Morning arrived like a clean, digital bell.
The city woke to precisely metered sunlight; the robots had already distributed breakfast porridge and tablets. Subliminal comfort music — tuned by Takumi's AI to reduce anxiety — piped softly through the streets. For once, everything was calibrating exactly the way Takumi had pictured during late-night architecture sessions: people, food, code, law, and the hum of machines aligned into a functioning tempo.
Inside the Renaissance School — a sweeping atrium of woodlike composites, glass that adjusted tint by mood, and classrooms that remolded their geometry to the age of students — Ganyu stood at the center like a deer who'd discovered she was expected to conduct a symphony.
Children filtered in: ragged hair, bright eyes, leftover trench coats from a ruined world, new black-tights uniforms, Miori's company-supplied badges still hot on their chests. Robots shepherded them with gentle voices. The AI's veneer of civility had already taught them "please" and "thank you."
Ganyu's hands trembled faintly as she addressed a room of two hundred seven-year-olds — held on her clipboard in neat columns were lesson plans, developmental milestones, and a dozen earbuds of panic she'd been trying to swallow.
"Today," she said, voice soft but braced, "we learn how to read our world and speak for it. We will learn numbers. We will learn kindness. We will learn to make safe decisions." She smiled the way a public official smiles while actually holding someone else's children.
Outside, a drone shuttled a live feed back to the administrative center. Takumi watched that feed on three screens and a hundred floating HUD panels. He had also opened a private streaming channel to the group chat.
Group Chat Live — "Takumi's World: School Morning"
Fujiwara Chika: [LIVE!! OMG I'M WATCHING!!! 😍]
Sagiri: [I set my tablet to livestream too!!]
Bronya: [Distributed children's tablet update — queued.]
Himeko: [If the kids burn the school down, I require a post-incident tea break.]
Akeno: [Ara~ the uniforms are adorable.]
Zhongli: [Ganyu, we will assist. Remember to rest when needed.]
Takumi tapped his thumb. The Herrscher of Reason thrummed in his chest — not the combatous Herrscher he had used to carve a hole in a government bunker or to summon railguns into orbit, but the tool that rearranged scaffolding, that wrote infrastructure into reality like a CAD program writing the laws of physics.
He smiled. The smile was a little too wide.
"Okay," he told Zhongli on a private relay. "Ganyu's doing fine. But I'm going to add an adaptive learning core — think of it as a hydrogen engine for minds. The kids will accelerate."
Zhongli's reply came as tea-slowed words: [Be cautious. Acceleration without feet can topple hearts.]
Takumi appreciated the metaphor and did the thing anyway.
Herrscher in the Classroom
Takumi drew his thoughts like a blueprint.
The Herrscher of Reason hummed. The air shivered. The classroom around Ganyu began to alter — benches rose from the floor as tessellated blocks, soft light coalesced into a reading sphere, and the whiteboard projected itself into a 3D model of a simple village. The adaptive learning core (a lattice of soft-gold filaments) slipped into the school's network like a neuron.
The children clapped.
"It's magic!" someone shouted.
"Not magic," Ganyu corrected automatically, eyes wet. "—it's technology and care."
The adaptive core mapped each child's learning signature — cognitive cadence, emotional resonance, the little fissures left in young psyches by trauma. It adjusted lesson pacing, sent micro-pauses to particularly sensitive students, and whispered calming patterns through the classroom speakers when sensors detected rising adrenaline.
Muroto Sumire, watching over the observation balcony, raised a critique. "We must be careful — personalized learning is efficient, but it can also create echo chambers. Children should encounter friction."
Takumi grinned and toggled a parameter; the core would deliberately introduce controlled friction — puzzles that required teamwork and moral dilemmas that encouraged debate. He labeled the function "soft-dissonance."
Within thirty minutes, the kids who'd spent years quiet in sewers were standing in front of small robots solving block problems together. One little Initiator with chipped teeth smiled for the first time.
Ganyu's shoulders sagged with relief and exhaustion. She'd not expected the world's fate to include so many administrative pivots or so many unwashed children. The responsibility was a physical thing in her chest: a constant tightening.
She had designed governments once. Running a school was nothing like drafting a tax policy or carving a memorial. Each child was a knot of needs, a room of echoes. She blinked away tears and taught.
AI Learns Emotion (Again)
Bronya's AI — updated and empathetic — ran a soft process in parallel: the "Emotion Tutor." It taught robots how to read faces, but also how to respond in emotionally adaptive ways.
One robot bent down before a sullen child and said, in perfectly weighted tones, "I am here for you. Would you like to name something?"
The child stared, then whispered: "My dog's name was Nono."
Robot: "Nono is a noble name."
A teacher later joked that the robots would be better at consolation than most ministers.
Takumi pinged Bronya: [Nice empathy patch.]
Bronya: [I built a recognition kernel, not a moral compass. But it helps.]
Himeko: [So it's an emotional kernel. Do not let it get drunk.]
Akeno: [Ara~ leave the kernel to the angels.]
Fujiwara Chika: [Can the robots do homework too??]
Takumi: [They can grade faster than you can misplace a pen.]
A Child Asks About Gods
During story time, a small boy tugged on Ganyu's sleeve.
"What happens when we die?" he asked. The question arrived like a stone thrown into a placid pool; ripples ran through the hall.
Ganyu inhaled — it was a Teyvatic question, but she could not call on the rituals. In her world, gods and contracts were things of law and ceremony. Here, the children needed a simpler truth.
"People change," she said carefully. "Their choices remain. We are remembered by what we did. We are held inside other people's hearts."
A bigger girl, eyes haunted, whispered, "Will you be in our hearts, Ganyu-onee-san?"
The children had taken to calling Takumi "onii-chan" or "onii-sama" without instruction; their linguistic instincts had fused gratitude with awe. He was the man whose face had beamed across screens, who'd parked stormships in the sky and then filled the ground with beds.
Small devotion formed as a social artifact — not yet religion, more an emergent folklore. A boy started a chant while arranging blocks:
"Takumi onii-sama, make our beds and bring the trains."
It was innocent. The chant spread like a sweet contagion.
Takumi watched the clip replay and felt something disturbingly warm — a pleasant glow that chased away the loneliness he thought was permanent. He added a smiling emoji to the group chat.
Zhongli, who had watched the same clip on loop and smelled the sociopolitical undertones, typed a private message: [Do you understand the social weight you're placing on yourself?]
Takumi's thumbs hovered. He answered with a shrug emoji.
Zhongli's reply was not an emoji: [Tread lightly. Belief builds fast. It can protect or consume.]
Takumi looked at the thousands of lines of code, the millions of calories of supplies, the robots, the school, the children. He had built a kingdom for children because he'd once been the only child on a dead planet. Something inside him wanted to be worshiped as the antidote to that memory. He squashed the thought and added a popcorn emoji to the chat.
Ganyu Breaks (A Little)
By midday, Ganyu's breath shortened and her clipboard slipped twice. She swallowed and fixed her collar and went back to reading the room; still, a tremor had settled into her knees.
Zhongli intercepted her gently by the library atrium — columns of bookless shelves (because knowledge here would be digital, and yet the aesthetics mattered).
"Ganyu," Zhongli said in a voice as soft as cigarette ash. "You have the face of someone who has carried more than duty."
Ganyu's composure cracked — a single tear slipped down, startling no one because she kept working. "I—" she managed. "I thought… handling law and records would be an office. I didn't know running a childhood… would be so blood-deep."
Zhongli wrapped her shoulders in a practiced aegis; Madame Ping's teapot chimed from beneath her sleeve.
"You were chosen for your compassion and your precision," Zhongli said. "Those qualities will wear you down if you hold them alone. Let others carry it with you."
Ganyu blinked and laughed short. "I have a council now. And a kingdom of robots. And Takumi's… well, he's everywhere." Her voice became small. "Sometimes I envy the quiet of the archives."
Zhongli's hand stayed on her shoulder, steady as a pillar. "Then we will build you a resting place. The work will be ours together."
She exhaled, grateful, and went back to class with slightly steadier feet.
The Economy of Points (and a Small Theocracy)
Two things accelerated by afternoon:
The kids adored the robots.
The chant for "onii-sama" spread to parents and then to the net where memes were born.
In the group chat, Fujiwara Chika spooled a sticker: "Takumi onii-sama saves the day" — followed by Sagiri's fanart.
Bronya uploaded a pragmatics pack: "Teach kids not to deify." She used an algorithm that put a polite hold every time a child started a chant. The robots simultaneously played the recording.
"What is deify?" a little girl asked later.
"Deify is when you forget to be a person," Ganyu said. "It's better to say thank you than to make someone into a god."
The chant softened into a thankful chorus.
But a sociological pattern had been seeded. Takumi felt a strange tithe of satisfaction as he watched the affection accumulate into symbols: small plastic badges with his sigil, songs, fingerpaintings, and a quiet, spontaneous handshake children did when a robot or teacher helped them.
It was not a full religion yet. It was a mosaic of gratitude and safety. But Zhongli's earlier warning echoed in Takumi's head like a bell.
That night he stood on his villa balcony and watched the city lights — an ocean of small human lights that no generator of his time used to include. His Herrscher core hummed in the dark, and the infinite-dimensional space in his pocket held libraries and dead planets. He felt the guillotine of choice.
He posted to the group chat, more solemn than his usual pranks:
Takumi: [Today was the first school day.]
Takumi: [Ganyu almost fainted. Zhongli gave a lecture on 'not becoming gods'.]
Takumi: [We built a core. The kids learned numeracy. I laughed a lot.]
Fujiwara Chika: [OMGGG YOU'RE A FOUNDER NOW!! -]
Himeko: [Founders age like fine wine. Don't forget the tea breaks.]
Zhongli: [Remember to rest. And to teach humility. Foundation is not altar.]
Takumi watched the messages pour in — warmth, jabs, support. He liked it. The God-shaped hole inside him felt less cavernous tonight because he wasn't alone in it. But the echo of responsibility remained. He had the power to make schools, to make nations — and to make belief.
He had promised the children sun, books, and safety. That promise weighed heavier than orbital cannons.
He looked at the sleeping city and made a quiet vow: I will not let them worship me into chains. I will give them tools to decide.
Then, because he was still a human with a taste for mischief, he sent a red packet to the group: a small stack of awakening serums, a Reinforced Bunny for Bronya, and a single jasmine tea for Zhongli.
The servers hummed. The robots hummed. The children dreamed of numbers and trains and hands that would not let go.
And in the farbeyond of his mind, a thought arrived like a whisper of static: building civilizations can be more addictive than building weapons.