"Collei, let me introduce you. This is my friend, Koji. This is Lumine. And this little floating one here is Paimon."
Amber held on to Collei's arm, eager as always as she introduced Koji and the others.
"Hello, I'm Collei. I'm from Sumeru." Collei gave a very polite self-introduction.
Paimon puffed up, clearly displeased. "Amber, when you introduce me you don't need to say 'little one.' Just call me Paimon, okay?"
Amber's lips curled up slightly. Then she looked left and right. "Where's Eula? She didn't come back with you?"
She had wanted to introduce her best friend to Collei as well.
"She's not really suited to return to Mondstadt. Too many people would just point and gossip." Koji shrugged as he spoke.
"That's true. All the Lawrences I've seen had it pretty rough. People throw rotten leaves and rotten eggs at them. Good thing Eula didn't come back." Amber nodded.
The Lawrences really had become like rats in the street—everyone wanted to throw something at them. If it weren't forbidden to injure people, there would probably be plenty of folks throwing rocks and bricks as well.
"I saw it too. What exactly did the Lawrence clan do to make everyone hate them that much?" Collei asked curiously.
Amber gave her a simple rundown, and Collei quickly understood: all of this was the fault of their ancestors, and there were still people in the clan who refused to repent and change.
"Eula isn't like the rest of the Lawrences. You could say she's a breath of fresh air in that family." Amber said this very seriously.
She didn't want Collei to misunderstand Eula.
Collei smiled and shook her head. "Amber, I know. If she's your friend, then she's definitely a kind and friendly person."
…
Nothing much was happening that day, so Koji decided to bring Klee out for some fish-bombing.
"Klee, have you been here to blow up fish before?"
Koji had brought Klee to Windrise. Schools of fish were swimming through the flowing water here.
"Uh… I have."
Klee scratched her head in embarrassment. Last time she'd come here to help, she'd set too many bombs. The damage had ended up a bit… severe, permanently altering the terrain around Windrise.
Still, at least nobody got hurt. That incident had also firmly established her status as Mondstadt's third-strongest combat power.
"Help… somebody… is anybody out there…"
A weak, broken-up voice drifted over. If your hearing wasn't good, you might miss it entirely.
"That sounds familiar… I remember now, it's probably Bennett-nii's voice."
Klee thought for a moment and recalled who it was. She had gone adventuring with Bennett before. She knew he was a good person; he just never managed to find any treasure. Klee herself didn't know why.
"Oh, it's him." Koji suddenly understood.
Bennett's bad luck was famous. Every adventurer who had teamed up with him had eventually quit because they just couldn't stand that level of misfortune, leaving the "Bennett Adventure Team" with only one remaining member—the captain himself.
However, Koji had a different perspective. Because of his terrible luck, Bennett constantly stumbled into dangerous situations, yet he always managed to survive, and his injuries were never truly fatal. In a way, didn't that count as its own kind of special good fortune?
In other words, it wasn't that Bennett had no luck at all—it was that all of his luck was poured into staying alive.
Following the sound, Koji and Klee soon found Bennett.
In front of them was a pit several meters deep, probably a hunter's trap for wild boars. Bennett was lying at the bottom. The vertical walls of the pit had nothing he could use to climb up, and with an empty stomach he didn't have any strength left anyway.
"Bennett-nii, you fell into another dangerous spot again?" Klee leaned over the edge and called down to him.
"Klee?"
Bennett looked up. When he saw someone he knew, it was like catching sight of hope itself.
He had adventured with Klee before; that had actually been one of his more "fortunate" outings. The only issue was that Klee's bombs always seemed to explode at the strangest times, and he inevitably got caught up in the blast. Klee, of course, was never hurt at all.
After that, he generally avoided going out to play with Klee. It was fine if he was the only one who got hurt, but if Klee ever got injured because of his bad luck, the entire Knights of Favonius would definitely come "visit" him.
Just thinking about it was terrifying.
"Thanks, you two."
Koji reached down, grabbed Bennett, and hauled him up out of the pit. Bennett didn't know how long he'd been stuck down there, but he felt completely drained.
His stomach growled loudly.
"Saved… I'm saved. I haven't eaten in two days." Bennett clutched his belly.
"Bennett-nii, I only have apples on me right now. Do you want to eat fish?" Klee rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a bright red apple.
"Thank you, Klee."
Crunch, crunch—
Bennett took the apple and devoured it like a starving wolf. He was clearly famished. Klee, meanwhile, took out some bombs and lobbed them toward the river to blast fish.
"Bennett, during the time you were stuck in that pit, nobody happened to walk by?" Koji asked.
At that question, Bennett shook his head, forcing a bitter smile. "Guess my luck's just that bad. And this isn't even the first time."
He could no longer count how many times he'd been unlucky.
If it wasn't falling into a hunter's trap, it was a tree collapsing and smacking him on the head, or triggering a trap inside some ruin in southwest Mondstadt, or getting himself stuck inside a ruin in Liyue…
If he couldn't get out on his own, all he could do was wait until someone realized he had gone missing.
"That's why you shouldn't get too close to me, or you'll end up unlucky too." Bennett reminded them kindly.
Even though he was unlucky, he had a gentle heart and didn't want to drag others down with him. So even when people quit the adventure team, he could understand.
Koji studied him. This unlucky boy carried a very peculiar kind of blessing. You couldn't call it pure misfortune—yes, it caused him all sorts of bad luck, but at the same time his own luck was strong enough to repeatedly pull him back from the brink.
…
"Don't put yourself down too much. Sure, you're unlucky, but the fact that you've survived this long—isn't that a kind of luck too?" Koji said with a smile.
He could have given Bennett some kind of blessing that would boost his good luck, but that would interfere with Bennett's own innate fortune.
Bennett fell silent, thinking it over. It was true—because of his misfortune he'd faced countless dangers, but in the end he had always made it out alive.
Maybe, just as Koji said, this really was a kind of luck that belonged to him alone.
"Bennett-nii, have some grilled fish." Klee trotted over, holding freshly blasted fish.
"Thanks a ton." Bennett began eating again straight away. That single apple from before hadn't come close to filling him.
"Ah… cough, cough—"
He'd eaten too fast and got a fish bone stuck in his throat. Bennett's face twisted in pain—his bad luck had struck yet again.
Koji was speechless. This kid really was born unlucky.
Things like this had practically become routine for Bennett.
Once he was finally full, Bennett waved to them, thanked them again, and headed off to continue his adventures.
"Bennett-nii really won't get into trouble again?" Klee asked worriedly.
Her own luck was great, but Bennett was constantly running into misfortune—everyone in Mondstadt knew that.
"He'll be fine."
In all of Teyvat, there was no one more unlucky than Bennett. But the fact that he could keep on living—that was Bennett's own brand of luck. If someone else took on that level of misfortune, they'd probably just die on the spot.
(End of Chapter)
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