Alex's life returned to some form of normalcy again. The two women understood that he had been given a special allowance to not have to remain in the sect, and so his presence didn't confuse them at all.
Alex had been regularly pitied for the first few days after the patients learned about his 'failure', which he let continue. There was no point in telling the truth to these people, and he didn't want to tell it to them anyway.
He didn't want people acting weirdly around him just because he had joined a sect now, so he let the people believe that he had failed and thus returned.
The shop sowed some steady progress as well. It was hard to judge the progress over a week or two, but in the 2 months after Alex returned, the number of patients had gone up by nearly 10%. That was a fantastic improvement to everything.
