Next day, early morning.
The sky was clear and the sea vast; the early sun was just rising, the air was crisp, and a gentle breeze was blowing freely.
The mild sunlight shone through the gaps in the window into the room, only to be blocked by the thick blackout folding screen placed horizontally in front of it.
Inside, the candle flame flickered gently, illuminating the otherwise dim room.
Fang Qiu was curled up lazily under the quilt. She frowned slightly, her long, slender eyelashes trembling twice.
She slowly opened her eyes, propped up her upper body, and looked around the environment in a daze.
"Is it still night? No wonder I'm so sleepy."
She looked at the room with hazy, bleary eyes, murmuring indistinctly like she was talking in her sleep. The strap of her nightdress had slipped to one side of her shoulder, revealing a large expanse of snow-white skin and the foothills of her tender, perky snowy peaks.
Yesterday, as soon as she got home, she had picked up the Teyvat Travel Guide and started reading.
Originally, she bought that book purely to broaden her understanding of the Teyvat continent. Unexpectedly, the book was surprisingly interesting.
That traveler named Alice was simply a genius, full of all sorts of unconstrained and bold imagination.
For instance, she wanted to build a giant spherical rotating cage in the center of Dadaupa Gorge. If she then captured all the surrounding Hilichurls and locked them inside, the momentum generated might be able to drive all the mills in Mondstadt City for at least five years.
Then, the Hilichurls that were too old or had exhausted their stamina would be sent into the mills to be processed into feed, which would then be fed to the strong Hilichurls to power the cycle.
This idea was simply more slave-driving than a capitalist.
Besides this, there were other unconstrained ideas like wanting to use bombs to level Starsnatch Cliff to transform Mondstadt's terrain, using Hilichurls for flight experiments at Windrise, and catapulting Hilichurls all the way to Springvale.
It had been a long time since she had read such an interesting book.
Heh, what an interesting woman.
She read it carefully for a day. When she went out at night, she even made a special trip to Wanwen Bookhouse to buy the Liyue Edition of the Teyvat Travel Guide. It was just that as she read last night, she didn't know until what hour of the early morning she had read; in the end, she fell asleep reading and even forgot to put out the light.
It was just like in her previous life when she would curl up in bed typing on her phone, often falling asleep while writing...
"Forget it, let's continue sleeping."
Fang Qiu rubbed her eyes, extinguished the lamp, and then nestled back into bed. She buried her pretty face into the soft pillow, nuzzled against it to find the most comfortable position, and fell into a deep sleep once again.
Just as Fang Qiu was sleeping soundly during her morning nap, Liyue Harbor had already completely awakened.
Cooking smoke spiraled up from chimneys, drifting with the wind. Young men and women rushing to work trotted along with steamed buns in their mouths, colliding at street corners.
They did not spark love; they were simply sad about the loss of their breakfast. Meanwhile, the dogs by the roadside happily scored a sumptuous breakfast. Two piping hot large meat buns.
At this moment. Inside the editorial office. Quite a few editors had already arrived one after another.
"Sigh, it's so hard... I want to resign and go home to be an author, enjoying the happiness of a cup of tea, a cigarette, and writing five hundred words a day. Although I don't smoke."
"You're still better off than me. I originally wanted to take a book back yesterday to work overtime, but the books that needed proofreading were all horror stories. I live alone; there was no way I could take them back to proofread!"
"Speaking of which, didn't Ah Qing say yesterday that she was taking a book to work overtime? I wonder how her reading went."
"I remember the last book she took home to work on was Fang Qiu's Sword and Fairy, right?"
"Yeah, this is the first time I've seen Ah Qing come in so late, and she looks like she didn't sleep well."
"How could anyone sleep well after finishing Sword and Fairy..."
"True. However, having said that, why hasn't Ah Qing arrived yet? It's almost time for work, isn't it? Could it be that she took Fang Qiu's book back to read again yesterday?"
"I glanced at Ah Qing's desk when I passed by just now. Fang Qiu's new book is still on the desk, so it shouldn't be that she got tortured by Fang Qiu's new book."
Just as the voice fell, they saw Bai Qing walk into the office with a face full of fatigue, looking somewhat out of it.
It wasn't the first time Bai Qing had taken a book back to work overtime, but aside from reading Fang Qiu's books, she had never been late once. This time she was actually late again, and she looked like she had lost her soul.
However, there were clearly no traces of crying this time, which made them somewhat curious. What kind of book made Bai Qing so distracted?
After greeting a few seniors, Bai Qing sat down at her desk. She placed Junior Sister, Go Easy, Senior Sister Hurts on the table, then rubbed the space between her eyebrows.
She had read through the whole thing yesterday, and almost half of the plot was about how girls got intimate.
Every time, it was like dancing on the tip of a blade; although the descriptions were very explicit, the plot would rein in the horse at the edge of the cliff every time, controlling the scale right at the boundary of crossing the line.
But even so, when she recalled yesterday's plot, she couldn't help but blush. Last night, she tossed and turned, unable to sleep well.
Bai Qing shook her head, shaking those messy images from the book out of her mind. She would deal with matters concerning this book later. First, she would look at Fang Qiu's new book.
"Phew."
She let out a long breath and cast her gaze toward Fang Qiu's original manuscript.
Your Name.
"Speaking of which, Fang Qiu's handwriting is getting better and better. Is it because her writing speed has gradually slowed down?"
Looking at the handwriting that had reached the standard of a normal person throughout the text, Bai Qing couldn't help but be slightly stunned and muttered to herself.
She continued reading downwards. The story began with simple daily life.
"The level is as high as ever."
After reading a few pages, Bai Qing couldn't help but nod. Even having read so much of Fang Qiu's writing, this opening was still amazing.
The opening was just a simple daily life plot. However, Fang Qiu added some unusual things into this simple and ordinary daily life.
For example, the "Who are you?" written in the notebook; the teacher saying "It seems you remember who you are today?" after roll call; and the strange things about her yesterday described by her companions.
And Miyamizu Mitsuha's own recollection, saying she felt like she had a very strange dream, as if she had experienced someone else's life.
These simple abnormal events filled her with anticipation for the plot's development. Moreover, Fang Qiu's writing technique was extremely exquisite; with simple dialogue descriptions, she established the personas of the appearing characters.
Immediately following was the shrine maiden's ritual activity. According to tradition, Miyamizu Mitsuha sealed mouth-chewed sake in a bottle, but because she was seen by her peers, Miyamizu Mitsuha couldn't help but doubt her life.
"I've had enough of this place! I've had enough of this kind of life! Let me become a handsome boy in Inazuma City in my next life!"
Miyamizu Mitsuha shouted loudly toward the foot of the mountain as she passed through the torii gate.
Her younger sister, Miyamizu Yotsuha, who was following behind her, sighed.
"Really so silly."
Seeing this, Bai Qing couldn't help but smile. She actually liked the younger sister, Miyamizu Yotsuha, quite a bit.
Then, when she looked further down, Bai Qing couldn't help but be stunned. The scene in Fang Qiu's book shifted, and Miyamizu Mitsuha had actually turned into a handsome boy living in Inazuma City.
"Eh?"
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