Devil's Path (Genshin Impact x OC)

Chapter 13: Appeal from the Cloud-Sea

Opening 2

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Two days pass by in a flash as Lucius and Paimon enjoy a nice lunch time meal with Gaming over in Xinyue Kiosk.

Though for Gaming, this is his breakfast.

Paimon: Ah... So full. That meal was so satisfying, it even gave Paimon some extra brain juice.

Lucius: ("Brain juice?")

Paimon: Oh! Listen, listen, Paimon's figured it out!

Lucius: Figured what out?

Paimon: Let's think about this for a second, Gaming. You invited us to this awesome restaurant and ordered a whole tableful of expensive dim sum just for the three of us... Well, you must be hiding the fact that you're some young master from a rich family! That would explain why you try to keep your friends and family away from each other.

Lucius: You're confusing him with Xingqiu.

Gaming: Yeah! I was about to say!

Paimon: You know Xingqiu? You sure know a lot of people.

Gaming: Well, when you're on the road as much as I am, you hear all sorts of rumors. Sometimes they're true, sometimes they're not. What it comes down to is being able to tell the difference. More often than not, that means knocking on some doors to find out for yourself.

Gaming: Though, sorry to burst your bubble, Paimon, but you're wrong about my family situation.

Paimon: What!? Paimon thought she was on to something there...

Gaming: My dad is just an ordinary tea merchant. Small-scale stuff, you know? It wouldn't even make sense to mention his business in the same breath as the Feiyun Commerce Guild. My dad... (sigh) He always wanted me to inherit the family business, to be a merchant like him. But that's just not who I am. It's not who I ever wanted to be.

Lucius: ("Ah, the classic trope of parents wanting their kids to be like them...")

Lucius: Does he know about what you want to do?

Gaming: Of course I have! I told him I wanted to be a Wushou dancer — that I wanted all of Teyvat to see what I could do! According to my dad, though, that wasn't a real job... Just a child's pipe-dream.

Lucius: Hmm...

Gaming: I'm sure he thought I would come around eventually, but Wushou dancing has always been the only thing I wanted to do. One day, he tried to get me to visit some other tea merchants to start building the right relationships, but I refused to go. We got into a huge fight. We were this close to throwing hands. In the end, I was so angry that I... I ran away from home. I haven't been back since...

Gaming: Don't get on my case just yet, okay? It's not like I think I'm completely without fault. No... I know that it wasn't the right way to go about things. But my dad's stubborn. No matter how hard I tried to convince him, it just went in one ear and out the other. There was no changing his mind. I knew talking would only get me so far. But if I made it big in Liyue Harbor... The results could speak for themselves...

Gaming: But... I'm sure you both already know how that's going. Wushou dancing's just not that big in Liyue Harbor. In the past, I would go door-to-door from store to store, asking if they would be interested in hiring a performer. Most times, I wound up eating nothing but humble pie, hehe... And you can't just rely on dreams to put food on the table, right? So I found a job as a guard to make some money, and now I have enough to get by and then some!