Law of conservation of energy and potential energy

I completely understand how this law goes and how energy is changed from one form to another. But there is something that I thought about, we all know how the potential energy works and when an object is carried to a height it gains potential energy etc. And the same should be applied to anything else, as far as I know. then what if we get let’s say a cup of water and a tissue and put a part of it in the water while the other part is held by anything, some of the water goes up the tissue thus its potential energy increased, so what was the energy used to get this potential energy and if none, doesn’t that violate the law?