At Cloud Retainer's question, even Shenhe, whose face never showed anything on an ordinary day, went tense around the eyes.
Fang Qiu fared far worse.
Under Cloud Retainer's puzzled gaze, her pretty face burned with awkwardness and nerves, her hands fluttering with nowhere to settle, her whole body swaying like a reed.
Ah, this…
How was she supposed to answer that?
She could hardly say it was a book packed cover to cover with girls courting girls, all bashful blushes by daylight.
And by night, bold as brass in bed, rock candy crunching between their teeth — shy in the day, filthy after dark. That kind of book?
Cloud Retainer might be making an honest effort to take in the newer, more avant-garde things of the world, but this particular volume, Junior Sister, Go Easy, Senior Sister's Hurting, was avant-garde on a whole different level…
"Why has no one spoken? Is there something about this book that cannot be said?"
Cloud Retainer looked thoroughly perplexed.
"Uh… that… it's nothing that can't be said… it's just that the book is terribly dull, there's nothing worth talking about… Oh, right, Adeptus, it's getting late. Why don't you turn in? I'll show you to your room," Fang Qiu mumbled, tripping over her own words.
"This immortal is not yet tired," Cloud Retainer said evenly.
Then she glanced at Fang Qiu again and asked suspiciously, "Why do you seem so on edge?"
Fang Qiu was more rattled now than she had been back when Cloud Retainer came looking to make trouble for her.
"No — nothing of the sort." Fang Qiu denied it at once.
"Your constitution is frail. If you are sleepy, go and sleep. Let Shenhe keep this immortal company," she said, taking in the flushed, crimson face in front of her.
Fang Qiu shot Shenhe a frantic look. Shenhe blinked once, caught her meaning, and said, "Master, I have work tomorrow as well. Perhaps we should all rest early tonight?"
"Hmph. Every one of you, the same. Go and sleep, then. This immortal will read on her own."
The first half of that sentence let Fang Qiu breathe again — surely the next words would be an order to show her to her room, and the curiosity about Junior Sister, Go Easy, Senior Sister's Hurting would die a quiet death.
Disaster averted.
Lucky. Nice.
Except the breath had barely left her lungs when the second half of the sentence registered.
Fang Qiu froze solid. Before she could so much as move, Cloud Retainer had already reached up to the shelf and drawn out that very volume, Junior Sister, Go Easy, Senior Sister's Hurting.
It was over…
The matter was settled beyond appeal. Fang Qiu didn't dare say another word. She simply stood off to one side and waited for judgment.
Cloud Retainer flipped the book open at random, read a few lines, and something unnatural crossed her face.
In the book, a character named Li Qiuyao had lifted her senior sister Zi Ling up onto the desk, and the two of them, clothes in disarray, were pressed body to body…
She turned a few pages and read a few more lines.
In the book, the two of them stood on a mountain peak with clouds rolling and unfurling beneath their feet.
Li Qiuyao was embracing Zi Ling from behind, both hands slipped inside Zi Ling's robes, searching high and low.
Cloud Retainer's expression grew stiffer still. She skipped ahead several dozen pages.
In the book, beneath a sky full of fireworks, Zi Ling and Li Qiuyao held each other and kissed.
Li Qiuyao's hands were misbehaving again, sliding in under Zi Ling's clothes.
She closed the book without a sound. For once, a trace of embarrassment surfaced on her face.
So that explained why Fang Qiu and Shenhe had been acting so strangely.
But why would the two of them be reading something like this?
With Shenhe's temperament, she should have no interest in such a book at all.
And besides, the red rope kept Shenhe's disposition firmly in check.
Which meant the book belonged to the child, Fang Qiu?
No wonder she'd been so shaken a moment ago…
Yet judging from Shenhe's reaction, she clearly knew about the book too…
So then… that means…
Never mind.
The affairs of the young were not hers to dwell on.
"This book is not to this immortal's taste. Is there another you would recommend?" she said calmly, setting the volume back on the shelf.
"Yes, yes, yes."
Fang Qiu nodded over and over, like a chick pecking at rice.
Her face was scarlet, red all the way to the tips of her ears.
The mortification had reached its absolute peak. She wanted nothing more than to grease her heels, bolt back to her bedroom, wrap herself in the quilt and roll around on the bed a few times…
Of course she knew Cloud Retainer had chosen not to name it out loud, sparing her the humiliation.
She had leafed through that book herself once, with nothing better to do. Eighty percent of it, start to finish, was the two heroines getting up to filthy things.
Cloud Retainer had flipped through it three separate times, and her face had gone stiff each time. She had obviously landed right in the middle of those passages.
Otherwise she wouldn't have put the book back so fast…
This was all Thoma's fault!
If he hadn't shoved that book in with the rest, how would Cloud Retainer ever have gotten the wrong idea about her?
Shenhe wouldn't have misunderstood her before, either, and Hu Tao wouldn't have nearly caught her with it…
She remembered exactly how the thing had arrived — packed in the same crate as all those horror stories.
Thoma, you heinous villain!
No. She had to find a way to get back at him.
This one she was not swallowing.
The more she backed down and thought it over, the angrier she got.
So Fang Qiu recommended a handful of genuinely decent books to Cloud Retainer instead.
A selection from all three nations — Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma.
After that, she and Shenhe led Cloud Retainer to a fresh guest room.
Watching Fang Qiu bid her goodnight and then flee to her own room, face flaming, unable to bear another second of it, Cloud Retainer allowed herself a faint smile.
An odd sort of satisfaction settled over her.
That was what the child got for twisting the knife in her earlier.
"Very well, Shenhe. You should return to your room and rest as well," Cloud Retainer said.
"Yes, Master."
Shenhe nodded and turned back toward her own room.
Cloud Retainer shut the door, lay down on the bed, picked up one of the books Fang Qiu had recommended, and began to read.
One page in, her brows drew together.
This book…
It wasn't as good as the ones Fang Qiu wrote.
Come to think of it, should she ask Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper about it — about the possibility that this child preferred girls?
While she was sunk in that question, Fang Qiu was face-down on her own bed, quilt clutched to her chest, rolling from side to side with her cheeks on fire.
The level of mortification back there was nothing short of those jokes from her previous life — the kind where you're watching porn and your parents come barging straight in…
So this was what social death felt like…
And worst of all, of all the rotten luck, it had to be a yuri novel!
Hssss…
Wait a moment.
Cloud Retainer hadn't gotten the idea that she liked girls, had she?
Then again — now that she thought about it, she really didn't have much interest in men.
Whereas those nights she'd spent sharing a bed with Hu Tao and Shenhe…
She lay there and scrubbed roughly at her white hair, and every scene from that book came back to her, tangled up with the memory of the three of them together. The red flooded her face in an instant, heat crawled through her body without permission, and she pressed her thighs together before she could stop herself.
Fang Qiu, oh, Fang Qiu! What exactly are you thinking about?
Fang Qiu rubbed her burning cheeks and burrowed down under the covers.
Her head was a mess of things that had no business being there.
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