Adrien bit his lip. At the time, he had sent letters to request apprenticeships with sorcerers in his area, but they had all rejected him - if things had gone his way back then, he would have never sent that letter to Val, whose writing style did not enthuse him enough to want him as a teacher anyway. If things had gone how Adrien wanted back then, he would have never met Val, he realized in that moment. In any case, he did not want to go into that with the shopkeeper of all people. "Yes, but I came here", Adrien decided to say, hoping it would be enough.

"Seems like a lot", was Giorgio's reply. He cleared his voice. "What have you been studying?".

"Well, magic --".

"Yes, I know that already", Giorgio interrupted him, his expression unchanged, but his voice somewhat harsher than before. "What kind of magic?".

Adrien took off his scarf. "Well, a lot of different things... Right now, I'm studying alchemy".

Giorgio nodded, for once seemingly satisfied with Adrien's answer. "And then what?".

"Defense magic, elemental shape magic --".

"No. What after", Giorgio said, stressing the "after" in his sentence.

Adrien paused for a second. "After I'm done studying?".

"Yes".