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Qiqi swayed on her feet, back and forth, just twice before her legs buckled. She fell without a change in her expression and without a sound. Herbalist Gui only noticed when he looked to the desk and saw it unmanned.
“Qiqi!” His footsteps came to a skid in front of her. Her eyes were still open, staring glassily up at the ceiling. He checked for a pulse - of course, there was none - and he checked for breathing - she wasn’t. The floorboards hammered with footsteps as he raced to the foot of the stairs. “Dr. Baizhu!” There was no immediate answer.
Dr. Baizhu’s door was as elegant as the rest of the pharmacy building, and his was the apartment that stretched through the elaborate dome rising from the pagoda roof. The high midday sun shone down onto the white walls outside but there were no windows to let it in. Gui was under strict instructions never to visit. He pounded on the door. “Dr. Baizhu! It’s Qiqi!”
Languid shifting came from within. The softest footsteps padded across the floor, then the door opened with a terse click. Baizhu’s red eye peered out from a two-inch gap. It fixed on the intruder and the slitted pupil thinned. Gui could see even in that small sliver of space his dishevelled hair and the way his house-robe had been hastily thrown over his body. He was holding it in place with his fingers.
“And what’s happened to Qiqi?” Baizhu asked, his voice extremely gentle.
“She’s collapsed, doctor. I’m sorry to bother you but I don’t know what-”
The door shut in his face. There were a few more clicks as locks were pulled loose, then Baizhu pushed past him and into the corridor. He stormed barefoot down the stairs, pulling the sash tightly around his waist as his wild, slept-in braid swept behind him.
Gui followed as he disappeared behind the counter. He watched as the man ducked low over her tiny body and gathered her up in his arms, then saw the way his own body trembled as he tried to lift her up. For the first time, Gui heard him snap. “Gui! Don’t just stand there - come pick her up!” Gui stumbled over and lifted her up into his arms - she weighed practically nothing. Baizhu hurried to the heavy doors of the pharmacy and heaved them shut, using all of his weight to do so like a sinner claiming sanctuary in a cathedral. He ignored the interested stares of the patrons wandering the terrace outside. “Upstairs! We’ll take her to my quarters,” Baizhu flicked his hand back in the direction they’d come.
-
Gui lay Qiqi down in Baizhu’s unmade bed. The only light in the room came from some oil lamps, which were turned down too dim to reach the corners of the expansive space. Instead they lit puddles of orange on the floor, small spotlights that lay down a glow on his bed, by his desk and by the door. They were stepping stones that lead the ailing doctor through his home. And it was so hot. Liyue was already warm, but in here he could already feel sweat pricking along his forehead.
Anything touched by the light was a chaotic jumble of a life lived within arm’s reach. Baizhu’s desk simmered and hissed as flasks of medicine cooked over a low flame. Strange boxes glowed, almost breathing in and out while crystals and uncut herbs cured inside of them.
The sheets on the bed were strewn and kicked in twisted directions, and it seemed as if every item that might take Baizhu’s passing fancy lay either on the stuffed bedside tables or within the two foot ring of debris surrounding it. On one of those bedside tables stood a jade pillar carved into the shape of a branch - a very expensive piece of decoration which Changsheng draped from in a deep sleep. Such stone would usually be far too cold for a reptile, but it had probably absorbed the ambient temperature of the air.
Baizhu pulled the covers up to Qiqi’s chin and laid two gentle fingers over her eyelids to brush them closed. He shuffled his robe and gestured to a chair in the corner of the room. Gui brought it over and Baizhu sat down at her bedside. He watched as Baizhu’s body weakened, his spine softening as he propped himself against his bed. His long plait coiled like a snake over the sheets. He took off his glasses and tossed them onto Qiqi’s dead stomach, then massaged the bridge of his nose. He seemed to age ten years as what little energy he had sapped away from him.
“Do you need anything?” Gui asked. The heat was stifling him. Baizhu looked up in a moment of confusion, as if he’d forgotten the man was there at all.
“Oh, yes, actually. It’s a bit of a nuisance but could you take some Remedium Tertiorium to Mr. Zhongli at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour?” Then he paused and his chest rose and fell a few times in shallow breaths. Then he continued. “He will take it to the Wangshu Inn. That may fix things.”
“I don’t think he works on Sundays…” Gui began. Baizhu cut in sharply.
“I don’t care. Just find him.”
He gestured with a desperate snap of his hand towards the door as his body curled lower over the bed. He was paler than usual, almost grey, but Gui knew better than to stay for him. He bowed and picked his way out through the glowing stepping stones.
-
It took him a while to find Mr. Zhongli, but he was surprised to see that the normally placid man seemed agitated. A drama was playing out around him and he was privy to none of it. He presented him the medicine. Mr. Zhongli seemed unsurprised by it, but nevertheless gave him a thankful bow of his head - he had noticed that the consultant never bowed very deeply to anyone, a strangely rude corner of his otherwise perfect etiquette. Then he swept off into the street, leaving Gui behind.
-
He returned to the pharmacy and mounted the stairs. The door was still unlocked, so he pushed open the door and stepped silently inside, wading through the heat.
Baizhu was twisted across Qiqi’s dead body, still sat in his chair but draped over her as if to protect her from outside forces. A sudden fear seized Gui and he raced across the room to lay a hand on his skin. It was cold, but there was a pulse. He now understood why the room was so warm. The man didn’t stir.
It would take Mr. Zhongli a few hours to walk to Wangshu Inn, and though he didn’t understand why that journey would matter so much to Qiqi, he nevertheless kept an eye on the water-clock sitting undusted on a table in the corner.
Baizhu only stirred once in those few hours, as Gui held his sweating, stifling vigil. A clamour sounded from outside - from what he could tell, the Millelith were arresting a petty thief or perhaps helping to right an upturned cart. Without coming to consciousness, Baizhu shifted and covered Qiqi’s chest with his arm, possessively keeping her away from the chaos that managed to invade his dreams.
-
Qiqi opened her eyes but made no sound. Nobody else knew she had woken up until one of her tiny hands gave Baizhu’s head an experimental pat. It stirred Gui too, who had dozed off in the heat. He saw, immediately, that he was unnoticed in the darkness. Both of their eyes were too weak to make him out.
“Baizhu…” Qiqi’s expressionless statement could have been one of surprise, recognition or merely welcome. Baizhu awoke with a start, but the shock had to battle through a slurry of weakness and fatigue.
“Qiqi. Back in the land of the living, I see?” He straightened up and took her hand in both of his. She seemed to think on his statement. Her eyes looked at their hands, then up at the dishevelled, weary man watching her in the low glow of the lamp. His pale face flickered in the lamplight, the deep shadows under his eyes ominous for both her future and his. In his loose robe, his hair falling around his shoulders, he looked to Gui like every mother who had ever stayed up late to nurse their child through a fever. He wondered if Qiqi knew that the man didn’t truly love her.
Her eyes looked through Baizhu as her other hand raised to her mouth. It helped her think. “Yes.” She decided, finally. She seemed no worse for wear, though there was a cloying, unnatural smell drifting from her bandages. Baizhu sensed it too and clucked his tongue.
“We’ll get you cleaned up. Come.” He pressed his hands into the mattress and tried to push himself up. A groan of pain choked out of him as his arms buckled, his shoulders crunching upwards like the hackles of a starving dog. Qiqi hopped out of bed before Gui could make himself known and stood beside him. She pushed him, ushering him without force but with unstoppable determination until he was forced to climb onto the bed. “Qiqi-” he coughed, “Slow down.”
He fell bonelessly into the sheets, his robe and his hair fanning around him in a way that reminded Gui of the butterflies that sometimes died on the windowsill of the shop - attracted by the cut flowers. They would often be too far gone to fold their wings and fall asleep - they simply dropped, wings spread, their last act a defiant show of what they had always been capable of. Qiqi pulled the covers over him and gathered his hair in a gentle twist as if she were tending to a toy doll.
“You’re a good girl,” Baizhu sighed. He raised a hand to pat her hair and give a friendly flick to the talisman hanging down her face.
“I’ll get you cocomilk,” she replied, deadpan. Baizhu chuckled. It had been he who introduced the substance to her in the first place - he, like Changsheng, couldn’t tolerate the milk products used in much of Liyue’s cuisine.
“Very well,” he replied as he picked up his discarded glasses and set them on a stack of medical journals by his bed. He shut his eyes for a moment. It was then that Gui knew that it was safe to stand. As Baizhu wavered in and out of consciousness he wouldn’t notice the padding of nearly-silent footsteps. Qiqi, however, noticed the movement.
She turned to Baizhu and gave him a kiss on the side of his head, play-acting the role of nurse or mother, before skipping after the herbalist’s retreating footsteps. Baizhu smiled and folded his hands over his stomach in a beatific picture of peaceful infirmity.
The door shut and the smile vanished. He threw himself onto his side and clutched at his body, sinking his fingers into the flesh as if he could rip out what was causing him so much pain. He had been upright for too long, and though the heat of the room was a necessary balm to the ice in his limbs, it still stuck to him and made him quake. Changsheng opened one red eye, then slipped from her perch. Her cool body slid around his neck and nestled against his face. They lay there together.