Chapter Text
The dark…. closing in…. suffocating… that awful smell… rustic and stagnant… even with his eyes closed he could see it. The corpses. Thousands upon thousands of corpses, misshapen and battered from the beating they had taken before their end. From somewhere, there was a muffled sound of screaming, endless and tortuous. And the blood… the blood… .
“ Stop… please… ”
It wasn’t until the words had been ‘spoken’ that he realised, he wasn’t actually speaking at all. The blood was in his mouth, his throat, choking him, draining the life out of him. “Hgnrhrhrn…” his hands grasped desperately for help, something, like it would do any good, as if it would save him. Blood bubbled up into the abyss every time his mouth opened, drowning him ever faster.
The light, I …. I can see it…
His voice rang through his ears, but it resonated in a muffled way, the blood clogging his ears, his sight, wavering. At this point all he could see was red, just red, his already limited vision growing increasingly more blurry. Black pulses soon followed, frequent and seemingly endless. Was this the end?
Even after thinking it, he knew it wasn’t true.
You aren’t worthy enough to receive an end….
Xiao could vaguely feel the pull of taught strings on his arms and legs. Like a puppet. That’s what he was, nothing more than a puppet.
He slowly closed his eyes in acceptance. I’m never escaping this… he thought, the words, even in his mind, were nothing more than a whisper. I don’t even know why I had ever thought I would…
The strings dug into his flesh but drew no blood. Xiao opened his eyes once more only to be met with darkness again, the endless void where no sound nor light escaped. At least … he thought it’s silence .
But it was short lived.
“Xiao!!!” A voice pierced through the emptiness. His head snapped up. Xiao recognized that voice.
He slowly looked up towards the sound, simultaneously gathering his surroundings. The blood was gone, the screaming diminished. He was….
He was back in Liyue.
Standing above him was a face he knew well, connected to a person that was bending down to his level, showing both concern and curiosity…. But Xiao was still a little disoriented. Instead of speaking to his awakener, he looked briefly around to gain his bearings.
He hadn’t even realized it, but he had been kneeling on the ground, doubled over himself. His scalp hurt, and his fingers stung under his gloves, dark maroon bleeding through the blue fabric.
It seemed that he had been clawing at the ground and his hair while under his trance…. the spells of pain and agony that came so frequently to him that they were almost routine. Almost.
Because even so, even after all those many years, the pain never got any better. Even after countless thousands of years it never ceased. This was Xiao’s reality. His punishment.
Now able to think more clearly, Xiao grit his teeth, annoyance replacing the disassociation that had plagued his face. People were staring. Of course they were, he looked like a madman out here in the middle of the streets… this was why he stayed away from people, to keep them from seeing him like this, and-
“Hu Tao.” His voice had come out as more of a growl, unintentionally, and he realised that his throat was horribly sore, to the point where it was an ordeal to speak without being put into immense pain. “Hu Tao, you…-” He was cut off as the girl, Hu Tao, hit him over the head with a chopping motion, her bronze eyes twinkling mischievously. “Aiya, you had me worried there for a moment!” She huffed, putting a hand on her hip. Xiao put a hand on his head, rubbing the spot where she had hit him, now even more sore than before.
Hu Tao was examining her black nails with a smirk as she gave him a sideways look. “You better get up before people start talking…” She said in a low tone. “Someone might call the millelith on you, and then I’ll have to play a nasty prank on them to get them away!” Even though the words she said implied that playing a prank on them was something that she did not want to do, the grin on her face and the high pitched giggle she gave afterward said otherwise.
Xiao rolled his eyes, staring at the ground as he stood up slowly. “You would like that…” He mumbled. He held back a wince as his head pounded, pressing his hand to his head. I need to get out of here …. He thought to himself, swiftly taking a glance around to see if there was any place he could slip off too. No. There were too many people…. ghgh…. Xiao shook his head in annoyance.
He knew that he could just disappear right there on the spot, but he had already made a big enough scene and made a fool of himself, all he wanted now was to get everyone’s eyes off of him. Stop staring, please…. he pleaded silently.
Xiao glanced over at Hu Tao again. A little ghost was floating around her shoulders leisurely, and Hu Tao was smiling as she twirled it around her fingers. She teased it as it tried to escape, but it was no use, she somehow had it trapped between her fingers. It’s only escape was when she let it go and sent it flying. He watched as she giggled, waving to the spirit as it whizzed off with that ever mischievous smile of hers.
Hu Tao… that girl….
Xiao had known her for a while now and yet… he still couldn’t fully grasp what her deal was. The 77th director of the funeral palor, exposed to death and the mysteries of the afterlife at a young age and yet… by looking at her you would never know. It was so strange. Someone who deals with things that heavy and existential shouldn’t smile like she does…. In fact, Xiao didn’t think he had ever seen her genuinely frown one single time. It was always just a joke, or her trying to pout that cute face of hers to bribe her ‘customers’ to buy a membership to the parlor.
He just didn’t get it. He wished he could be as carefree and unburdened as she was. He craved that kind of freedom, even a touch of it… why couldn’t he have it too? Why did he have to suffer while everyone else was able to roam free?
These thoughts plagued him constantly. He knew they were wrong. Of course he did. He wished that he didn’t think about them, that he could just accept his fate quietly. Those people couldn’t choose how their lives played out, after all. But after thousands of years… he still could not understand why, why must he suffer?
And that was where Hu Tao came in, why she puzzled him so much. Unlike so many of the other people who lived their lives happily, there was something about her that was different, unlike the other mortals that he had met. Even though she always had a big bright smile on her face, Xiao could always feel there was something… off about her. Behind her eyes, sometimes he could catch a glimpse of something different, something that she was keeping hidden to herself, far away in the depths of her soul that she kept locked away from everyone.
Xiao knew that look. He’d seen it many times before. In himself.