Night had fallen. The city lights came on one by one.
The dusk turned hazy and indistinct.
Many a person with a story to tell sat drinking, letting tears fall quietly, gazing up at the moon hanging high in the sky — growing rounder with each passing night — and lamenting how merciless time could be.
Lamenting that a missed chance was a regret that could last a whole lifetime.
A little girl sat by her window, eyes brimming with unshed tears, staring in the direction the boy she cared for had moved away to, lost in a daze.
Beside her, the copy of 5 Centimeters Per Second caught a breath of wind, its pages fluttering and rustling, carrying the girl's tender, unformed longing off into the distance.
That gentle breeze drifted over mountains, brushed past the Glaze Lilies swaying in the valley, skimmed across a lake and sent ripples spreading in its wake, then crossed half of Liyue and came to rest upon a little boy sitting in the corridor of his courtyard, reading quietly by lamplight.
He, too, was reading 5 Centimeters Per Second.
He had begged his family to buy it for him — and in exchange, had agreed to take on the household chores for a full three days.
Inside the pages.
Takaki Toono had just received Akari Shinohara's first letter.
The boy's face went red, but the corners of his mouth curved upward all the same. He thought of the girl who had given him a book.
She had promised she would write to him, too.
...
And at that very moment.
Yujing Terrace. Yuehai Pavilion.
Watching the Glaze Lilies outside her window sway in the breeze, Ganyu reached out a hand ever so gently.
"What a tender wind," she murmured. "Gentle, just like Miss Fang Qiu."
Ganyu's eyes were faintly red — she had clearly been crying not long ago.
She turned back toward the table, where 5 Centimeters Per Second lay open to its final page.
The ending was sad.
But Ganyu knew why Fang Qiu had written this book — it was because of those two children they had seen together that day.
Even Takaki Toono, who had tried so earnestly to hold on to his feelings, never ended up with Akari Shinohara in the end.
Given the way that little boy had been that day, keeping their feelings alive would have been even harder for him.
And the book that little girl had given the boy — it had been Fang Qiu's Your Name. That was why Fang Qiu had written this book in turn.
To tell them both: time shows no mercy, and what is missed is missed for a whole lifetime.
Cherish the one in front of you, while you still can.
"I wonder if that boy and girl ever understood what Miss Fang Qiu was trying to say," Ganyu murmured softly to herself.
Then she looked back out at the bright moon in the sky and said quietly, "By the looks of the date, the Lantern Rite must be coming up soon. I wonder what Miss Fang Qiu is up to right now."
"Is this really the limit of what I can do?"
At that very moment, Fang Qiu was seated on top of Jumpy Dumpty, pen in hand, staring down at a sheet of paper on her writing desk with a look of deep, concentrated thought.
On the paper.
In a scene set at dusk, Miyamizu Mitsuha and Tachibana Taki stood at the top of a hill, gazing at each other with deep feeling, both reaching out toward the other.
That, of course, was the image Fang Qiu had in her mind.
In reality, the drawing consisted of nothing more than simple, wobbly lines, crooked in all the wrong places. The figures were barely better than stick men — it was impossible to tell which one was supposed to be Tachibana Taki and which was Miyamizu Mitsuha.
"Figures. I crossed over without any golden finger to rely on, so naturally my abilities have their limits. Forget it — if I want to draw, I'll just have to learn properly from scratch. For this one, I'll do what I always do and make a request to the publisher to find someone for me. Just be a good client and leave it to the professionals."
Fang Qiu let out a sigh, crumpled up the drawing in front of her, and tossed it into the wastebasket.
Then she stretched with a long, lazy yawn.
"Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've checked on my own abilities. They should have improved a fair bit recently."
She glanced over at Tingyu, who was curled up in her cat bed, deep in blissful sleep. Fang Qiu smiled faintly, raised one hand, and gave a light flick of her wrist.
Cold mist surged and rolled. A deep blue ice sword crystallized out of thin air, radiating a sharp, piercing chill.
"Not bad."
Feeling the biting coldness radiating from the blade, Fang Qiu gave a satisfied nod.
The elemental power contained within the sword was noticeably stronger than the last time she had tested it.
And she hadn't even put in her full effort yet.
At her current level, she could summon seven ice swords simultaneously — each as strong as the one in her hand.
Seven swords descending from the mountain, practically speaking.
That said, while the chill from the Cryo Vision's conjured ice swords wouldn't affect her directly — she wouldn't feel the cold from her own creations — the swords would still lower the ambient temperature of the room. Once dispelled, the residual cold left behind would be enough to give her a chill.
Summoning several ice swords at full power in such a small room would drop the temperature considerably. Stay in there long enough, and she might actually catch a cold.
Catching a cold from ice swords conjured by her own Vision — if word of that ever got out, she'd never hear the end of it.
The helplessness of having a frail constitution. That was all there was to it.
Setting her Vision aside, she wasn't even sure she could beat that little boy she'd spotted the day she went to Wanmin Restaurant with Ganyu.
Alas.
How depressing.
Still — even if her physical constitution hadn't improved, her actual combat ability had gone up by a real, measurable amount.
No practical tests yet, but in a straight-up frontal fight, she was fairly confident she could beat that large Hilichurl consistently by now.
Among Vision holders, that probably counted for something, at least.
Not that she'd ever seen Hu Tao, Xiangling, or Keqing go all out — but thinking it over carefully, the gap probably wasn't that wide.
Probably.
Mm...
Hard to say how much of their power any of them actually used, though.
Oh well. It didn't matter.
She'd get there at her own pace. As long as she kept writing, the road would keep stretching forward. As long as she didn't stop, she would keep growing stronger.
One step at a time.
Someday — when the god sleeping beneath the sea broke free of his seal once more and stirred up chaos — she would be the one to take the place of the departed Rex Lapis, and drive the Overlord of the Vortex back into the depths with an ice lance.
At that point, she would be the new Rex Lapis!
Mm...
No wait, that wasn't quite right. Rex Lapis-ette?
Hmm, still not right. Cryo Lapis-ette?
Thinking this over, Fang Qiu let out a small laugh. She dispelled the ice sword and walked to the window, turning her gaze in the direction of Guyun Stone Forest, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
Her heart swelled with grand ambition.
Of course, reality was blunt — compared to the power of Rex Lapis, she still had a hundred thousand li to go.
Never mind hurling an ice lance the size of Guyun Stone Forest — she couldn't even fill the kitchen with the ice she could conjure right now.
The road ahead was long and the journey arduous.
She still had a lot of work to do.
Tonight's dream material: becoming the Cryo Lapis-ette.
Come to think of it, in her past life she used to do something similar at night before sleeping — imagining what she'd do if she became the richest person in the world.
Or browsing video sites for some billion-mora mansion to use as tonight's dream backdrop.
Tonight's dream: that one.
Smiling to herself at the thought, Fang Qiu leaned against the windowsill and looked out at the sea off Liyue Harbor.
The lights of the city reflected across the water, shimmering and dancing, light and shadow weaving together.
"Speaking of which, I wonder how far along that adventurer Alice has gotten with the next chapter of the Teyvat Travel Guide. Will the next volume cover Inazuma, I wonder? I'd love to know what the scenery there looks like — whether the sea views over there are anything like Liyue's."
After gazing at the seascape for a while, Fang Qiu tilted her head in the direction of Inazuma and spoke her thoughts aloud.
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