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At the wake of a god, Hu Tao stands by the edges of an empty casket, watching the people of Liyue come and go in waves of hushed whispers.
They do not speak to her, some don’t even spare her a glance as they walk up to pay their respects. In spaces next to burning joss sticks and incense, she catches the tremble of nervous hands, the quiver of fearful lips, glimpses of wariness woven into disgraceful speculation. It seems, even now, that not many are willing to believe in the death of an archon. That they have witnessed such a feat at all.
They gossip and they theorise in equal parts disbelief and denial, and Hu Tao hums quietly as they pass, still contemplating it all.
She’s never seen a funeral so full of life before.
For a deceased with no family to claim it, Rex Lapis is surely enough among the most mourned of all her clients. For that matter, for a deceased with no body to claim – he certainly seems more present than ever, his name pressed to the tip of everybody’s tongues. The previous director of Wangsheng Parlour had buried many adepti under his oversight. This should be nothing new to Hu Tao, not where the customs are concerned.
That doesn’t ease the strange feeling gnawing at her gut.
Ah, what does she know, anyway?
Gods die all the time, she knows that. In stories, in legend, in quiet affairs kept hush by unprepared rulers, no one stays in this world forever. No one who seeks death out gets quite what they ask for, either. To treat it lightly is a sentence to a fate far worse, a warning carved into her memory from childhood. That those who are meant to die will die.
And those who are meant to live –
Hu Tao suspects being callous with the matter is a fault that even the heavens may fall prey to, once in a while.
Besides, speaking of callousness.
“Not up to any of your playful tricks this time, director?”
The calm cheerfulness in his voice is a mockery of her own, snapping her instantly out of her thoughts. She sees pale skin on a familiar, frail frame before she looks up, that unmistakable green hair befitting the rest of his getup for the day. Gentleness so acute it’s a weapon on its own, the pit in Hu Tao’s stomach only sinks further down. Changsheng silent on his shoulders, appearing wholly uninterested in everything else going on. Baizhu smiles as he greets her, reaching a hand out to be polite.
“How often do we get to meet like this? It seems at times that you are from an entirely different world, how little our paths cross.”
Hu Tao folds her arms, pointedly ignoring the outstretched arm. Eyes the space between his glasses so it looks like she’s maintaining eye contact. “I would rather we keep it that way.”
“You wound me, director.”
She laughs in the face of her own antithesis, puts on a smile of her own to match his.
“Only joking!” Her teeth are far sharper; that she has for reassurance, if nothing else. “I like to keep in contact with all my future clients – wouldn’t want another company snatching you up, now, would I,” she’s been told many times that she talks fast but it’s now that she pays attention to the speed at which she recites her words, like she doesn’t want to give Baizhu a chance to cut in before she’s done. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in one of our new Rex Lapis packages? It’s quite the steal, you know.”
Frustratingly, the physician’s expression remains unreadable, genial. “That’s very sweet of you, director, though I can promise you I won’t be needing it.”
There’s a brief flash in Baizhu’s eye – something darkens, for a moment, daring Hu Tao to pick up on the undertone.
She raises an eyebrow. Ah, so they’re going to talk about it, then.
She traces the corners of Rex Lapis’s coffin with her nails, collecting paint and rust that has begun to scrape off the ceramic. Nervous habits, ah gong used to call it. It’s hard to think of the right words to say, in this place, with so many eyes and so many ears just waiting to catch wind of a conversation they’re not a part of.
She would know.
So she scoffs, “you’re still going on about that stuff?”
“And you’re still just as close-minded as ever, I see.”
Close-minded ?!
“What, like you know better?” Try as she might to maintain an air of friendly banter, distaste slips through to her words easy enough. “With all due respect, xiansheng , all you know is life. You don’t know.”
She’s met with a hiss from Changsheng, which Baizhu spares no effort to address. He waves a hand, straining his voice, “and with all due respect, director, all you know is death. So you’re right, I don’t know. But I know enough.”
They’re really going to argue about it here, then.
“ Xiansheng ,” Hu Tao says darkly, gestures all around them, “look at whose funeral we’re attending. Not even gods can lay claim to eternal life. Why should you think that you can?”
She thinks of Qiqi, ever-trapped in that body of a jiangshi – more dead than alive, in spite of all the adepti’s own efforts. More warning than exemplary study, in Hu Tao’s opinion, though certainly Baizhu doesn’t seem to share the sentiment. It’s almost impressive what some people do, clinging on to dear life. She still can’t quite wrap her head around it.
“Some people,” says Baizhu, “actually enjoy living.”
He says it like he hopes she doesn’t pick up on the quiver in his voice.
She knows pain when she hears it, when she sees it – Baizhu is not a strong man, not in any physical sense of the word. Changsheng, eternal life , weighs heavy on his shoulders, and Hu Tao is almost loath to bask in the irony.
He is a man on the verge of crumbling to dust, and it echoes in the way that he carries himself, here; like every shift of his weight, every movement is a battle against some kind of opposing pressure. For all his confident stance would imply, he is a frail, frail man and it’s no wonder that even Qiqi considers herself stronger than he is. She hadn’t noticed it before. But now, Hu Tao thinks, she understands at last.
“You’re dying,” she says, matter-of-factly, and she cannot tell if the grin that curls into Baizhu’s expression, baring his teeth, is one of amusement or of scorn.
“I am dying,” he confirms – ragged breaths in-between choked out words – and looks down to meet her stare, eyes hollow. “What else is new?”
What is she meant to say? “My, uh, condolences.”
Somehow, something gives her the feeling that joking at a time like this wouldn’t exactly help to lift the mood.
“Tell me something.” Baizhu moves past her to the platform that overlooks the rest of Liyue Harbour, rests his arms on the railings below. He glances behind, “director, have you ever been allowed to live?”
“What kind of question is that?”
He points towards distant figures, blotches of colour against the dull grey streets of Liyue Harbour from where they stand. “See those children, playing by the wharf? Did you ever have the chance to play with them?” A pause, he waits for a response that she doesn’t manage to formulate in time.
“Has there ever been a point in time where you didn’t have a purpose you needed to fulfil?”
She doesn’t budge from her spot, feels the air around them begin to grow warm. She tugs at her vision, draws in a deep breath. “You think my life would be better for it, if there was?”
“Perhaps.” Baizhu doesn’t seem too concerned with the answer, not as much as getting her to consider it at all. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Hu Tao says, “you’re kind of full of shit.”
She isn’t some child – isn’t some naive husk that needs to be told what her life is, and certainly not by a man whose ideals stand on the opposite end to her own. Hu Tao knows her own worth, etched into the marrow of her bones, some people tread paths laid out for them by fate itself. She can find her own happiness in being.
Baizhu laughs, like it disperses any remaining animosity between them to the wind.
And maybe it does, just a little.
She still doesn’t agree. She won’t ever agree, not knowing everything that she knows, having experienced everything that she’s experienced. But Hu Tao thinks, at least, that she can empathise with him a bit better now. That in spite of everything she isn’t, she knows the desperation of a dying man more closely than perhaps she’d like to admit.
So she stands here, a funeral director having a chat with a dying healer, next to the tomb of a fallen god.
She can learn to live with it, for a little while.