Read Tags to Understand What the Story is About (GENSHIN)

Chapter 2

It wasn't until noon that a certain someone can be seen with their floating companion, standing by a stall. Kaveh noticed them conversing with a merchant who didn't seem too pleased. He decided to step in, even though he knew he'll be late for the trip to Liyue.

"Hey, you're the Traveler that visited my house, right?" Kaveh interrupted the merchant that was about to throw a nasty comment. He eyed the merchant suspiciously. "What's going on here?"

"Oh! You're that one guy!" the floating fairy exclaims in surprise, turning her body around to face Kaveh. "Kaveh, right?"

The Traveler sighed as they placed a hand on their forehead. "Sorry, we were trying to purchase something from this stall but he's..." they pointed at the merchant with their thumb. "... not willing to sell something, even when negotiating the price."

Kaveh hummed. "What's it you're buying?"

"We were trying to buy this!" Paimon, he remembers now, shows him what looks like a thick plain book. It has a thick brown strap that can secure the closed book better, and looking at it closely, the material seems to be leather. There's an empty slot in the front of the book where a small photo can be inserted. The pages don't look like a normal average book, and Kaveh realizes soon that it is, in fact, a photo album.

"A photo album, I see," Kaveh nodded. He wondered what they need with it, but he removed that thought as he glanced at the merchant. "How much does it cost...?"

"A huge amount of mora!" Paimon answered vaguely, her tone becoming a bit agitated. It wasn't because of Kaveh, heavens no. She glared at the merchant who stared back with a more intense aura.

"If you want to know," the Traveler spoke up. "It's a whopping 500,000 Mora."

"Five hundred thousand-!" Kaveh's eyes went wide. "That's... expensive for a photo album..."

"Not expensive!" Paimon refuted. "It's insanely expensive!"

"It is not!" the merchant shot back, pissed. "It's a reasonable amount! This is a rare find!"

The Traveler eyed the leather photo album. "For something that looks ordinary, I don't think-"

"Don't you dare say it's ordinary! This leather photo album may look ordinary, but underneath all that leather, it was rumored that there is a special kind of material hidden from all eyes! It's an insanely rare material that no one knows of!"

"... If it's underneath all that," Kaveh started. "Why don't you just remove the leather?"

"This is good-quality leather," the merchant scoffed, picking up the album with only one hand. "The better, the harder it is to peel off. And even if it's possible, who'd destroy such fine leather?"

"I suppose that's valid," the Traveler muttered under their breath. "Is there any other items you're selling at the moment?"

"I do, but they're all for people who ordered it beforehand. I'm short on items."

The Traveler sighed. "We didn't even get to negotiate the price. I don't think anyone ordered this beforehand and yet this was put up on display."

"Some random person picked it up earlier and I had to shoo em off!" the merchant grumbled. "Then there were customers asking for me and I had to help them since they're impatient! And then I forgot about this completely until these two tried buying it."

Kaveh didn't know what to do about this situation, but he felt like helping the Traveler and Paimon since they looked like they needed it. The merchant did make things difficult in a way.