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The stream of customers was becoming too much for Qiqi. The line stretched from the front desk all the way out to the bottom of the Bubu Pharmacy’s palatial steps, filling steadily with impatient and unwell customers. She gazed up from behind the protective wall of the front desk and reached up to take money and prescriptions from snatching hands. She would put the money in the till. Then she would take four steps over to the cupboards that held the ingredients. Then she would pull the boxes out and put them on the counter. She would put the ingredients into a cloth wrapper, tie the bundle up neatly, then put the bundle in the bag. Next, she would realise that she hadn’t read this customer’s prescription and had instead half-remembered the last one. She would open the bag, open the bundle, place the ingredients back in their box, put the box back into the cupboard, then read the prescription.
A palm slammed down onto the counter. She heard it and turned politely around. “Can Qiqi help you?”
“Hurry up!” A customer - a man with glasses who had been in line for the better part of two hours - loomed over the front desk. Her glassy eyes looked between him and a few other nodding heads as she held the bundle to her chest. “We’ve been here forever! Who the Hell thought it was a good idea to put you in charge?!”
“I’m sorry,” an amused and gentle voice sounded from the door. “Is my little Qiqi causing trouble?”
Baizhu drifted through the line and people parted out of his way. It didn’t matter how long they had waited; when the great Master Baizhu strode past, people moved. He took Qiqi’s place behind the counter and took the bundle from her in one sharp, professional movement.
His eyes flicked across the prescription like the flick of a pen. “Si Shen Tang. Qiqi, listen carefully…” He gave clipped, simple instructions. Qiqi grabbed the required ingredients and brought them to him. With a magician’s flourish he had them wrapped, bagged and in the waiting arms of their recipient. “My sincerest apologies for the wait. Enjoy.” Then the man was gone.
Hands flew, the till crashed and clanged as goods and tender changed hands. Qiqi fell into a rhythmic trance at Baizhu’s side, hearing the name of the plant or formula, finding it in the archive and depositing it on the desk. It was easy and fun, and nobody would shout at her.
However, Baizhu looked pale and the shadows had returned under his eyes. His hair fell in loose strands as it escaped his braid, and Changsheng occasionally clenched and shifted around his neck to either cool him down or to escape his burning skin.
“Thank you, that’ll be 200,000 Mora,” Baizhu handed over a bag with a loving smile.
“200,000 Mora?!” His latest customer’s eyes flashed wide in appal. “That’s outrageous!” But Baizhu’s mask didn’t slip.
“I’m afraid that these ingredients are difficult to come by,” Qiqi heard him say. That was strange, because though she couldn’t remember collecting those ingredients, she knew she had done and was almost convinced that the trip had been one of the more pleasant ones. She opened her mouth to speak. Baizhu gave her a sharp kick under the table - it didn’t hurt, but she understood. He continued with growing gentleness. “It’s such a shame, but reality is reality.”
His customer sighed. “130,000 Mora and not a penny more.”
“150,000.”
“Deal.”
He received the money and clanged it into the till, then clasped his hands together, his smile never moving. “You are most gracious.”
Qiqi looked up at Baizhu as the customer left and her hand raised thoughtfully to her mouth. Baizhu glanced down at her and stroked her head in one calm sweep. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” She shook her head. “Good girl, Qiqi.”
The customers continued to file in, hour after hour. Baizhu’s mask never slid, his back remained straight and his voice was clear, strong and cheerful. But Qiqi watched as his body trembled on its feet and his blind reaches for her ingredients became clumsy, clawing grasps.
“Thank you very much!” he said to one young woman as she left with her medicine. His voice broke at the very last word and Qiqi saw his hand grip the desk. It shook, but with perfect composure he used his free hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “Next!”
She could never remember Baizhu’s face when he wasn’t there, but she knew that he was tall, colourful and smelled of violetgrass flowers. Sometimes he would tell her that he loved her, but her internal world quietly understood that this was not true.
He turned his head and spluttered into the crook of his elbow. Another customer came to the desk, the line behind him long, loud, seemingly eternal. He passed over a prescription to Baizhu’s ailing fingers. He scanned it. Qiqi’s feet automatically moved to the cabinets. For a moment there was silence. Then a thud. Qiqi turned.
Baizhu stared at the prescription with incomprehension, his eyes like Qiqi’s. Then his knees gave out beneath him and he crashed down beneath the desk. She saw his arms come up in a glassy, frantic haze to make sure Changsheng hadn’t been harmed on the way down.
She skipped over and reached out her hands to take the snake. He rounded on her like an animal. “No, Qiqi!”
“Is everything okay?” The customer peered down over the table. Qiqi looked from him to Baizhu. Her master was staring ahead, his expression impossible to read as one of his shaking fingers tangled in an errant lock of his hair. She could hear his heart pounding as something in him just gave up.
“Um… I don’t think so.” Her feet stamped nervously up and down, pom-poms bouncing on the buckles of her shoes. Changsheng coiled up Baizhu’s neck, covering as best she could.
“It’s time to close the pharmacy,” the snake said with uncharacteristic gentleness. Qiqi nodded.
She moved to the door as the customers filed out. There were shouts from those who had been waiting for a long time, but she clicked the doors shut in their faces. Changsheng curled around Baizhu’s neck and buried under his hair. His expression twitched into a frown, and Qiqi understood that he was trying to move, maybe to speak, but that nothing was responding.
With careful feet now, she snuck to his side and crouched like a little girl. A slow, crawling sensation tingled up her spine and she noticed it because she didn’t usually feel much of anything. A very quiet, pathetic question whispered across her usually still mind. ‘Daddy?’
Baizhu’s breath staggered. She crawled on all fours and squeezed herself behind him. Her small hands grasped around his waist and she held him as tightly as she could, as tightly as he sometimes did when she didn’t feel well. She pressed her little nose into his robes and considered the growing lump in her throat.
Her embrace became a cling. She had already forgotten Baizhu’s face, but he had never been a face to her at all. He was a gentle hug, a soft voice and he smelled like her home. He may not love her, but she loved him.
Baizhu sat for a long time - as if any movement at all would imply that he was ready to face a world that he could not bear any longer. Changsheng remained resolute around his neck, her cold head pressing against his jaw with immovable loyalty. The cabinets and all the medicines within loomed over them, suffocating them. Hundreds of clawing, desperate hands were represented in those drawers. Hundreds of crying pleas, suffering mouths, a tide of lives that demanded saving; so many cries that even a healthy man would have been condemned by the pressure. As Baizhu’s condition worsened, those demands demanded more.
Qiqi did not know how long Baizhu’s private war lasted but then, eventually, there was a shift. She felt a ragged pat on her arm.
Her expression crumpled. She rubbed her cheek into the back of his robes, her limbs tightening into little zig-zags as she hugged him even tighter.
“ Oh, Qiqi… ”
Baizhu finally turned, as delicate as a rabbit pulled from a snare. A shrill, quiet laugh escaped him because as he turned, Qiqi’s hold was so tight that she moved with him. “ Qiqi , come here.” He reached around, but he had always been too weak to lift her. She rolled so that he could move her wherever he wished.
His back hit the desk and he gathered Qiqi up in his arms. His hand cupped her head to his chest and she felt tears hit her hair. His heartbeat was fast but weak, and she snuggled close to it because she did not have one of her own. One tiny fist gripped some limp strands of his hair, the other his shirt.
For the first time, she knew he meant it when he muttered into the still air of the room, “I love you the most.”