Chapter Text
You're dragging your feet towards your apartment door, sluggishly pulling out your keys and unlocking your door. After a long day of classes and school work, there’s not much you want to do. You half-hazardly toss your bag somewhere on the couch, using your hand to guide yourself to your room.
Flicking on the lights, you drag yourself to your pc, needing to do your dailies. Logging on, you go around doing what you needed to. Spending resin, claiming daily commissions, expeditions, your teapot that you barely even pay attention to…
All of it is just a monotonous cycle of doing dailies, spending resin, and logging off to do more school work. Every day seems as dull as the last as the days continue to blur in your mind.
You did finish all of the archon quests, story quests, exploration, and the important world quests.
Or did you?
Honestly you can’t remember. Some things could be saved for later, besides it’s not like you were feeling up to it anyway. You had a mountain of stuff you needed to get started on.
From the side of your desk, you notice your phone screen lighting up from a notification. Grabbing your phone to check it, you realize that a Scaramouche fanfic author posted a new series. One about Genshin Impact in a royalty universe, where Scaramouche is the Imperial Crown Prince of Inazuma and the reader is a new maid in his palace.
According to the summary, the fanfic is meant to follow the game’s events, albeit very loosely. Some of the story elements are the same, but the characters and the story they follow would be different.
Excited, you quickly log off of your computer to the comforts of your bed to read. You pause for a moment, realizing you still have work to do. You still had homework that was due by Sunday night and you still had to go grocery shopping, do your laundry, and more and more and more responsibilities you don’t want to tackle.
‘I’ll just do everything over the weekend. I really don’t want to work on anything right now…’ you reasoned with yourself.
You finally convince yourself that procrastinating your responsibilities for a night wouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, you still had the weekend to do everything right? Content with your reasoning, you go to your bed to lay down to read the new story.
[You feel the sun’s rays hitting your face, waking you from your dreamless sleep. With the sun hitting your eyes, you reluctantly open your eyes to see an unfamiliar ceiling. Still groggy from your slumber, you slowly blink up at the ceiling, waiting for your mind to fully awaken.
‘Oh… I’m at the East Palace,’ you think, your mind finally catching up with you. You recall having a long carriage ride from your hometown, Hanamizaka. Then you come to a chilling realization.
It was your first day at the East Palace where you had to serve the Imperial Prince, Scaramouche.
Hearing all of the rumors surrounding the palace didn’t help to ease your nerves, after all, many servants were executed by his very hand for several different reasons. Were those reasons justifiable?
You didn’t know, all you knew was that you didn’t want to be one of those poor people.
Unfortunately, you didn’t have a pleasant upbringing. The desperation of survival drove you to where you are now. You’ve had to discard everything for the sake of survival and this situation isn’t different.
You’ve been a servant for nobles for as long as you could remember. Each person had their own preferences for their home, learning them was only half the battle.
The other half was trying not to get in their way. Trying not to anger them, be perfect so that they don’t have a reason to punish you.
Rising out of bed, you quickly get changed into your uniform. You swiftly make it out of the servant’s quarters and towards the main hall to meet the head maid, Mrs. Asanuma, and the head butler Mr. Hiramatsu.]
The next thing you knew, it was late into the night by the time you finished the first few chapters.
It’s only been the first chapter, but you’re hooked. After all, in this alternate universe, Scaramouche seems to have the temper of when he was The Balladeer.
You especially have a soft spot for the head butler, Hiramatsu. You know he was created for the purpose of serving as head butler and Scaramouche’s, well not the closest, but at least a trusted confidant.
Mrs. Asanuma seemed to not care about the Reader-Insert as much, almost in a dismissive way. You can’t tell if it's because the confrontation happened in front of the prince, but you guess you’ll find out more as the story continues.
Although, you weren’t at all shocked to find out that Scaramouche’s residence didn’t have much staff. Even the Reader-Insert seemed to believe the lack of staff was due to his abrasive and violent nature.
Your thoughts begin to change topics, wondering how Scaramouche had ended up the way he did. You saw the Dottore character tag, could he have something to do with Scaramouche’s story? And then what would come of the relationship between Scaramouche and the reader? How would the author change the story?
Your thoughts continued to race as you got yourself ready for bed, although you doubted you would actually sleep very much tonight. After all, this story was so interesting to you, you couldn’t help but theorize.
Walking to your closet to get a change of clothes and a towel, you make your way to the bathroom to shower.
While in the shower your thoughts continue to fly. Seeing Dottore’s name made the pit in your stomach drop, but you kept faith that it would end up like the game. You could only hope that Dottore would receive the karma he’s due, either by Scaramouche or by another character, you didn’t really care.
After finishing your shower, you go to brush your teeth and finish the rest of your night routine. You lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to calm your thoughts.
But, you can’t.
It seems you were right in your assessment, you weren’t going to sleep very well tonight. You continue to toss and turn as sleep eludes you, thoughts and feelings running wild. How unfortunate you were so early that the story only had a few of its beginning chapters.
This author doesn’t have a set schedule and with school around, you could only assume updates would be slow. The author isn’t a dedicated writer and only doing it as a hobby, but you could only hope they would update sooner rather than later.
After a few more hours of tossing and turning, you eventually fall into a deep sleep.
-
How odd.. You don’t typically dream, but for some reason you’re getting the strange sense that you are in a dream. You try to open your eyes, but you find that you can’t.
You can feel that you’re surrounded by darkness, like you’re in a void of nothingness. You can tell that if you tried to scream, no one would hear it. Not even you. In the abyss, you know you’re scared, but at the same time, you can’t feel a thing.
Someone’s humming.
You don’t recognize the tune nor do you know where it’s coming from, but their singing is one of sadness.
Loneliness.
Helplessness..?
You’re finally able to pry your eyes open, and you were right. You can’t see a thing. You’re completely surrounded by the emptiness of the void.
You wander blindly in the darkness, when you faintly sense a presence in the distance. You think it’s a person, but you can’t tell. Even with the distance, you can tell they’re sitting, waiting for something… or maybe someone?
You start making your way towards the figure, trying to see who they are. When you get close enough to discern some of their features, you find that their back is turned to you. Their long hair covers any other identifying features.
There are voices.
You can’t make out what they’re saying, all of it sounded muffled in your ears.
Then you see it.
There’s a figure standing over the other.
It’s angry.
[‘But… why?’]
You try to get closer, you’re suddenly pulled away back into a dreamless sleep. But, you can’t help but wonder…
“Why do I feel so helpless?”
-
You toss and turn in your bed, feeling extremely uncomfortable because of… something. For some reason.. you can’t remember why. All you know is that you don’t like the heavy feeling on your chest.
You feel the sun’s rays hitting your face, the bright lights peaking through the window. You try to turn away from it, but it seems like the light won’t fade away. Did you forget to close your blinds and curtains last night?
You try to ignore the light by covering your head with your blankets, but unfortunately the sun did its job by rousing you from your restless sleep. Slowly opening your eyes, you blink a few times to get your eyes used to the light.
You turn to lay on your back, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. You shoot up from your bed, sitting up straight, taking in the room around you.
You have no idea where you are.
All of the furniture is unfamiliar to you, the walls and floor also don’t look like the ones you have in your room. Not even close. The walls were made of clay with dark wooden engraved accents, the floors were made of high-quality straw mats, and the entire style reminded you of Japanese houses.
The air feels more suffocating than usual, colder. The air is charged with electricity, why that comparison? You don’t fully know, but you can feel the hairs on your arm standing.
You take in the room you’re in, panicking as you can’t recognize where you are. It doesn’t look like you’re in Japan, but a place inspired by Japanese architecture. The walls and floors are made of high quality materials and there are many sakura blossom motifs.
The room looks barely lived in, there’s a faint layer of dust coating the surfaces and there aren’t many personal belongings that can signify to you that someone lives here.
There’s a tattered bag lying next to your bed and another twin-sized bed on the opposite side of the room. The other bed looks neat, cleanly folded blankets and unwrinkled sheets. You can’t tell if someone had slept in that bed or not.
Looking around the room, you’re confused as to where you could possibly be. None of the furniture looks immediately familiar to you. You didn’t own any of this, especially all of the Japanese-style furniture. All of a sudden you had a sinking realization.
‘Did I somehow get transported into the fanfic I was reading?!’
There’s no way.. right? How was this even possible? Could that even be possible? What happened to your body in the modern world?
You can feel your breath quicken as your panic rises. Your heart is beating out of control as you realize the furniture and style reminds you of some Inazuman furniture from the game, albeit not exactly the same.
‘I’m in Inazuma--no, the East Palace,’ you think, the pit in your stomach dropping further and further down. Looking out the window, you could see the landscape of traditional dry Japanese gardens you learned about in history class, similar to those found at Tenshukaku.
How in the world are you meant to survive being in Genshin?
No, not Genshin.
A fanfic.
One created from the mind of someone else. One that was unfinished and set in a completely different universe. You have no idea what to do, you don’t even know how you got here in the first place.
Could you even return?
Swallowing your rising panic, you recall what happened to the Reader-Insert on her first day. ‘She was late since she couldn’t sleep well the night before.’ That means you’re late already as well.
You throw the blankets that were covering you in a panic, rushing towards the desk in your room that had your work clothes. On the table is a neatly folded white kimono, white apron with under clothing folded on top. On top of the clothes is a dark purple sash and cord that’s used to pin your sleeves back.
Haphazardly tossing your night gown somewhere on your bed and putting on proper attire, you rush out the door. You can only hope the main room is somewhere nearby.