Muhe Ye
"Are you ready?" asked Jean to a still-sleepy Kenshin.
"I think I should have entered your bed at night" said a yawning Kenshin.
"What?!" Jean asked in alarm. But when she thought about it, she blushed and looked down, playing with her fingers.
"Fuck" said Kenshin seeing this. "I definitely should have, even if it was just for cuddling".
"W-Why didn't you?" asked Jean. She appreciated Kenshin not entering her room without permission, even if they were 'married', there were a few things she wanted to take calmly.
"Well, it's your room" Kenshin shrugged. "Maybe after we deepen our relationship a bit more. And today is going to be a hard day, and I don't know if you would be able to sleep with another person by your side".
Jean nodded, glad that Kenshin respected her privacy. She wouldn't mind it that much, but she preferred taking things step by step.
.....
Then she remembered that she had already 'married' Kenshin, so there had only been one step. Her mother had destroyed the whole staircase.
"Hmmm" Jean tried to speak, but she wasn't sure of how to broach the topic.
"Just ask" Kenshin said, leaving the huge mansion first.
"How did your relationship go with the other girls?" Jean asked curiously while closing the door and locking it. She wasn't jealous, but if she was going to share her life with Kenshin, she would need to talk with the other girls in the same situation as her, and getting to know them better was a necessity.
"Good" admitted Kenshin. "To be honest, you are the second one I talked the least with. We were too busy in our respective countries, and the distance is too much to make single-day travels".
"That's true" Jean nodded, and they started walking side by side to the Knight's HQ. "We haven't talked at all since that festival 2 years ago, and you are saying that there is a girl you talked to even less than me?".
"Well, the term girl is a bit behind us now" Kenshin said looking up and down at the blushing Jean. "But yes. We talked with each other through letters, sometimes once a day. I had a deal with Arlecchino, she will send me weekly letters and I will help her" Kenshin sighed.
"Did something happen?" asked a worried Jean.
"She sent me around 20 letters in these 2 years, when she should have sent me around 100" confessed Kenshin. "She sent some packs of letters worth of a few weeks, but still".
"Don't you think she may have, well, you know...." Jean wasn't sure of how to say it.
"Broke up with me?" said Kenshin calmly. "I don't think so. I received her last letter a week ago, and it was about something she wouldn't have told me had she decided to 'break up'. Well, we are not even a couple at this point".
"But she still asked for your help?" asked Jean with a frow. "If she could ask for your help, she could have sent letters".
"She asked for my help, how could I deny her that?" asked Kenshin with a sigh. "The Harbingers are like cats and dogs, they are always plotting against each other so that may have been a reason for her not to write. I will speak with her, I have no intention of playing the blaming game".
"I won't speak of how you deal with her" said Jean looking ahead.
"You have all the right to speak about it" Kenshin grabbed Jean's shoulder and looked at her. "The moment you think you should not comment on this kind of thing is the moment a rift forms between you and my 'other life'. So please Jean, tell me what are you thinking about".
Jean looked at Kenshin with surprise but nodded after understanding what Kenshin was talking about. The fact that Kenshin was trying to let her feel included in all areas of his life made her realize once again that she had chosen well.
"I don't know if you should believe her" confessed Jean. "Fatui are not to be trusted. They have done a lot of damage to Mondstadt so I don't like them at all. I only know this Arlecchino from our meeting back in Inazuma, and it didn't even last for half an hour, so I don't know her that much. But don't you think it's possible that you are getting tricked? She may have a reason for not sending letters, but she was still asking you for help".
"Jean, speak clearly" they arrived at the Knights of Favonius HQ, but with a gesture of his hand he stopped the waiting people from approaching them. They needed to clear this.
"I don't know if she is using your.....'interest' maybe?.....to get your knowledge out of you. There is a lot of this I don't understand, and her circumstances are too strange to me so I can't clearly say that she is fooling you" Jean looked worriedly at Kenshin, not knowing how he would react to this.
"I know her very deeply, just like I know you" said Kenshin with a reassuring smile. "Knowing souls tells me far more about a person than what you may think. I don't think she is fooling me, she is just too used to being alone and that coupled with her circumstances may look like it. The next time I see her I will know what is she feeling. But I will always take what you say and your opinions seriously" Kenshin softly hugged Jean.
"Thank you" Jean felt relieved that Kenshin was willing to listen to her even when her opinion was contrary to his. She knew they had jumped over a lot of steps, but it was now she was realizing how many necessary things they had skipped.
She wasn't afraid, but maybe a bit unsure of how Kenshin would react to her saying this.
Were they really ready to spend their time together without getting to know each other better first?
She was distracted by her musing when she felt Kenshin tighten the hug.
"Don't worry Jean, we can take our time" Kenshin obviously sensed Jean's anxiousness, and reassured her. It was not like they were already married. Right?.
"Hey!" Paimon quickly flew over and looked at Kenshin and Jean with her hands on her waist. "You are making us wait when all you 2 are doing is flirt!"
"Excuse me your Paimonness" Kenshin did a theatrical bow dad made Lumine laugh. "Please accept the offer now residing in my room, the previously mentioned meal my lover gave me".
"U-Uhhhh" Paimon got confused by Kenshin's elegant apology, but quickly snapped out of it. "Humm, I will accept it, but my disappointment is immeasurable".
"I thank your Paimonness for her magnanimity" Kenshin bowed again, making Jean shake her head.
"Let's focus now" Jean quickly donned her serious expression, making the rest perk up. "I will go with Kenshin and Amber to the Temple of the Falcon, while Lumine, Kaeya and Lisa will go to the Temples of the Lion and the Wolf. Our objective is to take some crystals like this one".
Kenshin took the blue crystal, surprising Lumine and Paimon who only saw it red before.
"Lumine, you will pick them up, Kaeya and Lisa will get hurt. After that, you give them to me and wait for further instructions" Kenshin said and Lumine nodded.
"Then let's go!" Amber shouted excitedly.
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"These ruins are amazing" mused Kenshin, looking at the enormous space around. "Where is this place? It's even bigger than Mondstadt, and I don't think this is underground, we would have melted a while ago from being this deep".
"Don't think about it, just go with the wind" replied an energetic Amber.
"That seems to be the rule of Mondstadt" muttered Kenshin.
"Be careful you 2, these ruins are full of traps" warned Jean, looking around. "I am tired of receiving reports of people getting trapped, and it's the knights who later need to rescue them".
"So much for adventurers" scoffed Kenshin. "And they probably fall in the same traps again and again".
"Hey, adventurers are great" rebuked Amber. "They help a lot of thinning the number of hilichurls".
"Nothing they couldn't do being Knights" countered Kenshin, making Amber look unsure of how to reply. "I'm not saying adventurers should disappear, just that they could make themselves more useful by joining the Knights of Favonius".
"How did you manage them in Inazuma?" asked Jean curiously, still looking for enemies and traps.
"I didn't" Kenshin shrugged. "With the civil war and the former Shogun being well, the former Shogun, they were too scared to come, and Inazuma is quite dangerous. We have an island under a perpetual thunderstorm that will fry you just by getting closer to it, a radioactive island, an island where the remains of a god I forgot to seal are making monsters mutate and an island covered in some sort of drug cloud that will make you forget even your sexuality. Not an attractive place to have 'adventures'".
"Doesn't a few of those problems have an easy solution?" asked Jean. "Those remains and the thunderstorm seems to be easy to solve, at least for you and the former Shogun".
"We are focusing on controlling what we have, once that is controlled, we will make the rest of the islands habitable. We will have a territory almost as big as Mondstadt" Kenshin replied rubbing his hands, imagining how many plans they will be able to put in motion.
"Jean, enemies ahead" Amber said with a tense expression.
"4 hilichurls at least, and maybe a few slimes, they are hard to see" Kenshin immediately identified the enemies and relayed the information to Jean and Amber to plan around it.
"That's amazing" said Amber, looking at Kenshin in astonishment. As a scout, she knew how important Kenshin could be in an exploration group.
"I am" and Kenshin shooed them with his hands. He felt that participating was too much. And he didn't want a hilichurl to enter his Plane, his Soul.
Jean and Amber quickly made quick work of everything in the room, and returned to where Kenshin was waiting with a bored expression.
"Hehe, did you see that?" Amber proudly said. "We are strong".
"Bunny girl, I am stronger than you" commented Kenshin, making Amber frown. "Yes, I am strong now that I can see. I will teach you about it later".
"Kenshin, focus" Jean of course knew about it. She knew how Kenshin took the position of Shogun, and after a week of anger towards him for risking his life, she felt happy for him. At least now she didn't need to worry about him encountering a group of hilichurls when he came to Mondstadt.
Kenshin nodded after directing a mocking gesture towards Amber who frowned even more.
'I will tell Eula about this. Now that the Raiden Shogun is not with you, she will want her revenge' angrily thought Amber.
"I will go ahead" and Amber started walking.
"Nini.....zido" a half-dead(?) hilichurl, who Amber's arrow failed to incinerate, crawled towards the place that would allow him to take his revenge.
"Kenshin, don't tease her" Jean approached Kenshin to scold him, and together they followed Amber, who exited the room and looked back with a frown.
But just before Jean and Kenshin could exit the room, a shout filled with rage and pain interrupted them.
"MUHE...YE!!!"
Clank!
Kenshin and Jean looked back with panicking faces at the now dead (?) hilichurl, who with his last efforts had stepped into the trap in the middle of the room.
"Fuck."