Defeated, Jean only sighed. "Fine, then I will buy a non-alcoholic beverage...Are you happy? Now, have you seen him?"
Diluc put up an apple cider on the bar desk and received her Mora.
"I did. Earlier. What's all this deal about?" He finally glanced over the group of powerful individuals next to her.
To him it seemed like something was definitely going on.
He actually figured it out the moment he saw Yomite, but somehow, deep within his mind he denied the possibility. He did not believe that Yomite was that close with Jean for her to believe him and he even actually planned on contacting her tonight.
"Are you finally going to deal with the Fatui in the city? Or the Abyss Order, perhaps? Maybe...Treasure Hoarders?"
"None of that sort...No...We are..." It pained her to say this, "We are going to try to convince Stormterror to stop attacking our city and if that goes wrong...then slaying it might be our only option..."
"...For real? I never would have thought this came out of your mouth, Jean, but now it makes sense." Diluc glanced at Yomite and his group, "So you told her, I presume."
"Well, yeah, she told us to contact her if we found out something that could save the Stormterrror, so we did." Yomite nonchalantly replied.
"It's as The Honorary Knight Yomite said...But we are currently missing Kaeya and he had been acting strange ever since he returned from the Temple Of the Wolf...He forgot to put up the daily report two days in a row now, and I am not sur—"
The sharp stare Diluc gave her made her swallow the rest of the sentence down.
She took a sip of her drink, watching the engines of Diluc's mind turn as clear as if his forehead was transparent.
"He would... never forget to turn in something. Never."
"So there was something today with him, I assume?" Jean asked.
Diluc's hands continued moving mechanically, cleaning glass after glass.
"He...was behaving odd, now I see."
Jean knew Diluc was the type of person that needed to be doing something repetitive for his mind to work better than usual.
So doing all the arrangements for the night at the tavern would come handy whenever he needed to ponder about something.
She knew she had hit the nail when the sole mention of Kaeya made Diluc throw a fit.
It just gave him more data to think about.
Sometimes she found herself very surprised at how they really seemed two sides of the same coin.
All the jokes about ditching the work aside,
Kaeya would usually come up with a conclusion to a problem long before they both had, even though he seemed for the most part unbothered and uninterested with whatever issue was on the table.
No matter what activity he might be carrying out, Kaeya's mind would simply never stop.
He might have been lazy, uninterested, bored out of his mind, but when it came to work, he was clever, sharp, active, initiative, and unstoppable.
You would never bring yourself to think someone who thought even of the smallest details would make a mistake of this nature. Twice in a row.
"I know where we might find him...Follow me." Diluc stated and put a sign that read "Closed" on his pub window. "He mentioned something about meeting up with someone at the town square in about an hour or so."
***
As the sun continued to set on the horizon, there was an unusual amount of people gathering on the streets or casually leisuring at their windows, which made Jean all the more bashful to be sitting on a crate in a narrow alleyway where they could see the Good Hunter's restaurant all the while being sufficiently covered themselves.
"So, remind me again...What the hell are we doing here?" Yomite let out a perfectly normal question due to the weird situation he found himself in.
He was currently crammed inside one of the alleyways, sandwiched right in between Hu Tao and Fischl, with Lumine closely behind him.
As Lumine was way shorter than he was, she put her chin on his right shoulder to see more clearly all the while she was standing on her heels.
Yomite felt bad for her.
He would switch with her immediately if he could, but he was pretty much stuck there unless others decided to move out.
"We're observing," Jean flatly replied, trying not to invade Yomite's personal space.
The position she was in couldn't exactly be called comfortable, as she couldn't even stretch out her long legs without the fear of kicking into Yomite's back.
"Here he comes," Diluc pointed at Kaeya who just arrived at the plaza.
"We have eyes." Jean let out an unexpected snarky remark.
But as most things, this also had an explanation behind it.
Everyone present was currently pissed off at Diluc, as he took the best spot for himself.
He had enough space for himself, while five of them had to cram into an alley.
Just then, an elegant pair of black shoes made the cobblestone crack when the wearer stopped dead in his tracks.
There was then Kaeya Alberich, with a big bouquet of fiery red silk flowers.
Silk flowers were something akin to a rose from Yomite's original world.
Wearing casual clothing consisting of a tight black t-shirt which showed off his chiseled chest and a pair of brown pants.
They were skeptical at first, but now it was clear that he was actually going on a date!
Diluc acknowledged his efforts, "He looks decent. Still...I never would have thought he would go out of his way for something like this…It does not suit him in the slightest..."
"This is the first time I've seen him like this and it's weird…" Yomite pointed out.
Jean squinted her eyes and muffled her laugh, "That indeed confirms it...He is super nervous! Look!"
Kaeya fidgeted in place, while scratching his hands and occasionally the back of his neck. His whole body felt itchy for some reason and he kept on opening and closing his palms as they were getting too sweaty.
