Chapter 187: Liyue
"So, Miss Ganyu, what made you join that Teyvat organization of yours?" Camus asked, unable to resist tacking on a complaint at the end. "Honestly, your organization's name really is a little odd."
Curaçao walked at Camus's side, quietly taking in their surroundings while listening to him probe at Ganyu.
"Because there is someone in the organization whom I wish to follow." Unbothered by Camus's less-than-friendly attitude, Ganyu spoke of her reason for joining with a faintly wistful expression.
"Miss Ningguang?"
Ganyu shook her head. "The head of our department."
Camus's smile widened. "Anyone who can put such an admiring look on Miss Ganyu's face must be a truly remarkable person, I imagine."
He couldn't ask about the head of Ganyu's department directly, so he had no choice but to feel his way around the subject.
"Yes, yes! He really is a wonderful person — powerful, gentle, deeply learned..." The moment Lord Zhongli came up, Ganyu always had an endless stream of praise ready to pour forth.
Watching her show no sign whatsoever of stopping her catalog of the man's virtues, Camus found his smile growing harder and harder to maintain.
He hurried to cut in at the first pause. "Your department head must be terribly busy, then? Like the head of our own action division — missions every single day, worry bleaching his hair white. It's brutal work."
"Mm... no, not really." Ganyu pondered for a moment, then chose her words carefully so that Camus could follow. "In fact, that gentleman has, ah, retired. Miss Ningguang is overseeing our department's affairs for the time being. Though Miss Ningguang isn't run off her feet every day either — with Miss Keqing and the others helping, it's quite manageable."
"...Retired?" Camus paid no attention to anything Ganyu had said after that word. His expression went blank as he repeated it.
Even Curaçao couldn't help widening his eyes, turning to stare back at Ganyu, the one who had uttered it.
Camus had genuinely never expected the first time he heard the word retirement to be from the mouth of a fellow member of an underground organization. Did organizations like theirs even have such a thing as retirement?
He had always assumed the best outcome for people like them was to die at their posts of old age — though in practice, most of them died along the way, whether by mission or by betrayal.
The question slipped out of him before he could stop it. "Is your department head related to your organization's boss?"
Otherwise, how could anyone rest easy letting a department head retire safely instead of finding a way to silence him for good?
No, no — even if they were blood brothers, trust would fly out the window all the same.
Camus was certain that in his organization, if Rum told the boss he intended to retire, the boss would agree to his face and then quietly have Gin dispose of him.
At that thought, before Ganyu could even answer his previous question, he pressed on. "Hmm... this may be a bit forward of me, but are you certain that gentleman of yours really retired safely? He hasn't, say, gone missing?"
Though she found it a little strange that Camus would say such a thing so suddenly, Ganyu still nodded. "Yes, I'm certain."
"I was just in contact with him the day before yesterday. He's been busy reshaping the terrain lately — he hasn't even had time for tea. I've already set aside some fine tea, planning to send it over to him in a little while." She wondered whether Kirara might be able to handle the delivery.
Ganyu's voice dropped toward the end. Camus didn't catch those last few words, but he understood her meaning well enough. He couldn't fathom why a retired old man would go off reshaping terrain, but that hardly mattered.
What mattered was that this Teyvat organization really did allow its people to leave the organization alive — and not just anyone, but a department head.
Come to think of it — could that rumor he'd heard be true? The one about the son of another of Teyvat's department heads joining his own organization?
He'd always assumed it was just gossip the man himself had made up in passing. But if Teyvat was willing to let a department head retire, then not pursuing the matter of that department head's son leaving and joining another organization didn't seem impossible... maybe.
That free, huh? Camus was honestly a little envious.
Knowing full well it was impossible, he still felt a reckless impulse to ask Ganyu whether he could join that Teyvat of theirs.
He had barely wrestled his churning feelings back under control and come back to himself when he heard Ganyu answering his earlier question.
"As for the boss's relationship with that gentleman... they are friends, of course. Friends who have been through a great deal together." Ganyu's expression was firm.
Just friends, huh...
But if the boss was friends with a retired old man, then Teyvat's boss, like the one in his own organization, was an old codger too?
Camus felt a flicker of disappointment. That was rather dull. Was every organization's boss one of those old men with one foot in the grave who refused to act their age?
After that, Camus asked a few more questions about the department head and Ningguang, but nothing particularly useful came of them. All he learned was that their department handled the commercial side of the Teyvat organization, and that after the department head's retirement, Ningguang had been provisionally filling the post.
Of course, in the same spirit, Ganyu also asked Camus a token question or two about the Black Organization — showing no interest whatsoever in his organization's information would have been strange, after all.
And just like Ganyu, all Camus could offer was surface-level information about the organization; anything classified certainly wasn't going to come out of his mouth casually.
...
"Gentlemen, I've now shown you through the entire company. Is there anything else you'd like to ask?" Back where they had started, Ganyu came to a stop and turned around, her voice soft as she asked.
"We haven't seen everything, have we? You never took us over there." Camus gestured toward the place he had once visited.
"I'm very sorry, but that is a restricted area. We can't allow outsiders inside."
Faced with Ganyu's gentle but unmistakably non-negotiable expression, Camus had no choice but to give up.
Ganyu escorted Camus and Curaçao to the company entrance, and the three of them exchanged farewells.
"Oh, right — Miss Ganyu, I forgot to ask just now. What's your department called?"
After the goodbyes, Ganyu had taken only a few steps when Camus's voice came from behind her.
She paused for the briefest moment, then turned back with a smile. "It's called Liyue."
With that, seeing Camus and Curaçao standing outside the company gates with nothing further to say, she turned and continued on her way, vanishing from their sight before long.
"Liyue? Another strange name. Why does that organization keep coming up with these bizarre ones?" Camus grumbled under his breath.
Curaçao organized the notes he'd just committed to memory, then shot Camus a glance. "There's no one around now. Shall we sneak back in and take a look for ourselves?"