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“Dear Traveler,
Perhaps Inazuma should be your next stop to find your sibling. They say that the Raiden Shogun is the closest to the Heavenly Principals, and her convictions may parallel your sibling’s ideals. Though, I must warn you to take care: they say no one enters Inazuma, and no one exits. Yet, goods continue to be exported from the nation, and ships carrying imports sail often from Liyue Harbor.
The refugees from the nation say just one thing: beware those who hunt in the night.”
-
There’s something strange in Inazuma’s night air.
It’s an odd, lingering scent of iron and ash. Not so strange from the burning scents of fireworks in the night, yet displaced in a way Yoimiya struggles to name; it’s hard, sometimes, to reconcile the tranquil nights reflecting a sky of fireworks with the gloom that now hangs over their heads.
But it’s never been about her. Nor the men she’s helped tuck away beneath the leaking roof of a rusted warehouse, long shadows cast by twilight’s glow. It’s about them , nightcrawlers whose eyes trace the back of her neck. It feels like someone is always watching.
Maybe because someone is.
“Take this and go! To the far shore!” Yoimiya whisper-shouts, hissing the syllables between clenched teeth as she shoves the false vision into his awaiting hands. The man nearest to her stumbles, eyes wide, but he swallows his surprise as the vision pulses in his hands. It’s only a temporary repellant to those who wander in the dark, but it’s enough— has to be for those trying to escape, and she watches his partner tug his arm when he hesitates. “Go! Run!”
She doesn’t need to say it a second time. The bushes shake as they duck through them, footsteps thunderous in their haste. As soon as they’re clear, she draws her bowstring, eyes narrowed. The vision by her hip sparkles with her, bright, and she aims high only to see…
“Kujou Sara?”
“Naganohara’s daughter, correct?”
“Oh. Yes.” Her teeth are still aligned—not a nightwalker, then. She lowers her bow tentatively, still high enough to catch Sara's ankle, but the militant allows it. It’s a threat as much as a comfort; Yoimiya takes what she can get.
“You can relax.” Unlikely. She rolls her shoulders back as Sara stares at her, almost cold, before the Tengu sighs and extends a hand. In the dim glow of her vision, she can see a… slip?
A familiar slip. It’s old, torn to shreds before pieced together, more like an ancient relic than a fireworks order. Heavy, too, bound with gold on aged paper. She recognizes the feel of the paper despite the gold holding it together and the messy calligraphy on it is a family staple.
It’s hers. Her father’s, and her father’s mother’s, and so on and so forth, back long enough when the nights belonged to those who dwelled in the day as much as those who prayed to the moon.
“This is…”
“A fireworks order. The Raiden Shogun would like to have them by summer’s end, is that feasible?”
Not impossible, but a tight deadline. She’s tempted to say no–after everything that’s happened in Inazuma, the hunting, the turning, this is all she receives from their Archon? But it’s a customer, a slip that’s clearly been carefully pieced back together. Yoimiya crinkles it in her hands. It’s genuine.
“Yeah, okay. Come pick it up then.”
-
The slip is pretty in the sunlight.
She’s no stranger to unusual slips; people whose dogs have been at it, rats in their houses or unruly children, slips that come in mostly shredded to pieces and half-readable. There are those who have no slip but a photograph of one, others who have only a piece of the original, and more who have spilt something damning that's all but washed away the original ink. And yet, despite the chaos of it all, they come to Naganohara, to her father and her, and ask them just one thing:
“Please, could you try to recreate it?”
They do. They always do because it was her father and his mother, her grandfather and his ancestor, a legacy passed on in the form of another family’s memories. And when she makes the same powders her family always had, a history unfolding in the grinding of flowers and the peppering sparks in her hands, she thinks herself lucky.
This slip is ancient . So old it tears at the touch, held together by gold: more a work of kintsugi art than a fireworks order sloppily scrawled.
She wonders who it was who gave it to the Shogun. Who it was who tore it to pieces, who had patiently pieced it back together; who had seen it, cherished it, to the point they refused to bring it out again.
Yoimiya knows who it is. The better question is, why?
-
“What a surprise! Yoimiya, right?”
“Hehe, yep! Sorry for barging in, I just need some sango pearls. Is that alright?”
“Of course! Though, what do you need them for?”
Yoimiya grins as Kokomi helps her unearth pearls from open-faced oysters. The pearls in Watatsumi are as large as her palm, far bigger than anywhere else in Inazuma, and thus perfect for getting the most powder per pearl. Still, it’s a bit of an odd ingredient being phased out well over two centuries ago for the toxic fumes they could potentially omit during the grinding process.
It’s alright. She’s a bit more durable than most people.
“A fireworks request,” Yoimiya explains. “It’s an older recipe. I just got some Naku weed, and I’ll need some Amakumo fruit after these pearls.”
“That’s…” Kokomi blinks at her as she pries an oyster wide with the sparkling vision on her chest: a Hydro vision always seems unfairly useful. “You’d trek across Inazuma all for the sake of one order?”
“It’s the Naganohara promise: the same fireworks, every time, for everyone.” A promise of Inazuman eternity. Kokomi hums.
“I understand what you mean,” she says. It’s tense, clipped, and Yoimiya turns to Kokomi’s stare at Watatsumi. Her land. “A dedication to one’s people… I know that well.”
“How is it?” Kokomi’s voice is quiet, almost calm, if not for the irregular vibration that tugs at her words. Despairing. Pink hair falls over Yoimiya’s shoulders as she leans in. “Narukami at night.”
Scary. Horrifying, sometimes, when the people she once knew to greet her with wide smiles and cheer are now little more than walking corpses, cold to the touch and dull in the heart. Yoimiya sees the way ambitions are drained from their very being, how they melt into shadows in the night. They call them nightwalkers, dawn seekers, only because it’s better than saying what they truly are.
Dead. A husk of a human being.
“It’s okay,” she says because it is. Has to be, because Ayaka is hanging on and Gorou is hanging on, and she ’s hanging on too, grinding down toxic pearls before the night crawls in and she forgets her legacy. “I have a vision.”
Kokomi’s stare weighs on her. “Yoimiya, these fireworks—”
“I know,” she laughs, putting the last of the pearls inside. They clink where they meet the fake visions she’s taken to carrying, and her smile cracks.
“I know.”
-
Yoimiya loves Inazuma. She doesn’t think any of them could hate it if they tried.
It’s home, even if they’ve started to lock their doors at night, even though she’s started to have to refill the false visions basket thrice a week instead of twice. The shadows grow longer, the moon hangs higher, and she spends the evenings tucked beneath the windowsill with Pyro burning along her arms. A gaze trails her form. She wonders when she became used to being watched.
Human, vision holder, nightwalker.
She misses it; Inazuma when they didn’t draw their curtains closed, when the night was backlit by fireworks rather than fear. Powder slips from her fingers, carefully pinched, into the thin holder. She adds the colorants, the freshly ground plants, the old ingredients stocked by her ancestors. And now her, centuries later, remembering them not by name but by love, by fireworks, a cherished memory she’d never experienced.
Her vision sparks. Yoimiya looks at the slip, every little tear, and dangles it above the flame. The gold shines.
Archon.
-
The fireworks sit out for a day before a storm rolls in, crackling lightning and deafening thunder, and Yoimiya has no choice but to close up shop earlier than normal. Night falls too quickly lately and the fireworks don’t work nearly as well damp. Her mind wanders in the quiet.
Kujou Sara is always on time. If she’s not here yet, that could only mean one thing.
“Naganohara?”
Someone else has come to pick them up.
“Yes! Welco–W-welcome… Raiden Shogun.” The words stutter their way from Yoimiya’s mouth as Inazuma’s Archon walks into the room, head poised high and naginata strapped to waist. Electro crackles in her very presence, heeding to the ruler of the night, and she swears that the moon itself wavers in a subservient sweeping bow to her arrival. Raiden’s mouth opens and dimly, Yoimiya notes that her teeth are sharp.
“There’s a storm coming in. You should stay dry.” Casual talk from the mouth of a ruler. Nightwalker. She swallows as electric eyes trail the store. “I hear my order is completed.”
“I—yes. They're right here.”
For all her trawling across Inazuma, the end result is a small satchel of fireworks. Raiden nods, gesturing, and the words that fumble from her are entirely unintentional. “Would you… like me to light them for you?”
The Archon hesitates and her blood roars in her ears. Can she hear it, nightwalkers? Smell her fear, the pulse of her heart fluttering in her chest, the way her throat constricts with every breath? “Because I. Have a Pyro vision. So, that's good. For fireworks.”
Stupid. Stupid . It glimmers in response to her racing tempo, a beacon to the eye, and she watches Raiden take her in. Stare at her, into the depths of her soul; she watches the mouth part and shiny, sharp teeth glint in her vision’s ray.
“That’d be appreciated.”
-
It’s a trek to Yoimiya’s favorite fireworks spot. The cliffside opens up to the wide berth of the ocean that surrounds Narukami but the swathing trees that cocoon their sides make it feel small, intimate. Cozy.
It’s nice, kind of, to actually know who is staring at her in the dark. She smiles at Raiden when she lights the first spark, and huddles close enough for their knees to touch under the brush to peer out into the night skies.
When the fireworks start up, the night quiets. Tranquil, where eyes go from her neck to the sky, where Inazuma hushes beneath the roar of flaming flowers bursting in cold air. She watches the fireworks flicker in the air, colors fade and glow; the remnants of her heritage blazing before her.
Raiden’s, too. Purple and gold eyes, watching the untold unfold in the night sky.
“She loved this.”
It escapes the Shogun as though a confession, more air than words. The last of the blooming flames die into falling embers at the word, almost as though bowing to the elite gracing them with her presence. A nightly being acknowledging another.
She’s bewitching, Yoimiya thinks, in both the kindest and most insidious ways.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed an evening like this. I’m thankful.”
“Naganohara promise! The same every time, for everyone.”
“Hmm,” Raiden hums. It lingers between them, electric. “A worthy promise, though difficult to fulfill. You’ve begun closing up shop earlier.”
“It’s… risky. To have it open late. Nightwalkers are…”
Dead. Alive. Staring her in the eye, the queen of them all; a glass doll in the face of ancient fireworks, a monstrous shadow looming before her. Raiden’s gaze burns. “Do you fear them? The nightwalkers.”
Truth or lie? Yoimiya swallows.
“Shouldn’t I…?”
Silence blankets them in the moon’s vision as Raiden takes her in. “I’ve heard such fervent prayers for so long: fear of death, of disease, of war and partings. Of grief. And yet you, Naganohara, who crafts fireworks that flicker out as quickly as human lives…” Her fangs glint. “Tell me. If everyone becomes eternal, what is left to fear?”
So that’s why.
Wax paper, messy brushwork, tri-colored dye. Aged gold carefully pieced together in the moonlight by a nightwalker who learned to grieve. Her palm unfurls.
“This is…”
“Your fireworks order.” They hang from her fingers; two. Original, torn apart and repaired and torn again, and new, scrawled in a way for her and her descendants. “Old and new.”
“I didn’t request a replacement.”
“No one does,” Yoimiya says. Raiden’s brows furrow, and she almost laughs. “You’re right. I’m afraid of dying, my dad leaving, my friends parting… this war, every day? It scares me. Terrifies me. But that’s life, right? Always changing, always adapting.”
“Wouldn’t you rather things remain? For your father and friends to stay by your side, forever?”
It’s tempting. Her head shakes. “If everything stayed the same, my father would still be the Nagonahara head. I’d never graduate from apprenticeship, and never would’ve met my friends, and…” Yoimiya smiles, genuine in the night’s shadow. “ You , Shogun. If everything stayed the same, I’d fear you forever.”
“And now?”
Human, Yoimiya thinks; a nightwalker who smiles at fireworks and debates their meaning when they fade. Human, who dawdles on the concept of forever and wastes life away, wondering how to preserve it. Nightwalker, who sees eternity and thinks it must be good.
“I still do, kinda,” Yoimiya laughs, half nervous. Alive still and grateful for it. “But not fully. I’d like to make fireworks again for you sometime. These, maybe, or something new. I just,” she swallows. “I think that’s what they would’ve wanted. Because even if we change, if your fireworks partner changes, that’s. That’s not our promise. Not mine.”
It’s too much, a foot in mouth moment. But her lips part without her brain, and she lets it. “I want you to remember me tonight. And the person who watched these fireworks with you before, and the ones before that. And every time I make these for you, I want to remember you too.”
“Our memories,” she whispers, “aren’t they eternal too?”
Blasphemy, betrayal. If there was any time for the metallic glint of Raiden’s naginata to reveal itself, it’d be now. Yoimiya waits. Closes her eyes and breathes.
The slips in her hand flutter in the breeze, and when Raiden tugs, she lets go.
“Maybe,” and then, “she would have liked you.”
When Yoimiya opens her eyes, the Shogun is nowhere to be found.
-
She wakes to a slip beside her bedside. No bite, no gold. Her handwriting scrawled messily on wax paper, and the neatest calligraphy she’d ever seen in her life besides it.
Order for two.