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Zhongli is forgetful.
Strangely enough, he remembers every little detail of the landscapes of Liyue, reaching from Stones Gate to the Harbor city, every little stone and pebble on his journey and seems to be able to retell every event in the history of Liyue. The amount of history the consultant of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor can describe in astounding detail is to be feared.
But he just can’t take care of his financial situation. If you could even call it that. He doesn’t have any money on him at all...on any given time, at any given place, to any given occasion.
How has such a man not died of starvation yet?
When asked this question, the consultant simply smiles awkwardly, and answers: “Well...I just happen to have my connections.”
“Connections, huh?” Childe furrowed his brows as he fumbled his chopsticks in a sad attempt of picking up a dumpling. “What kind of connection am I to you, then? Your wallet?” Zhongli halted in his movements, dumpling dangling from his chopsticks (Childe looked at his skills in awe), and pondered for a moment. “Could have been described more elegantly, but yes. In a way.”
“Do you have connections to every part of Liyue city? In the light of your job, I assume that’s just natural.” The young Snezhnayan smiled triumphantly as he finally held the dumplings up in the air and carefully moved it towards his mouth. “Yes, sort of. To the antiquity sellers, most of all. But also to the perfumer, the libraries, the mines-”
“What about the food in Liyue then? In case you need to prepare for a Funeral offering.” Childe quickly cut Zhongli off before he could drift off into rambling again. This time, the consultant answered rather hesitantly: “Oh, there is not much need for me to manage that. There are still other experts at the Funeral parlor. I’m not one for...cuisine.”
Childe grimaced as the dumpling fell back into his rice bowl, finally giving up on the local customary standards. He stuck the chopsticks into the dumpling (a bit too violently as the filling spilled out, leaving little chunks of scrambled egg and shrimps on the rice) and stuffed it into his mouth. “Why not? I thought that such a Liyue connoisseur like you would be most interested in cuisine. The seafood here really is different than it is in Snezhnaya.”
He was taken aback by the usually so composed man shuddering, and even more surprised when he saw his face paling. “Ah..is it now? Truly, uh...fascinating.” “Mister Zhongli? Are you feeling alright?” As if snapping out of a trance, Zhongli blinked a few times and glanced at the sky. “Yes..yes, do not worry yourself. It must be the weather today.” Childe looked at him with worry, wondering if he was catching a cold. They have been strolling around Liyue all day for the week after all, maybe it really was too much for the recluse consultant.
“Why did you invite me to your office today, Childe? I thought you planned on seeing the place at Chihu Rock today.” “Oh it’s nothing, really. I was just afraid that you were catching a cold, walking around outside all day.” Zhongli stared at the Snezhnayan teen, surprised; maybe because he didn’t expect a mercenary to care about such things, or because he didn’t expect anybody to notice his bad state the day before at all in the first place. “A cold? Oh, you have the wrong impression of me; I do not easily get colds, I’m...in a way, built differently.”
Childe looked up at Zhongli; the consultants pale, smooth skin made him seem so vulnerable and fragile despite his tall and healthy build, perhaps he was speaking the truth, but Childe had to admit it was a bit hard to believe.
“Well, I have already invited you here, and since you’ve been showing me around all week, I decided to bring a little something from my home country as well.” “Oh, as a gift for the business friend?”
“What? No, no...not at all, this is something I wanted to give you to show my gratitude as the private man Tartaglia, not as the Fatui Harbinger Childe.”
“Ah...a very kind gesture indeed, Tartaglia. I suppose even the Fatui have some sense of hospitality in them after all.”
For the first in a long, long time, Childe felt his heartbeat speeding up as the man looked at him with his amber, almost glowing eyes, warm like the leaves of a ginkgo tree in the autumn. It was the first time he saw Zhongli smile, not just the little business smile he expressed sometimes when he was content with certain antiquities and gems, a warm, genuine, bright smile.
“Childe?” He snapped out of his daydreams when Zhongli’s smile disappeared again, replaced by a slightly concerned face. “Ah, not at all, I’m just..not like the other Harbingers. I enjoy openness with our clients more than most.”
“Master Childe, your soup.” “Ekaterina, just in time!” Childe stood up from his seat, a bit hastily as he noted. “Master Childe, are you alright? Your face is redde-” “No, nothing at all, thank you for bringing the soup over, I’ll see you this evening!” He chuckled a bit nervously as he hurriedly snatched the two bowls of soup and pushed his worried junior out the room, shutting the office door behind her just a tad too loudly.
“Ahaha, Ekaterina, lively as ever now isn’t she, always so eager to-” He turned around to, for the second time today, witness a baffling sight.
A glowing spear, whenever and wherever it suddenly came from, was gripped tightly in the consultant’s hands, pointing towards the puzzled Childe. His expression was a mix between disgust and deathly fear. The wooden chair he was sitting on was pushed back so fiercely it left dark scratch marks on the floor. The ever-so polite man that just showed his warmest side now stood there with a crooked stature, like a looming shadow preparing to attack.
Childe nearly fell backwards from the sheer power he could feel from the consultant. The warm, gentle amber eyes were no more, the glow was now a demonstration of fierceness, a warning to his enemies to not take a step closer. But on closer inspection, the looming shadow was not pointing the spear towards him, he was pointing the spear towards--
“Mister Zhongli? Do you despise foreign dishes that much?”
As if waking up from a trance, Zhongli slowly straightened up, the grip on the spear loosening. He gained control over his expression again, but although he was noticeably more held back again, his eyes and mouth were still twitching at the sight of the soup bowls in Childe’s hands.
“I…” Childe was astounded. Zhongli, who usually has such a way with his words, was now stunned into silence by the mere sight of his specialty. It stung a little, and the young Snezhnayan couldn’t help but feel a bit of his pride protesting. “That thing...in the soup...it’s not alive, is it?” Childe looked down onto the “thing” Zhongli was pointing towards with his trembling fingers. “Oh, the octopus (Zhongli shuddered at the mention of the word)? Of course not, ahaha. It’s a specialty from my hometown. I’m sure it won’t taste as bad as you think, you need to get used to this kind of food if you want to have variety in life.”
Zhongli is forgetful.
Strangely enough, he remembers every little detail of the landscapes of Liyue, reaching from Stones Gate to the Harbor city, every little stone and pebble on his journey and seems to be able to retell every event in the history of Liyue. The amount of history the consultant of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor can describe in astounding detail is to be feared.
But oh, how much would he like to forget and erase those experiences from his millenia-old memories. Of course he couldn’t tell Childe the true reason behind his revulsion, but every time the bowels were moved, the slimy, soft limbs slid and sloshed around in the bowl with an ugly, sticky sound and he wrinkled his nose as the memories started to wake again in his mind, reminding him of that...incident thousands of years ago. Compared to that, a fight with the sea deity was an absolute pleasure.
The shrieks of that peculiar creature echoed in his ears, even after he relieved the entire village of those slimy, disgusting beings that crawled into every nook and cranny they could find. If you were lucky, you’d reach into a cupboard to touch their cold, viscous exterior, and if you weren’t so lucky...let’s say that you might’ve ended up missing a finger or two.
The worst part was probably their heavy, nasal breathing and the occasional banshee-like shrieks that were ever so distinguishable when one was trying to sleep. It sounded like a sea creature in distress, outside of their natural environment, the clawed mouth with innumerable teeth opening and closing with a little ‘pop’. Yet they refused to return to the sea...if that was even where they came from.
Rex Lapis, called Morax back then, has lived and fought through hundreds of thousands of wars, a creature like this was like a pebble compared to a mountain. So he agreed to the contract that he, Morax, God of War and Contracts, shall save the people from this unusual predicament. It would go by quickly, a quick purge in every village wouldn’t take long. Or so he thought.
A century had passed, and yet he hadn’t fully cleaned every house of the villages in Liyue. He was exhausted, and the common folk bowed to him, sometimes asked if he wanted to rest; but he declined. As the God of Contracts, he couldn’t possibly break one that he established himself, now could he? He was, however, close, oh so very close to doing so.
“Those fowl creatures just refuse to disappear” “There, there.” “Every time I rip them apart, they just multiply in numbers.” “You can rest a bit now.” “Ahh, Celestia, what calamity thou hast bestowed unto me…”
It was an unusual sight, the folks had to admit. The powerful and mighty Morax, wretched and absolutely ruined, sat, face down on the stone table, beside a young lady in a noble dress. She had hair white as QIngxin and eyes, blue as the Glaze Lilies, her gentle and soft appearance strongly clashing with that of Morax, dark-haired and in full armor, with muscular, strong hands that closely resembled the claws of a dragon. “Guizhong, have you ever been tempted to break a contract?” “Oh, never. I don’t think it really matters; I don’t use contracts to fulfill my will.” Morax looked up from the table, his amber eyes unusually close to tearing up. In all his years of war and bloodshed, Guizhong had never seen that kind of expression. “It has been centuries. Centuries. I still can’t make out heads and tails with this creature…” He slammed his face back onto the table. Guizhong just smiled apologetically. She loved and cared for her best friend and guardian, but the Goddess of Dust just could not grasp why Morax insisted on keeping and establishing the contracts that often led him into predicaments such as these.
Even in the present day, more than 4000 years after Morax finally vanquished all of those bizzare creatures, he winces a bit as Childe puts down the bowl with a hideous slosh. When he looked into those innocent, pleading blue eyes (“Please just try it, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!”), he sighed, defeated.
“Oh Celestia, what calamity thou hast bestowed unto me…”