Arknights: Opening a Stationery Shop in Baizao, Where Every Word Comes True

[Arknights] [Yuri] [Native] [Respecting the Original] [The Fallen Return for a Rematch] [Original Protagonist]

Chen Zhaoying, proprietor of the Hundred Stoves Ink Pavilion, has an inconvenient little quirk: sometimes, the characters she writes come true.

The character for "water" can steady a boat, and the character for "ink" can stop bleeding. It should be a good thing. Unfortunately, with every stroke she writes, she loses a little more of her memory: how many spoonfuls of sugar were in yesterday's osmanthus cake, the surname of a customer she met last month, and even...

She kept it from her older sister, her apprentices, and the whole city of Hundred Stoves. That is, until one snowy night, when someone from the Sui Affairs Bureau arrived with a contract: "Become a Candlebearer, or become a ghost beneath a memorial stele."

From then on, she came home on the third day of every month to make osmanthus cake, without fail. On every other day, in corners where no one could find her, she used a half-foot-long ebony ruler to write one "peace" after another.

But the old red cord tied around that ruler was pulled too tight, and her hands were growing colder by the day.

"Sister, if one day I forget the way home, will you come and find me?"