[ well. fitting for the conversation topic at hand, but damn.

he's not shaken by it so much as surprised by both how serious the tone was and how much time it spanned. like watching a whole movie, but with all the important plot points in the middle cut out. ]

Huh...? [ looks to diluc ] What happened?

[ totty one-shotting me by calling out his montage (he's so right for it)

diluc huffs softly. ]

...My father died earlier that night. And Kaeya took that opportunity to reveal something he'd been hiding from our family the entire time.

[ what are you so melodramatic for, genshin ]

Oh... [ winces. ] Sorry.

Did he have something to do with his death, or was it... something else, and it was just bad timing?

[ he shakes his head ]

It was something else. [ extremely. bad timing. ]

...But it's in the past now, for the most part.

[ echoing todomatsu's words just earlier, ]

It's complicated.

Ah... yeah.

[ a couple memories of his own come to mind here, though he isn't broadcasting any of them — of osomatsu being so fucking awful at choromatsu's goodbye dinner, and of the time they were afraid they were going to lose their father. if dad hadn't gotten better, and if osomatsu had gotten into one of those moods again over it, he can imagine he wouldn't have been able to just forgive him and move on in the next episode either. ]

Everyone's emotions are running high during times like that... It's easy for things to get ugly, I think.

...I wish it weren't so easy. But, I suppose it was a hard-learned lesson.

[ and he can't know what todomatsu is thinking of, but he imagines he's had more serious confrontations with his own siblings in the past.

(and diluc would rather talk about totty's family than his own... sorry he's like this.) ]

...At any rate, I'm sure your brothers are worried for you.