infractions changed from place to place and sometimes from person to person, he was just aware enough of the fact that some things were done only in private spaces to notice the limits of only being able to observe most people when they were out in public. What he had learned from observing people ultimately hadn't helped much when the set of values taught to him by Roni had started to significantly diverge from the one observed by his family. Within less than a month, the few things he actually enjoyed doing alongside his family had turned out to be activities that Roni hated and had been partaking in "only to be nice to him", words that had quickly turned out to mean something closer to "to put him in his debt in some way".

As he put a fresh set of clothes on, he couldn't help but think of his own stance about what constituted proper dinner attire. The thought was encouraged by the memory of what he had heard of Emil's conversation with his cousins earlier in the day, the leeway he'd had on the subject depending on the family's current job and the fact that it was one of the things about which Roni had seemed to constantly change his mind. He remembered times where what he was wearing while eating was one of the last things on his mind, provided his clothing wasn't so caked in dirt or remains or something he had killed that some of it could get in the food. If those two conditions were not met, Lalli considered that after eating was good time to change clothes if it needed to happen, that way washing would take care of both the work-related stains and any food stains. During some jobs and while he was staying in the old man's house, he risked being reprimanded for showing up for a meal in clothes that weren't both of a certain kind and spotless. If he took the time to think about it, he could understand, just a little, how people might not like it if everyone made the effort to put clothes following a certain set of criteria on, and only one person didn't. However, yelling at a person who hadn't made such an effort as loudly as if they had just done something that put their life or that of other people in danger – barring cases where the clothes actually were in a state that put people's lives at risk – was wrong in Lalli's eyes. According to what little he had heard Emil tell his cousins, he had once lived a life in which improper dinner dress got the same immediate reaction as standing too close to the river on a rainy day from his parents. That had once caused him to risk his life on top of obliviously getting the rest of his clothing even dirtier for the sake of using river water to clean up a small smudge he had gotten while doing one of the many jobs he had tried in the past. The difficulty of telling between a major and minor infraction because of both being treated the same was familiar to Lalli. He once again cursed the part of him who wanted to forgive Emil's behavior after either discovering or figuring out one of the reasons behind it.

Lalli ended up speaking much more than usual at dinner, as the event in which he had been involved was among the things the old man needed to know about when he missed them. In the midst of talking, he realized he had a question for the old man:
-When you told me about the men in town who could potentially become my partner, you advised against dating Leif because of Göte. Why didn't you say anything about Emil?
The old man swallowed his current bite of food before answering:
-To be honest, at the time, it looked like to me the two of you could have enough in common to get along. This possibility unfortunately seems to have been overwhelmed by the overlap between his personality and the sort of behavior towards which you have become wary. However, I have a question for you now that you've had the opportunity to observe him and interact with him a few times: if he actually liked you and didn't care about moving back into his former home, how would he be able to prove it?
Lalli thought a moment. Emil lived in a servant's room, so unless he ended up in an arrangement with someone whose lodgings were similar or significantly worse, it would make sense for him to move in with his partner. Especially now that that his cousins were part of his life. Even if they were going to leave eventually, as far as he knew, merely giving them back to their parents alive and healthy would result in them being sent back to him soon enough. As for any other option that could come to Lalli's mind, all Emil would have to do would be to pretend convincingly enough until some kind of binding arrangement was made between the two of them. That reminded him of something Stefan had spelled out not that long ago:
- The second hard and fast rules are made… Wait, what did you think Emil and I had in common?
The look the old man gave him told Lalli it was one those times where the old man was following a logic that was his own only:
-Neither of you are naturals at dealing with people the way you are expected to. Both of you have experienced the extent to which trust can be abused by some people on top of this. In both your cases, it has left you reluctant to do something that is usually expected of a romantic partner all while not liking the idea of making someone else do the same thing. You probably haven't had the opportunity to experience it, but should you ever need to borrow money, Emil is one of the last people in town you should ask. He's fine with using it to pay for something he'll immediately get in exchange for it or parting with a quantity he won't miss with the advance knowledge he'll never see it again. However, ask him to give up money, especially a sum he will miss, for something that's not tangible to him or that he'll only get much later and he'll be furious. He also abhors the very idea of gambling in any way. Unfortunately, a proper courtship can be seen as gambling from a strictly financial point of view. He's unwilling to spend money on something that may not work out and doesn't want to impose such a thing on others. You've been restrictive with a much more intangible element ever since you came here with Anne-Mari, in your own way.

Lalli couldn't deny those two last statements. At the time at which he had met Stefan, he'd found the idea of just giving money to someone to be his friend when he needed one appealing; a true friendship had felt like it required water from a well that had been run dry by Roni and had just recently gone back to having mud at the bottom. When that well had reached the point where it had a little actual water in it again, it had felt obvious that Stefan should get some of it. Then he had realized that this was how he had ended up allowing Roni to take so much of it in the first place, hence the conversation from earlier in the day that had ended with a pause in their courtship. Wanting to give that well a little more time to fill up again was the reason he was hoping the next time he would see Onni and Tuuri would be later rather than sooner; he was quite sure he had been giving them some of that water all along, but had never paid attention to the quantity and wanted to be sure he had enough before seeing them again. A thought he didn't remember having before crossed his mind: maybe that a proper family member, friend or romantic partner was supposed to not only take some water, but also give some of their own, with there being some benefit to getting someone else's water. The latter would explain why there were some people who spent their lives giving as little as possible away while taking all they could. But it also gave him a clearer idea of what he may be needing in a partner: someone who wouldn't take away more than he was able to give. He suddenly felt stupid: some of that new water had probably been provided by Stefan in the first place, and he realized it after leaving to keep him from taking too much. But what was done was done, and he could still use that breakup to get an idea of how much Stefan had been providing compared to other things that had changed in his life over the past few weeks. However, that led to another question for the old man:
-Me and Stefan together… what do you think of it?
-I guessed the two of you might be good for each other at the beginning, but had trouble telling if you would be able to build anything on top of your respective early reasons to give each other a chance. From my experience, relationships that start that way can grow into anything from genuinely loving and healthy to at least one half using the existence of that period as a reason to vehemently reject the very idea of a long-overdue breakup. So I decided that only time would tell which situation you would end up in. Did you have a more specific question for me on the subject?
-Did I make a mistake breaking up with him?
-It's way too early to tell. But in terms of avoiding landing into another relationship like the one you had with Roni in the future, the fact that you were able to accept that a breakup might be the right way to go is an encouraging sign. Stefan is nothing like Roni, but breakups with people who are tend to be hard because they never truly want their partners to leave them. They usually have spells of being as nice as they were at the beginning of the relationship when they realize that things have gotten too close to breaking point. If you can bring yourself to break up with Stefan, it might be easier than you think to break up with any partner you may want to try in the future, but turns out to be unsuitable.
Lalli knew there was only one way to test that. However, Leif was out, Emil was out and he knew nothing of the three other men that were left. He then had two realizations back-to-back. The first was that he had been able to break up with Stefan because he knew him well enough to expect the event to go smoothly. The second was that the part of him that still wanted to give Emil a chance despite everything existed precisely because he was avoiding interacting with him more than he needed to. Maybe that part would go away if he did the reverse and, instead, spent enough time around Emil to see the sort of person he actually was. If the old man was right, he'd be able to walk away whenever the trouble he saw coming would actually happen, but long before things became unbearable.