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Qiqi sits with her legs hanging off the high stool just behind the counter of Bubu Pharmacy. She swings them lazily, rocking back and forth patiently in tune with the rattling of medicine bottles in the background. She stares blankly at the engravings on the wooden counter in front of her, and it’s only because she’s too petite to see any further from this. Baizhu had told her to wait, to sit— patiently , and not with contempt, regardless of how long he takes—so she must, else another day would pass without an apple for dinner.
In a matter of seconds, a pungent stench is released into the air as a medicine bottle is opened. Baizhu enters the main room, shaking a glass vial—within which is a strange concoction, and the beads of the hanging curtains clatter against each other, welcoming him in the room. Qiqi retches, pressing her hand against her mouth as her nose catches a whiff of a fruit, one whose name she does not remember, but detests so much.
“Qiqi sad,” she says out loud, eyes glassy as the smell leaves her skin burning with reddened scars.
“Qiqi doesn’t like.”
The pharmacist turns his head, in unison with the pale white snake draped around his shoulders. He makes a cold expression, one lacking any emotion, and as he pushes his glasses onto his nose bridge—any hint of sternness that Qiqi must’ve seen is concealed under the cover of a wide, patronising grin. He comes closer, the open vial still in his hands and the smell getting stronger with his approach. Qiqi shakes her legs restlessly with his approach till the stench is too much and she slides off the stool, hiding behind the counter.
“Qiqi doesn’t like,” she repeats and Baizhu pauses.
Seemingly grimacing under his breath, he presses the medicine bottle down against the counter and crouches down to meet her eye-level.
Slowly, he reaches his hands forward for her face but Qiqi doesn’t come closer. She presses her hands against her chest, staring at Baizhu with what may be fear. His hands halt a short distance away from her, and Baizhu tilts his head, as if to ask for his little apprentice to come forward at her own will. “Qiqi doesn’t like,” she mumbles, shaking her head in defiance. It’s at this point when she’s pulled forward by her nimble hands and a hand, twice the size of her face, wraps around the curve of her cheek.
"Qiqi doesn’t like what?" he asks with a voice so gentle, that Qiqi begins to forget why she’d been so scared of him. She lowers her gaze, no longer trying to struggle out of his grip. Within her chest, she cannot find her heart, and it seemingly gets colder with a feeling of gloom as she welcomes his touch. Baizhu ruffles Qiqi’s hair, chuckling in approval to her obedience. Moments later, he requests, “Baizhu cares for Qiqi most. Will Qiqi go to Aozhang to fetch more herbs?”
Qiqi looks up at Baizhu slowly before lowering her gaze once more, her grip tightening around the fabric of her dress, till even silk feels rough against her palm. She searches for even an ounce of care in his voice, any consideration for her feelings, and even as she presses her fist over her heart, she fails to ignite any emotion in response to his request. Qiqi makes a glum expression, and she flinches and Baizhu tightens his grip around her shoulders. His cold voice echoes in her ears, sending a shudder down her petite frame till she finally nods. “Baizhu- xiansheng remembers what today is?” she looks up earnestly, allowing a stray ember to ignite an experimental flame of hope in her heart.
Baizhu shifts his fingers to his chin, wrapping them around it in thought. He hums, and with every second that passes, Qiqi feels the non-existent hope diminish, drowning her heart in sorrow. Baizhu perks up all of a sudden, straightening his back in realisation. The young girl’s eyes widen only briefly, a sign of her excitement. Then, with a wide grin, the cold-hearted pharmacist raises his arms mid-air and exclaims, “Ah yes! I was meant to test out my new elixir today!”
As he turns away, Qiqi grips onto his sleeve. With a scowl on her face, she continues to pull his sleeve till he looks at her again. “Qiqi… Qiqi’s birthday today,” she mumbles sadly, forcing a tiny smile in hopes of convincing the latter to spend the day with her instead. Baizhu huffs in annoyance, yanking his hand away. Qiqi recoils, forced to retract her hands as she raises her head to stare at the man, now towering over her. Baizhu rubs the back of his head awkwardly, though not even for a second, does he have any guilt in his eyes.
Then, he realises there’s no point pretending to be a good person. Nonchalant, he shrugs. “Sorry, I’ll be busy today. Maybe find someone else to play with you, Qiqi,” Baizhu reminds, not looking back even once to acknowledge the poor girl he’s leaving behind. He raises his hand in goodbye, leaving his half-open elixir on the counter table, leaving the room with the sickening stench and a terrible, terrible feeling at the pit of Qiqi’s stomach. “Make sure to collect all the herbs!” she hears in the distance.
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Qiqi wills herself to move, beckoning the strength from every fibre of her muscles to force herself to move step by step, heaving herself up to the unreachable peaks of Mount Aozhang under the sweltering heat. Her limbs ache, and it doesn’t help that her satchel leaves her shoulders sore from its weight. Baizhu must have known that it would be this hot—knowing the doctor himself would never let take the initiative to go out on a day so warm, where he’d be complaining for hours about how his clothes are wet and sticky from sweat. Qiqi’s clothes cling to her, and even with her body normally in irregularly cold temperatures, she doesn’t feel any better than a human would in such a misfortunate situation.
Around spring, is when Bubu Pharmacy has its highest volume of customers. Baizhu isn’t a man who likes to plan ahead, and completes tasks as they come to him—so when he begins testing out new medicinal potions, it’s when Liyue is most warm and most busy, so Qiqi should consider her journey a means of rest. She should be grateful that she’s away from Liyue’s flood of locals, where she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the hundreds of unfamiliar faces on top of the ones of her friends that she can’t remember.
Springtime is when herbs grow most freely and in abundance, and when most medications can be brewed. The people of Liyue stock up on supplements early before the humid summer brings the yearly wave of tropical diseases, and Baizhu likes to capitalise off these strangers that trust him so blindly. How would they feel if they knew the medicines they consume come from the hard work of a young girl who can barely run on two feet when she’s tired, much less climb mountains on days that should have been special . Qiqi misses a step and her foot slides off the slippery edge of the cliff. She gulps, and other than a flutter in her stomach, she feels nothing else except a feeling of loyalty shunning her traitorous thoughts about Baizhu.
It must be his good fortune that he stumbled across Qiqi one cold winter, when he had to do all the hard work and scavenging for himself. Doctor Baizhu, admittedly, is a man who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Even so, with his charming smile and fresh looks, he strikes to the public as a people pleaser, one whose morally-questionable ways are never doubted. Or, it may be that Qiqi was the one that has been fortunate enough to find a home, where she has a roof to sleep under on most nights and at least a meal every day. It’s what he tells her, that she’s fortunate to have met him.
Qiqi winces as she recalls her interactions with Baizhu. It’s something she absolutely detests thinking about, the way he caresses her insincerely and takes her for a fool. She pulls herself up with as much strength she can muster in her arms, but they fail her and the grip of her fingers loosen against the cliff. “Qiqi... want to climb…” she grimaces, a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead and into the corner of her eye. With one last ounce of strength, she climbs, and her fingers feel grass where they rest next. Qiqi coughs up as she crawls on solid ground, palms pressed on the ground. “Alive.”
She drops her bag against the ground, and falls flat on her back where she stares aimlessly at the vast sky above her. Working under the hot sun shouldn’t be a problem for a zombie such as herself, however, there was only so much her little body could do. Her chest rises and falls, getting heavier with each movement till even her eyes come to a close.
And suddenly, she remembers Baizhu, the reason she was out here in the first place. She jolts awake and looks around her, trying to remember if there was anything else he asked for. She digs through her bag, sorting through the bundles of Qingxins, Violetgrass, Mint and other herbs. Her fingers stop and she freezes. She hears Baizhu’s voice at the back of her mind but it’s too soft, too inaudible, for her to decipher any word. “Qiqi cannot remember.”
She flinches.
Baizhu’s loud voice echoes through her mind in memory, bringing back memories of the last time she failed to adhere to her given instructions. Vaguely, she sees a foggy image of Baizhu slamming his fist against the counter and throwing his stacks of paper onto the floor.
(“You know I cannot tolerate it when people don’t follow my simple instructions, right?” Baizhu bellowed back then, his deadly, furious eyes boring into hers. “Didn’t I tell you how much I needed the slime condensates for this new mixture?!”
Qiqi’s pupils dilated in fear as Baizhu scrambled through the room, shoving glass bottles off the shelves as he rampaged around his own store. He yanked out bundles of herbs that Qiqi had spent weeks picking out carefully, choosing only the best ones to fit his taste, and undid them all, crushing them under his feet. He removed drawers off their hinges and broke into cabinets in hopes of finding spare material, only for his rummaging to end in futility.
“Qiqi couldn’t remember,” was Qiqi’s excuse, except it was the truth. And yet, her innocent truth did not gain her mercy and she awoke the next morning with cuts on her withering skin and a broken shop for her to fix in an hour before its opening an hour later.)
“Little Qiqi,” a gentle voice calls out to Qiqi from behind, slowly wrapping her shoulders in a warm embrace. Another tear slips off her eyelid, merging with the others that have been streaming down her cheek. The young girl turns her head, stifling a sniffle and when she returns to her mind, she finds herself fallen to her knees. Her flowers have rolled out of the satchel, lying at the very edge of the cliff where they could easily fall and waste her day’s worth of effort. Qiqi doesn’t reach for them, nevertheless.
She hangs her head low in embarrassment, “Qiqi still cannot remember.”
“Little Qiqi, why are you so sad?” the voice questions, gentle like Aozhang’s breeze and multi-coloured, cascading leaves. Qiqi finds it difficult to turn her head fully, and she starts to feel her hands tremble in fear at the possibility of being approached by an enemy who wants to fight her. She gulps, and once she manages enough courage, she turns her whole body. Then, what follows, is an immediate reaction which happens within the span of a second. Something clicks, and Qiqi gasps, feeling warmth seep in through the open cuts on her chest. Her heart grows a little bigger and a tear slips under her dress and pauses over her heart. “I got a feeling little Qiqi wasn’t feeling her best,” Ganyu reaches a hand forward.
Qiqi steps forward, leaning her head down to press against Ganyu’s hand. She rubs her hand against her moist face, and when she pulls it away, she notices a clear liquid, glimmering under the sunlight. She must have been too cold already to have felt anything different. The adeptus rubs her thumb against the young girl’s face, wiping away her tears before slowly raising it to her hair, pulling out weeds and stray flowers intertwined between locks of her hair. “Cocogoat. Cocogoat," Qiqi calls out, blinking repeatedly.
Ganyu sits on the ground, tapping her hand against her lap. She leads Qiqi down gently with her hand, guiding her to sit beside her. The younger girl obliges and plops down onto the ground, leaning closely against the adeptus with an expression of bliss on her face. Seconds later, however, she starts to kneel, rolling over onto both her knees. She stretches both arms into the air, making grabby hands in an attempt to pat Ganyu’s horns. In a soft voice, she grumbles, “Qiqi like Cocogoat.”
“My horns..." Ganyu hesitates at first, a little embarrassed. Alas, when she looks into Qiqi’s eyes, she can’t bring herself to refuse. She lowers her head, tilting it down to allow easier reach. I’ll make an exception for Qiqi,” she says instead. Qiqi strokes the adeptus’ curled horns, giggling with such innocence that it melts the latter’s heart. When she’s finally content, she nuzzles against Ganyu’s lap properly, pressing her head against her chest. In Qiqi’s immediate view is her satchel which has been lying open on the ground, and the bundle of Violetgrass at the verge of falling; she frowns.
In a sad voice, she mutters, “Baizhu will be angry.”
“Qiqi doesn’t like,” Qiqi starts again, but she cannot complete her sentence. But she cannot complain either, because this is as happy as she can let herself be. In Ganyu’s arms, she feels the kind of warmth that she hasn’t felt in years, the slow, gentle fire of Ganyu’s touch melting the cage of ice that had left poor Qiqi fettered down to a life of hopelessness. She had never once felt complete, or fulfilled in her life, and it had gotten worse with losing the touch of the adeptus who had resurrected her after her death. Ganyu hums slowly, cupping her hand over Qiqi’s eyes, forcing her to close her eyes.
“Today is Qiqi’s special day.”
“Remember? Cocogoat remembers?” Qiqi sits up quickly, holding Ganyu’s hands. Childish innocence swims in her eyes like the fish dancing in the nearby pond, splashing water with their tails. In this moment, a breeze passes and the golden oaks shadowing them send a flurry of leaves blowing towards them. A stray Qingxin in the breeze flutters by them, flying over their heads and the bundle of flowers at the edge of the cliff tips over a little more, not falling still. Qiqi looks up in awe. Mount Aozhang, after all, is the prettiest in spring.
“I wouldn’t forget. It is an adeptus’ responsibility to remember,” Ganyu responds with a smile. But for the thousandth time, the unbearable burden of responsibility wears itself down on Qiqi’s shoulders and she feels the pained urge in her chest to reach out for the flowers before they fall off. She crawls forward, wrapping her arms around the bundle of herbs and her vision blurs. Curling her free hand around the satchel, she then presses her things against her body and falls back onto her rear in exhaustion.
“Qiqi must remember and find all the herbs. Qiqi doesn’t want to go.”
“For now, can’t Qiqi rest?”
And surely so, Qiqi is tired. Exhausted, even. Sick of having to live her life indebted to someone else, someone who would never treat her right even with the little that she expected. But she’s also scared. There is always a fear that will stay looming that she will, one day, be kicked out, abandoned, left to rot. To save herself, she must learn to be good.
The feeling of Ganyu’s arms around her shoulders break Qiqi out of her worry spell. Qiqi, once again, finds herself melting back into the arms of the adeptus. “Qiqi doesn’t need to grow so quickly. Qiqi has all the time in the world. In fact, I can find all the flowers that you need. But for now, rest, Qiqi. Today is for you,” she coos, stroking her hand through the younger girl’s hair. For once, Qiqi lets herself fall back, for good this time. She doesn’t know where it comes from, but looking up at the azure above, she laughs.
She points at the sun, and then oddly-shaped clouds and even sweet flowers in the distance and laughs like she hasn’t in a hundred years.
If Qiqi could choose to freeze time, it would be so she can live in her moment, here, with Cocogoat who brings her back home.
Xiao yi xiao, shi nian shao. Laughing makes you ten years younger.