Chapter Text
THE MORNING OF SPRING SECOND, 2012.
“Have you ever even read any of those?” Venti asks as Xiao opens his locker, spilling with love letters. “Childe, come look at this one!” He snickers, ripping open the pink envelope, complete with a heart sticker to seal it.
Childe snorts as he skims the letter, slender fingers pointing at the glittery ink. “Dear Xiao, you have always – hey!”
Xiao snatches the letter from him, crumpling it into a ball. He’s tempted to throw that and the rest of the letters in their faces and watch them clean it up, but he doesn’t feel right littering (But it is very tempting).
His popularity is no secret to him. He’s not oblivious, unlike the female leads in those dramas his sisters watch together at full blast in the living room, and she can never tell she’s in a love triangle. Her choices, of course, being a colossal dog whose only redeeming quality is that he’s hot and rich, and the other, her kind childhood friend. But she chooses the first every time. Xiao chooses to ignore these trivial matters. He doesn’t need a relationship, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever want one, especially not with the people throwing themselves at him. Though, he respects their courage – they probably have more in the hand they use to write letters to him than he does in his entire body.
“Don’t you two have places to be?” Xiao asks. “Like, class?” He takes half of the stack, pushing it into Venti’s hands, then gives the other to Childe. “Throw these away for me if you’re going to skip. I’m busy.”
“We aren’t your servants, Xiao!” is the last he hears from Venti before he walks off.
He wasn’t entirely lying when he said he was busy, which is why Venti and Childe didn’t outright say no to doing as he asked. As the student council president, Xiao’s biggest responsibility at the beginning of the year is the Spring Festival, where each class plans an exhibition to celebrate the new school year. The lights are on in the student council office as he enters.
A blonde girl, his height, is setting a file onto his desk in the back of the room.
His secretary, Lumine, smiles at him. “Good morning, President.”
He nods. “Good morning, Lumine.”
“I’ve compiled each class’s exhibitions for the festival in that folder,” she says, motioning to the yellow file. She bows almost ninety degrees. “I’ll see you at the meeting, President.”
He doesn’t get to say anything before she’s rushed off, assumedly to class. They aren’t friends, so it’s not like he expected a conversation, but it would’ve been nice. Xiao at least knows her name and class, since they’re in the same grade.
Once her footsteps fade off into the hallway, he picks up the file to flip through its contents. Not all that interesting, since he’ll find out about the exhibitions on his own later anyway. Class 4-1, his class, is doing a food stall of some kind. He doesn’t bother checking the rest.
The left side of his desk has a noticeboard plastered with documents, his class schedule and some photos Venti put up. It’s PE. Shrugging off his blazer, he leaves it on the backrest of his chair and leaves for his classroom. In the dark and cold air (they forgot to turn off the air-conditioner, which he has done many speeches for at assembly) he heads to his desk to grab his water bottle. Hydration is important, Dad always reminded him.
A small yellow sticky note is stuck to the surface of his desk. The penmanship is neat, each stroke delicately written in black ballpoint. There’s even a doodle next to the message.
How are you, President? I wonder if being the student council president is tiring… Cheer up!
Crushing it in rough hands, he tosses the note under his desk. Sticky notes are the worst. He also doesn’t feel like being late today, so he hurries to the field after grabbing his bottle. Not that he particularly enjoys PE, the only fun part is watching the silly rivalry between Sara from his class and Itto from Class 4-4 unfold in real time.
The note doesn’t mean anything. He gets things like that everyday, they don’t actually care if he’s tired or not. They just like him, for reasons he still doesn’t really get. Of course it’s tiring. It’s exhausting – he runs around planning everything and dealing with teachers, people fear him, people are in love with him, he doesn’t think he’s had a full eight-hours sleep since he became president. And he wasn’t even meant to be in the first place. It was meant to be Jean from his class, but she’s too busy travelling around the globe for her tournaments, so he was their next option. Now he barely has any time for family or his friends (okay, well he doesn’t have many of those anyway) as he’s too busy doing work that he’s pretty sure should not be up to an eighteen-year-old boy who’s only five feet tall!
Well, five feet and four inches. It makes quite the difference.
He releases his ever-tightening grip on his bottle, plastic popping back into shape after he fiddles with it.
Cheer up, the note said.
He would if he could.
THE AFTERNOON OF SPRING SECOND, 2012.
“Alright, everyone update me on the tasks I assigned,” Xiao says, tapping papers on his desk to arrange them. The office is occupied by the student council members, plus Venti and Childe. He could tell them off, he has the authority, but they’re not half bad company. In fact, they’re pretty much the only company he has, so he’d rather not piss them off.
“Like I told you this morning, everything is in that folder,” Lumine replies. “Oh, and I’m not joining again this year.”
Ganyu, the vice president, speaks from the sofa in front of his desk. “I’ve marked the areas in the courtyard with the classes' names. I also asked Keqing to–”
He cuts his sister off, which, if they were home, their Dad would reprimand him and ask him to apologise. Which he will. Later. “Lumine, you never come to school events. Why is that?”
“Personal reasons, President,” she answers with a faint smile. “I don’t have to tell you.”
“That’s alright. I’m just saying you should come this time,” he blurts, fidgeting with the hem of his blazer under his desk. “It’s our last year, after all.”
She mumbles something under her breath. Lumine, from the day she stepped foot in the school, has never attended any school events. Field trips, festivals – none of them. He’s always chalked it up to being busy, or her parents not allowing it, but he never understood why.
“No need to be so harsh to the pretty girl, Xiao!” Venti exclaims, a grin stretching across his face as he slams his hands onto Xiao’s desk. “She’s got things to do, right?”
Right, like a job. Which, according to their school, is against the rules. He lets it slide for her, since he finds that rule stupid anyway, and she’s a near-perfect secretary. There’s no point in meddling in her personal affairs if she can keep up with the work he delegates. Plenty of gossip goes around about what work she does (he’s even heard about her engaging in more promiscuous line of work, but he knows that would never be true), but there’s rumours about everyone in this room. He might be the one with the most.
Lumine smiles at Venti. “Right.”
“Is it really that fun to sit here and watch us work while you guys do nothing?” Xiao glances at Childe and Venti, the former of which is sitting in an armchair aggressively trying (and failing) to solve a Rubik's cube.
“For sure!” Childe tosses it in Xiao’s direction, luckily passing straight over the other three’s heads. “I get to watch your gorgeous secretary work, so I’m pretty much set for life!”
“Quit flirting with my secretary, would you?”
“It’s okay, it’s funny. I don’t mind,” Lumine reassures Childe. “I can speak for myself, President. Thank you.”
His two nuisances hiss as if they were stabbed. “Ouch, right in the heart!” Venti exclaims, hand dramatically reaching to his chest. “If he has one.”
Lumine is capable, he knows that very well. She always has a smile on her face even when she dislikes something, like an idea he has, or a suggestion from a schoolmate, she’ll shut it down with grace. Not only that, but she’s outgoing to top it off. She has friends from every class – in fact, he’s pretty sure every person in every class is her friend. Xiao wishes he could say the same for himself. And she’s in the debate club, so her retorts hurt twice as much. He’s seen a couple (and been the judge of several), and her raw talent is not just a gift. She worked hard to get where she is now. He respects that. Xiao sets down a complete Rubik's cube. “I do, thank you very much. Ganyu, you were saying? Sorry for cutting you off.”
“No worries, Xiao. I asked Keqing to get the prize money from Ms. Ningguang so we can have it ready before the festival.” At Childe’s furrowed brows, she explains, “She’s our treasurer, Keqing. She’s in various other clubs, so she seldom attends these meetings after school.”
“Alright. Everyone is dismissed.”
When Xiao gets up, Childe scrambles to sit at the leather desk chair. Lumine and Ganyu leave swiftly. His guesses are the first, to hurry to work, and his sister, to find Keqing.
“Xiao, are you going back with Mr. Zhongli?”
His dad is one of the teachers at their school. These two are the only people that know the history teacher is his father. He’d rather keep it a secret to avoid claims of favouritism, although it would be quite the opposite. His father is way harder on him than the other students. He shakes his head. “You know I don’t do that. I’m just going to walk home like everyone else.”
“Wanna drop by where Lumine works?” Childe asks, swivelling around in his desk chair.
“She told you? I’ve been asking for weeks but she won’t tell me,” Venti complains with a huff.
Childe shrugs. “Nah, I found out by accident. Teucer wanted cupcakes so I went to this cafe near my house, and there she was.” He stretches his arms out above his head. “She seemed pretty pissed, but other than that she just kinda acted like she didn’t know me.”
“Yeah, I’d do that too. I might just start right now,” Xiao mutters. “I don’t want to bother her. You shouldn’t either.”
The truth is, he doesn’t want to expose that he’s aware of her breaking the rules. That would be too much of a hassle to deal with.
“Hey! I’m not that bad, am I?” Childe shouts, looking to Venti for reassurance. He only shrugs, shaking his head.
The bell jingles as the glass door closes. The last thing Xiao hears is Childe mumbling swear words in a language he doesn’t know.