While this story focuses on the heartwarming relationship between Chibana and her son, Kei, and the people around them and those they interact with it still has moments where it will make you cry.
You've Got My Eyes
- In the first chapter, Chibana's friends don't seem to miss her presence at all. They're laughing and generally making an embarrassment of themselves, but none of them seem to realize that the protagonist is gone as they're too busy gossiping with each other- even when Chibana is walking out the door with Zhongli they don't seem to miss her. They also don't seem to acknowledge her until the next day when they are knocking down her door and yelling at her for ditching the group.
- Even though we don't get the exact details, Chibana's life after conceiving Kei spirals. She loses most of her entire friend group including her childhood friend, Mizuki, who according to the author were eager to ditch her and her pregnancy served as the perfect excuse with her parents being decidedly not pleased about her pregnancy to the point that Chibana was fully prepared to raise her unborn child alone. On top of that, near the end of her pregnancy she gets robbed during a time when she's going through some financial struggles. While Chibana is a good mother to Kei and has a stable job to support them, her time as a single mother was far from easy.
- Kei being accused of owning a Vision was very stressful for both her and Kei. Not only did Chibana have to deal with her son being accused of owning a Vision and the Commission trying to interrogate him, she has to deal with her former best friend Mizuki Takao calling her a whore.
- Kei screaming that he and his friend Kiyoko aren't friends any more and making her cry as a result due to her breaking her promise with him.
- It doesn't get any better in the next chapter. Chibana is utterly furious at the fact that the Commission was called on her son, but she also believes that Kei likely has a Vision and that it's hidden somewhere in the house and he hasn't seen it. While Chibana tries to search the house for it, Kei is screaming and crying and begging his mother the entire time as he tries to stop her to the point that he can't vocalize his distress any more.
- Chibana's horror when she realizes she was just adding on top of what was an already traumatizing day onto her son who is five. She can do nothing but deprecate herself for distressing her son even more.
- Chibana's reaction to the fact that the one man who could help her get out of her and her son's nightmare day had been arrested the day before. The strong front that she put up for Kei begins to cracks and she starts to break down, her anxiety getting the better of her as she struggles to vocalize that she needs a Vision to get the Commission off of Kei's back.
- When Yae Miko tells Chibana that Kei's father is likely the recently deceased Rex Lapis, the strong facade that Chibana had finally breaks as she cries in front of her boss after the stress of the past few days and likely the past few years. The possibility that her son's father was the deceased Geo Archon is the final stressor that causes her to break and starts thinking of herself as a failure of a mother.You thought you would’ve stopped crying over everything after all this time. You thought you had gotten the tears of pure stress out of your system over the course of your pregnancy and the months following Kei’s birth. Then you thought you were done crying when Kei got sick for the first time as a little toddler, because he wouldn’t stop screaming, and you get it was because his ear was hurting so much and didn’t understand you were trying to help him, but you felt like such a failure. Every day, any time something happens to Kei, every moment he’s in pain or fear, you feel like a failure. You thought the final, final time you would cry like this was when you gave your old boyfriend a second chance. It all blew up in your face and you felt so stupid for taking him back. You remember putting Kei down for a nap after he left, dragging that asshole’s things into the yard, and torching it all. You were sobbing the whole time, and told yourself fuck this shit, you’re putting all your energy into Kei now, and you’ll be a better mom for him.You don’t even think you believe Yae Miko because seriously, what fucking odds are there that the random guy at the bar who knocked you up would be the actual fucking Geo Archon? Wouldn’t some divine conception be a little more classy than two people moving from bar to hotel and stumbling to the bed because they literally can’t keep their hands off each other? That man had ethereal beauty, yeah, but he was just a hot guy with pretty eyes! Pretty amber eyes that you’ve never seen before. You swore they shined like gold at times, but that was the lust talking back then and the memories romanticizing right now. If you stretch your imagination, maybe he looks like how Rex Lapis is described in those Rex Incognito books, but those are fantasy books as far as you know! Just stories about the Geo Archon posing as a mortal and… and walking around Liyue. And his only defining, consistent feature are the amber eyes that shine like gold…
