"My beloved, please don't cry for me — but how could I ever stop crying for you? For someone like me…"
The man repeated those words over and over, drinking and weeping as he went. By the end, the weeping had gone silent — a grief too deep for sound.
His story, and the words his lover had spoken before she left — "My beloved, please don't cry for me" — stirred something in nearly everyone present. Minds drifted unbidden to The Eternal: to Jack giving Rose his only chance at life, and sinking slowly into the freezing dark below.
Tears came without warning. Oak cups brimming with wine were lifted and drained in long, desperate gulps.
Bottle after bottle was brought to their tables.
Gone was the usual festive cheer of a night out drinking. Tonight, the whole bar sat under a heavy, suffocating silence.
Cup after cup. Bottle after bottle.
Most people drank in brooding quiet. When the sadness hit a certain depth, tears simply spilled over, circling in the rims of their eyes before finally falling.
"What on earth is going on?"
Margaret, the bar's owner, stared at the scene before her, thoroughly baffled.
What was wrong with these people? Why were they all crying like this?
One person getting dumped, sure — but surely they hadn't all been dumped at once? And besides, who were Jack and Rose? Were those the names of their partners? But everyone was calling out both names — they couldn't all share the same partner, could they?
She didn't understand. What had happened?
Margaret was baffled. Diona, rushing back and forth beside her, was even more so.
Between one errand and the next, she took a moment to study the crowd that had poured in so suddenly. A good number of them were carrying books — and without exception, every last one was by Fang Qiu. The Eternal, above all else, dominated the lot.
So most of them were Fang Qiu's readers.
But these same people had been reading just this afternoon — expressions focused, chatting and laughing as they turned pages. Apart from that drunkard Eula, who had looked a little off, everyone else had seemed perfectly fine. So why had it come to this so suddenly?
How had reading a book led to a bar crawl?
One was so refined. The other was so...
The thought led her, unbidden, to the image of her father — rolling around in a muddy ditch like a wild boar after one too many. And the ones who turned violent when the drink took hold.
Like that bard yesterday. She'd been walking home after an extra shift and found the green-coated bard collapsed right in front of the bookshop door.
Waves of customers came and went. Plenty drank their fill of three or four bottles before stumbling out into the night, red-faced and unsteady. But the moment one group left, a fresh crowd pushed in to take their place.
Business was booming like never before. Not a single seat was empty.
Without exception, every person had come to drink their sorrows away. Without exception, every person had brought a book by Fang Qiu.
Diona felt a despair she had no words for.
How had it come to this…
How was Fang Qiu's book driving this many people to drink — and drink this hard, cup after cup without stopping…
Most people normally stopped at three cups at the most. Now they were starting at three bottles.
Every face in the room was flushed scarlet, stumbling drunk.
She was standing there with a long-suffering expression, already mentally preparing to investigate exactly what had reduced everyone to this state, when the door swung open and two figures walked in — one in red, one in blue.
"That drunkard Eula — she's here after all. And she brought that earnest Outrider with her."
Diona's pupils shrank slightly, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Wasn't this even worse?
Even responsible, reliable Amber had come to the tavern to drink! She didn't even dare imagine who might walk through the door next.
What was in that book?! What had Fang Qiu done?!
The two of them made their way to a pair of empty seats at the bar and sat down.
"Get me something strong. The strongest you've got. And for her…" Eula's eyes were faintly red-rimmed. She glanced at Amber beside her, who was quietly sobbing, and said, "…a drink. Non-alcoholic."
"Mm…"
Diona mixed their orders with a helpless little groan.
The good news: Miss Amber was having a soft drink.
The bad news: Miss Amber was having a soft drink this time. Next time was anyone's guess. Because her father hadn't always drunk either, and look how that had turned out.
The moment they sat down, whispers rippled through the people around them.
"I'm not forgetting what that Fang Qiu owes me."
Eula felt the stares — sharper than usual, more pointed — and responded by throwing back a long, vicious mouthful of liquor. A flush crept prettily across her cheeks, though her expression was tight with grievance and barely suppressed fury.
That Fang Qiu — writing the old Mondstadt nobility as such villains...
Never mind that the real old nobility had been even worse in actual history. The point was, a storyline like that, in a book this good, could only make her situation in Mondstadt harder to bear.
Of course, that wasn't really the heart of it. Her standing in Mondstadt had always been poor — the people who truly knew her wouldn't think less of her over a novel. No, the real issue was something else entirely.
That author had killed Jack.
And done it in a way that broke your heart completely.
Reading Jack's final confession — watching the words describe him drifting down, slowly, into the cold and endless dark of the sea — even she hadn't been able to hold back her tears.
Amber had fallen apart entirely.
Infuriating.
This grudge was going to be settled. Immediately. Without delay.
The next time Mondstadt needed someone sent to Liyue on official business, she would be the first to volunteer. That pen name, Fang Qiu — obviously a woman's touch behind it. If it turned out to be a woman, she'd track her down in Liyue, grab her by the collar, and demand to know: How do hands this gentle write words this cold?
She'd drag her to Dragonspine and force them both into an ice lake together, make her feel — firsthand — what Jack felt, sinking into that freezing sea.
And while she was in Liyue anyway, she could stop by Yanfei's office, get her help tracking down that person's whereabouts. Two birds, one stone.
"Eula, don't drink so fast."
Amber wiped her eyes and looked up with a worried expression.
"I'm fine, don't fuss."
Eula waved a hand and promptly downed another enormous mouthful. Almost at once, a bewitching flush bloomed across her face.
Amber watched her and sighed quietly.
After this book, Eula's life in Mondstadt was probably going to get even harder…
But knowing Eula, what she probably cared about most wasn't that at all — it was the ending of the book itself.
Thinking about it, Amber felt a wave of sadness wash through her too.
She'd gone in expecting a story about a man and woman defying the shackles of convention, ending up together, happy and free — a beautiful anthem sung in the name of love and rebellion against the world.
She hadn't expected an ending this cruel. Cruel enough to make it hard to breathe. Cruel enough to make you want to cry.
And the way the book depicted the brilliance of the human spirit — it read just like the poems she'd found in her history books, the ones written by those who sang out against oppression.
She had to admit it: Fang Qiu, the author behind a name that had sent every bookshop in Mondstadt scrambling to promote her work, had earned every bit of that recognition.
The writing was truly extraordinary.
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