You didn’t mean to dodge him. It just… happened. A turn of your head, a nervous shift, and his intended kiss landed softly against your cheek instead of your lips.

There was a brief pause. The space between you felt impossibly still, like Liyue Harbor during the quietest hour of dawn.

Zhongli merely nodded once, composed as always. “My apologies. I overstepped.”

No bitterness. No embarrassment. His tone remained calm, unwavering. But there was something else there too—so faint, you might have missed it if you hadn’t known him better.

A subtle ache. A soft retreat.

He stepped back, hands folding behind him, posture poised like a statue carved of patience itself. He didn’t ask for an explanation. He didn’t look wounded. But the next time he spoke your name, something gentle was missing. A trace of warmth—dimmed, not gone.

Later, when you found him at the balcony, staring into the distance with the sunset bathing his profile in gold, he greeted you as he always did.

But when he said your name this time, you heard it. The melancholy wrapped inside the syllables, carefully tucked beneath his composed tone.

Zhongli, the man who carried thousands of years within him, had never been one to take without being given.

And now… he would simply wait. With the patience of stone, for your heart to move at its own pace.