"You too, huh?" Shen Yuan asks, half-hysterical, before he can stop it. He didn't mean to say that, didn't mean for any of this happen, but Lan Xichen is here and talking to him, and it's either attend to him, or look at the grasping creeper vines that are growing out of the wall. Ties That Bind, the die-hard fan that still lives in Shen Yuan's brain notes. Not a local species.

"No," he says, wringing his hands in his lap. "It's a, a mix. Some things that might have happened, if I'd never left the last world I lived in. Some things that...that might happen, I suppose, if a certain person came here."

He bows his head to hide his face. "I hope he never comes here," he whispers shamefully.