Rizvy

kalim’s definition of “friendship” is explained in book 7 and in previous personal stories (explained later) where he considers others as “friends” if they helpr him, and himself to them if he helps them. if it isn’t noticeable yet, the thematic reason why kalim has such a loose idea of friendship is because it is based on the genie’s idea of friendship. in the genie’s perspective, he is a friend to aladdin (“friend like me”) because he is able to do things for him. after aladdin promises him that he will free him, the genie starts referring to aladdin using casual nicknames that are synonymous with the word “friend” (buddy, pal, etc) (and yes, i did check, it was only ever aladdin’s name or “master” before this promise).

there are a few unique situations that the game touches on and some of it is more obviously written than others.

1. normal (for kalim standards) (emphasis on “for kalim” + a projection onto jamil) friendship-making

this is the situation that we see the most, and it’s mostly based on, again, kalim’s loose standards for what constitutes as a friend or not.

the one in jamil’s ceremony robes is one i wanted to touch base with the most, because although he has a loose definition of friendship for himself, he uses the proper word to describe other people knowing another person (“acquaintance”).

“knowing each other” is the logic that kalim uses to describe acquaintance, which is the correct definition, as he uses the same logic to come to the conclusion that sebek may also know silver. when sebek mentions that he and silver were taught alongside each other by lilia as fellow pupils, kalim mentions that “silver and i are in the same class”. i know it’s a simple way of explaining their friendship, but it’s nice that sebek mentioning that sebek and silver were taught alongside each other got kalim to mention the same context between his friendship with silver (they’re in a class together = taught alongside each other).

it’s here when kalim then starts to suggest that “you and I should be friends too!” meaning that, like silver and kalim, sebek and kalim should be friends as well. this is taken out of the Japanese version of the card, where kalim only mentions that him and silver get along great in class without implying a desire to be friends with sebek. ill explain later why it might have changed. (on a side note, i find it really interesting that kalim was smiling during jamil’s lecture after this until jamil tells him “i keep telling you not to trust new people so easily”, considering that the only one kalim says he trusts is jamil. i might talk about what the differences are in their definitions of trust in another post) (on another side note, kalim mentioning “sebek wasn’t even a spy!” implies that was a possibility he was thinking of).

last thing: kalim says “who cares which dorm he’s from? we know his name and we’ve chatted. that makes us friends! and friends help each other out” to try to convince jamil to help out sebek. I’ve mentioned this a few times in other posts, but kalim’s specific idea of friendship (polished and finetuned by the narrative) is based on reciprocal deeds. these can lead to helping each other out, but initially they don’t always start off that way. this might mean that exchanging words is a reciprocity that kickstarts kalim into treating the other person as a friend. sebek wasn’t an assassin or “even a spy” (aka, ulterior motives, which, to kalim, would mean that the exchange of words and value in those words wouldn’t be reciprocal) (more on this later), so by kalim’s standards, sebek is a friend. however, there is one problem with this interpretation from the story.

there is a time between when kalim says “we should be friends”, which means the idea of being friends with the other person isn’t true presently but could be true later; versus when kalim says “that makes us friends!”. but during this time, kalim and sebek don’t exchange any more words - the conversation happens between solely kalim and jamil, or jamil and sebek. you can go back and see for yourself! this is potentially one of the reasons why the former line was added into the official english translations, because one more thing changes later on.

with this, there is a big implication that kalim was projecting his idea of friendship onto jamil in that moment; he wasn’t describing his friendship with sebek at the time, but jamil’s friendship with sebek. (pronouns in Japanese are vague). jamil should help sebek because he is friends with him, and if jamil won’t go, then kalim will go instead to help jamil out. this is also implied when kalim describing his relationship with sebek uses the term “schoolmates” rather than “friends” to describe himself helping out sebek:

id like to note that the term “schoolmate” isn’t used in the japanese version. kalim doesn’t specifically say a term for what he calls sebek in this moment. again, the original japanese version of the card leaves things vague on who is referring to what. it could be true that they wanted to translate that ambiguity into the official english translation of the card by subtly showing the difference between how kalim wanted to be friends with sebek but didn’t do much after he mentions it to pursue the friendship, and how kalim thinks of sebek as a schoolmate but sees jamil and sebek as friends because they’ve chatted together more than him.

to summarize the logic: kalim would like to be friends with sebek, understands he is just schoolmates with him, but believes that jamil is friends with sebek. unlike when he calls himself sebek’s schoolmate to justify himself helping him out, he persuades jamil to go help sebek because they are friends. if jamil doesn’t go to help, kalim will go instead, because jamil and kalim are friends and kalim should help jamil out if he can’t do something. kalim, later on, understands that he “basically forced jamil to walk him back and all”, so followed after them to make sure they were getting along.

if it helps to add context to his behaviour, kalim sees jamil as a brother, and kalim has a lot of younger siblings. he is practically obsessed with making sure jamil had good relationships with other people (…doesn’t this sound like both of our favourite matchmakers in aladdin) (im talking about the sultan and genie here) (i need to make a compilation of parallels between them and how it’s relevant to kalim’s character). lab coat was also a thing where the main objective of throwing the party for jamil in the beginning was to get him to bond with other people. (good job kalim for understanding that codependency between you and jamil is a problem) (or he’s getting tired of jamil’s own micromanaging lmao). this pops up again in the nbc event when he encourages jamil to make friends with students from other schools. that was potentially his objective here, which is why he then follows the both of them to see if they’re getting along, despite him forcing jamil to go along (and kalim himself acknowledging this).

2. implications of times where his interactions with other people didn’t mean they were interacting as friends (or an initial desire to be friends from kalim’s end)

this is unlike sebek’s situation, where kalim says he wants to be friends with sebek or is implied to want to be friends with sebek but didn’t get a chance to form a proper friendship outright, but understands that he might be able to later on. to my knowledge, this specific situation only ever happened once, and the only time it happened, it’s acknowledged as a thing of the past that kalim would like to change - and is mostly a result of the type of people both Kalim and the other are.

i won’t explain everything because you can deduce for yourself how kalim thinks of riddle, but back to the idea of “friendship” and reciprocity - kalim mentions to riddle that “you don’t have to take everything upon yourself either, you know. if you ever need help, you can always come to me” implying that it is very unlikely for riddle to start the “friendship-making process” by asking for help. when kalim does try to help riddle out by giving him advice, riddle is always against it: “must I stand here and take advice from YOU?!” is a repeated statement from him twice in the same personal story.

conversely, in riddle’s gym story, when kalim does offer to help by offering to be his partner, and gets help from riddle when he forgot his running time, in both instances, riddle reacts rather poorly and kalim notices it/acknowledges it with a small “hm?” from him. i have a summary of kalim’s opinions of riddle based on these two stories lying around in my docs that i need to post, but to be frank, he didn’t consider him as a friend before kalim’s school uniform story. for more proof, back to said school uniform story: kalim runs off after getting his ingredients, but runs back to tell riddle that he should come to the banquet because they’re “both sophomore housewardens, so it’s about time they hung out as friends”. this implies that, although kalim interacted with riddle in situations before this, learnt his name, and chatted, in very few or none of those situations was the context “as friends” to kalim. this further adds to the idea that kalim’s idea of friendship - “we talked and are now friends” - was him encouraging jamil to be friends with sebek by projecting an idea of friendship onto jamil and wasn’t actually an indicator of how he makes friends or sees his relationship with sebek himself.

coming from kalim, not being considered his friend sounds very harsh at first, but you have to remember he naturally doesn’t trust other people and had to make a conscious effort and change to begin trusting others enough to not scare himself at the dinner table. and this only came about because he actively worked on detecting poisons himself. and even with this, he still hates eating by himself.

speaking of, this is exactly what the game tries to emphasize in the same story when kalim, rather rudely than normal when it comes to denying food from other people, tells riddle not to bother with bringing food to the banquet. even though they can start hanging out as friends, they initially come from a place where they didn’t, so kalim still can’t trust whether the food riddle brings will be poisoned or not. but riddle, who didn’t catch the initial “ooc moment”, or the second one for that matter, also didn’t catch this conclusion. the conclusion he did catch is only what the readers at the time needed to know - that kalim was possibly poisoned. it’s framed this way (narrative-wise) for both the readers who look into kalim’s character - which at this point, would be none at all considering this is his very first card - and for new readers. which is incredibly perfect writing and i wish the events and newer stories would try to do some of this when balancing out “new readers who didn’t experience main story vs old veterans”, especially when it comes to scarabia… anyway, expanding on the former idea, it’s like a lot of kalim things where it’s encouraged by the narrative to look back at these moments in hindsight to understand it (aka every single one of his lucky breaks in events where something he did previously led to a lucky moment in the end).

this card is probably one of the purest instances where, although kalim treats someone as a friend, he still keeps an arm’s length emotional distance from them. his idea of friendship is very loose, but doesn’t necessarily mean - or maybe because it doesn’t necessarily mean - he regards everything the other does with utmost faith and trust. he’s positive, yes, but just like the development of his relationship with riddle, it wasn’t always that way. to a certain degree, describing him solely with his positive and generous nature when it comes to his idea of friendship still might not be entirely accurate either.

3. being told who he becomes friends with

the situation of “becoming” friends with fellow and gidel is an interesting situation because it was influenced by the people around him. before the group agreed to a temporary truce to help fellow out (again, back to the idea of “helping each other out” as a key standard for Kalim’s general standards of friendship), kalim then says that he’s always wanted to be friends with fellow and gidel. this implies a similar situation like sebek’s, where kalim recognizes a desire to be friends with someone, but never really got the chance to in full. you can tell when this is the case vs when it’s not depending on the vocabulary and terms kalim uses, which is why this is different from riddle’s situation, where this wasn’t vocalized in their conversation with each other.

i don’t have much to say on this one, but it is a thing that happened! so it’s important to mention. he didn’t actively start thinking of fellow and gidel as friends until this truce was made and approved by other people, which is a different situation in general. a lot of the other times we see kalim refer to someone as friends either 1. makes sense for his character, or 2. projects his idea of friendship onto someone else.