I'm Just an NPC [Genshin Impact]

There are all sorts of rumors circulating in Liyue.

If you're in trouble, buy a blue exclamation mark hair clip at a general store and pin it to your head. A blond Traveler will appear to help you.

If you're attacked by Slimes in the wilderness, crouch down with your head in your hands. You'll get an invincibility buff while you wait for rescue.

If you accidentally fall into the water at Guyun Stone Forest, hold your breath as long as you can and don't let a single drop get in your mouth, or you might die from choking on the saltiness.

And if you...

Rumors. They're just rumors.

Because he only heard all of the above after Jian Qingye went abroad to study.

Back then, before his exams, he had gone to the Copper Sparrow Temple and prayed for ages beneath the statue of Rex Lapis, wishing to come first.

As it turned out, he was first in the exam number order, first in the exam room, and the first to take the oral exam. Fortunately, he still managed to make it to Sumeru in the end.

After spending a few years there, he couldn't get used to the food at all and grew sick of pita pockets. As soon as he graduated, he went to Fontaine for graduate school, but the food there wasn't good either. He ate sweets every day until he shuddered at the sight of anything sweet.

At last, homesickness got the better of him. He raced back to Liyue overnight and watched the chef at Wangshu Inn fry up two pots of rice. The chef was so startled he didn't charge him for one bowl.

Once he had somewhat recovered, Jian Qingye began turning over those ridiculous rumors he'd heard.

Honestly, he'd been curious for ages.

What was the latest rumor around here? Wasn't it something like... take a plate of almond tofu up to a rooftop, and you might be able to lure out a handsome green-haired man?

No sooner thought than done. Jian Qingye wiped his mouth and got up, ready to ask the chef for another plate of almond tofu. Of course, he'd pay.

But he had barely taken two steps after standing up

when the last thing he saw was a strange rock hurtling toward his head at lightning speed.

"Thunk."

A good sound means it was a good head.

He promptly passed out.

When he woke up again, the handsome green-haired man from the rumors was right there before him.

...So that was it. Bringing food wasn't enough. He had to be unlucky, too.

The handsome green-haired man didn't catch what he was muttering. Seeing him awake, he stepped out, then came back with someone Jian Qingye recognized all too well.

Zhongli, the Liyue Harbor consultant whom most people knew, gently asked how he was feeling, then made a request in a perfectly ordinary tone that was anything but ordinary.

Jian Qingye wondered if he'd heard wrong. "Um, what? Could you please say that again?"

"We would like to ask you to travel to another world," Zhongli repeated in a gentle voice.

"And help us find our friend."

That's right. On his first day back in Liyue, before his feet had even warmed up, he was about to embark on an even more absurd journey.

Mr. Zhongli said he was the only one who could do it right now.

Because that stupid rock that knocked him out had bound him to it.

*

A special-grade new student at Tokyo Jujutsu High, a newcomer who earned a codename in the organization after just one month, a consultant who was so busy from their first day at Investigation Division One that no one could ever find them, a little girl picked up by the Armed Detective Agency and treasured beyond measure...

Jian Qingye had one thing to say: if he'd known from the start that these people came from another world and would be such a handful, he absolutely, absolutely would never have agreed to help.

Unless Rex Lapis himself asked him.

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