GENSHIN IMPACT: Yandere Lohen x gn reader
COME CLOSER, BITE, & SHOOT ME! pt 1
... where being good with a bow and arrow is impressive. Hitting a target is what all archers are trained to do. Being perfect at it is another matter entirely. Your ever-so-kind Vice-Captain Lohen watches— no, he studies you during training, thinking of different ways to make you perfect.
Maybe an apple will finally get you there. Maybe that was never really the point at all.
MC Archer in Training Reader! x Yandere! Lohen
Words: 5005
Lohen had always wanted to pursue perfection. His version of perfection. Even if it meant keeping the fifth company shooting blind at a target for hours. Even if it meant keeping you there for hours until the hairs on the target splintered apart under the mercy of your arrows.
The night had long passed due to its youth, with the moon crossing more than halfway across the night's pitch-black sky, hanging swollen and low. Stars had been working hard, twinkling far, far away, shining with all their might as they twinkled down upon the relentless wreckage of the sheer human stubbornness happening below. The very something, not going unnoticed by those above.
The archery range had long been abandoned by anyone who had a brain in their head and missed the warmth of their bed at home rather than this. Comfort sounded more like weakness. Lying around and sleeping when the definition of perfection could be achieved, crafted during these very critical hours, sounded better than any sense of “comfort” a plush blanket and warm tea ever could have provided you.
The other thing that was alive were torches that weakly flickered against the wall, gasping for oil against the never-ending wavering breeze of the night that teased them. No one had come to feed them. No one had thought they had to.
No one wanted to interrupt the precious pursuit of perfection Lohen had etched out for you.
The arrow whirled.
A silver streak of the arrow flew past and sliced through the inky blanket of darkness of the night, correctly. The arrow obeyed your command from the way your fingers plucked the string, the way you always knew how.
You had understood the laws of how Monstandt’s winds had worked before you were tall enough to reach the wooden bow with the cool silver edges on the tippy top shelf of the weapon rack. You knew how the night’s breath and how right then, it needed a higher aim and a gentler pull back.
The moment you were five, right from the start when you had picked up the wooden prop bow on the ground – you knew, this was what you were born to do.
As you grew older, naturally you started to enrol and train with the knights. Years passed, and ever since you started to take training more seriously with the Knights, specifically with Lohen, you felt different, something.
The first thing an archer is trained to do is to hit the centre of the target. In your lifetime, you have accumulated as many hits as a person would only dare to dream of in 3 lifetimes. It was something that flowed naturally in the nature of your hands and arms, like the way you breathed. It was a part of you, an extension of your own body.
Yet now, hitting a target in the centre was nothing more than an expectation.
Nowadays, when you hit the centre of the target, you don’t feel the same sense of warmth or satisfaction in your chest that you once had. Now, it felt more like a dagger twist in the centre of your chest every time the rings split hairs at the end of your arrows. It was as if the arrows never landed correctly enough, centred enough, perfect enough.
The arrows never landed how you wanted it to.
The arrow lands left of the centre. Not by much. A finger's width, maybe even less than that. You stare at it. A muscle twitched under your eye.
Any other archer who had your aim would have already left by your third arrow at noon.
Any archer who had watched you shoot today and witnessed any of your shots during this entire day called you exceptional. Gifted was the most common word people used to describe you – ever since you were little until now. Until the moment you met your vice-captain.
Those very same people would have showered you with praises and buttered you up with Sweet Madame's or covered all your drinks at the Cat Tail's for at least a month — slapped you on the shoulder at the bar and told you the centre of the rings was splitting hairs with every arrow you pinned onto the target. They would have meant it then.
Lohen said nothing.
He stood still. His back is straight and tall. Eyes fixed. Mouth shut. He carried his silence like a weight that pierced behind your back eyeing your hands, your posture, your hold. For eight hours, he had offered nothing but only single-words of appointed feedback. Each word that he did say dropped like a knife that cut through the thick tensions after each shot he had deemed imperfect. It had been eight hours. It had been more than eight hours now.
With each passing hour, it seemed as if he remained unphased. Time being nothing more than just a simple number ticking away on some wooden device made by humans to dictate when the sun and moon would rise and fall. He simply just did not care. The only thing he cared about was the belief he had placed inside you.
He was waiting for his belief in you to come true like a child wishing upon a star. And traditionally, with wishing on stars, those dreams are best kept unsaid. He didn’t want to see his wish come true just yet.
The silence of his nothingness settled now.
You had begun to distinguish the differences in the types of silences, it all started to become something intuitive now. This one meant: Again.
You nock another arrow into your bow, the arrow propped in between as always. Draw. Release.
Left of centre again.
Behind you, the sound of him confirmed what you knew was going to come next. The same exhale, the same sound, the same word–
"Again,"
The word struck your ears harder this time, like a strike into the depths of your eardrums. This time, again, meant something heavier. You tilted your head, rotating round and roun, feeling the dry crack of your neck echo as an unfriendly reminder of the grudge your bones had against you, desperately wanting to rest.
You took a deep breath in through your nose. Closed your eyes. Let the breath move out of your mouth. A mental chant started to repeat in your mind: This was the shot. No more: “Again.”
The fingers, the shoulders, the rhythm of your heartbeat that pulsated in your ears, that kept the blood in your veins alive had to be perfect. Your eyes narrowed at the target. To you, it was no longer just simply wood and paint. It was a sign of mockery that had a big, fat red eye that taunted back at you fifty meters away.
Your eyes had studied and burned the picture of the target all too well. You knew that grain, the certain texture, and the sound of the Monstadt oak wood. You knew these facts better than the lines of your own palm. And that was exactly why, this was going to be the shot that was going to end tonight.
You can see the centre– no, you know the centre of that stupid circle. You've been looking at that stupid centre of the target on that stupid piece of wood for the entire day and now night.
And then there it was again. It wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t a scream or shout.
Something shifts. A small thing. A very annoying shift of something that had been messing up every single shot of yours for the entire day. It wasn’t the hands.
To blame your hands would be a pathetic excuse, a beginner's reasoning to cover up the real truth of why you couldn’t be perfect. You knew the real reason very well, the reason that lived somewhere deep inside you in a place where you were reluctantly buried. The images of the the undeniable fact that one day you were going to have to do something that took a breath away from this worlds very existence.
The arrow hits the right side of the centre. Different side. Same exact distance off. You felt the tension in your jaw start to build again.
"You're straining," Lohen remarked blankly. His tone had not changed, remaining flat as ever.
"You're straining because you're hesitating."
"You don't know." The sound of his voice cut like a blade, severing your sentence before anything else further left your throat.
He took a step closer. The shadow cast by his figure stretched across the stone, swallowing yours in an instant. Light pulsed at the base of his footsteps from his boots against the floor, which battered against the depths of your eardrums, the kind that made your heart thump deeply in your chest.
He leaned in, a slow tilt in a way that caged your breath. A lock of hair that had disobeyed the other strands of his teal head fell away, acting like a veil that covered the right side of his face – leaving only one sharp eye that looked at you– no, pierced into you like he was examining the deepest corners of your mind.
"If you ‘knew’," he mocked you, "you would have stopped doing that by the sixty-seventh arrow." The tone of his voice implied that he should have been smiling.
He didn’t need to. The tilt of his head was edging even closer, moving still until his heat started to radiate from his chest and onto your skin was enough.This here, was the very moment he deemed you interesting. Actually, that was a lie. He had found you interesting the moment you struck the arrow through his heart by listening to him so well all day.
He loved your pretty hands, the ones that pulled back the string on the bow when he wanted you to. You had the right to leave, yet your pretty little legs never moved away from him, enduring all those long hours of him constantly nitpicking at you about each shot, a martyr to his pathetic idea of perfectionism.
And now all this had led him here, to be present at this unholy hour, at an empty training range when he could be anywhere else right now. He could have been anywhere else. But he was here with you.
"Have you ever shot a live target before?"
Your neck turned before your own mind even registered moving your own body. Then you immediately wish you didn't. He was close. Almost nose to nose, plastered so terribly close to you. The proximity feels like an absolute insult to whatever the definition of personal space was. A gust of wind would have been enough for you to completely crash into his uniform.
You were used to him standing close to you, long hours in the range with just the two of you — observing every little detail about how you moved and worked with a bow and arrow like any normal instructor was normal. But this–
“Answer me… I won’t ask twice,” he murmured.
The words were whispered, yet coated in a sickening sweet type of sugar that coated each word that escaped his lips – poured directly into your ears, for your ears only to savour every last bit. He let his words hang, just a little more to savour your twisted expression that froze.
“Do you know what it feels like…” he says slowly, leaning in a fraction closer. His gaze dropped to your lips for a second before snapping back to your eyes that trembled, “...to hit a target that breathes life into these very winds?”
Your lips part. Your breath held.
The pale teal-grey of his hair in the low failing torchlight that spluttered against the weakest of winds frayed lawlessly against it. It was a beautiful mess that he wanted you to acknowledge.
You knew what he looked like. You had seen him every day. Today, you have stood next to him for endless hours. But, right then, the violent gradient of his violet eyes mixed with blood-red crescents in his iris that seemed to pick apart everything you had tried to keep away burned into you. They had traced the way your lips had moved open, the way the uneven pulsing rhythm in your body had hammered its way into your throat – betraying any sense of sanctity you had left.
You quickly dropped your gaze down to the white gold plating of armour that lay across his chest – a proud signature mark that showed off the status, the very mark that had given him the authority to command you to have stayed for this long. Yet, his breath was still building on the side of the sensitive skin of your neck – acting as a reminder of how much power he really had over you in strength.
Your teeth found their way to the soft inner lining of your cheek, the metallic taste of blood starting to burst on the tips of your tongue as an attempt to ground yourself away from the unbearable close proximity you both held in that moment.
This time, it was you who had no words for him. Instead, you forced your body to physically move away to somewhere safe. Somewhere, to do anything else but stand even a second closer to him like this. To do something, at least to fill the void of uncomfortable silence he had built for you, knowing full well he had his answer.
The quivers. You had to reach for the quivers.
It as if the silence was alive, only now filled by his piercing gaze as he meticulously analysed the way your fingers tremoured for a new quiver – your breath somewhat more ragged.
With a small clearing of your throat, you adjust yourself back up straight after picking a random arrow that was closest to you. Your mind thumped uncontrollably, clouded by only something you knew you could control. Your routine. Rolling your shoulders back, you locked your shoulders and tightened your core until you finally felt that familiar ache again that lay deep inside your muscles like normal. Your fingers latched onto the string, seeking comfort in the way it rested against the pads of your fingertips.
"Hm. How interesting.” Lohen said as he moved back, his gaze still glued onto you.
“So, you’re deciding to go silent now?”
The question came out dark, in a tone laced with something that darkened the air itself. Shortly after he shifted, the atmosphere moved with him. He passed by your side. He didn’t reach for the spare bows or the bundle of quivers.
He reached for an apple. The apple.
The bright red fruit had been sitting on the edge of the wooden table all day. You had noticed the apple early on during training and thought nothing of it. And now, it was in his hands.
His gloved hand snatched it up. Tossed it up in the air with casual ease. The fruit turned in the air before it landed with a softened thud in his gloves. During this, he doesn’t look at the fruit. His gaze was anchored deep into the side of your face, analysing the curve of your nose down to your soft, plush lips that he wanted desperately to claim into his own, the taste of you must be so–
He shook his head, tongue meeting the top palate of his mouth before you heard a soft click.
"Again," he commanded, different now.
You still don't look directly at him. You refused to look at him, busying yourself with fitting the quiver more perfectly against the bow, rubbing it from side to side.
You draw. You locked eyes with the target.
Then, the heavy silence that was once there vanished. The metallic clack of the wooden gate unlatched. He was stepping into the shooting range – the direct line of fire where a single pull or push could end an entire life in a snap, dictated by a finger. Your finger.
His footsteps were not simply a pair of boots stepping across the cold stone. Each step that contacted the cool ground echoed across the empty range, steady and paced like a countdown that stripped you of any dignity you had left with him.
Every range had its rule, of course. Etched in stone and written in by the cautionary hands of someone who had clearly felt the mercy and lethality of a simple drawn string – with the sole purpose of protecting those in the future. The first one was the simplest one really, the one that shouldn’t even exist if one had common sense.
Do not occupy the line of fire with an active archer in sight – Death.
Tonight, those rules desperately carved were nothing more than finding a rock in rubble beneath his boots. An exception. He did not acknowledge such a thing. Death was something particular he thrived with, something he lived and breathed with.
The rhythm finally stops. Fifty meters of open stone. Fifty meters from where the target stood. Fifty meters is where he stood.
He lifts his boot to the edge of the wood like it weighed nothing to him and shoves it out of the way with insulting grace. The scrape of the wood against the stone cuts through the quiet night of the range — a jagged tear of grating friction that pierces against the comfort of the pulse in your ears.
He then started to turn slowly to face you.
To face the bow. To face your bow. He looked nothing like the Vice-Captain that you had stood next to, the one that had been nose to nose with you a moment ago. The expression is carved onto the flesh of his face. Nothing short of a breathing defiance of the oath you had sworn by your blood to protect in the sanctity of the range.
He looked pleased. Although not smiling. Lohen never smiled the way normal people did. But there was a spark of something alive in him then that wasn’t there at the third hour, or at noon, that sent a chill down the length of your arm.
“You’ve been shooting at that target,” he said while not looking at you – instead, his gaze was focusing on the apple in his gloved hand, “for eight hours straight, every single time I’ve told you to.”
He let the apple still in his palm.
“And you know what that target has never done?”
There was no space left for you to think about his question.
“Looked back at you.” Head cocked just slightly to the side.
He let those words settle in the silence of the air between you for a moment.
“Wood is simply something taken from a tree,” he said, his other hand fiddling with the brown stem on top of the apple, twirling the top of the apple gently.
“Chopped and stripped of everything it used to be when it was alive.” He glanced over at the target he had just pushed aside with a look of boredom. “It has never looked at you, knowing that the decision of whether it continues to exist is entirely in your hands.”
With a firm twist, he plucked the stem out of the apple. Looked at it for a second – twirling it between his thumb and index finger.
“You can’t kill something that was never alive.”
He tossed the stem away. Then, turned the apple over again. Tossed it up again into the air – caught it without looking.
“I’ve heard about you, you know, before you joined the knights. The Windblume festival competitions.” His voice shifted to something conversational, lighter as he recounted the very event that every single Monstandt citizen knows.
“Windblume balloons. All that confetti. All those prizes and plastic trophies you’ve won every single year.” The smirk grew, eyebrows raised and fell for a split second. “Impressive, for what it is really.”
You weren’t sure by his tone whether it was out of sincerity or pure mockery.
“It’s funny,” he said, “to spend an entire life being exceptional at hitting things that has never once been alive.”
You felt that unfamiliar pit in your stomach grow without your permission.
He scoffed. “And it’s even more funny to think about” his free hand lifted, two fingers gesturing loosely at the bow still in your hands. “that the moment something is, you’d already decided to give it mercy.”
The silence after that was much heavier now. Much heavier than the silence he gave you, standing in the range with each of your missed shots.
Only then did you become more aware of the aim of your arrow. The angle of the arrow tip is being moved away from the centre line of him. Away from the shot that he was looking for the entire evening, that would be his last breath. You had already decided to miss.
Your breath held itself, afraid of what was going to come.
He noticed. He said nothing about it, though. He just looked at the missed aim of your arrow, then back at your face, knowing that he was right. And he always loved being right about things.
“Mercy?” You repeated back to him, weak.
“Don’t,” he stopped you, “act like you don’t know what I mean.” He rolled his shoulder. His free hand came to the other arm, coming to support the satisfying cracks that echoed from the stress he had to release. It was like he had strained the entire evening, waiting an incredibly long time to finally get it out of his system.
He let his rolled shoulder fall loose. His gaze cast down at the ground, shaking his head. It was like the look that reminded you of a mother would give to a child when they did something that disappointed them.
“You have the best aim and intuition out of all the knights I have trained in the ranged company,” Lohen said. “I don’t say that. To anyone.” He paused, “You have the hands to rival even Amber,” he stated easily, like it was a fact.
That name hit you like a heavyweight in your chest. Amber.
Amber was your idol. Always had and will be. She was exceptional for her age, becoming a ranged scout so early on in her career to serve in the knights. Not once had it ever crossed your mind that you would be better than her.
And then there was your vice-captain who slapped that possibility right into your face like it was an objective fact.
“Don’t you know,” he continued, the softness replaced with a lower, direct tone, “how long I’ve been waiting to say that.” Not a question.
He took a step closer. His eyes locked back onto yours.
“Did you really want to be shooting down pathetic Hilichurl towers the rest of your life?” A slight tilt in his head, “With that much talent in hands like those.”
He glanced at them briefly with a look of disgust. “Don’t you want to use them for something real?”
You press your eyebrows together. You thought back to the moment you had held up that wooden prop bow. It was too naive of you to think that you were recruited to be an archer who shot down ropes and barracks to help those who really wanted the fight. That was the first realisation you made just then. The second realisation was that you didn’t want to make that first realisation.
“I’m here to help you, little archer,” he stated simply as if saying something obvious to soothe you. “You see this?”
He held up the apple, “It’s a very red apple.”
The weakened torchlight that watched him didn’t quite reach. Yet you could still trace the haunting whiteness of his collar that sharply pointed towards the angles of his lips that curved slightly upwards. All that was left of him was up to the shadows and the figment of your imagination.
And of course, the big red bright fruit he held in the palm of his hands.
“I want you to shoot it,” he said. “Right through to its core.” His voice dropped on the last one – not louder, but more commanding in the tone he used to get what he wanted with knights. “Right where I put it.”
You saw the apple move. The slow, deliberate rise as it passed his chest. Past the line of his collar, moving up towards his face as it passed his jaw, then finally it reached his chin. With each second that passed, you felt your hands grip tighter around the wood and string. The red indentation against the pads of your fingertips becomes more and more evident from the stress.
The apple stopped right at his lips.
Then came the sound you couldn’t hear; you didn’t need to hear it to know you were right.
It being the shape of his mouth opening. Then, followed by his teeth dug deep into the crisp skin of the fruit. There he stood in front of you. Fifty meters away, with a big, bright red fruit bitten in between his teeth. Both arms spread wide across to the side like he was about to celebrate something victorious.
Fingers that were once so stable started to tremble uncontrollably – not out of exhaustion, something less professional than that.
"Vice-Captain,” You said. His title, not his name. You couldn’t say his name, "This is—”
You shake your head.
The apple remained still where it settled.
“This feels wrong,” you tried to say, “...come back here. Please.”
The word please slipped out of your lips in a way you hated. You felt slightly embarrassed by the end of the word which left your lips with how you trembled hesitantly – as if saying please would change the outcome of your fate right then.
Not any sane person would honestly ever smile in a situation like this. But you could see it clearly from the curvature of his lips that rose above the apple. He knew how it looked from your perspective. He had practically offered himself up as live bait, only an arrow tip away from death to being served on a platter with a fat, round apple between his lips.
And he had this look you had never seen across all those gruelling eight hours. A look that followed with a type of silence you couldn’t quite name.
One arm rose from his side. The fist came after, all fingers balled up tightly. Then slowly two fingers, extended and pointed out.
Then the fingers curled back twice. A gesture so slow and deliberate in a way that you wish you were blind, understanding what it had meant.
A/N: just saw some leaked clips of Lohen.... why is he literally so hot??? LIKE HIS ULT?? AND IDLE WITH THE DAGGER AND POISON??
ANYWAY, please lmk if you've enjoyed or want more of yandere lohen. i promise part 2 will explore a little more freakier side of him - only if u guys want it ofc HAHHA
thank you again for the support! I hope you've enjoyed.
If you’d like to be tagged in pt 2 please comment below!
