Your professor is careless and inconsiderate. [Because really, that kind of greeting card-ass nonsense isn't something you should say to anyone, let alone a dying man. It doesn't help.] You do not shine brightly because you will fade.

[Broadly, in any case— it isn't a case of being brilliant and wonderful and so full of innovation because he is going to die, like the greeting card phrase implies. It rankles Octavian, to hear people have spoken of Viktor like a tragedy, puttering around before his inevitable demise. As if the rest of his life has been reduced to the single point of his death before he even gets there. And now Viktor speaks of this morbid cycle, a black hole emptying into that very point over and over and over—

He leans down a bit more, staring down at Viktor in his usual lightly intense way.]

Your companions from home told you this? [The gross misuse of his body after death, even to bring him back, the disrespect of it—] Then from now you must choose. Every moment a choice.

[Choice keeps coming back to linger in the room with them, it seems. Octavian brushes Viktor's hair back again, then slides his fingers down to brush against his cheek.]

Become unrelenting. Bigger than death and those who would choose for you.