Happy To This Place Is Becoming More Popular :) Can I Get Um... A White Tea, No Milk Art, In A Green

happy to this place is becoming more popular :) can I get um... a white tea, no milk art, in a green tea cup, with a side of crocus, please? oh and make it angsty. thanks!

a missed opportunity 

summary: at first, your feelings for ningguang had been small enough not to notice or act on. however, as she visited your shop more and more, you felt as though these feelings had to be spoken. unfortunately, your confession didn’t go as you had planned and your relationship with her became strained. you thought that would be the last time you would see ningguang... until she shows up at the worst possible time.

masterlist | event

customer’s order: a white tea (ningguang) with no milk art (headcanons) in a green tea cup (*jealousy) with a side of crocus (an almost romance). extra: customer requested it to be angsty

*brewer’s choice, as it was not specified in the order

pairings (seperate): ningguang and (brief) beidou x reader

reader info: uses gender neutral pronouns (they/them), reader owns a small shop in liyue, and reader is not the traveler 

word count: 795 words (4 minutes~)

genre: romance, angst, rejection

format: headcanons

warnings: rejection, negative self talk (ningguang to herself), mentions of heart break, ningguang getting jealous, urge to scream, and ningguang being posseive and thinking of trying to win you back

a/n: ahhh you’re so sweet nonnie 💖i’m glad this place is becoming more popular too!! i tried my best to make this as angsty as i could </3 thank you for the request and i hope it was a pleasant read💖

you hadn’t thought much about lady ningguang

of course, you appreciated her sacrifices and admired her struggles to get to her position, but most days she didn’t cross your mind

until she began to visit your quaint shop

she even made small talk with you as she shopped... something you were surprised by the most

oh, and her flirtatious gestures

her scarlet red eyes flittered from the items on display to you with equal curiosity

each of ningguang’s visits to your shop left you a little flustered, but you appreciated the business

until you began to catch feelings for her

because now you caught yourself stumbling over your words whenever you made eye contact, your heart beating faster than it has ever before, and— wait, when did your palms get so sweaty??

finding yourself loathing the feelings more than your fear of rejection, you made the bold decision to ask her out

when you did, a brief look of regret washed over ningguang’s face 

before she twisted into a cool and neutral expression

“i think you’ve got this all wrong. i wasn’t flirting with you, archons above no, i was just... have you heard of the art of the deal?”

she left your shop soon after, leaving you speechless and alone with the remains of your broken heart

you felt so... hollow 

so you closed down the shop for the rest of the day

... and then the next... and the next...

until it had been a full week since you last opened. 

but you eventually managed to stumble out of bed and get on with your life and continuing to run your business

of course, her words seemed to haunt you as you continued on through each day

each time a customer made small talk with you and asked about your life, you became more selective with your words and guarded each aspect about yourself as though it was your deepest secret

until a certain captain stepped into your shop, alongside her entire crew

it was the first time in a while you had smiled and laughed so hard, and captain beidou had easily burrowed a special place into your heart

but just as those feelings had begun to escalate, a familiar someone stepped into your shop

and ningguang was... not too happy to see you and captain beidou talking... 

and how much beidou leaned across the counter practically infuriated ningguang

but she managed to keep her cool

“oh, hello... captain beidou... i wasn’t expecting you to be here. but i see you’ve met my friend... it’s good to see you, by the way. i’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

unbeknownst to you, ningguang has been sulking around for the last few weeks

she’s mostly kept it to herself in private, but she really regrets rejecting you so harshly

especially when she was actually looking so forward to a date with you... only for her inner thoughts to get into her way

they’ll be better without you, she had thought, they don’t want to be in the spotlight all the time. it would be suffocating for them.

because she knows what it’s like, and she doesn’t want to worsen your quality of life somehow

but she really misses her almost daily visits to your shop (which her secretaries all nagged her about before) 

ningguang has been feeling lost without seeing your face

but, she sees you with beidou, the remains of a smile on your lips disappearing quickly

... and she experiences hearbreak

but ningguang instead just smiles at you, trying her best to convey all of her regret through her eyes only

“i’m sorry for bothering you... i was just here to...er, pick up some packages i left behind last time i visited. i really need them.”

soon enough, you hand over her items and bid her farewell after taking her payment

ningguang feels her throat burn as you turn back to beidou

she stood there for a moment, her eyes now burning, as she watched the blush that bloom on beidou’s cheeks at the sudden attention

ningguang can’t take more of it, so she just turns on her heel and walks out

once she steps out of your shop, she feels the remains of her heart spilt into many pieces

but instead of crumbling down into the streets of liyue, she holds her head high and sweeps those broken pieces away

because ningguang would be damned before someone caught her crying over something as trivial as this

you weren’t even hers and yet seeing beidou being so casual with you... argh, she wanted to scream her fury out

but ningguang just walked the streets calmly, a plan formulating in her head to try and win you back before it’s too late

thank you for reading 💖 all forms of interaction to my posts are appreciated 💖

this can't be true can it

people are absolutely EVIL about the boundaries of “picky eaters”. no, they do not have to try it. yes, they can know they don’t like it without having eaten it before. no, they probably have not suddenly grown a taste for the food they’ve said they hate. no, they probably are not going to like it in the Special Way This One Place Cooks It. yes, you are being a bad friend if you try to “trick” them into eating it anyway

Am I the only person who thinks that Roland and Miranda could've Gone about their wedding and telling their kid/s about their new relationship a bit better.

Sofia: has never had a proper father figure because her birth father died when she was young, implied to having been able to take of herself since a young age, didn't know what her own room would look like, slept on her window sill for the first night because she was uncomfortable with a big bed, was surprised with a ball just for her but given no prior preparation (didn't know how to dance) and hadn't even met Roland, Amber, and James until she arrived at the palace, forced to change school's to fit in with her new royal status, isn't allowed to do things she liked to do without being ridiculed

Amber and James: their mother died from childbirth, their father spoiled them because he couldn't spend that much time with them because he's a king, didn't tell them that he was now in a relationship with someone, when they do find out they're probably also told that they were going to be living with two villagers who they must now consider family. It's unlikely that Amber took to these surprises well because of the way she reacted to Sofia, and James seemed more okay with it but I don't think he was entirely comfortable with the fact that he was being given a new mother and sister out of the blue.

Also I understand why they wouldn't tell other people about their relationship because of things like classism and accusing Miranda of being a gold digger. Also being high profile by being a noble/royal or having connections to royalty/nobility would be making it extremely likely to having painted a large "Hey I'm close with this high profile person___, who is extremely wealthy and well connected. Come get me" target on their back, but my point stands that they could've at least told their kids.

Also did Roland even tell his mother or sister or were they just as surprised?

Did anyone else come from successful families on both sides where each generation is expected to succeed or do better than the last but you're in your final year of high school and have done nothing to prove so by wasting your potential despite having worked hard for most of your life?

Is anyone hear the youngest of your family and already considered the smartest or the best of your already highly capable older siblings, but because in everyone's eyes they wasted their potential everyone's putting the expectation to be the "successful one" even though said siblings are already doing well in their own right and it's just the way your family has perceived what they've done as failing?

Did anyone else constantly succeed growing up in terms of either academics or extra curriculars to the point everything became a complete bore to you so you get accepted into an international private school in hopes of giving you a challenge with your families encouragement. So you go and you thrive but over the years your mental health begins deteriorating so you beg to be let to go back to public school where you think you'll do well because what they're teaching now was already taught to you at private school but you brain just wants rest and doesn't care about failing or succeeding you just want to be able to sleep everything away?

Did anyone else do really well in one languages but not know they're mother tongue because of systematic racism so when you're school finally gives you a chance to learn it you're family convinces you to go but you were already doing so well in a different language and now have to transfer to another so you don't let your family down?

Did anyone else do so much extra curricular activities because you were afraid of making friends and these were some of the only ways you could talk to people but you did them for so long and you became so good at them that these became boring to you as well and for once you just wanted to have a weekend, lunchtime, or some after school time to yourself where you didn't have to worry about practice, training, and homework without missing one?

Did anyone else have to take extra swimming lessons because it's an essential life skill but your fear of deep water prevents you from ever using these skills so you stay in the shallows and feel like the money and time spent on those lessons went to waste?

Did anyone else's family sign them for an after school club because you appearently need to learn new skills for the future but you're already so busy and these lessons are expensive so once again you're wasting more time and money but this time even though you've confronted your family they tell you no but you're suffering of boredom and anxiety of not having learned or understood anything for two and half hours?

Did anyone else miss out on the chance to learn basic life skills like communication, cooking, and cleaning, and first aid because you were too busy trying to succeed at everything else to the point it caused you crippling loneliness and made you think that everyone else's opinion if you was more important than you yourself?

Did anyone else have complete plan for the future because you thought said plan would go the way you were expecting things would work out but the world was already shit and because you're failing at just about everything you were good at now you don't know if you'll make it to uni because you don't have enough credits and you might have to repeat. You don't know if you'll go to art school because no one cares about artists careers. You don't know if you'll become an architect because now you're always destroying your work in frustration because it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. You don't know if you'll write a successful book because you can't sort out in your head how to sort out the plot, characters, and symbolism and weave everything into a compelling story. You don't know if you'll become an animator because of the crappy work hours compared to payment.

You're plan failed and you have no idea what to do. You've wasted everyone's money and time and you've wasted your potential and lost your future.

No, Just me? Okay then.