Work Text:
It is raining in Liyue Harbor.
This is not an uncommon occurrence, especially given the time of year. It is late fall, with a bite to the air and winds strong enough to make the papers tacked to noticeboards tear free and the gingko leaves to swirl in the air and collect in the edges of the streets. Rain is expected, but it usually occurs in the form of light showers during the day followed by a blue-gray cloud cover that never quite dissipates.
This storm is not one of those. Thunder booms, rattling windowpanes and causing young children to clap their hands over their ears even though they are safe inside their homes. The wind is not violent, but the rain is deafening, drumming against tiled roofs and splashing against stone-paved streets. On the noticeboards, the ink on the signs has run, neat characters rendered unrecognizable by rivulets of inky water running down the papers like tear tracks.
Liyue’s citizens cannot help but remember the last time it rained like this.
It isn’t the same, they tell each other, attempting to reassure themselves in the process. That will never happen again.
Only a few know what truly happened that night, but the rest know enough. Everyone saw the many-headed dragon rise from the ocean, saw the Tianquan’s pride and joy slam into it and shatter with a great explosion of light and sound. The rain had been deafening that night too, they think. The seas had been choppy, waves roaring and washing over the docks. The water that had sustained the land of stone for millenia had turned against it.
So can anyone truly blame them for being a bit too cautious about venturing outside, for being a bit too apprehensive when thunder rumbles far overhead?
Please, Lord of Geo, a few of them pray silently. Please see us safely through this. Not like then. Never like then.
Even though you are gone now. Please.
Hu Tao sighs and rests her chin in her hands, staring out through the screen of the funeral parlor’s front window at the blurry street beyond, defined by its shadows more than its shapes in the obscuring rainfall. She can hear rain drumming against the roof, but there are enough floors above the funeral parlor’s foyer that the sound is muffled to a dull patter. She, of course, remembers the last storm like this, but it doesn’t bother her in the slightest. They got through that, didn’t they? Even without Rex Lapis’ help. And this rain is just passing through—it’ll be gone completely in a few days, and then she can go cover her shoes in mud and pick the last of the silk flowers before they all die in the winter. She isn’t worried about anything. Really, she isn’t.
She decides watching the rain would be fun—maybe she could find poetry in the way water drips down extinguished lanterns and makes little rivers in the streets, the gingko leaves picked up and carried along like tiny dragon boats. A paper screen prevents her from seeing anything in detail, and even though it is beautiful, adorned with flowers and clouds and dragons, Hu Tao resents it a bit. She wants to watch the rain, she really does. What would happen if she just...removed the screen?
She glances over her shoulder. Seated on an intricately carved wooden chair is Zhongli, his eyes closed and face impassive, almost meditative. He hasn’t moved in the past half hour, though she’s known him long enough to know he isn’t asleep. If she’s quiet, maybe-
“Do not deface that screen, Hu Tao.”
He speaks without opening his eyes. Hu Tao freezes, hand halfway to the bottom of the screen, itching to pry it away from the window. She scowls. “I’m not defacing it. I wasn’t even touching it.”
“You were about to.”
Dammit. How can he even see without opening his eyes? That’s kinda creepy, and when Hu Tao, 77th director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor says something is “kinda creepy”, it’s definitely enough to alarm any sane person.
Hu Tao sticks out her tongue and turns to face Zhongli, swinging her legs around the cushioned bench beneath the window and kicking them idly. The bench is her favorite place in the parlor, though its cushion has been worn flat almost to the point of discomfort from her long days of repose there over eighteen years of life. “No, I wasn’t. I would never deface the property of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Which I am the owner of. Whose property I am the owner of.”
Zhongli finally opens his eyes. They’re different from anyone else’s that she’s seen, and even though Hu Tao knows getting a vision changes people’s features a bit and their eyes in particular, his don’t seem...natural, somehow. She’s seen clients be either absolutely spellbound or sent running by just a glance from those amber-gold eyes. Hu Tao, of course, is immune to all of his looks, particularly those of disapproval (the ones she gets most often), having grown up in the parlor with Zhongli as a sort of second guardian along with her grandfather. She’s drawn mustaches on his face with a calligraphy brush, hidden his hairpins under cushions, and filled his room with dozens of vases of silk flowers. He’s practically a brother to her. Or a father, or even a grandfather. She’s not really sure, and the specifics don’t matter.
Hu Tao would never let him know that, of course. She rarely confides in him, never listens whenever he tries to lecture her, and does her utmost to make him think she regards him as one of her employees whose only true virtue is his indifference to her countless pranks.
“That screen was crafted under the rule of Tianquan Li Shen,” he says slowly, voice resonating despite the thrum of rain. “It’s at least seventy years old. The loong dragon detailing is particularly indicative of its period, and the glaze lilies likely took a professional craftsman months to fully color.”
“Really?” Hu Tao says, eyes wide in mock surprise. She takes an exaggerated glance back at the screen. “And it doesn’t look a day over thirty.”
Zhongli just looks at her, eyes tired.
“You know,” Hu Tao says, immediately changing the subject as a new thought occurs, “If it’s raining in Qingce Village, too, aren’t all their fields going to flood? They have that big river, and practically their only source of income is the terrace fields. Liyue Harbor has all the canals and stuff, but Qingce doesn’t. What’ll happen there, do you think?” She cocks her head to the side, resisting the habitual urge to move her hand to steady her hat even though she can see it hanging on the stand by the door, along with her and Zhongli’s coats. “Think there’ll be casualties?”
It’s not like Hu Tao wants anyone to die, not really, not at all. She just accepts the possibility of death better than others, and that throws a lot of people off. Not that she cares, or anything.
Zhongli doesn’t take long to respond. “Qingce Village has a water-draining system, though it’s less advanced than Liyue Harbor’s. A system of underground canals runs beneath their fields, dug by the village’s past residents. They have different entry points, but none are very long, and they all empty out into nearby waterfalls. Maintenance on the canals occurs every few years, but the qualities of the earth they are dug into make pipes and supports unneeded. And if those fail, the village has several warehouses positioned at the village’s highest points that are designated as storm shelters.”
“Yeah, but the entire population is, like, old people and little kids that talk like old people,” Hu Tao points out, tilting her head to the side. The pieces of her bangs she keeps long tickle her neck. “What if they can’t make it to the shelters in time?”
Zhongli’s unnatural eyes are unreadable. “You’d be surprised to see what humans are capable of under extreme duress. Stone erodes and breaks, but humans bend and run and make sure everyone else is following them.”
Hu Tao blows a raspberry instead of responding immediately. Zhongli constantly makes these rock-centric analogies—Liyue is the city of stone, yes, but at times it feels over the top. “Rocks can’t drown, though.”
Zhongli just raises his eyebrows a degree and looks past her, at the screen she had been about to remove just a few minutes earlier. He does that too much; he just decides not to answer her. It’s annoying, especially when he just responds after half an hour of silence like the conversation hadn’t been dropped already. Whenever he does that, she reprimands him for it because she’s still his boss even though he’s probably, like, way older and he had to keep up form and at least pretend to be a well-adjusted member of society and that does not constitute continuing forgotten conversations at random.
But whenever she tells him that, he just looks at her, seeming almost genuinely confused, like he hadn’t even realized his mistake. Like his plane of reality is just slightly different than the rest of the world’s.
Hu Tao doesn’t know his exact age, but she still knows he’s too young for something like that to be done by natural causes.
Well. It isn’t her problem. She’s never been able to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the living, anyway.
“Say, Zhongli,” Hu Tao says, flopping down onto the bench and letting her arms dangle off the sides, “isn’t there that big water dragon right next to Qingce Village? It draws power from the rivers and lakes, right? Won’t it get, I dunno, bigger and scarier when the water levels rise?”
Zhongli tilts his head to the side a degree. “Do you mean the Oceanid?”
“Yeah, the Oceanid.” Hu Tao stretches her fingers down to touch the floor and clicks her black-painted nails against the boards. “Chongyun—you know Chongyun, right? Yeah, you do—told me a little while back that he once fought it along with one of his cousins as part of his training. When he was, like, thirteen. Kinda crazy, but that’s how the Chonghua Clan has trained their exorcists for dozens of years, so y’know. Anyway, he told me he and Shuilian—his cousin, who was maybe a couple years older, I think—nearly died fighting it because it kept forming the water into these crazy mimic monsters, like those yaoguai in folktales used to scare little kids. He said his cryo vision was the only thing that saved him, and he kept freezing all the monsters so his cousin could actually do some damage on them, ’cause his greatsword fell in the water and he thought he was gonna die the entire time.” She glances over at Zhongli. “So. Do you think it could gain power from all the rain? ’Cause if it did, that’d be super bad news.”
Zhongli takes a while to respond, his gaze distant. “No, I don’t believe so,” he says slowly. “The Oceanid can survive in any body of water in Liyue, but can only mold the water in its sacred lake, so that is where it chooses to stay. And any fresh water falling into the lake is not sacred, so it would not be able to be used and will eventually evaporate. Sacred water, however, remains in its liquid form indefinitely in the area it originated from.”
Hu Tao taps her chin. “How does water become sacred, though?” she muses.
Zhongli clears his throat. “Sanctifying bodies of water is a storied practice dating back thousands of years, predating even the Archon War-”
“Sorry, Zhongli, but I’m gonna have to decline listening to that particular tidbit of information,” Hu Tao interrupts hurriedly. It’s not that she dislikes Zhongli’s penchant for sharing his veritable library of knowledge in the form of long spiels at a moment’s notice, not really. Most of her knowledge of Liyue’s old traditions and the Harbor’s past have come from him, in the form of late-night stories told over candlelight. She just wishes he could get to the point faster, but he never does. “Not that I don’t like your stories, they’re all really interesting.”
Zhongli inclines his head in acquiescence. “Another time, then.”
Silence falls between them again, the patter of rain outside merely a dull murmur.
To Hu Tao’s surprise, it is Zhongli who breaks it after a long pause. “Hu Tao, you do know of the Oceanid’s origins, yes?” He’s always pronounced her name slightly differently than how everyone else does, with just a bit more inflection than normal. Hu Tao thinks it’s how her name is pronounced in Liyue’s original dialect or something. She’s tried replicating it to herself, as quietly as possible of course, but she’s never managed to pronounce it exactly as he does.
Maybe she’ll ask him about it one day.
Hu Tao quirks her mouth to the side. “Yeah, it was one of the granny’s favorite stories to tell at my old school, the one that wouldn’t stop talking about the glory of Rex Lapis. I think I told you about her? Fengye-Lǎoshī . Her. She told us about how way back when, Qingce Village started using this adepti dust stuff to fertilize their crops—don’t look at me like that, it was really unclear—even though Rex Lapis said it was a bad idea and they shouldn’t do it because it was disgraceful to the adepti. Then it rained a lot, and all the magic adepti fertilizer flowed into the rivers and got swept into a lake. Then it got corrupted—I forget how—and formed into a big water dragon called the Oceanid. The Oceanid knew nothing except its hatred for humans and it started terrorizing the village, leveling houses, drowning people, submerging the rice fields, stuff like that.”
She pauses and studies Zhongli’s reaction. He has a curious expression on his face, like he’s simultaneously recalling something and restraining himself from correcting her. Weird. “So then Rex Lapis, who was wandering the earth at the time, noticed the disturbance in the ley lines or something and turned into his dragon form and flew over there as fast as he could. And even though it was the humans’ fault that the Oceanid was created, and even though he had warned them about the dangers of adepti fertilizer—never really got that part, to be honest—he fought the water dragon and subdued it, and then banished it into the depths of the lake from which it was born. Then he helped Qingce’s citizens rebuild all the houses and hold ceremonies for the dead people because he’s the best ever and we should all go make offerings to Rex Lapis right now.” She spread her arms dramatically. “And that is the story of the Oceanid, according to one worryingly devout primary school teacher.”
After a brief pause, Zhongli shakes his head and smoothes the odd expression from his face. “Well. I had not heard that particular retelling. Thank you, Hu Tao.”
“If you’re saying it’s wrong, it probably is,” Hu Tao sighs, watching drops of rain trickle down the windowpane, forming together and breaking apart at will. “Everything I learned from Fengye-Lǎoshī—everything I learned from school in general, really—was about how Rex Lapis is so amazing, and how by extension Liyue is amazing, and why Liyue Harbor by extended extension is the best place ever, no questions asked. Hell, if I didn’t have you telling me all about Mondstadt’s wine trade and Inazuma’s different Commissions growing up, I might have even believed it.”
Zhongli smiles slightly. “I’m glad my role in your education was appreciated, Hu Tao.”
Nope, too familiar, she needs to insult him now. “The length of your lectures hasn’t changed, though.”
This just causes his smile to deepen a bit. “Indeed. But I get the point across, do I not?”
“After half an hour, yeah, maybe.”
“I doubt I’ve ever talked for that long. At least in one sitting.”
“You talked for forty-five minutes about the qualities of the huangjiu you were drinking just yesterday.” Which was paid for with her money, incidentally.
“Well, perhaps that huangjiu was particularly noteworthy.”
Did he make a joke? Hu Tao stares. Zhongli’s face is completely impassive, but she thinks there might be a twinkle in his amber eyes. Too familiar, too familiar. She needs to change the subject. “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I wouldn’t know because you don’t let me drink. ” She narrows her eyes at him. “Even though I’m four whole months past the drinking age.”
Zhongli raises an eyebrow. “Well, how much do your friends drink?”
Hu Tao begins ticking them off her fingers. “Chef Mao lets Xiangling have rice wine every other day, and huangjiu on weekends. Xingqiu gets to drink all kinds of fancy stuff at the dinner parties his family makes him go to, and he doesn’t let us forget it. Chongyun can’t have alcohol, but that’s only ’cause of his condition, which I do not have. Yun Jin and Xinyan both go to bars sometimes after their performances and get a glass or two, I’ve seen them going together. And Yanfei—well, Yanfei’s an adeptus, so she does what she wants, I guess.” She pauses. Actually, maybe Yanfei wasn’t the best example, because she’s well past the drinking age, probably technically older than Zhongli. Maybe, maybe not.
Zhongli steeples his fingers on his knees, considering her. “Tell me, Hu Tao, why are you so keen on drinking?”
That…wasn’t what she was expecting, but she has an answer all the same. “’Cause I just want to know what it’s like. It’s something I want to experience, like scaling one of the pillar mountains in Jueyun Karst or finding that floating pagoda I read about once, the one that’s suspended by plaustrite. And, I dunno, there’s a market for it, like with bars and stuff, so it must be fun.” Hu Tao lives for the things she loves, both sacred traditions and new experiences with varying levels of safety. Zhongli seems to live in the past more than the present, always wary of letting her do things that she hasn’t done before. She can’t understand it. Can’t understand him.
A slow blink from her companion. “Interesting,” he murmurs. “You don’t seek the alcohol itself, just the fact that it is divergent from your current experience?” He looks oddly thoughtful, like he’s picking apart her words like she were one of Liyue’s great dead philosophers.
Hu Tao nods. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”
Zhongli doesn’t respond, and they lapse into silence once more. Hu Tao sits up on her bench and rubs her lower back, stretching one arm and then the other. Her posture is getting worse with every passing day, she knows—after he caught her curled into a ball on the floor, knees to her chest with the book she was reading tucked between her feet, Zhongli has told her that her spirit will become one of the ghosts with crooked backs that wander Wuwang Hill with a shuffling, shambling gait, unable to walk properly. She had told him she had never seen such ghosts so they didn’t exist so her back would be perfectly fine in the afterlife, and he had just sighed and brought her a chair.
“Would you like to know the true story of the Oceanid, Hu Tao?”
Hu Tao blinks and looks up. Zhongli is staring at his hands clasped firmly in his lap, the wide rings on his thumbs gleaming in the lamplight. She sighs to herself—now, apparently, is one of the times where Zhongli randomly continues previous conversations with no warning. She would reprimand him for it, but she’s intrigued; Zhongli has told her the “true” versions of legends before, always involving much more bloodshed than the ones she was told at school, and she would always gleefully relate them to her friends and classmates with hand gestures and sound effects to match. Xiangling only recently admitted to her that she couldn’t bring herself to eat eel for a month after Hu Tao told her of the wriggling, slimy sea creatures that Rex Lapis had to exterminate hundreds of years ago, which had been one of Zhongli’s more memorable stories.
“Indeed I would,” Hu Tao says conversationally, drawing a knee to her chest and resting her chin on it, staring expectantly across the room at Zhongli. This will be interesting, she’s certain of it. Maybe it’ll be sufficiently gory to tell Xingqiu and Chongyun the next time she sees them at Wanmin Restaurant.
Zhongli doesn’t lift his gaze to meet hers, continuing to stare down at his gloved hands. “Firstly, while your teacher likely had good intentions and the version of the myth she told you was one she herself had been taught years previously, nearly every facet of it is incorrect. The Oceanid was not caused by ‘adepti fertilizer’, as you so eloquently put it, and…” he trails off, then shakes his head slightly and continues. “…Rex Lapis was not a paragon of virtue. Indeed, he was the one who created the Oceanid in the first place.”
Hu Tao’s eyes are already wide. Oh, this would definitely be interesting. It’s not like she doesn’t know that Rex Lapis didn’t always make the right decisions for his people, not really, not at all—Zhongli’s stories have already firmly driven any unconditional worship from her. But she’s never once been told of a time when he was actively malevolent.
“The people of Qingce Village once wanted to expand their city into Liyue’s center of commerce, and by extension, a capital city,” Zhongli continues. “They had extensive fields and an almost year-round growing period, and a number of rivers and lakes that would allow ships easy access to it.”
“But they have all the waterfalls and stuff,” Hu Tao interjects, confused. “Ships can’t go over those, right?” Zhongli himself had told her that before, saying that was the exact reason why Qingce Village was unable to grow into anything larger or more prosperous than a town.
“The topography was different at this point in time, and I’ll address that later,” Zhongli responds patiently. “The people of Qingce began building great docks and bridges without consulting Rex Lapis or any of the adepti that oversaw the land at the time, firm in their belief that humanity could succeed and prosper without any divine assistance or approval. Rex Lapis…” He pauses again. “When Rex Lapis learned of this, he construed the acts of the villagers as unforgivable hubris. How could they think of themselves as independent from their patron god that had blessed them and the land they lived on?
“So, blinded by indignation and what he believed to be righteous rage, he descended upon Qingce Village and created the Oceanid from the sacred water in a nearby lake, which he himself had sanctified. Then, he corrupted it and taught it to hate humanity, and set it loose on Qingce Village’s innocent citizens.”
He says this all in such a measured tone, the deep timbre of his voice never wavering, so it takes a few seconds for this statement to register in Hu Tao’s mind. She has to consciously keep her mouth from dropping open as he continues. “As he was watching this wanton destruction, another immortal visited him: the goddess of dust.”
Guizhong, Hu Tao thinks, the name taken from both history books and Zhongli’s stories. The goddess of dust, the brains to Rex Lapis’s brawn, who cofounded the Guili Assembly and was always compassionate towards humans. Whenever Zhongli had told her legends of the goddess before, his gaze had become oddly wistful, but now his eyes are closed and his face is impassive, unreadable.
“She shouted at him to realize what he was doing, the hurt he was causing to satisfy his own selfish pride, becoming more angry that day than she ever would be again. After she had yelled until her lungs were hoarse—as that was all she could do, for her power was far less than Rex Lapis’s—the prideful god finally realized the extent of what he had done and descended upon Qingce Village in his dragon form, not to destroy it this time, but to help it before it was completely annihilated. But the Oceanid was out of his control, flooding the area with great swathes of water and killing all in its path, so Rex Lapis had no choice but to fight his own creation himself. It was not an easy battle, and the strikes from Rex Lapis’s tail carved great valleys and furrows in the cliffs and riverbed, creating Qingce’s now-characteristic waterfalls. But finally, with the population of the village nearly halved and most of the buildings and rice fields beyond salvaging, Rex Lapis managed to subdue the creature and seal it away in an underwater tomb.”
Zhongli finally looks up to meet her gaze. His eyes are often somber, particularly when he recalls these such legends, but now they hold a strange, implacable sorrow that Hu Tao knows she can never comprehend. It’s off-putting, to say the least, and Hu Tao shifts uncomfortably, unable to break his gaze. “And that, Hu Tao, is the legend of the Oceanid. Not a tale of human foolishness and Rex Lapis’s triumph, but a warning of the blind pride of the gods.”
Hu Tao doesn’t say anything. Zhongli doesn’t, either, just sighs softly and sits back in his chair as if he has just finished a difficult task. Hu Tao doesn’t want to be shocked by Zhongli’s story, not at all. She would be the first to admit that she might be one of the least devout people in Liyue Harbor. But it’s so different from the legends she’s typically told, even by Zhongli himself, that she has to process it for a moment.
Rex Lapis is a paragon of virtue, the highest standard of responsibility and quiet compassion for all of Liyue’s children, in addition to the constant protector of all of its citizens, even in death. But Zhongli is telling her that he’s not. He made a mistake, and had to have a weaker goddess show him how he went wrong.
“How…how do you know all of this?” she finally asks, voice quieter than she hoped it would be.
Zhongli closes his eyes and meditates for a few seconds before responding. “…My own master told me, years ago,” he says, but Hu Tao can tell that isn’t the full truth. “He had…a friend who was an adeptus, who told him about it.”
A friend of a master, her ass. Zhongli probably knew at least one adeptus personally, if his knowledge of their rituals was anything to go by, and that was assuming he wasn’t one himself. She’s had her suspicions, and has even researched in the history texts of Wanwen Bookhouse for tales of adepti with amber eyes, but the only one who seems to fit that description is Rex Lapis himself and there’s absolutely no way that’s possible. Especially after the legend he had just shared. No self-respecting god would share a story of them at their lowest with anyone, much less her.
Besides, Rex Lapis was dead. Dead and gone. And the man before her is very much alive.
But she can’t exactly express her disbelief right now. “An adeptus? Like Xiao?” she asks, cocking her head to the side and feigning mild ignorance. She considers Xiao a friend, always leaving out almond tofu and incense whenever she passes by Wangshu Inn and going out of her way to avoid main roads when traveling through Liyue’s countryside, hoping to meet the adeptus by chance. They’ve only crossed paths a few times, and Xiao was always quiet and reserved in those instances, but he had never become cross with her no matter how much she teased him for her own entertainment. He was one of the few that could claim that achievement, one other being Zhongli himself.
Zhongli opens his eyes and furrows his brow slightly. “You know Adeptus Xiao?”
Hu Tao waves an airy hand. “We’ve met a few times. Verr Goldet called me to Wangshu a couple years back to help her deal with some lingering adeptal essence in a couple of areas in and around the inn. She told me it was driving one of her guests crazy. When I got there, I learned who the guest was, and consequently who caused the concentrated pockets.” She grins. “He was super standoffish at first, but I’m sure I charmed him with my expansive knowledge of Liyuen funerary rites.”
Zhongli’s gaze is flat. “Your greatest virtue.”
Hu Tao gasps in mock outrage. “Zhongli! I am insulted! You may be older than me, but you’re still my employee, you know!”
“I’m a consultant ,” Zhongli corrects, a faint smile twitching the corners of his mouth upwards. “And thus not bound to you by law in a working sense at all.”
“Details, details,” Hu Tao sings, flapping her sleeves like wings and barely hearing him. Then his words finally reach her brain and she stops dead, arms raised mid-air. “Wait. You’re not bound to me at all?”
“Not in an employer-employee sense, no,” Zhongli says mildly, tilting his head in confusion at her disbelief. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
“B-because,” Hu Tao splutters, tucking her hands behind her knees defensively, “because—because why else would you stay? ” She’s always thought, for all these years, that Zhongli was once her grandfather’s employee and his contract was passed on to her after his death and her takeover of the business. It’s never once occurred to her to check on this in any of the official documents, because Zhongli is simply a fact of her life, someone who has been not exactly a father but something like family all the same, someone to depend on, a single constant.
She had always assumed that was because he was bound to her by contract. If that’s not the case, then why would he even stick around? Hu Tao knows she can be difficult, childish and unpredictable at times, and she would dare to say it was even worse when she was younger. Any sane person would seek employment elsewhere—Zhongli could easily find a job at a library or theater as a historical consultant, or tell stories of the ancient past at a high-end teahouse, or do anything better than putting up with her and offering occasional advice for a small salary.
But he had always stayed. And she had thought she knew why, but now that has been flipped on its head.
Zhongli’s confusion somehow seems to deepen. “Are you asking me why I did not abandon you after the death of your grandfather?”
Hu Tao tugs on her bangs. “Well, if you put it like that it sounds really weird,” she responds, “so don’t put it like that. Put it like: ‘why didn’t you seek employment elsewhere after my grandfather died and your contract with him was terminated’?” Because that was what must have happened, the employer’s contract must have only been a lifetime thing.
Zhongli frowns. “I was never bound to your grandfather by contract either.”
Hu Tao groans and flops back onto her bench. “Then what the hell , Zhongli? Why are you still here? I barely pay you! And judging by past experience, you need a much greater source of income to fund your preferred lifestyle.” The funeral parlor’s dwindling savings fund certainly knows that.
“Hu Tao.” Zhongli’s eyes are strangely solemn, even tinged with sorrow as they had been after telling her of the Oceanid’s origins. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. “Do you think I do not care?”
Huh?
Hu Tao pushes herself back up and gapes at him. “Care? What—what do you even mean?” What the hell does he mean?
Zhongli tilts his head to the side. “Do you think I do not care about you. About your welfare and your future. About your happiness.”
Hu Tao just stares, processing.
Shit.
She thought she had known what their relationship was—just a bit more than employee and employer, almost friends, with Zhongli trying to stop her from doing reckless things in a tired sort of way and Hu Tao never listening to his advice but silently appreciating his continued presence in her life. But now Zhongli has told her he was never bound to her by contract and had stayed out of his own free will, and on top of that he apparently cared about her. He wanted to secure her future. Like a father. Like a grandfather.
She thinks of her grandfather, Old Hu, a stooped and wizened man who was rarely without the hat now hanging with her coat by the door, who had made her laugh and held her in his lap as he told her stories about butterflies and ghosts and the afterlife, that intangible second realm. Intangible until she had followed him into it, had been so desperate to see him again that she had disregarded everything, words of caution and her own safety, in order to find him.
She thinks of her grandfather, but she doesn’t want to.
“You…” She can barely find her voice, and when it comes out, it is barely a whisper.
Zhongli had been there when her grandfather had relinquished his hold on the living world. As soon as Old Hu had shown signs of illness, Zhongli had confined him to his bedroom and called a doctor to the parlor, refusing to listen to her grandfather’s protests. Hu Tao remembers how confused she had been, only thirteen at the time, watching Zhongli grow tenser with each passing day, how his eyes clouded over like aging silver and he lingered at Old Hu’s bedside, conversing with him in hushed tones.
Then one day, the doctor came and called Zhongli to the room, his voice containing a note of panic. Hu Tao had tried to follow, but Zhongli had shut the door before she could, giving her one last glance with sorrowful amber eyes before turning away. She remembers beating on the door with her fists, kicking it, trying to pick the lock with hairpins, to no avail. She remembers finally giving up and curling up at the bottom of the door, shaking with restrained sobs and burying her face in her hands as her last remaining family left this world.
She hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.
After that, Hu Tao remembers waking up in her bed, though how she had gotten there she hadn’t known. It had still been dark, the only light coming from the faint glow of streetlamps behind the screened window. Casting her gaze around the room, eyes still dry and irritated from crying, she had seen Zhongli sitting in a chair by the door, his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands, unmoving. Looking utterly defeated, more broken than she had thought possible. Stone couldn’t break, and her Zhongli was made of the strongest granite there was.
She had looked away, tried to go back to sleep, and never mentioned it.
Now, Hu Tao is remembering everything, and to her shock she feels tears begin to build behind her eyes and a lump rises in her throat. No. She doesn’t want to cry. The only person who has ever seen her cry is her grandfather, and…no. She can’t. Not now, not here.
Hu Tao hides her face in her hands and tries to laugh it all off, as she’s always done whenever Zhongli’s words are too familiar and she sees her grandfather’s face and forgets he’s truly gone. “Ai-yah, Mr. Zhongli, don’t get so sappy on me,” she manages, hating how her voice shakes. “It’s—it’s unbecoming—” Fuck, she’s falling apart, right in front of Zhongli, no, she can’t do this, not now, not ever…
“Hu Tao, are you alright?” Zhongli asks, voice concerned. She hears fabric shifting and furniture creaking as if he’s standing up, and slow, tentative footsteps as if he’s cautiously walking towards her.
“M’fine,” she chokes out, frantically pressing on her eyes with the heels of her hands, seeing spirals and feeling the telltale wetness of tears on her palms. No, no, no.
“You’re not fine,” Zhongli says firmly, and suddenly his voice is much closer and she smells old parchment and silk flowers, and she’s teased Zhongli about that so many times, saying he smells like an old bookstore and a florist’s shop all at once and he really needs to pick one establishment before he spends all her mora in both of them. A hand rests gently on the back of her head, cradling it, and she knows it’s gloved with a ring on the thumb but she can’t help but try to think it might be her grandfather’s, for no one has tried to comfort her in this way but him. No one else has ever known she’s ever needed comforting.
She’s never known she did, either.
Hu Tao can’t help but think she’s a little pathetic right now. The first older person she truly cares about since her grandfather showing her kindness, and she completely falls apart.
“Hu Tao.” That unusual inflection, spoken softly with a hint of implacable sorrow. “Take your hands away from your face. Look at me, Hu Tao.”
Sniffling, Hu Tao complies, still trying to hold back tears, feeling like she’s a little kid again with a scraped knee, seeking out comfort like a glaze lily turning towards the moon. Zhongli has knelt in front of her, one hand cupping the back of her head and the other carding through her bangs, gently smoothing them away from her face. He smiles slightly when she finally looks at him, at odds with the fathomless melancholy in his eyes.
“I would be the first to say that I have not always been the best at caring for others,” he murmurs, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear in the way that her grandfather had done hundreds of times before, in a way that she did not know that she missed so deeply until she felt her suppressed tears finally begin to fall. “But I have always cared for you, Hu Tao. And your mother and grandfather before you.” His voice catches, and Hu Tao’s heart stops because she didn’t think stones could cry but something is glimmering in his amber eyes. “I hope you know that I would never desert you. I wish I had said that before.”
Hu Tao can’t help it. A sob finally breaks the surface, and she throws herself forward, burying her face in Zhongli’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around his neck. She’s crying in earnest now, great shaking sobs wracking her body as she clings to the man who, without her realizing it, has become her home, the thing that welcomes her and cares for her and will never leave her behind. Her Zhongli is made of granite and memories and stories and gold, and she knows she’ll never let go of him, not now, not ever.
Zhongli returns her embrace in a gentler fashion, but no less secure. His arms are wrapped tight around her shoulders, his hands combing steadily through her hair and his chin pressed against the top of her head. She hears him whisper something, so quiet that she can’t make it out.
Then he begins to murmur words into her hair, something slow and rhythmic she doesn’t recognize at first. Slowly, it dawns on her. It’s a lullaby. Her grandfather’s favorite, one she hasn’t heard in years. He would sing it to her over and over, trying to get her to quiet down and go to sleep. She always would, in the end, but would sometimes stare at the ceiling of her bedroom after he left for the night. She would try to figure out what the lyrics meant, for she had thought that every word, every line, had some hidden meaning.
Jasmine flower, jasmine flower
How beautiful you are
I would pluck the moon from its place in the sky
So you would always have its light
Jasmine flower, jasmine flower
Set sail for home
Sail back to the moon that I took just for you
So you would see it and smile.