"Then I'll leave the rest to you professionals. I'm going to find somewhere to rest." Shen Luolun yawned lazily.
After the exhausting journey and the whole "Emotion-Forsaking Beef Noodles" incident, he hadn't even had a hot meal. Though he'd found plenty of amusement with Yinyue and thoroughly let off steam, he was tired now. All he wanted was to find an inn, take a good bath, go to sleep, and wake up refreshed enough to do the contemporary radio calisthenics the next morning.
"Where are you going to rest? Why not just come to my house?" Lan Yan hooked her arm through his.
"Your house?"
Shen Luolun thought about it. Lan Yan's family was in Yilong Wharf, not far from here.
"Forget it. I'm afraid I'll run into your uncle again. He's always trying to get me to study the arts," he said, shaking his head.
Shen Luolun used to visit the Lan Clan often to hang out with Lan Yan, until he met someone-Lan Yan's uncle, Lan Zhanye.
Lan Zhanye spent much of his time away. One day, he returned home and happened to meet Shen Luolun. He was immediately amazed, taking a liking to him at first sight and wanting to take him as his final disciple and pass on his legacy, but Shen Luolun refused.
Lan Zhanye refused to give up. They met many more times after that, and he kept extending the... olive branch of a master-disciple relationship to Shen Luolun.
Shen Luolun turned him down every time.
The reason was simple: he didn't want to go deep into the mountains and forests for arduous cultivation.
How many years did a person have in life?
What good was spending ten or twenty years painstakingly studying the arts?
At most, he'd look cooler and have more special effects.
For him, living freely in the mortal world was far more worthwhile.
Besides, the arts couldn't grant immortality. In Teyvat, without some extraordinary encounter, people lived a hundred years at most. After a hundred years, everyone was reduced to dust.
In any case, Shen Luolun had made his peace with it. Whether he studied or not didn't matter; having fun was what counted. No amount of talent could stop him from wanting to lie flat.
Besides, he already had a master in name. What would it look like if he took Lan Zhanye as another?
"You're naturally gifted, so it's only normal that my uncle likes you. Why won't you learn? Come on, learn! I'll teach you if you do."
Lan Yan smiled slyly and poked his cheek.
"Yeah, yeah, get lost. Don't think I don't know what you're up to."
Shen Luolun brushed her finger away.
If he became Lan Zhanye's disciple, wouldn't that make him Lan Yan's junior brother?
He'd automatically be a rank below her.
Whenever he spoke to Lan Yan afterward, she'd be able to lord her status as his senior sister over him.
How humbling! (Sad)
"Whoever wants to learn can learn. Unless your uncle isn't there, I'm not going home with you."
Having turned Lan Zhanye down so often, Shen Luolun didn't want to see him for the time being. Meeting him would feel awkward.
"What are you afraid of? My uncle isn't going to eat you."
Lan Yan raised her fair little fist.
"I've got you covered, so don't be afraid. Let's go."
Shen Luolun was so annoyed he almost laughed.
"You're still playing dumb when you know exactly what you're doing?"
He pinched the girl's cheeks and gently pulled them.
"You just want me to call you senior sister, don't you? Hmm?"
Lan Yan averted her gaze.
"Mmm... I don't."
"I don't believe you."
Shen Luolun snorted.
This kind of little scheme from a bestie was the worst.
The moment she saw a chance to get one over on him, she'd take it.
"Shouldn't certain people pick a more appropriate place to fool around?" Yelan's tone was flat, betraying no emotion. "This is a public place. Please mind the proper social boundaries between men and women, especially in front of a Liyue civil servant."
"That's right, that's right! The ancients said 'propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame,' and propriety came first! A socially appropriate distance in keeping with propriety is an important factor in maintaining social stability. If men and women failed to observe propriety, I hear they used to be put in a pig cage and drowned!" Xiangling chimed in from the side.
Shen Luolun broke into an embarrassed sweat.
He hurriedly let go of Lan Yan.
"What are you talking about? Lan Yan and I are joking around. You know what a joke is, right?"
"Don't make it sound so serious, okay?"
Drowned in a pig cage?
Wasn't that what they did to adulterers?
Had Liyue really gone back to the height of the feudal era when it came to morality?
If even fooling around with his bestie could get him drowned in a pig cage, that was terrifying.
He hadn't gotten to enjoy the perks of being a feudal landlord, but he was being persecuted by feudal backwardness instead?
"Sir, please don't joke so casually with women. You could be charged with hooliganism." Yelan folded her arms and looked at him coldly, as if he were a criminal suspect.
"Okay, okay, okay."
Shen Luolun raised both hands above his head, looking helpless.
"Is this good enough? I'm as law-abiding as they come."
Lan Yan puffed out her cheeks.
"A-Luo, they're just trying to scare you. It's not that serious."
"Lan Yan, are you really going to indulge him and let him become a menace to society, a black sheep who'll spend the rest of his life in prison?" Yelan turned her sights on her.
"A-Luo isn't that kind of person." Lan Yan met her gaze without backing down.
How could playing around with her turn him into a black sheep? That was far too biased.
"Hard to say," Xiangling interjected.
"Why don't you leave this guy in my care? I'll use good food to make him turn over a new leaf."
"Huh?"
The two spoke in unison.
She wanted to reap the benefits while they fought? Dream on.
Yelan and Lan Yan immediately swung their sights around to Xiangling.
Lumine pulled a certain someone away from the center of the storm.
"How exactly did you provoke them?"
Now they were all at each other's throats. It was just like a certain kind of comedy scene from the light novels a certain someone wrote.
Shen Luolun blinked in confusion. "How should I know?"
Weren't girls all inexplicable, catlike creatures like this?
Even with his dual status as both "good bro and bestie," he couldn't escape their hissing.
In the past, they'd often fought over Shen Luolun.
After all, he was the only one who held both those roles, and there were too many monks and not enough porridge, so he could only try his best to treat them equally. He was basically used to it by now-they'd always make up for no apparent reason in the end, so he didn't need to worry. The only thing that puzzled him was that after making up, they'd always give him the cold shoulder for a while for no apparent reason.
"Hey, hey, hey, seriously? You don't know what they're thinking?" Lumine asked, highly skeptical.
He could write works like The Lie Between March and May, On the Speed at Which Cherry Blossoms Fall, and Snow Country, all full of delicate, rich emotion... yet the original author himself was utterly oblivious to everything happening around him?
If Lumine hadn't known full well that Shen Luolun wasn't a bad person at heart, she really would have thought he was the kind of scumbag who liked to keep on good terms with pretty girls and toy with their feelings.
"How would I know? Even a bestie can't read minds, can they?" Shen Luolun retorted.
"Okay, putting all that aside, there's actually something I've wanted to ask you for a long time," Lumine said suddenly.
"What?" He was slightly taken aback.
"No matter how close a guy and a girl are, you can't describe them as besties, can you?"
Lumine stared intently at him.
"Why not? Didn't people use to say 'male bestie'?"
"Since when? Does that happen in Teyvat? I've been in Teyvat this long, so how come I've never heard of it?" Lumine narrowed her eyes.
Of course they don't have that in Teyvat. It's something people said in my previous life, Shen Luolun thought.
But there was no way he could tell Lumine about his previous life.
Seeing that a certain someone had nothing to say, Lumine gave a soft snort.
"They don't, do they!"
"Honestly, you're far too dense. I've wanted to say that for ages."
"What do you mean, dense?" Shen Luolun was genuinely puzzled. What was Lumine trying to say?
"I don't know if you're playing dumb or really are dumb. They li-"
Just as Lumine was about to lay it all bare.
"Traveler!"
"Huh? Paimon?!"
A white, floating spirit drifted unsteadily in through the doorway, rubbing her eyes and looking half-asleep.