Over the course of the week, she’d thrown herself fully into the wide variety of tasks assigned to her as Varka’s studious right-hand. Responsible and chivalrous, put together and dependable. Extra patrols around the city? Check. Scheduling important training exercises that would require painstaking oversight to ensure that none of the knights were slacking? Check. Mountains upon mountains of paperwork regarding strategies and diplomatic agreements with the nations surrounding Mondstadt, alongside Snezhnaya? Check. Random tasks as assigned by knights in over their heads or townspeople desperate for a steady hand to take charge? Check, check, and check. Typically, she would have made an attempt to get her fellow knights to at least assist her in any endeavors they tried to shove off their own plates ( as a learning opportunity — better to give the benefit of the doubt and be on standby if it truly was too difficult, and if it wasn’t, she could scold them ), but today, yesterday, and the day before, Jean had simply accepted the opportunity to distract herself.

Of course, Diluc couldn’t be avoided forever. There were only so many hours in the day that he wouldn’t be in the city proper. Only so much time that the inevitable could be pushed aside. Eventually, there would be tasks requiring his own oversight in the city, as opposed to at the winery, and they would run into each other. Not that she was avoiding him! They were friends, and there wasn’t any reason to dally on reuniting. Simply put, Jean had too much on her plate, that was all. Varka often preferred to be “leading the charge” so to speak, and left a great many of the more detail-oriented portions of leadership in her hands.

So why, if she knew this plain as day, had she instantly bolted to hide behind the nearest corner to avoid her dear friend’s notice when she saw him? Like a ridiculous child, nervous about being scolded. A moment of weakness, the crippling feelings of guilt and doubt worming their way into her thoughts. Truthfully, how could she face her childhood best friend, when he’d left due to the deception and lacking spines of the Knights of Favonius? It had been three years. And faced with reality, all her strides towards creating a more upstanding, useful version of the knights they’d looked up to as children all seemed... small. Not nearly enough.

He looked different. Solemn. Dressed in all black as if permanently in mourning, which she supposed suited him after the events of three years past. Diluc’s hair still held that wild and unruly quality it had in their younger days, but now it remained up in a high ponytail, out of the way.

It had only been half a minute. As reality set in, Jean quickly adjusted her gauntlets, tightened the bow in her ponytail, set her shoulders back... and returned to what she’d been doing prior. A hilichurl camp had been spotted oddly close to the city walls, and it was easier to go out and have it handled before sunset. She could have them dispatched quickly on her own, and then do a patrol of the perimeter while the other knights stuck to their posts within the city. That way, if the entire group wasn’t still within the camp, there would be available knights to protect the citizens if the leftover hilichurls lashed out.