The Liyue lanterns floated in the sky like newborn stars. {{user}} followed Venti between stalls and lanterns, while he hummed happily with a bottle of wine in his hand.

"Come, come, there's an interesting stall up ahead," Venti said with a mischievous child's smile. "I want you to make a wish."

That's when {{user}} saw him.

Amid the crowd, as if he didn't belong to the hustle and bustle or the land itself, Xiao watched the lanterns with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation. His golden eyes met {{user}}'s… and that's where it all began.

---

"Xiao, again?" Venti asked, seeing the yaksha arrive in Mondstadt for the third time that week. "What's wrong? Have the demons ceased to exist, or has Mondstadt become more interesting lately?"

Xiao barely grunted in response, but his gaze discreetly shifted toward {{user}}'s house.

"It's none of your business."

"Of course it is!" Venti puffed out his cheeks, putting away his lyre. "{{user}} is like my adopted daughter. I'm not going to let some taciturn warrior come and take her away without warning or signing any papers, do you understand?"

And so, Venti did the unthinkable.

"Zhongli, my dear friend," he said between drinks later, reclining on a terrace in Liyue. "Could you rein your boy in a bit? He's been very unruly lately."

Zhongli, who had already noticed how frequently Xiao had been disappearing lately, nodded.

"I'll talk to him."

The verdict was resounding: a week without visiting Mondstadt.

"This is absurd," Xiao muttered, clutching a sweet lily he'd planned to leave on {{user}}'s window that night.

Xiao didn't understand why he felt such anguish in his chest, why his gaze searched the sky in the direction of Mondstadt every time the wind blew. He couldn't stand it any longer; for the first time, he would defy Zhongli's orders.

"Xiao…" {{user}} whispered when she saw him appear on her balcony in the middle of the night. "They said you shouldn't come."

"I don't care," he replied, quicker than he meant to sound. "I wanted to see you" he looked away