The Vanished Brother
After returning home from Twilight Mansion, Xiayu finally got a good night's sleep. She'd been run off her feet all night with no rest, and honestly, she had to admire those detectives—how did they never get tired?
By the time she woke up, she was finally in a state of mind to sort through yesterday's sudden turn of events. That was when she realized something truly absurd: the guy who had popped out of nowhere, declared himself her older brother, and then vanished without so much as showing his face hadn't even left her a way to contact him. So how, exactly, was she supposed to track him down and get some answers?
"Um... Traveler...?"
Just then, Paimon's hesitant voice drifted into Xiayu's mind.
Xiayu sneered. Paimon, so you finally decided to show up! I was calling you all night and getting nothing. I was starting to think I'd accidentally eaten you as emergency food after all.
"Traveler, don't say such scary things, hehe..."
And you're laughing! Where were you when I needed you most yesterday? Also—did you ever get a straight answer out of 111 or not?
"I asked, I asked!" Paimon answered in a flustered rush. "The reason Paimon couldn't reply right away is that Paimon was off contacting 111 in the first place!"
Fine, then. You'd better have an explanation that satisfies me. Otherwise, 'emergency food' is going to stop being a nickname for you, Paimon. I might just stop calling you Paimon altogether and start calling you Emergency Food to your face—and who knows, one of these days I might actually eat you.
"Whoa! Traveler, you're terrifying!"
Seeing Xiayu clench her fist, Paimon hurriedly cleared her throat and pressed on. "Ahem. Traveler, here's the thing—when you first drew your system, it matched you with the Genshin Roleplay System based on the game you were most familiar with at the time. In other words, it was never a random draw at all. You chose your own exclusive system, and that system was built using the Genshin Impact game on your phone or computer as its template."
"The moment your exclusive system finished binding and Paimon appeared, your appearance was automatically overwritten to match the Traveler from your game. But..."
Paimon paused there for a beat before continuing. "But—Traveler, do you remember which character you used to play in Genshin?"
Something clicked for Xiayu. I remember. Back then I picked the brother—Aether—and then, on a whim, I entered my own name as his...
"Yep! Your appearance was supposed to become Aether's. But when the system went to overwrite your character template, it discovered that Aether had developed a spark of consciousness all his own—impossible to overwrite. So it had to swap in Lumine's template for you instead."
Xiayu swallowed hard. You're telling me I almost ended up living as a man?!
"What's wrong with that? The characters you project parts of yourself into—Alhaitham and Kaeya—are men too, aren't they? What's the difference? You've adapted just fine!"
That's completely different! They at least come with a character's memories softening the edges. This body of mine has only my own memories. If I'd turned into a man, I would NOT have gotten used to it!
Paimon stayed optimistic. "Hmmm... well, maybe you'd have gotten used to it with practice? Besides, that's not what happened anyway, right?"
So that was why Aether had said it was *him* who'd been traveling alongside her all this time—which meant the person who saved Matsuda Jinpei three years ago must have been Aether too. Could it be because he'd overheard her talking to her game character back when she used to chatter at the screen?
But questions still remained. Then why did he appear forty years ago? And why does he have self-awareness—do the other characters have it too?
"That's because when the template was deployed," Paimon explained, "Aether's template had already developed self-awareness, so your consciousness couldn't be merged into it. But the template had already been generated and released—it couldn't be recalled. The only thing left to change was the deployment timing. As for why forty years in particular... Paimon's guess is that's the earliest point on the main storyline's timeline."
"And the reason he has self-awareness? That one's easy. It's because of you, Traveler."
Me?
"Because you're special, Traveler—that's the whole reason you got bound to a system in the first place. When you played the game, didn't you genuinely wish he was real? You wished he existed. So naturally... he came to exist."
"As for the other characters—Paimon has scanned them. Probably because you didn't interact with them as much, they don't have self-awareness. They only carry the memories that came built into their characters."
I see... so that's how it was...
Everything finally fell into place: So all along, on some level, I really did want an older brother?
"So? Traveler, are you satisfied with Paimon's explanation? You won't eat Paimon as emergency food now... right?"
Paimon's bright, chirping voice pulled Xiayu out of her tangled thoughts and lifted her out of the heavy mood that had settled over her. She let out a long breath and let all that weight go.
Whatever else was true, she had family now—a brother. That was a happy thing, wasn't it?
Yeah. I'm satisfied. Paimon isn't emergency food—Paimon is the Traveler's very best guide.
Three days later, at Beika Mall.
"Who would have thought something like that could happen. So—have you seen your brother at all since then, Traveler?"
Nahida held Klee's hand in one of hers and an ice cream cone in the other. She took a tiny nibble, then looked up to ask.
Xiayu had just finished relaying everything she'd learned from Paimon, hoping to hear the Dendro Archon's take on it all—and Nahida's very first question sent her mood plummeting.
"No! Forget meeting him, I haven't gotten so much as a single text! Okay, fine, we never swapped contact info, but I refuse to believe he couldn't get his hands on my phone number! And it's been three days now—three days—without a word!"
At first, Xiayu had actually been a little worried—what if this bargain-bin brother of hers suddenly showed up and she had no idea how to act around him? But now three days had passed without a single peep from him, and worry was the last thing she felt. All that was left in her heart was pure, simmering fury.
Unbelievable. He was the one who came knocking in the first place! Wasn't he delighted when she called him "big brother"? And now what was this? Got what he wanted, so no need to cherish it anymore?
"Then are you angry right now, Traveler? Does it feel like you just swallowed a Jueyun Chili?"
Nahida watched with genuine curiosity as Xiayu chomped down viciously on a huge bite of her ice cream.
"Something like that. Let's just say I'm on fire." Xiayu took another furious bite of ice cream, hoping to douse the flames in her chest.