American, but living overseas | Old enough to have graduated high school before BNHA started publication | Aspie and you can pry that diagnosis out of my cold dead hands | Bi with a husband | She/her but they is fine too
Welcome to my blog, I guess? Hi, I'm Nix (yes there's a reason for the one single Star Wars thing in my otherwise MHA-obsessed stream of content).
I've been writing for like... twenty years now? I only got hardcore into fanfiction within the last half decade or so. I'm quite proud of my grammar and vocabulary thank you very much, but distinctly less confident in my plot and pacing. My fics are primarily longform and generally rated E for at least one scene, but I'm sloooowly branching into more short snippets.
I do almost exclusively Shigaraki Tomura shipping, in some weird combination of Self-insert (which are almost nothing like me), OC (which the internet hates as a rule), and Reader (with highly overdeveloped characterization). Additionally, I live and die by my favorite tags on AO3, where I have the same name as this blog and no publications yet, "I recognize that canon has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision I've elected to ignore it."
Yes, that is @scary-grace's tag, a million thanks to her for all of her writing for dragging me into the fandom, and also thanks to @shigarakislaughter for prompting me to actually get around to posting anything at all here instead of lurking with a liked posts list.
This blog shall contain prose (sometimes purple, definitely explicit, so please heed the MDNI tag), headcanons, and semi-coherent autistic rambling.
You have now been warned. [rubs hands] Let's get started, I guess?!
After everything he's been through, Shigaraki Tomura wasn't expecting to wake up at all, much less at full health to a world that doesn't hate him. Then again, it's never even heard of him. Or of Pro Heroes, for that matter. And he's never heard of it. Liyue? The Seven Elements? Huh. Did he get isekai'd? Well... He can live with that. Literally. Is he the only one here though?
Haiyan, also known as Water Singer, was only looking for some Starconchs to feed to his Vision. What he found was the strangest Inazuman refugee he's ever seen. Or rather, pseudo-Inazuman. It's a good thing they can communicate, because he suspects he's going to be doing a lot of explaining. Not that he minds. His new friend doesn't just learn fast and work hard, he cleans up quite nicely as well.
...This is probably Alice's fault.
Rated E for Explicit.
Chapter CW: Near drowning.
Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling
Index
<- Start - Prev - Here - Next ->
Glaze Lilies
Haiyan goes down to the market for 'travel supplies' in the evening, and comes back apparently empty handed. Tomura assumes he stored what he bought wherever he keeps storing everything else.
The next morning, they check out of the inn, Huai'an giving them a basket of steamed buns for the road. They walk farther north than Haiyan has ever taken him before, beyond the bridge at the far end of Wangshu Inn's adjoining island. The land on the other side is flatter, not quite level but still barely enough to claim to have hills, and surrounded by silvergrass.
An hour or two after lunch, they stop at the base of a statue on a pillar. The pillar itself comes up to just above Haiyan's head, so Tomura has to step back several paces to look at the top. It's a man lounging on a throne, robe skirts on his legs and a hooded cloak covering his hair but his chest bare, holding up a blank cube in contemplation. The whole thing blazes in his Elemental Sight, mostly white but Geo-gold on the cube.
"Yanwang Dijun," Haiyan says reverently. He pulls a bottle and a small basket-plate of matsutake meat rolls from somewhere and sets it at the base of the statue, then bows his head in prayer.
Tomura doesn't expect anything to happen. It's just prayer. But after several moments, the statue lights up with a swirl of blue light, too deep and rich to be just Hydro, and there's a whiff of petrichor and floral perfume in the air.
"Did he… answer?" Tomura asks.
Haiyan gestures to the basket-plate. The meat rolls are gone. "See for yourself."
Tomura stares. Somehow, despite everything else, he wasn't really expecting much when he was told about the gods ruling here. "Should… Should I pray too?"
Haiyan smiles. "That's up to you."
He steps closer and reaches out to touch the pillar of the statue. Hi… He almost yanks his hand back, feeling stupid. Sorry? No one ever taught me to pray, there was no one worth praying to… I guess I live here now though. My Vision wants glaze lilies, anyway. I like it better here, even if there are no video games. It's way easier to just live here… so… thanks, I guess.
The stone warms under his fingers like sunlight, and there's another burst of petrichor-and-flower scent. It's… welcoming, somehow. He lowers his hand and looks at Haiyan, who smiles a little wider. "He noticed."
Tomura nods slowly. "Should I bring an offering next time?"
"If you genuinely feel like giving one, yes. If it just feels obligatory, it's better not to. Those don't taste as good, so to speak." The pretty man pauses. "And don't offer fish. He hates seafood."
"That's… weirdly specific. Is that in a scripture anywhere?"
Haiyan snorts. "Not as such, no. I should probably clarify something… When I said my mother served Yanwang Dijun as one of the Xianshou, I didn't mean she served the Archon Morax. Yanwang Dijun is also, and was first, Dijun of the Xian. Prime of the Adepti, in Teyvatian. It was with his blessing that she courted my father, and she presented me to him when I was born. I've known him personally all my life."
Tomura blinks. "…And how long is that?"
"Ah… The Bimillennial Rite was five— no six, next one is almost here — six years ago, so… Seven hundred and thirty-two."
His brain stalls out. "You don't look a day over twenty-five," he manages.
Haiyan looks… embarrassed? "Truthfully, I'm considered young enough to expect all sorts of stupid behavior from, at least by dragon standards… I'm not as young as Liuyun-ayi makes me sound though! She still considers Ganyu a child, and Ganyu-jiejie fought in the Archon War." In a blatant physical redirect, he turns away and heads back to the road. "We should continue."
By the end of the day, they reach Stone Gate, the near side of the border crossing with Mondstadt. There's no inn here, just a Millelith guard post, a tea shop, and a few private houses by the overlook. Tomura pulls on his loose jacket as the weather cools ever so slightly, and when Haiyan finds a spot by the water, he sits easily on a rock and watches as a wok in some kind of floating frame is produced and heated, and a stir fry is thrown together while rice cooks in a pot over an actual campfire.
"I didn't know you could cook," Tomura says when he's handed a bowl. Beef, mushroom, cabbage, lotus seeds, and a small amount of chopped Jueyun chili peppers.
"I've had plenty of time to learn," Haiyan points out, amused.
"Oh. Right."
"Ironically I don't have the patience for the more complicated things. Stuff like squirrel fish or triple-layer consomme? I'm good with a knife, but those things drive me insane. I'd rather just make grilled ticker fish or bamboo shoot soup. The soup takes a while, but most of that is just simmering in the pot, it's not three hours of cutting multiple ingredients into threads and stacking them in a pattern."
Tomura shrugs. "I never learned how to do anything that didn't start and end with 'add boiling water and wait three minutes.' I can't even boil an egg… Although that's because I physically couldn't peel them. There was no point when I wouldn't be able to eat them without help anyway."
Haiyan frowns. "Why?"
"My master. Everyone had some kind of power, where I'm from. Or close enough to everyone. His power was to take other people's powers and pass them to someone else or hoard them." Tomura stares at the campfire. "Like trading cards. Do those exist here?"
"If you mean the game where you build a deck and play against other people's decks, yes, there's a new one called Genius Invocation. I don't know much about it though. Just enough to get your comparison."
"Right… He gave me one when I was five. I didn't know, I didn't even know it was him, he disguised himself and walked me home and slipped it to me like… like planting a poisoned knife in my pocket. It was really powerful, but broken, there was no way to turn it off. Anything I touched with five fingers would be destroyed."
"…That's why you fight like that, then," Haiyan observes.
"That's why I don't know how to fight. Well, didn't. I didn't need to. I just needed to get close enough to slap someone and I'd win. I'm still not used to being able to hold things with my whole hand." He shrugs again. "You can't peel an egg like that. Or an orange. Or… whatever else. I couldn't even hold a full-sized sandwich."
Haiyan chews on a piece of beef. "Do you want to learn now?"
Tomura considers that for a minute. "Sure, why not."
CoRR
It takes two and a half more days to get to Qingce Village. On the morning of the first day, Haiyan shows him how to use the leftover rice from dinner to make chazuke. At lunch, it's how to gut fish to be grilled on a skewer. At dinner, he learns to chop vegetables for the stir-fry. On the second day, he learns to boil and peel eggs, but mostly he just does the things he learned yesterday while Haiyan watches, only intervening when he's about to cut himself. They camp for the night in a pavilion at the edge of a bamboo forest.
The final stretch of the trip winds through the forest and up a hillside, to a Teleport Waypoint overlooking a river valley filled with terraces, wide scale-like layers filled with green and gold. A series of rope bridges running between stone pillars provides a route from the small cliff they stand on to the path on the other side.
Adults walk through the terraces, while children run along the path. Several younger ones spot Haiyan and swarm him, chattering in Liyuese. A few of them break off to circle Tomura, several staring up at his Vision and jabbering at him.
"What do they want?" he asks.
"They want to know if you're a swordsman or a spearman." Haiyan accepts a fistful of small yellow flowers and mint from a little girl, and gives a few mora back.
Tomura brings out the Twin Nephrite and shakes his head at the kids. Most of them droop in disappointment, but a couple look even more excited. He sticks his hand in the water at the edge of the river and lets off a blast of Anemo, and they shriek with glee as water sprays everywhere. Then Haiyan pulls the splashes off of them all and molds it into dragonflies that buzz away, and the kids chase after them with happy squeals.
Haiyan grins at him, and Tomura grins back, then looks at the flowers and frowns. "Kind of young for a crush, wasn't she?"
"What, these? It's a Xian thing, not a crush. The kids always give me things like this when I come through town. They're more food offerings than anything else. Last time I got a basket of Jueyun chilis."
"Flowers, though?"
"Sweet flowers. The nectar is practically pure sugar." Haiyan stows the apparently-edible bouquet.
At the far end of the valley, they climb the hill into the village proper. Dark timber houses with blue-glazed roof tiles are planted around a mill powered by three wheels under a waterfall, with a plaza in the middle taken up by a produce market and a teahouse with a half-dozen bamboo tables.
Haiyan sits down at one of the tables and orders some tea and xiaolongbao, plus the same noodle dish that Tomura had the first night at Wangshu Inn and a plate of something called 'humbly enough,' which turns out to resemble mapo tofu.
"How often do you come through here?" Tomura asks.
"Once every few months, more or less. I usually stay for a week or two. Clean out the Treasure Hoarders that have moved in around the south and northwest, help with irrigation, duel Rhodeia."
Tomura pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. "Duel who now?"
"Rhodeia of Loch. East of here, there's a small lake where an Oceanid lives. I duel her for the purifying waters that my Vision needs."
Oh, boss farming. "What does she get if she wins?"
"An Adeptal seal that keeps mortals out of her lake and a year before the next challenge. Frankly, she's a bitter, paranoid old hag and it took me over a decade to negotiate the arrangement, but we aren't without common ground."
Tomura picks up another wad of noodles. "What kind of common ground is there to have with a bitchy water elemental?"
It's a minute or two before Haiyan answers. "The Oceanids are children of Egeria, the first Hydro Archon. But she died in the Cataclysm, and her Throne was taken by an Oceanid that became Focalors."
"Became Focalors?"
"The names of the gods are just that, the names of gods. Yanwang Dijun was not Morax until he ascended to divinity… Although the Archons are not the only gods, I should mention. So until she received her creator's Authority, Focalors likely had a different name." Haiyan takes a sip of his tea. "But to the point, the Oceanids lost their mother in the Cataclysm, and many of them died trying to recover her. Plus, the waters of Fontaine were poisoned by a creation of the enemy. They couldn't go home if they wanted to."
Tomura's eyes fix on the string of pearls around the Hydro Vision. "And neither can you."
"Neither can I," Haiyan agrees. "And my mother did not survive the Cataclysm either."
There isn't much he can say to that. "…Will you go for a duel while we're here?"
"Hm… On the way out when we leave, maybe. There's a tunnel on the far side of her lake that comes out by Stone Gate."
"And then a shortcut back to Wangshu… Cool."
CoRR
There isn't really an inn in Qingce Village. There is, however, a room in the home of Granny Ruoxin, the de facto village chief. Tomura's glad to get a hot bath. Despite Dabi's jokes about 'unwashed gamers', he never actually ignored hygiene. He spent enough time with his neck and face split and scraped open from the dryness and the scratching to know better. He just didn't linger on it. Why would he? Soap stung his skin, and too long scrubbing would make the eczema worse. But after spending months homeless, he's learned to enjoy the hot water when it's available. Of course, it helps that he's not clawing himself to pieces anymore, and the old marks where he used to have healed.
When he gets out, Haiyan strips the water from his hair as soon as he steps out of the bathroom. "Would you like me to put it up for you again?"
He shakes his head. "Nah, not right now. If you could show me how to do a braid for the night though…"
Haiyan nods, looking strangely neutral, and uses a lock of jade-green behind his own ear to show Tomura the pattern for a basic braid. Tomura copies it as best he can, and ends up with one that pulls to the left and won't hang straight down his back, but it holds together when he ties it off, and it's only slightly frayed when he wakes in the morning. Once he redoes it and eats the breakfast Granny Ruoxin sets out, they head out for the fields.
He almost doesn't recognize the first glaze lily he finds. The bloom is sealed up in a teardrop shape under the sunlight. It's not until Haiyan gets out his erhu and plays a song that it opens.
He glances incredulously at the pretty man. "How did you do that?"
Haiyan shrugs. "They like music. They always have. Liuyun-ayi said Guizhong used to play the guqin to help them grow."
"Huh…" He crouches down to pick the flower. "How much of it do I need?"
"Cut only the central stem, one finger-length down from the bloom, at an angle," Haiyan instructs.
Tomura pulls out the knife he was given on day one and carefully slices through the stem. When he stands, he gives the flower a curious sniff, and his eyes widen. "Hey, I've smelled this before!"
Haiyan raises his eyebrows. "Really? When?"
"At the Statue in the marsh. When the prayers were answered, I could smell rain on dry dirt and these flowers."
"Huh. That's not the most common manifestation." For some reason, he sounds pleased. "He must approve of you for whatever reason."
It only takes the one day to find enough glaze lilies to feed his Vision, even with how scattered they are on the terraces. The second morning, he culls the local Slime population to collect their condensation. He would use the stuff he's already collected, but Haiyan pointed out how having Cryo Slimes around growing crops is a bad thing, and while Geo Slimes won't kill plants with frost, they can still crush them with all the bouncing around.
"Where do I get the gem things though?" he asks at lunch.
Haiyan produces a few tiny fragments of gleaming teal. "I got these from... another guest at the Wangshu Inn. There's also a jeweler's shop in Liyue Harbor that will trade small ones like these for Geo Sigils, and certain Ley Line Outcroppings will produce them." He deposits the bits of glitter in Tomura's hand. "I will warn you though. When your Vision is ascended, it provides a temporary rush of energy, then after an hour or so exhaustion sets in and you'll need several hours of sleep.
"So an early night and a big breakfast tomorrow?"
"If you do that now, yes."
"Bet." Tomura takes the gems and feeds his collection of ascension materials into his Vision. The Anemo emblem in the center pulses wildly for a minute, then wind rushes over his skin, ruffling his clothes and hair and filling his lungs. His legs twitch restlessly under the table and his eyes widen. "Holy shit that's like three cans of Monster in a shot."
Haiyan stifles a laugh. "I don't know what kind of monster you put in a can, but if you need to move, go ahead. You're charged up with enough Elemental Energy I could probably see your trail from five li away."
"Right." Tomura picks up his bowl and shovels the rest of his food into his mouth, chugs the rest of his tea, and nearly knocks his chair over as he bolts.
Holy fuck he's running so fast, he takes the stairs down from the plaza ten at a time then jumps and nearly sails clear over the gate arch halfway down. He has to curl sideways and grab the tiles to stop. That gets the attention of the Seelie that's been drifting around up there. He didn't want to climb around randomly but since he's here now, he follows it to its garden back up at the plaza. Then he takes the wooden stairs down the steep side of the hill toward the water and heads for where he knows he saw a pack of Slimes before.
He obliterates three groups of blobs and follows two more Seelies before coming to a stop on the edge of a terrace on the north side of the valley and staring in confusion. "What the fuck? Am I high?"
That's a Hilichurl. He's pretty sure that's a Hilichurl. He's also pretty sure that Hilichurls do not wear pinstriped suit jackets with ties, however ragged, or boxer shorts, or dress shoes and little… straw crowns? No seriously, what the fuck? It has a briefcase! That it's using as a pillow!
"Screw it." He calls up Twin Nephrite and launches himself at it with Grinding Breeze.
It doesn't die in one hit. Instead, it freaks out exactly the same as every other Hilichurl, and, unlike every other Hilichurl, it swings the briefcase at him like an old lady's purse. It doesn't bother running after him when his Skill stops him several meters past it, instead it opens the briefcase and starts pulling out cabbages to throw at him. One of them hits, and he recoils, more in surprise than pain. It responds to the retreat by producing one more projectile, what looks like a bright yellow bunny plush of all fucking things.
A bunny plush that explodes when it hits the stone wall where he was standing before. Right. He's not letting it do that again. He tags it with another Grinding Breeze, then circles back immediately and hits it again.
At that point, it has enough, and… dives into its own briefcase to escape, apparently. The briefcase disappears in a puff of colorful smoke.
"…Right. I'm done now." Tomura sits down on the wall, all his energy abruptly draining away. Haiyan finds him there a few minutes later.
Haiyan listens to Tomura's slightly garbled explanation of the 'weird-ass fuckin' Hilichurl' with bemusement. He's heard of something like that, but never seen it. Before he can say so, however, Tomura passes out, so Haiyan picks him up and carries him back to Ruoxin's house, pausing by the waterfall to wash the sweat and grime away so he'll wake up clean.
CoRR
They spend a full week in Qingce Village. Haiyan does his usual chores around the valley, this time with Tomura helping him. Tomura is awed by the Hydro trick Haiyan shows him, sitting at the edge of the river with a foot in the shallows and using the water to transmit a short concert of erhu music through the whole valley. The next morning, the scent of glaze lilies fills the air.
"How did you do that?" Tomura asks.
"Sound is simply vibration, isn't it? Water carries it fairly well. A Geo Dragon could make a whole mountain sing."
By the time they leave, the Treasure Hoarders have fled, the Slimes are culled, the violetgrass on the cliffsides has been plucked, the Seelies are in their gardens, and Tomura has learned to cook fried egg, mora meat, mint jelly, and rice buns. Tomura has also shown a borderline supernatural talent for sniffing out chests, and Haiyan is sure that if the Treasure Hoarders somehow managed to recruit him he'd be promoted to Golden Raven within a month.
They take the west route out of the village, what amounts to a meter-wide ledge halfway up the northern cliff face of Wuwang Hill. Past the two shorter waterfalls, Haiyan leads the way in climbing down the old stone ruins that creep up the wall from where they're scattered across Rhodeia's lake. Halfway down, it starts to rain.
"She knows we're here," Haiyan says.
When they reach the water level, Tomura turns a nervous look at him. "I should probably mention, I'm shit at swimming."
"Ah? Would you rather watch from here? She drops the paving stones out of the arena, sometimes. Not all of them, and only a bit over my height down, but…"
Tomura stares out over the lake at the giant square of the dueling platform. "No, that looks big enough that I should have space anyway."
"All right, but stay close to the edge, stay ready to move, and don't attack anything."
Haiyan creates a surface tension path from the last chunk of ruins to the arena. As soon as he steps foot onto the stone, Rhodeia of Loch bursts out into the air in all her watery glory.
"An assassin from our homeland? Or a fool who trespasses on the waters of—" she starts in Liyuese, then abruptly stops, genuine offense reducing to disgruntlement. "Jiao."
He inclines his head. "Oceanid."
Tomura stifles a snicker. Badly. Haiyan turns to look at him, and he shrugs apologetically.
"What is this? A mortal? You bring a mortal to my lake?" she squawks, outraged.
Haiyan shuts her down quickly. "He's only here to watch, not interfere."
"Must he?"
"If you don't like it, I can go find one of your sisters to fight."
"You wouldn't. You Adepti never leave Liyue."
"Do I look like a crane to you?"
"Hmph. Don't bring him again." She pirouettes in the air, then spits out a few Hydro Mimics. "On your guard."
He draws his sword. "Remember, stay back," he warns Tomura, then rushes at the boar.
Humans think that Hydro attacks can't damage Hydro beings. That's not entirely correct. While an entity made entirely of an Element is immune to the common application of its Element, it's still vulnerable to disruption. Slimes have no defense against such tactics, being animated but lacking consciousness. The value in fighting Oceanids is that they do. They actively resist, and try to disrupt their assailant in turn. It becomes a contest of fine control, and when dealing with external constructs, a gamble of investment. Rhodeia, one of the oldest and most powerful of the Oceanids, has more Elemental power than Haiyan does, but conversely, his Yanjian require far less energy to create… And he's in a better position to claim the Hydro energy released by the destruction of a construct on this field than she is.
He cuts through three cranes, a frog, and a pair of crabs before the first paving stone falls. It's the corner piece that Tomura is standing on, and he tracks the splashing as his watcher hurries to the next one. The water is up to his knees by the time he reaches it, and he has to climb the edge to get out of the pit. A trio of falcons and three more cranes later, and that stone starts to sink too, leaving Tomura to rush for the remaining corner on that side of the arena.
"Pissy bitch," he thinks he hears Tomura mutter under the pounding rain.
Two pairs of boars and a finch appear next, and Haiyan frowns. That's quite a lot for one round, especially since the boars are designed to restore themselves using the rain, and all are thickly built enough that his sword can't simply carve through them in any way, unlike the crabs' claws or the cranes' legs. This will require focus.
So much focus that he dismisses the next sinking platform as insignificant, since it's only adjacent to Tomura's perch. So much focus that when Hydro power starts gathering on the field, he doesn't notice exactly where it's going.
He does notice Tomura's startled yelp and the drag against his ankles from a sudden current. He does notice the loud splash of a body hitting the water. He disrupts the finch and one of two remaining boars and turns to look.
While Haiyan was busy with the boars, Rhodeia trapped Tomura in the corner. Then she used a surging whirlpool to drag him into the pit between paving stones. She's not holding him down now, but she doesn't need to. When Tomura said he wasn't a good swimmer, Haiyan assumed he meant he had a weak stroke, maybe only able to do the 'dog paddle' common to small children still learning. But it looks horrifyingly like even that is beyond him. He's not treading water so much as trying to claw his way back to the surface as he repeatedly slips under, sputtering as water fills his mouth every other breath.
Then Anemo surges as he tries to grab at the air. It's a mistake. The froth that forms sends him straight toward the bottom.
"TOMURA!"
Haiyan shreds the final boar with a rushed, overpowered swipe, and lunges for the gap in the arena floor. He falls like the water isn't even there, forcing it to let him sink faster, and more runs than swims over to where Tomura is drifting. As soon as he reaches him, he shoves the water away from them both and directs it all underneath them, pushing them up to the surface by displacement. Another command pulls the liquid out of Tomura's lungs, but he's clearly still out of it.
With a thought, Haiyan produces his teapot and carries Tomura into the abode. Another thought drags the rain and lakewater drenching him away and sends it out into the flow that marks the boundaries of his subspace.
"Tomura! Tomura, can you hear me? Please say something, please," he begs.
"Khf… I think… I lost those hairpins…" Tomura mumbles, dazed.
"The hairpins aren't as important as you. Can you breathe okay?"
"Mh—" The attempt to hum an affirmative is interrupting by a coughing fit, and Haiyan hurriedly checks his lungs to see if he missed some water. "I'm— Gck! Okay…"
"Very well." Haiyan kneels to set him down, then turns back toward the entrance. "Wait here. I'll be back shortly."
When he reappears on the arena, Rhodeia is hovering at the edge of the field. "I wasn't trying to kill him," she says awkwardly. Petulantly.
Haiyan summons his sword without a word. His teeth don't quite fit in his jaws, and his talons cut into the hilt.
"How was I to know he couldn't swim?!"
"Two people to a duel, Rhodeia," he snarls.
"Is this a broken contract?" she asks nervously.
"Yes." What faint shadow he casts in the rain warps as his horns grow past their politely blunt length. "But it's also attempted theft. That is my fenghuang. You will learn not to touch him."
Oceanids in their natural form don't have throats. Rhodeia still swallows.
The Hydro Mimics she summons barely slow him down.
okay not to ocpost again but the worst thing about having an oc is sometimes they become The Character to you. and you need to talk to someone about it like wow I can’t stop thinking about The Character… but in order to do so you have to like sit them down and explain everything about your oc first. and then it’s just you explaining your writing ideas. i need to talk about them the same way i would talk about any random character i love to someone.
After everything he's been through, Shigaraki Tomura wasn't expecting to wake up at all, much less at full health to a world that doesn't hate him. Then again, it's never even heard of him. Or of Pro Heroes, for that matter. And he's never heard of it. Liyue? The Seven Elements? Huh. Did he get isekai'd? Well... He can live with that. Literally. Is he the only one here though?
Haiyan, also known as Water Singer, was only looking for some Starconchs to feed to his Vision. What he found was the strangest Inazuman refugee he's ever seen. Or rather, pseudo-Inazuman. It's a good thing they can communicate, because he suspects he's going to be doing a lot of explaining. Not that he minds. His new friend doesn't just learn fast and work hard, he cleans up quite nicely as well.
...This is probably Alice's fault.
Rated E for Explicit.
Chapter CW: Mostly my dumb Genshin headcanons. Hints of PTSD.
Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.
Index
<- Start - Prev - Here - Next ->
Wind
Tomura learns to read the common script remarkably quickly, Haiyan thinks. He's only a touch slower than average, and virtually any time he gets stuck, he ends up asking what a word means in Inazuman. Then he makes a note of it in a blank journal he wanted with the actual textbooks, and Haiyan realizes it's entirely a matter of vocabulary. He memorized the script within two days, he's just not fluent in Teyvatian. Which he is working on, he asks Haiyan to speak it and not use Adeptal translation.
He listens intently while Haiyan explains the materials he needs, and takes the small knife he's offered to help with the harvesting, then follows him out into Dihua Marsh.
…Tomura is fast, Haiyan realizes. Faster than most people without Visions can ever manage. Very few of the frogs he jumps at get away, and lizards and loaches only need one lunge to feel threatened enough to drop their tails and pearls. In fact, once he gets used to how they move, he starts grabbing the tails and holding them as they're detached, with enough precision that the lizards aren't hindered in their escape in the slightest. So Haiyan directs him to try catching butterflies and crystalflies too. That takes a few more tries to master, but soon he's handing over intact wings and crystal cores. On the third evening, when they take a bit longer to get back to the Inn, he starts snatching fireflies without prompting and handing them over.
Tomura has nightmares, Haiyan learns. He didn't the first night, but he does every night after, until Xiao-gege tells him irritably to play a few songs.
"Can you see his dreams?" Haiyan asks.
"They're too loud not to. His master controlled him more than—" The Yaksha stops abruptly and vanishes in a teal-black wisp of Anemo.
Haiyan understand what wasn't said, and gets out his erhu.
They clear the Marsh nearest the inn enough in four days that Haiyan decides to take him south to the Guili Plain instead. They find Treasure Hoarders fairly quickly, and Haiyan finds that against relatively untrained human enemies, he's fairly competent in a fight. He only really has trouble with the Marksmen, and even then he's got the sense to keep another Hoarder between himself and the crossbows, and he takes out more than one by baiting a Scout into throwing a knife that he can easily dodge. The only thing he seems to have a problem with is unarmed force. Multiple times, he grabs someone by the face or neck only to release them immediately, then looks surprised when nothing happens and has to adjust. But slowly he adjusts to using elbow strikes and proper choking grips, and never freezes up so much that he takes a serious hit.
Hilichurls are a bit more difficult. He's clearly never seen one before, and while he definitely recognizes the difference in how Haiyan deals with them versus how he deals with the Treasure Hoarders, he still asks why.
"Treasure Hoarders can be reasoned with," Haiyan explains. "They're greedy, but they have self-preservation. They understand the implicit contract of mercy. In trying to rob us, they invite a beating, but because we allow them to retreat, they remain a nuisance instead of escalating."
Tomura winces, glancing at his hands, and Haiyan briefly wonders what he was expecting to happen when he grabbed the ones he did.
"Hilichurls are feral in the truest sense of the word. They have tools, yes, and speech however crude, but they have no higher comprehension. The boundaries of civilized interaction are beyond them. Even should you manage to learn enough of their tongue to hold a conversation, a single misplaced word will set the whole pack on you in a frenzy." Haiyan looks around the destroyed camp, the Slime-blasted wooden structures and cracked masks scattered on the ground. The bodies have already dissolved. "By nature, they can't learn. The only mercy they can be granted is a quick death."
"…Are you saying they're inherently evil?" There's something… wary, in his tone.
Haiyan picks up one of the masks. "Not at all. Without evil they wouldn't exist, but they're no more evil than a boar, and for the same reason. That's why we kill them cleanly when we encounter them, but don't hunt them down."
"Why did they drop those? The masks."
"Because they don't need them anymore. But they wear them for a reason. Never take the mask from a live Hilichurl. It's a cruelty they don't deserve." Haiyan stores the mask and picks up another one.
Whatever world Tomura comes from doesn't have treasure chests, Haiyan finds. He's baffled but delighted to find his first one, if a bit confused by the contents.
"Is that a chicken leg?"
"That… happens sometimes. Normally they're a bit more conventionally filled."
"Who fills these things?" he asks, counting out the mora and examining the Pocket Grimoire.
"No one, technically, for the most part. Most are expelled from the Ley Lines as the world's memories are filtered. Some are the work of people long gone, but those are few and far between, and better hidden besides."
"What are these wax seals?" He holds up a Geo Sigil.
"They're called sigils, and they're not wax, they're made of Ley Resin and Elemental energy. You'll always find them marked with Geo in Liyue, or Anemo in Mondstadt, because the lines carry traces of the Archon's power from Statues of the Seven. Keep them, there's a shop in Liyue Harbor that will take them as currency."
Tomura has a talent for finding chests, including ones hidden by puzzles, and is perfectly happy to follow Seelies back to their gardens. Haiyan is perfectly happy to trail after him.
They've been roaming the Plains for a week when he encounters a Weasel Thief for the first time.
CoRR
"Uh… Why is that weasel wearing a backpack?" Tomura asks.
"Treasure Hoarders get strange ideas sometimes. It's probably full of Mora."
Tomura's eyebrows shoot up. A wallet mob? He backs away slightly to focus better, and takes note of the bulging red bag the critter is hauling around. It's practically bursting at the seams. He takes a deep breath and lunges.
The weasel notices him at half the distance and tries to run, but it's just like catching a lizard. Well, except for the part where he needs both hands. He almost loses his grip when his reflexive four-fingered hold isn't stable enough to hold a squirming mustelid. But he does manage it, and unbuttons its bag before tipping it head down and catching the stream of coins that falls out.
There's less in there than he thought, given the size of the bag. Then he realizes there's still something in there, something stuck. He pockets the Mora and reaches into the bag—
The weasel falls from his hand and bolts. He doesn't notice.
The chains fall away from your wrists. You don't wince as the sores beneath them are exposed to the air, you've long since learned not to show pain, or maybe you've forgotten how. You don't look at the spear-wielding man who broke them. You stare instead at the cooling body on the ground. All his fine silks and foul promises did not protect him in the end.
"He can't hurt you again," you're told.
"No," you agree. "He can't."
"Are you okay?"
"Am I allowed to be?" you ask.
"You are. You are also allowed to not be."
"What do I do now?"
"That is up to you. Your choices are your own."
You've never had a choice before. "I'm… free to choose? Then… I choose to leave him and all like him behind."
You walk away from your former master's corpse, the wind swirling through your tangled hair and tattered clothes.
Tomura blinks, eyes fixing on the gold-framed turquoise gem in his hand. "…Is that why they're called Visions?"
"If what you saw wasn't your own memory, then the resonance must have been extremely close," Haiyan answers, looking delighted.
"What? Resonance?" Tomura's fingers close around the Vision, a comforting tingle sliding across his skin like a breeze ruffling the fine hairs.
"I— Didn't say, did I? Only the living have ambition. When an Allogene dies, their Vision loses power." The pretty man pauses. "I didn't mention that either. Allogene is the technical term for Vision users. The gem loses light and color, turning a cloudy white, and most remain that way. But sometimes, it will be picked up by one with a drive suited to its original owner and wake for them. That Vision was Masterless when the Weasel Thief picked it up. The creature probably thought it was an unusual coin. But it chose you the instant you touched it."
"So this is mine now?"
"Yes. If it hadn't lit up for you, you probably could have sold it for an exorbitant amount of money, but I don't recommend getting rid of it now."
The very idea of trading the Vision away fills him with instant revulsion, like a hand on his face shoving him into a dark room where the only light comes from the words Sound Only on a screen. No. He won't go back there.
I choose to leave him and all like him behind.
The Vision is his.
He realizes his hand is halfway to his neck, fingers curled to scratch, and forces it down. He doesn't itch anymore. It only itched at home around Father and Sensei. They're gone. He's safe. He's free.
He looks at Haiyan. "How do I use it?"
Haiyan smiles. "Let's go back to Wangshu."
CoRR
Haiyan doesn't lead him directly back to Wangshu Inn. Instead he detours almost straight east, to a Millelith Watch Post, and points out a stone monument planted near the retaining wall. Tomura has seen one of these before, there's one on the Wangshu Inn's main deck, but—
"It's not colorless anymore?"
The crystal at the top and base on either side of the limestone pillar are glowing a soft red, instead of being plain quartz-clear.
"Touch it. You should have enough passive Elemental Energy for it to register."
Tomura reaches out and lays a hand on the crystal. When nothing happens, he frowns and taps his Vision against it. The crystal flashes, turning blue, and the monument rises into the air.
"Excellent. Not quite the usual way, but it works."
"What are these things?" Tomura asks.
"Teleport Waypoints. They allow Elementally-capable beings to travel near-instantly by Ley Line. Now that you have a Vision, you can use them."
"Let me guess, I can only go to one I've activated already?"
"Correct. Also, they're subordinate to the Statues of the Seven in their nations, so they can theoretically be locked. Inazuma's local network has been separated from the rest under Sakoku." Haiyan glances back at him. "I should mention, they're not well known by normal mortals, and there are a number of Allogenes who haven't figured them out either. Now, as for channeling Elemental Energy, can you sense any differences in the world, or in your general perception, between now and before?"
When they reach the Inn, Tomura gathers the breeze on his skin like instructed and touches the Waypoint on the deck with a single finger. Red turns blue and he grins. "So do I just need to focus on where I want to go or—"
He doesn't hear Haiyan's response, but frankly he doesn't need to, because the world turns white, and an iridescent blur later, resolves back into the Millelith Watch Post that he was just imagining. He blinks, grins wider, and pictures Wangshu Inn.
Haiyan is snickering when he arrives. "Just make sure you have a clear image of where you're going. If you don't, you can end up anywhere your Vision has attuned. Teleporting to Dragonspine instead of Qingce Village is a bit off-putting. And cold."
"That's Dragonspine up there, right?" Tomura asks, pointing toward the Northeast, where a snowy peak tall enough to pierce the clouds is mostly obscured by the structure of the inn.
"Yes, and it has a Ley Line Disorder that makes it as cold as Snezhnaya. The land is overflowing with Cryo energy, and even those with Pyro or Cryo visions will quickly freeze to death. It's not fit for human habitation."
Tomura looks at the Hydro Vision on Haiyan's lapel, then at his gleaming horns. "What about water dragons?"
"Heh. Xian have a bit more resistance. I personally am more affected by humidity, or lack thereof."
Tomura follows him inside and heads up to their room while he says something in untranslated Liyuese to Verr Goldet. He washes his face and brushes his hair — he's starting to wonder if he should learn to braid it — then strips off his sleeves and refills his tea bottle. The leaves are just used up enough by now that he can chug it as he sits down at the table.
He's turning his Vision over in his hands when Haiyan comes up and sets a plate of Lotus Flower Crisps between them.
"We're back early, so I got us a snack." The pretty man sits down across from him. "Now, I assume you're going to use your Vision in combat?"
Tomura crunches down on a crisp and nods.
"Then you'll need to attune a weapon to it. Humans don't have enough innate Elemental affinity to perform any complex manipulations without a focus aid. Not without decades of training."
He grimaces. "What kind of weapon? I already said I don't know how to use any."
"There are five categories that a Vision will accept. The light blade, which mostly covers one-handed swords but also includes the hand-axe, dagger, or occasional more exotic weapon — a century or so ago I encountered an Inazuman wanderer who had an umbrella of all things. The heavy blade, which obviously includes two-handed swords but also warhammers and such. In Inazuma—"
"Let me guess, the kanabo?" Tomura asks.
"Indeed. Oni love them. Then there's the polearm. Spears, halberds, sometimes plain staves. The bow, which does include crossbows, but does not, so far as I know, include firearms such as what Fontaine and Snezhnaya have started developing recently."
"Hang on, firearms?" This place has guns?
"Yes. I don't know much about them, just that Visions won't bind them as a main weapon. And finally, the catalyst." Haiyan produces one of the books Tomura found in those chests, and the weird decorative ring with the jade disk suspended in the middle. "Catalysts have the most diverse form, because they aren't used as a weapon themselves. They're used to channel and shape Elemental Power directly. Most mages use them, but since they allow the hands to remain empty they're not uncommon among martial artists."
Tomura gives that about three seconds of thought, then reaches for the book. "Catalyst."
Haiyan stops him. "Wait. I do have more to explain."
He takes his hand back and eats another lotus crisp instead. "I'm listening."
"Weaponry has a vast range of qualities. Any apprentice blacksmith can grind an edge into a sword billet, but it makes for a dull blade and a poor Elemental focus, the sort of thing the Knights of Favonius issue their Squires for gatewatch, who have no reason to expect more than a few slimes or hilichurls to come bouncing along. Likewise, a novice mage will make do with their own student notes, scrawled in a plain journal. It takes a journeyman craftsman to make a weapon with any proper channeling capacity, such as the Millelith use. You've seen their spears? Forged in bulk, but well-made enough to be sharpened without being worn away. To be infused with extra properties, to have those properties improved with a little alchemy."
Tomura zeroes in on that last statement. He hasn't missed how the patterns that this world works in mirror his old hobby in some ways. "Extra properties that can be improved?"
Haiyan nods. "This book is a Pocket Grimoire. Hardly better than Apprentice Notes, only a little more effective, but in no way special. This, on the other hand… A proper Yun-style Catalyst, as used by Liyue thaumaturges. By virtue of being jewelry, it's already better than an ordinary book for channeling." His eyes and Vision both glow faintly. "Twin Nephrite… The raw materials are middling quality at best, but its craftsmanship is quite good. A good channeling weapon will something deliver a more powerful blow than usual, and this one is designed to allow that more often."
Critical chance?
"And… Ah, it feeds on success. Your enemies falling will grant you speed and strength for a short while. My sword does something similar, if under a different condition. The Skyrider Sword converts the lingering energy of an Elemental Burst into physical power, while enhancing the ability to generate Elemental Energy and gather ambient particles."
Tomura takes the Twin Nephrite. And another lotus crisp. "Burst?"
"Ah, I never explained the general functions of a Vision, did I…" Haiyan creates a small sculpture of a swallow, which perches on his fingertip. "What can be done with a Vision is generally only limited by creativity, but there are two main expressions of power. The first is sometimes referred to in academia as an Elemental Skill. You've seen my primary Skill, Yanjian. You're not limited to one, but most Allogenes develop whatever works best for them to the point of reflex and stick to it. The main trait of any Skill is that it generates Elemental Energy. Conversely, the Elemental Burst is fueled by that Energy, and typically consumes it all in one large… well, burst."
So a Burst is basically an Ult, okay.
"I get it. So how could you tell what this thing does?" He holds up the Twin Nephrite. "The passive ability thing."
"If you feed a bit of Elemental Energy into a weapon, even one your Vision isn't attuned for, you should be able to discern the patterns it flows through. It takes a bit of practice though, and it's common to learn Elemental Sight first."
"And how do I do the attuning part?"
"You'll want to feed a steady flow of power through it, like— Yes, like that. You'll know it's done when the Catalyst starts to hover. Then you can dismiss it into the Vision and summon it at will."
It takes several minutes, almost ten, but eventually the ring lifts into the air with a white-gold shimmer across its surface. "Does it always take that long?"
Haiyan blinks at him. "For a first attunement? That was actually rather fast. I would guess that your Vision's previous master also used Catalysts. If you chose to switch to Swords, it would take at least a day, which is why almost no one does that. But if you simply want another Catalyst, it should be much quicker." Then he looks at the clock on the wall. "I think dinner should be up soon."
It is. Haiyan ordered Dragon Beard Noodles to go with the usual favorites. A celebration, he says, for getting a Vision. The noodles are hair-fine, Tomura can see why they'd be considered special.
CoRR
Haiyan takes Tomura north into the marshes to practice with his Vision, and is surprised at how fast he works out a usable attack pattern.
He continues to strike open-handed from a low stance, and it's barely an hour before he's consistently infusing his hands with Anemo. When he gets the hang of it, Haiyan notices. It's all but impossible to apply a persistent Anemo aura with a Vision, but Tomura is definitely causing some kind of lingering effect, and it's not Swirl, because none of the Slimes he's tagging with it are reacting Elementally, at least not after the first blow. Instead they seem to shrivel, almost, drying out in cracks like sun-baked mud and oozing from the splits in their gelatinous shells. The ice-caps and stone crusts on the larger Cryo and Geo Slimes outright crumble under the influence.
The Skill he develops has an equal effect, again when there's nothing to Swirl. The Skill itself isn't entirely unlike Xiao-gege's Lemniscatic Wind Cycling, although Wind Cycling doesn't have the vacuum effect that drags anything smaller than a Mitachurl into Tomura's path.
Then, in the middle of a fight with more Treasure Hoarders, he constructs a working Burst, and Haiyan has never seen anything like it. Potioneers have been flinging Electro and Pyro bottles around for nearly five minutes, and the air is filled with ozone and embers. Tomura is getting visibly annoyed at the thieves' persistence in the face of increasingly dry and cracked skin, and a wide dome of lashing Anemo currents snaps out around him. It should Swirl the potions. It doesn't. Instead it feeds the potion remnants to each other, and the result blasts all of the Hoarders off their feet.
"What in Celestia's name was that?" Haiyan asks as the Treasure Hoarders finally flee.
"An Overload reaction? It was Electro and Pyro, wasn't it?"
"Yes, but that's not how Anemo works, how did you do that without simply Swirling?"
Tomura just stares at him blankly. "Why wouldn't it work?"
Haiyan opens his mouth, then closes it again. "This needs more testing," he finally says.
"Then let's go!" Tomura collects the dropped mora and medallions, and heads for the nearest tree to climb for a look around.
By the end of a week, he's all but mastered the basics, and his progress has plateaued. Haiyan introduces him to Artifacts and their esoteric effects, and he's pleased, but he's still stalled, and it's frustrating him.
"Why am I not getting any better?!" he demands.
Haiyan grips his wrist gently and pulls it away from his neck. "Stop, breathe. Why is getting stronger important?"
"Are you serious? I've seen what you can do! I've read about more in the books! I'm pathetic in comparison!"
Haiyan examines his expression for a moment. There's something like fear in it. Fear of weakness? Tomura did say he died before… He turns his attention to the Vision that hangs from the left hood-frog of Tomura's vest and peers into it. "Hm… I think it's ready for its first Ascension."
"What?"
"Visions are a gift to honor a mortal's ambition. They get stronger with use and practice, but one can't just continue to build power through mundane efforts indefinitely. You have to provide material proof of dedication. Offerings to yourself, essentially. The fruits of your victories. There's a pattern to it. Many small spoils from ordinary enemies, a trophy or two from a greater foe, tokens from your homeland, and Elemental Gemstones to catalyze the process."
"A level cap increase," Tomura mutters thoughtfully. Whatever that means… Then he frowns. "The homeland thing is going to be a problem, I told you I can't go back to Japan."
Haiyan shakes his head. "It won't be a problem at all. Your vision is Liyuese, which is what matters. The only question is which tokens are required. Or the other things, for that matter. It differs from person to person. My Vision requires Starconchs, nectar from Whopperflowers, and the purifying waters of an Oceanid."
"Boss fight…? How do I figure out what I need?"
"It's no different from identifying a weapon's traits, honestly, and easier in general. Most people learn the former from the latter, and you haven't gotten the hang of it yet, have you? You could use the practice." Haiyan slaps his forehead, annoyed at himself. "Really I should have gone over all of this before, I don't know why I didn't remember. The good thing is, a first Ascension generally doesn't require the greater foe's trophy."
Tomura nods slowly. When they return to the inn, he sits down on the bed and holds his Vision in both hands, letting his eyes fall closed. Haiyan pulls a book from his stash and starts to read while he waits.
It doesn't take long for the first discovery. "Slimes," Tomura announces.
"Excellent. You should have plenty of their condensate saved up." He turns the page.
…Maybe this isn't the best book to be reading when Tomura is sitting right there. He quite likes the character interactions, but he hardly needs the ideas.
Luckily Tomura speaks again before the dialogue on the page turns to anything more active. "There's some type of flower I haven't seen before."
"Describe them."
"Pale blue. About the same shade as my hair. Five petals, paler on the inside. And… moonlight?" Tomura opens his eyes. "What are they?"
"Glaze lilies…" Haiyan closes his book and tucks it away. "They only bloom at night, and they wilt under anger and violence, but they grow well where music fills the air. The Guili Plain used to be covered in them, all the way to the Stone Gate, before the land sank and the marsh filled."
"And now?"
"There are some cultivated in Liyue Harbor, but they're expensive. Chenyu Vale has more. But the closest place is Qingce Village. They grow freely in the crop terraces."
"Then we're going there?"
"Yes, I think it's about time we move on from the inn for a while." Haiyan pauses. "Would you rather walk or take a boat?"
Tomura shrugs. "How far is it?"
"The other side of Wuwang Hill, the tall one to the Northwest."
"What's that, two days? Walking is fine… I might need to do something with my hair first though." He reaches up to tug on the already-tangling tail of silky lily-blue.
"Please don't cut it," Haiyan says quickly.
His face screws up into a disgusted expression. "Ugh, no, I hate having it cut. I need a braid or something. Whatever will keep it from knotting up."
"Hm… I'll be right back." Haiyan slips into his teapot and searches for a moment, coming back with a pair of fine geovishap bone combs. "May I?"
Tomura shrugs again, and turns away. Haiyan pulls the leather cord tie out of his ponytail and runs the thicker comb through the length to work out the few tangles, then wraps it all in a twist around that one, sliding the finer comb through crossways to pin it in place.
"How does that feel?"
Tomura shakes his head back and forth, then reaches up to feel the set of the loops. He tugs once, gently, then a little harder, to test the set, then pulls his hood up and back down to see if it will catch. It doesn't, and he nods. "That works."
Haiyan almost purrs. "It suits you."
"Thanks." Tomura's tone is, as ever, awkward and stilted when he uses that word. Haiyan thought he wasn't used to using it, but he's starting to suspect that he wasn't used to needing to say it to begin with.
Haiyan will have to fix that. "We'll leave in the morning."
chatgpt is a threat to the symbiotic relationship between fanfic writers and their betas. we are losing our traditions. eradicate the soulless machine and ask your friend who has a full time job and 3 kids to annotate your omegaverse fanfiction like any other responsible adult.
I think what I love most about mythology is that the “Trickster God/Spirit” is an archetypical character found in almost every body of folklore. It’s like “Oh, here’s our God of the Sun, our God of the Sea, our God of Fertility, and our God of Being A Wretched Little Gremlin Who Causes Problems On Purpose”
Call Me Sometime (Chapter 5) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
You work the dispatch desk at a phone sex line to make ends meet, and you're used to handling some strange calls. But the caller you're babysitting tonight is the strangest by far -- and that's before you find out why he called.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Chapter 5
“It’s really not so scary,” Sakura says to you, smiling. The two of you are meeting in the room where she holds her video sessions, which makes you feel weird on way too many levels — but this is where she wanted to meet, and you want as much information as she can give you about working under a contract. “What have you heard? About escort work in general?”
“After working here so long? A lot.” Most of it isn’t good. “Um, you all provide kind of a big range of services. You have different specialties. Hirono and Mitsuko see the guys who get off on power plays, and Mayumi handles the ones with really specific fetishes. Yoshimi only works with clients who like to roleplay. And you —“
You’ve never been clear on what Sakura’s specialty is. You give her an apologetic look, and she laughs. “My specialty is discretion,” she says. “I work with clients who want a companion who can pass as something more — something more than a mistress, even. You could say I provide the girlfriend experience.”
“The girlfriend experience,” you repeat. “What’s that?”
“Oh, Nine-chan. Haven’t you ever had a boyfriend?”
You’ve had two. One in middle-school, which doesn’t count, and one in high school, which does. He saw you naked, so you have to count him, even if the two of you weren’t in love. “Yeah, but it was kind of weird. I didn’t really know what he wanted from me.”
“That won’t be a problem here. It’ll likely be spelled out in the contract,” Sakura says. “Amount of contacts per day, type of contact — text, phone, video, face to face. Date activities. Sexual expectations. All of that will be covered under the contract. I — are you okay?”
Somewhere around “sexual expectations” you started getting nauseous. “I’m good.”
“The expectations will be spelled out,” Sakura says, giving you a worried look. “But the girlfriend experience isn’t just about quantity of contact. It’s about quality. It’s about making the client in question feel like the most important man in the world, without putting pressure on him to do anything in response. Time spent with you should feel good for the client. It should feel easy and stress-free, and to his observation, it should look effortless from you.”
You’ve heard the high-tiers say things like that before. “Professional.”
“Not quite,” Sakura says. “Escorts who work outside of contracts need to be professional, to make it clear with their clients where the boundaries lie. You’re working with one client who’s paying a lot for all your attention. Your job is to make him forget the payment part. The client should feel like you’re with him because you want to be.”
“So the girlfriend experience is the girlfriend fantasy.” That makes a little more sense to you, but you see Sakura shrug. “No?”
“It depends,” Sakura says instead. “How do you feel about Player One?”
You don’t know how to answer that. Sakura can tell. “Prior to my contract, I had twelve regular clients,” she says. “None of them were terrible, but I looked forward to meeting one of them much more than the others. Partially because of how he treated me, of course, but partially because there was a lot to like about him. Men hire escorts for a lot of different reasons. My favorite client hired me because he wanted companionship, and his career didn’t allow time for him to date.”
You’ve heard rumors about who Sakura’s contract is with. You’re pretty sure he’s a hero — a minor one from a rich family who works a really busy beat. Yokohama’s a big city. There’s always something going wrong. “I liked him,” Sakura continues, “and he liked me. We developed a tighter bond than I did with my other clients, to the point where we decided it would be best to become exclusive.”
“It was a mutual thing?”
“Of course! Kaz wouldn’t have done it unless he knew it was what I wanted.” Sakura smiles. You wonder how much of this is true and how much of it is a story she’s telling herself to make the fact that some guy owns her more acceptable. “I know your client didn’t have a chance to ask you first, but he knew a promotion to escort wasn’t what you wanted, didn’t he? Had you talked about it before?”
“I couldn’t have. I didn’t know what Mitsuko was planning,” you say. You think back on the conversation and, like you do every time you think about it, feel unsteady on your feet. “I wasn’t going to say anything. He knew something was wrong from my voice.”
You’ve wondered since then if you wanted Tenko to guess that something was wrong. If you were hoping he’d save you. You’re still not sure what the answer is. Right now, though, it doesn’t matter. Mitsuko’s not going to turn you into an escort — instead, she’s selling you to Tenko so you can provide the girlfriend experience. Sakura nods knowingly. “So he does know you,” she says. You don’t like that idea very much. “And you must have some idea of what he’ll expect from you in a more formal arrangement.”
You don’t have any idea at all. As far as you can tell, Tenko locked you down to avoid losing the access he already has. If he’s after more, he hasn’t spoken about it on the phone with you — but even as you’re speaking with Sakura about the contract, Tenko’s on a video call with Mitsuko, signing the stupid thing. Who knows what kind of ideas he could come away with? “It’s not so scary,” Sakura says again. You believe her even less than you did the first time. “You already know how to make your client feel good, or he wouldn’t have done this.”
You make Tenko feel less alone. Beyond that, you’re not sure how you make him feel, other than weird. Without seeing his face or reading his body language, you’ve had to rely entirely on changes in his tone and syntax to tell you what’s going on in his head, and you can tell that he’s thrown for a loop multiple times during every call. He gets quiet when he’s confused, snappish when he’s unsure, and you’re never sure what you said or did to cause it. Talking to you matters to him, though. Enough that he’s willing to drop a ridiculous amount of money to make sure he’s the only one who gets to.
You wonder, like you do every so often, where Tenko’s getting the money. It doesn’t really matter as long as he can pay — and Mizuho said he could. That’s not all Mizuho said about him, though. You ask Sakura. “Mizuho said he’s got backup. What does that mean? Just that he’s rich?”
Sakura shakes her head. “All the clients are wealthy,” she says. “She means he’s got someone powerful in his corner. Someone Mitsuko would think twice about crossing. I’m guessing that’s part of why she said yes.”
Someone powerful. What does that mean? Money is power — but like Sakura said, every Shiroiwa client is rich. Tenko’s supporter could be powerful in the sense of a quirk, maybe, and your mind jumps to any one of a number of heroes. But Tenko hates heroes. He hates heroes, he has someone powerful enough to spook Mitsuko backing him up, and his boss wants him to fundamentally alter society. A picture comes together in your head, one you don’t like. You thought Tenko was a lonely, socially awkward anarchist with money to burn, and maybe he is. There’s also a nonzero chance that he’s a villain.
Villain or not, Mitsuko’s just had him sign a contract that says he basically owns you. You read over it sitting in the basically-empty room where you’ll hold video sessions if Tenko wants them. It’s detailed, like Sakura said it would be. You’re obligated to contact Tenko at least once per day. Sakura’s contract obligates her to be available twenty-four seven, but Sakura’s a full-time escort and you’re still hoping to get an aboveboard job one day. The daily contact is mandated to be at least by text, but the expectation is that you’ll call him outside of your regular work hours at least once per week — on a phone that, per contract, Tenko will pay for. Video calls and in-person dates are optional. Anything sexual is one hundred percent off-limits until Tenko’s twentieth birthday so you don’t get arrested. The contract mandates that you put together a wish list in case Tenko wants to send you gifts. It also mandates that Tenko give at least two weeks’ notice before terminating the contract, lest a truly ridiculous severance payment be yanked out of his account.
A few of the high-tiers stop by for a look at it, and all of them are impressed. “The boss was looking out for you,” Mayumi remarks. “This is a lot of good stuff for somebody who doesn’t have to put out.”
“Is that how you feel about it?” Hirono asks. “Having to put out? I think it’s fun.”
“Of course you do. Clients get off from kissing your toes. I’m the one who has to threaten to suck a guy’s balls off with a vacuum cleaner if he doesn’t eat me out right.”
“Okay, but you’re getting eaten out. I’m just getting my toes kissed.” Hirono glances at you. “I know Player One’s not legal yet, but you two spend a lot of time on the phone. What kind of stuff is he into?”
“That’s not really what we talk about,” you say. “I don’t know.”
You don’t know for sure, but you have some ideas, courtesy of Tenko’s responses to all the weird stuff you find in the mailroom. Lingerie is a yes, costumes are a no. Role-play, or at least the serious kind of role-play, is also a no. He doesn’t seem interested in heavy-duty kink, or you’d have heard about it the time somebody sent a full complement of high-end BDSM gear to one of the club girls. The idea of toys seems to interest him, but you can’t tell if that’s a sexual interest or just a basic curiosity. The workers call sex toys for men lube tubes. Sex toys for women are a lot more interesting.
In fact, now that you think about it, the only thing you found that really caught Tenko’s attention was a book of erotic short stories a client sent to one of the phone sex operators, hoping she’d read it over the phone the next time he called in. He asked way too many questions about it — where it came from, why someone would send that, what the stories were about, whether they were any good — until you finally snapped and told him to stop trying to trick you into reading them yourself. You couldn’t figure out why a guy like Tenko, who has an internet connection and a whole online database of free porn, would be interested in erotica read aloud. You still can’t, except —
Except he can’t see you. All he has to go on is your voice. The two of you talk about sex not infrequently — you work for an escort service, it always comes up — but it’s always joking or clinical, never actually hot. You wouldn’t know where to start and neither would he. Maybe he wanted to you to read the stories so you’d have a script to go off of. Or maybe he just wanted to hear you talk about sex like you meant it.
“I knew there was something,” Hirono crows. “Look, she’s blushing —”
“You’re going to be fine,” Mayumi tells you. She pats your shoulder. “This guy likes you so much that he locked it down sight unseen — and between you and me, I think he’s going to be pretty happy with the sight once he sees it.”
You don’t think so. You don’t look like anything special, and it doesn’t take much to tip you from ordinary to gross. Third-day hair and forgetting to wash your face will usually do it. You can cross that bridge when you come to it, though. Unless Tenko wants to video call, you’re perfectly fine to keep answering the phone in sweatpants.
Your brand-new work cellphone arrives towards the end of your shift, already set up. The contact list contains one phone number, which must be Tenko’s, and he’s also downloaded a ton of mobile games. You set your passcode, power off the phone and turn it on again, and then send your first text to the single number in your contact list. Hi. It’s me.
The phone starts ringing, painfully loud, and you answer it and hold it up to your ear, already missing your headset. “It got there,” Tenko says. You nod until you remember that he can’t see you. “What do you think?”
“It’s really nice,” you say. Nicer than your personal phone, for sure. “Thanks for not making it pink.”
Tenko snorts. “I’ll send you a case for it as soon as you tell me what color’s your favorite.”
Your instinct is to recoil, to duck the personal question — but as of a few hours ago, your time belongs to Tenko, and you’re supposed to provide the girlfriend experience. Guys probably want to know their girlfriend’s favorite color. You swallow hard and tell him, wondering why you feel like you’re selling your soul, then follow up: “You don’t have to get me a case.”
“Yeah, I do. I hear you drop stuff all the time in the mailroom,” Tenko says. “Your audio sounds weird. Do you have headphones?”
“I’ll go find a headset,” you say.
“I’ll be right back.”
You hang up, go to the reception desk, and beg, steal, and borrow your way into the headset you usually use. “You have a contract now,” Mizuho grouches at you. “Make Player One buy it for you.”
You’ll ask Tenko to buy you stuff when hell freezes over. You take a few seconds, connect your headphones via Bluetooth, and call Tenko back. He picks up on the first ring. “Don’t hang up on me again.”
“Sorry,” you say. “I just had to go look for one.”
“You could have taken the phone with you,” Tenko says. He’s getting clingy. Or maybe not: “I don’t hang up on you. Except that one time.”
“Maybe we should talk about that,” you say. “I read the contract. It’s really specific. But it doesn’t tell me what you want from me.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
That’s not the answer you were hoping for. “If it was obvious, I wouldn’t ask,” you say. “This is all really weird. I’m grateful. Really. I would rather talk to you than any of the others.”
“Because we’re friends.”
Every so often, Tenko will ask you a question that feels like it has a wrong answer. This is one of them. “Yes.”
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” Tenko says. “More than I had before, but you were first. I’m not losing you to some string of assholes who are too pathetic to get a real date.”
It’s quiet for a second. “And you sounded like you were going to cry or something when you told me. I’d be the asshole if I let my friend cry.”
Your throat closes up. “I’m glad you have more friends now,” you say, swallowing hard. What is wrong with you? “You deserve that. You deserve people who care about you.”
“What about you?” Tenko asks. “Who do you have that you care about?”
“We’re going straight for personal questions, huh?” You should have guessed that’s what would happen. It’s not like you can have phone sex or something. Or that either of you would even know where to start with that. “Uh, so — there’s my D&D group, right? I’ve told you some about them. I met one of them through work and the other ones I know from high school. I haven’t had time to make friends in my EMT course yet. I’d like to, but they like to go out after class, I always have to work.”
“Not anymore,” Tenko says. “Go out if you want to.”
Sakura said to provide the girlfriend experience, but no boyfriend you’ve ever had or heard of has suggested that you go out with people, particularly not when you haven’t specified the gender composition of the group. “Don’t you want to know if there are going to be guys there?”
“No,” Tenko says. You picture him shrugging. You’ve been trying harder to picture him lately, and it’s not going well. His voice tells you nothing. “I’m not your dad or something. Do you have parents? Where are they?”
“Um — I’m an only child. My mom and I talk. Sometimes.” You can’t remember the last time you actually called her. Usually it’s just a text or two, here and there. “And then my dad, he — um, he’s the reason I’m here. He had — has — a gambling problem. He spent all our family’s money trying to pay back debts, so I had to get a job. So I guess you can thank him for the fact that we met.”
It’s quiet for a little bit. “Do you believe in fate?”
“Huh?” You try to switch gears with minimal success. “Why?”
“Or destiny, I guess. Sensei does. That’s why he chose me,” Tenko says. Who’s Sensei? You’ve heard him refer to a boss before, but never a teacher. “I want to say I wish your shitty dad hadn’t made it so you had to get this job, but if you didn’t get this job, I wouldn’t have met you.”
Oh. It strikes you as weirdly sweet. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. “Let’s say destiny’s a thing,” you say. “Even if I didn’t have this shitty job, we’d have met sometime anyway.”
“Then I wish your shitty dad hadn’t made it so you had to work for an escort service,” Tenko says, and you laugh. “I mean it. If we’d have met some other way.”
“We would have,” you say. “So, um — are you busy right now? What are you doing?”
“Not busy. I’m just in my room,” Tenko says. “Playing a few games.”
“Did I interrupt?”
“No,” Tenko says at once. “I was just — uh — hanging out. Don’t worry about that stuff.”
“About interrupting your games?”
“About interrupting anything,” Tenko says. “I want to talk to you.”
Right. He wants to talk to you. He’s paying a lot of money to make sure he can talk to you. “I thought we could play games together sometimes,” he says. “Even if you have to study, we can be on the phone. I won’t bother you. I want to hang out.”
“You went quiet. Do you want to hang out — not on the phone?”
“I mean, I thought you did,” you say awkwardly. “I sort of thought –”
You don’t know what you thought. The girlfriend experience, like Sakura said, except that doesn’t seem like it’s on Tenko’s mind. He has other friends now, but he still wants to talk to you. Does he even know what you look like? Are you just supposed to treat him the way you’d treat your other friends? Your relationship with Tenko, whatever it is, used to be simple. Now it’s complicated, just like everything else in your life, and not for the first time, you find yourself wishing you could go back to the way things were before.
“We’ll meet up,” Tenko says into the silence. “Not yet. Right now I want to know what you want for your birthday.”
“You don’t have to get me anything,” you say at once. “Just sing me the birthday song and we’ll be good to go.”
“Me singing you the birthday song would ruin your birthday,” Tenko says. “If you had a wish list, I’d get you something from that, but since you don’t, you can just tell me. Pick something.”
“Um –” You cast about for something inexpensive, something you still couldn’t justify buying for yourself. “New dice.”
“Dice?”
“For my D&D game. Everybody has their own set, and the people in my group get ones that match their character somehow. I can only afford the plain ones.” Your face is heating up with embarrassment. “If you wanted to get me something I’d definitely use, new dice would be great.”
“I can do that,” Tenko says. He sounds pleased. “What does your character look like?”
Somebody in your group likes to draw, so you have a picture – but not on this phone. You spend an awkward few minutes texting yourself from the new phone so your personal phone has the number, then texting the photo from your personal phone to the new one. Trying to juggle multiple phones is going to be a pain. If you’re not careful, you’re going to wind up calling and texting Tenko from your personal phone.
You finally get the photo sent. Tenko must have his sound on, because you can hear the arrival noise from the message through your headphones. “This is cool,” Tenko says. He sounds surprised. “I thought it was going to be like – a nun, or something.”
“That’s what I had been thinking, but the person who drew it went the other way with it,” you say. “I like it better this way.”
“Me too. I needed something for your contact photo, anyway.”
So that answers one of your questions. Tenko doesn’t know what you look like. If he’s going to imagine you as somebody, you don’t mind if it’s your D&D character. “Then I need a contact photo for you,” you say. “That’s something else you can get me for my birthday.”
Tenko makes a skeptical noise into the phone. “You don’t want a photo of me.”
“Either you can send me a picture or sing me the birthday song,” you say. “Up to you.”
He must really not like singing. A second later, you get the photo.
You can’t see his face. Or anything in his background. He’s taken the photo from about a forearm’s length away when he’s mostly facedown in his pillow, and all you can see is messy blue-grey hair and the corner of one eye. You can’t tell what color his eye is. Just that he’s looking at the camera.
thanks, you text back, even though the two of you are still on the phone. i like your hair
“Don’t lie,” Tenko says out loud. But a heart-react shows up next to your message, and your stomach does an odd twist. “Use that one for now. You can take a better one when we meet up.”
It’s weird. The thought that he didn’t want to meet in person made you uneasy, but the thought that he does expect to meet up makes you nervous, too. But he said not yet, so you tell yourself not to worry about it for now. You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it. You try not to think about how many bridges you’ve crossed with this job that you never expected to get to in the first place.
“When we met up,” you say. You save the photo and set your phone aside. “Sounds good.”
For anyone worried because they write the same trope more than once: I love that shit. I will love that first one and I will still be excited for the thirtieth one. Let these idiots do the same thing over and over again. We deserve that.
never be good at your job. it's a trap. they'll just give you more and harder stuff to do and it'll pull you away from your true passion of writing gay fanfiction for people on the internet
