The red streaked boy paused in the doorway to the living room. He'd just been getting a mug of water from the kitchen and was on his way back upstairs when some music coming from the living room had caught his attention. The tune was constantly repeating over and over and sounded more... Instrumental than most music he knew of but he also couldn't shake the feeling that he'd heard it before somewhere... So he'd naturally become curious as to what it was. Looking in through the doorway of the room he could see Ajit sitting on the couch with his laptop open in front of him on some kind of... Well, it looked like a path through the sky? It seemed to be the source of the music though.

Unable to figure out what it was still, Dan decided to just go into the room and ask. "Hey Ajit!" He called out, entering the room and heading over to where his friend was sitting, "Whatcha doing there?" He asked.

Ajit jumped and spun around, having apparently not noticed Dan coming downstairs until he'd spoken up, "Oh, hi!" He greeted, eyes wide with surprise. Causing Dan to resist a chuckle as he sat down beside the other on the couch, giving him a much better view of what was indeed a pathway through the sky on the screen of the laptop.

"What is that?" Dan asked, "I feel like I recognize the music from somewhere."

For a moment the golden streaked boy seemed confused as to what the taller of the two was talking about, but then it seemed to hit him. "Oh, this?" He asked, angling his screen towards Dan, "I'm trying to download a game. Genshin Impact. Julia was telling me about it at school the other day and it sounded kinda fun so I thought I'd give it a try." The younger answered then shrugged, "I didn't really expect it to take so long to download though. It's been downloading overnight and it's still not done yet." He complained.

Dan looked at the progress bar on the loading screen which was apparently verifying file integrity and was at ninety seven point thirty two percent. "It's almost done now though, right?" He asked.

Ajit shrugged, "I think so, it could still take forever though." And then the exact second he finished that sentence, the progress bar sped up and landed at one hundred percent. Then disappeared from the screen and was replaced with the words 'CLICK TO BEGIN' and a door appeared at the end of the path. The two boys blinked at each other. "Or it could do that." Ajit finished, perplexed, causing Dan to burst out laughing.

"So... Are you gonna start the game now?"

"Well, after waiting this long for it to load. I think I'm gonna have to." The younger of the pair nodded, moving his cursor to click the screen.

On screen the doors opened and filled the screen with white light and then an image of two shooting stars drawn onto sand beside a crab and a stick appeared on the screen and a voice from the game spoke, "So... What you're trying to say is that you fell here from another world?" The scenery changed to show two shooting stars flying over cities, "But when you wanted to leave and go onto the next world," The scene changed again to show two blonde characters, one dressed in mostly black and the other dressed in mostly white, standing side by side on some platform above the clouds. "Your path was stopped by some unknown God?" Three dark red diamonds appeared on the screen in front of the two blonde characters and then a new character stepped out of the middle one, "Outlanders. Your journey ends here." She announced, looking down at the two blondes.

"Oooh.. This is getting interesting already!" Dan laughed.

Ajit turned to him and nodded, "It is!" He agreed just as one of the blonde characters on the screen began to speak, the pair went quiet to continue watching the scene play out on the laptop screen. The two blondes began to fight with the God who had appeared before them until the scene suddenly paused as both the twins flew in to attack the God. "Select a twin..." Ajit read out the words that had appeared on the screen.

The red streaked boy leaned closer to the screen to see what the characters looked like again, "Which one are you choosing, Ajit?" Dan asked, still trying to figure out which one looked cooler in his opinion.

He simply got a shrug as a response, "I'm not sure." The amber eyed boy replied, clearly thinking hard about this. "What do you think?"

Dan shook his head, "No idea, I can't figure out which one I think looks cooler." Then he had an idea and grabbed his phone out of his pocket, opening google and typing in genshin protagonists to the search bar. He found what he was looking for on the first image result, full images of both of the twins. He looked at it for a moment then shrugged to himself, "Nah, still can't decide who looks cooler. What do you think?" He asked, showing the image to Ajit.

"They've both got such pretty designs!" Was the instant complaint from Ajit, Dan couldn't help but laugh, causing Ajit to start giggling too.
Once they'd both stopped laughing, the golden streaked boy looked at the picture again, "Hm.. Okay. I think I'll just choose the guy. I like his hairstyle." He reasoned.

That surprised Dan.

But not for the reason that might've been expected...

"Wait, one of them is a guy?!" He blurted out, "Oh my god, I thought they were both girls..."

Instantly they both burst into laughter again.

"Yep, he's a guy." Ajit replied once they'd both gotten over their laughing fit. Then he selected the male character on the screen. The in-game screen changed to show the character he'd chosen from the front. Some new text appeared on the screen saying 'Let your name be known...' along with a text box for the player to type their chosen name into. "Um..." Ajit paused, "Does it say what his name is on there?" He asked, looking towards Dan's phone.

Dan clicked off his current search and typed in 'genshin protagonist name' instead and read out the first result he got, "The main protagonist of the game, known as The Traveller. Players have the option to choose Aether, male or Lumine, female... But why don't you just name your character your name, you can name them anything, right?" He wondered aloud.

"Well, yeah but..." Ajit paused, "I don't actually know. It just feels like it'd be weird to play as a character without using the character's name, you know?" He answered, looking slightly embarrassed.

The older of the two didn't seem to notice, "Oh, that makes sense!" He smiled at the answer, "Do you want me to tell you how to spell the name?"

Ajit nodded, "That would be great, thanks."

Dan grinned, "Aether, so that's... A-E-T-H-E-R." He spelled out the letters from the screen, saying them slow enough that his friend could type them in as he spoke. He read what Ajit had typed in, "Yep, that's it."

"Good. Alright then, let's continue." Ajit smiled, pressing the enter key.

It took a second but then the fight scene continued, on the laptop screen, Ajit's chosen character Aether dodged an attack from the god but his sister Lumine was caught and entrapped in a cube, their character kept fighting for a little longer but then was trapped too, yelling the final line of "Wait, don't go. Give my sister back!" Then the screen turned black and white writing appeared that was then read out by the voice of the character they'd chosen. "And just like that, the god took away my sister. Some kind of seal was cast upon me, and I lost my power. So while we used to travel from world to world, we are now trapped here."

As the character spoke symbols began to appear across the bottom of the screen and then the scene switched back to the drawings in the sand, except now there was a drawing of the god underneath the picture of the shooting stars. The drawing only remained on screen for a few seconds before the camera changed to show Aether talking to a small floating girl with white hair. The conversation between the two continued for a minute or so before it ended and the camera angle changed. Instructions for how to move the character began to show up on the screen along with a few new icons.

"Ooh, gameplay!" Dan cheered, somehow invested in the game already despite having only been watching Ajit play it for around ten minutes and having not known about it at all before then.

Ajit grinned, "Finally, I can't wait-" He began to say, then cut himself off, "Oh come on. Why the W-A-S-D keys? The arrow keys are right here and perfectly fine. I hope there's an option to change the key shortcuts later on in the settings." He frowned his keyboard but began trying to move around his character using W-A-S-D and the space bar for jumping. "Okay, so now... Follow Paimon? Where is she?" Ajit began to mutter as he moved his camera perspective around in the game so he could find the small floating girl.

Dan switched off his phone, which had still been open to the image of the twins from the game, and placed it down on the arm of the couch. Watching as Ajit moved his character to follow Paimon through the world of the game.

For the next two hours Ajit continued playing Genshin and Dan continued watching as the story of the game progressed.

Within that time, in the game they visited a statue of the seven, unlocked Anemo abilities for their Traveller, unlocked the settings menu where Ajit changed the movement keys to the arrow keys, seen a dragon, spotted a character who Ajit instantly recognised leading to Dan finding out Ajit knew quite a lot about approximately four characters and already had two favourites, unlocked a new character named Amber who both Dan and Ajit had instantly compared to Dan, figured out that Amber was a lot more difficult to use in combat than Aether was, learned how to swap the weapons of their party members, learned how to cook food, entered the city of Mondstat, learned how to glide, fought the same dragon they saw earlier, met a character named Kaeya, met two more characters named Jean and Lisa, unlocked the wishing feature and gotten both Noelle and Xiangling in the first ten pull, compared the latter of which to Dan after listening to her voice lines, completed the first temple with Amber, did some exploration, entered the second temple with Kaeya and completed that too unlocking Kayea as a character, did some more exploration, entered the third temple with Lisa who's fighting style Ajit quickly took a dislike to due to how her attacks never seemed to hit the opponents and eventually completed the temple mostly using Aether and Xiangling.

Which was... A lot.

They talked a lot whilst they played the game, all of their conversation being game related in some way. At one point Dan googled the name of Ajit's favourite character to see who they were.

Now the pair were discussing what to do next in the game now that they couldn't progress the next part of the previous quest until they were at a higher Adventure Rank.

"I think this one might be easier for now?" Ajit replied to Dan asking if they should try the quest Kaeya's troubles, pointing at a different quest on the screen under the World Quests section titled Welcome to the Adventurers' Guild, "Plus I think I remember Julia saying something about the Adventures' Guild being important and useful for levelling up your Adventure Rank?"

Dan nodded, "Right, that makes sense then... To the Adventurers' Guild!" He cheered, laughing.

"Actually, it's 'To the dinner table'." A voice called out from behind them, they both turned around to see Dan's Mom in the doorway of the room, looking rather amused. "I've called you both three times already," She shook her head, "I can't believe you managed to find a game that's good enough for Dan to not pay attention to it being dinner time." She snorted.

The red streaked boy flushed a bright pink in embarrassment at his Mom calling out his love for food. It wasn't like it was news to anyone in the room or in the entire world but still... Embarrassing. He jumped up, "I just didn't hear you!" He protested, "But I have now, c'mon let's go have dinner!" He announced happily.

The younger of the pair didn't move, "Wait. I should..." He spoke and then paused, catching Dan's attention. A confused note had crept into the boy's voice when he spoke again, "How do I even exit this game? Do I need to find a save button or just an exit one?" He asked no one in particular.

Dan blinked and picked his phone up from the arm of the couch, making another quick search. "It says to open the Paimon menu and choose quit game, then confirm, it should take you back to the loading screen area. Then there's a power button thingy, click that then ok and it automatically saves your progress."

Ajit nodded and followed the instructions Dan had just read out, signing himself out of the game. "Okay, done." He smiled, "Now we can eat."

"Dinner here we come! What was it that one npc near the city said? Never go adventuring on an empty stomach!"