Lumine put away the battered-looking Dull Blade, but the instant her gaze landed on Kamisato Ayaka, she froze completely.
"I’m Kamisato Satoru."
"Nice to meet you. My name is Kamisato Ayaka, and I come from the distant land of Inazuma."
Ayaka greeted her with graceful composure.
"Hello, I’m Kamisato Ayaka’s dog!"
Lumine had been utterly stunned by Ayaka’s near-perfect beauty. Her brain short-circuited, and she blurted out that earth-shattering sentence without thinking.
The entire area instantly fell dead silent.
Satoru’s face was covered in black lines, Paimon’s jaw nearly dropped to the ground, and Ayaka’s face turned red to the absolute limit.
"Ahem! Ahem!"
Satoru coughed forcefully twice, trying to ease the soul-crushing awkwardness hanging in the air.
Lumine abruptly snapped back to her senses.
Two obvious patches of red instantly spread across her fair cheeks, and she looked completely at a loss.
She hurriedly waved both hands around and shyly tried to explain that she had only been spouting nonsense just now.
After all, she had only recently woken up. Her brain was probably still full of mush, leaving her in that hazy, half-awake state where nothing quite worked properly yet.
The corners of Satoru’s lips slowly curled upward, a mischievous gleam flashing in his eyes.
"In that case, do you still want me to be your dear brother-in-law?"
He asked leisurely, his voice dripping with teasing amusement.
"Yes!"
Lumine answered almost instinctively, without so much as half a second of hesitation.
The moment the word left her mouth, however, she wished she could summon a shovel on the spot, dig a deep hole, and bury herself in it.
Paimon stared at her companion, who looked embarrassed enough to start steaming, and opened her mouth to offer some comfort.
But she could not think of a single appropriate thing to say.
Her mind was a complete mess.
She was even beginning to wonder whether her Traveler companion had some rather unusual preferences.
And if she were being completely honest, Paimon was starting to feel a little nervous herself.
What if Lumine set her sights on her someday too?
"You idiot brother!"
Ayaka’s beautiful face turned bright red with anger, her eyes filled with embarrassment and indignation as she glared fiercely at Satoru, who was clearly enjoying his prank.
"Oh, come on. I was just making a little joke to liven things up!"
Satoru grinned and waved the exquisite Kamera in his hand.
He had to admit, this generation’s Traveler really was an interesting character.
That scene just now absolutely deserved to go down as a legendary moment in history.
At that moment, Satoru could not help wondering what the "brother-in-law" far away would think if he witnessed this with his own eyes.
Satoru’s unique Six Eyes had already detected a faint presence in the distance.
It was an overwhelmingly powerful perception capable of seeing through falsehood itself.
At the farthest edge of his vision stood a golden-haired young man with a profound, unfathomable presence.
An oppressive aura radiated from him, terrifying enough to seem capable of corroding all things, while a Herald of the Abyss wrapped in ghostly blue energy stood close beside him.
The older brother Lumine had been desperately searching for was currently staring in their direction with a slight frown.
He could not understand why two people dressed in Inazuman attire had suddenly appeared within Mondstadt’s territory.
"Forget it. Let them do whatever they want, as long as they don’t interfere with our grand plan."
Aether murmured coldly.
Without looking back, he stepped into a pitch-black spatial passage.
The blue Abyss Herald followed close behind, and the two vanished without a trace.
...
"You really flew here from some distant world beyond the sea of stars? What does it look like out there?"
Ayaka sat on the grass, her bright eyes filled with curiosity about the world beyond Teyvat after listening to Lumine’s story.
For the young lady of the Yashiro Commission, who had spent her entire life bound by the confines of Inazuma, everything beyond her homeland felt fresh and exciting.
If not for the opportunity presented by this journey, she might never have had the chance to personally witness so many magnificent natural sights in her entire life.
"There are way too many to count. If you want to hear about them, I could tell you stories for three days and three nights..."
Whenever Lumine faced a gentle beauty like Ayaka, she became exceptionally enthusiastic.
She immediately launched into a vivid account of the strange and wondrous worlds she had once traveled through.
Standing off to the side, Satoru’s expression gradually became strange.
He was even starting to wonder whether, by the time they returned to Inazuma, the Kamisato family registry might mysteriously gain a new "brother-in-law."
He could practically picture the devastated expression on Kamisato Ayato’s face already.
The guy might even draw his sword.
When that happened, Satoru absolutely had to use his Kamera to capture the scene from every possible angle.
"Hey, hey! Do you have any more of that shiny little thing in your hand?"
Paimon stared longingly at the Mint Jelly in Satoru’s hand, which was giving off a refreshing coolness.
Her throat visibly bobbed as she swallowed.
She was practically drooling.