chasm ･ xiao ⋆.࿔*

- chapter 10 -

(unedited) 

Childe's POV

I swear to god, this girl. What happened to the naive adeptus I've known for the past month? Where did this new incredibly aware one come from? This is like some Xiao level shit. I take out her vision, investigating it once more. It's a bit duller than it was when I took it. Hmph. Serves her right to get near death. Would've made my job easier anyway. Quite obviously, nothing's going to work against her anymore, so now I have to think of a new plan.

I wonder where they're keeping the Exuvia?

-----

Qiqi walked in a few minutes after Childe left.

"Y/N." she said in her calm voice.

"Qiqi!" You smiled at her, already starting to forget your interaction with a certain harbinger just minutes before.

"Qiqi is here to heal your leg." She walked towards you with a small box in her hand.

"Qiqi needs you to close your eyes and relax." She said, propping her fingertips against each other and herself closing her eyes.

"Okay, yeah, I can do that!" You bubbly said. You closed your eyes and tried to think of happy things to take your mind off Childe. Your mind pictured Xiao smiling, running around in a sunny field with a flower crown on his head. You chuckled at the thought.

"Qiqi has finished healing your leg, Y/N." you hear, awakening you from your fabricated thoughts.

You move your leg around a bit, stretching it out and turning it.

"Works just like new!" You say. "Thank you, Qiqi."

"No problem." She replies. "Qiqi will be on Qiqi's way now. Goodbye, Y/N."

"Cya later Qiqi!" you wave to her, and she waves back.

-----

"What happened to you? I heard yelling in here earlier." Xiao said, strolling in a few hours after Qiqi left. You were sitting on a chair in the corner, reading a book.

"Childe happened." You remarked.

Xiao's face morphed into one of disgust. He started asking you questions left and right, interrogating you.

"The harbinger? What was he doing here? Why was he here? How did he know you were here?"

You put the book down.

"Woah, slow down there bud. I'm not a Teyvat wiki. I have no idea what he was doing here, or how he found me," you blatantly lied.

"Y/N, even you know I'm not that stupid. What was he here for?" Xiao said, deadpanning.

You sighed.

"He came to check up on me," you say, "since he was nearby when it happened."

"And he didn't try to help you?"

"That's exactly what I asked. Apparently he didn't think that three lawachurls could almost kill an adeptus." you said.

"Well, I can see why he would think that. This is your fault for being so ignorant of your surroundings that you don't even notice when your vision falls right off. You may as well be a citizen of Inazuma getting their vision taken by the decree." He lectured.

"The what?"

"Did he say anything suspicious?" Xiao asked, completely disregarding your question.

"Not really."

Xiao raised an eyebrow at you.

"Okay, so he may have been really really insistent on trying to know what Ganyu said to me and then I may have gotten pissed off and yelled at him for wanting to know everything that everyone says to me and brought up his status to him and said I couldn't trust him as much as I thought I could then he may have gotten mad and left and slammed the door," you rambled on.

"What? Is the door okay?" Xiao got up, examining the hinges before sitting down on the armrest on your chair. "Anyway, what did Ganyu say to you? It's not like you to keep information to yourself."

You reflected on yourself. Was it okay to tell Xiao? Would he accept you realizing your mistake, or judge you like he always does and tell you 'I told you so' and lecture you once more? Then again, you've known this man for over a millenia. Xiao is one person you know you can trust.

"She told me that if Childe was really a normal, sane person, he wouldn't be a harbinger. She knew she wouldn't be able to change my mind, so she just told me to not tell him more than he should know." You slowly reply.

Xiao ran his fingers through your hair.

"I would tell you that you're an idiot, but I can tell that's probably not what you want to hear right now, so instead I'll say that I'm glad you came to your senses, even if it was a month later."

You smiled up at him. He handled that surprisingly well.

"Now that you don't have your vision anymore," Xiao said, breaking the silence, "we need to work on strengthening your physical attack." He got up and lent you a hand to get up before teleporting you both to an open forest.

--

You're walking through the harbor, humming a light tune to yourself. Xiao taught you how to attack by applying more weight, and now you can kill a hillichurl in one slash. Plus, things are looking a lot better now. Reason being, if you don't end up getting your vision back, you can still hold yourself up with physical attacks that are basically just as strong as your cryo ones. And if you do end up getting your vision back, now you can switch between cryo infusion and physical attacking. Using physical attacks would save you a lot more energy too, so it's a plus for both sides.

It starts to slowly pour rain, but you don't mind. You just keep walking to nowhere. You watch as the cityfolk rush to get under a roof, smirking at some attempts of children trying to take various shortcuts. You're quite tranquil, nothing could possibly bother you right now.

Right?

Wrong.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a flash of ginger on the other side of a tree.

Childe?

You weigh your options, and then decide to discreetly follow him.

---

oh my god wtf oaf actually didn't take over a month to update??1?12@?@21/1!?

using my free school time to do this is actually a pretty good idea it seems

now that i have built the bridge to the climax except a longer chapter tomorrow

this is where the real fun starts 😈