Chapter Text
At first, Ganyu thinks she has Keqing all figured out.
The new Yuheng is different, sure. She stands out enough, her tongue shamelessly sharp, her presence as bold and dissonant as her ideas. She has no respect for Rex Lapis and the foundation he has built for Liyue, unlike the rest of Yuehai Pavilion, but really, there isn’t all that much to her. An ambitious and misguided skeptic at best, and at worst, an overconfident formerly gifted child whose wealth, position, and perceived intelligence have entirely gone to her head as an adult.
So Ganyu finds herself baffled when she arrives early—as usual—to a Qixing meeting one Monday morning to find Keqing there already. Six small, cylindrical packages have been placed around the table, one at each seat. Keqing is just setting the seventh and last one before the Tianji’s empty chair when Ganyu enters. Keqing looks up, offers a curt nod and an efficient smile in greeting.
“Good morning, Ganyu. Early as ever,” she says.
“Good morning, Lady Keqing,” Ganyu responds. She crosses to her seat at the nearest corner and looks down at the package, which is wrapped in a sturdy paper bag the color of ochre. “These are…?”
“Ah, they’re souvenirs I brought back from Qiaoying Village. That one is yours.”
Right, Qiaoying Village. Ganyu recalls that Keqing had been there since last Wednesday for a short work trip. She unfolds the top of the paper bag. Inside is a small glass jar filled with dried shrimp.
“Oh.” Ganyu feels a creeping, sick sense of satisfaction over her upcoming words, but ensures her voice holds only gratitude and remorse. “Thank you, this was very kind of you, but… I’ll have to decline—I cannot eat meat.”
“Oh,” Keqing echoes. Her face shows brief disappointment. Then she recovers. “That’s unfortunate, but noted for the future.”
Ganyu almost—just barely—feels bad for delighting in Keqing’s oversight. She adds in compensation, “The others are sure to appreciate it though.”
“I hope so,” Keqing says with a huffed laugh.
Ganyu carefully folds the top of the bag back over and returns the souvenir to Keqing. “Thank you again.”
The door opens then, and Uncle Tian enters, followed by Ningguang, saving Ganyu from her and Keqing’s private conversation. She greets them, and begins to prepare for the meeting.
Over the course of the next hour, Ganyu’s gaze keeps straying from her notes to the Yaoguang’s wrapped jar of shrimp, which sits on the table between their two seats. While gifts among colleagues are not unheard of or even uncommon, the members of the Qixing have never made a habit of giving each other spontaneous gifts. Uncle Tian might sometimes, around Lantern Rite or other holidays, or one of them might host a celebratory banquet, but Ganyu had not—and would never have—expected Keqing to do something like this. The souvenirs, while not expensive, look to be of high quality, and, Ganyu has to admit, are quite thoughtful and well-picked. She doesn’t eat meat, but she knows Qiaoying Village’s method of preparing dried shrimp with northern herbs sets their product apart from Liyue Harbor’s own, making it something of a delicacy.
It’s puzzling. Keqing has done little to suggest that she even likes working with the Qixing; she’s often busy butting heads with them, questioning even the longest established policies. She seems to tolerate her colleagues, maintaining the bare minimum respect and diplomacy to get her work done. Ganyu had wondered why Keqing even bothered to accept the nomination as Yuheng in the first place, but chalked it up to ruthless ambition.
Then again, Ganyu thinks, it’s only been a month and a half since Keqing’s inauguration. She’s young, new, and radical. And practical. This could very likely be her way of pacifying her fellow politicians. That must be it, Ganyu decides. Misguided as she might be, Keqing is one of the Qixing after all; she must recognize the benefit of getting on her coworkers’ good sides as soon as possible.
Two months later, it happens again.
Keqing shows up to a Thursday afternoon meeting with a stack of thin boxes. She’s second to the meeting room this time, arriving after Ganyu. She seems surprised by this fact, but greets Ganyu in her usual curt and cordial way. Ganyu stands from her chair and returns the greeting, although she is mostly distracted by the boxes balanced in the crook of Keqing’s left arm. The other arm is occupied by her books and papers.
“Would you, um, like help with those?” Ganyu feels obligated to ask.
Keqing shakes her head. “No need, they’re light.” She sets down her notes, then the boxes neatly on the table and begins to unstack them. Each is a rectangle just larger than her hand, twice as long as it is wide. Ganyu vaguely recalls a memo Keqing had left on Monday, saying she was taking a team up near Wuwang Hill and would likely need the personnel overnight.
Keqing glances up at Ganyu. “They’re souvenirs—dipping dish sets. I bought them from a merchant near Stone Gate,” she explains, confirming Ganyu’s thoughts. “The craftsmanship is exquisite. You can have the first pick, since nobody else is here yet.”
Ganyu shakes her head and puts on a polite smile. “That’s alright, I can take what’s left over.”
“Suit yourself.” Keqing gives her a sharp shrug. She takes her seat and begins to sift through notes. “But feel free to take a look.”
Ganyu peeks at the clock from her periphery. Twelve minutes to the meeting. And it would probably be at least five before anyone else shows up. She should probably stop coming so early, to avoid being stuck in a room alone with Keqing. The thick, stale silence between them now becomes more stifling with the heat of the afternoon sun that is amplified by Yuehai Pavilion’s windows. It is only barely mitigated by the sound of paper being shuffled. Ganyu is all too aware of Keqing’s presence, heavy and disapproving. And she can’t shake the feeling that Keqing has an eye on her too.
Finally, Ganyu gives in. She steps toward the table and reaches for a box. The lid slips off easily to reveal two shallow dishes made of glazed ceramic. Two pairs of fish have been painted in delicate blue, and a line of four characters is written on each, composing a two-line poem when both are put together. Ganyu looks up to find that Keqing has stopped flipping papers and is watching her.
“They are… beautifully made,” Ganyu says honestly.
“They are,” Keqing replies, almost proudly. “And no meat products this time for you.”
Ganyu both is and isn’t surprised that she remembered. She finds herself letting out a short laugh. She gestures to the other boxes, curiosity piqued. “May I…?”
“Go ahead.”
Ganyu goes down the line, examining the pairs of dishes. They all have a different painting, each just as beautifully done as the next. She pauses when she comes to the sixth set. The dishes are covered in a pale green glaze, and a scene of silk flowers arcs over their lower halves. Ganyu’s gaze fixes on the poem.
“My brothers scattered throughout the land…” she reads one line in a murmur to herself. A very familiar line, an old one. “This is—”
Her brows shoot up as she puts the poem and art together. Surely Keqing, Rex Lapis’s harshest and most vocal naysayer, has made a mistake. Ganyu looks at her, and says carefully, “I’m sorry, but… did you mean to buy this particular set?”
Keqing frowns at the open box. “Is something wrong with it? I checked thoroughly for any defects, unless something happened during transit.”
“No, it’s just…” Ganyu continues slowly, “These lines, they’re from a song honoring Rex Lapis.”
“That—what?” Keqing’s frown deepens. She looks incredulous now. “No, they’re taken from a poem about a man thinking of home. I’ve read it myself.”
Ganyu shakes her head with fierce certainty. Annoyance sparks hot in her veins, but remains absent from her voice. “Yes, but that poem is derived from a song written about Rex Lapis after the Archon War. The silk flowers confirm it. They were a common offering.” And if you’d had more respect for our god, you might have known, she wants to retort, but she bites it back.
Keqing wrinkles her nose in what might be a concession. “I see,” she says. “I suppose the original can always be improved upon.”
Ganyu feels her blood rush indignantly. She shouldn’t have said anything. She doesn’t trust herself to say anything now besides a controlled, “Respectfully, I disagree on this case.”
Keqing folds her hands over her papers. “Even old songs can be adapted and interpreted differently for different times. That’s exactly how the arts develop. But… Rex Lapis means a lot to you—fair enough.” She nods at Ganyu and the box in her hands. “You should take that set then. Otherwise someone might try to claim it, if you’re right about its inspiration.”
Ganyu shuts the lid with a little more force than is necessary. She manages a neutral, “Thank you,” before taking her seat and refusing to speak anymore until the rest of the Qixing begin to arrive.
After the meeting, when her pulse has calmed and her irritation faded, Ganyu sits at her desk with her newly acquired dish set. Everyone had been quite pleased, and while Keqing did not budge on disclosing a value when pressed, Ganyu could tell the souvenirs had not been cheap. Not luxury goods, but certainly a long step up from her first round of dried shrimp.
Ganyu, once again, is confused. Keqing has been Yuheng long enough that initial gifts of flattery don’t seem necessary. She doesn’t seem like the sort to keep up that habit anyway, but Ganyu supposes she can’t rule out the possibility. Keqing is a politician, after all. Or maybe, she gives the souvenirs as a display of status—a reminder of wealth and sophistication and power, lest the others look down on her for being new. It could be a sly way of indebting them; it wouldn’t be the first time Ganyu has seen such a tactic in use.
Ganyu sighs. She slips the box away in a drawer. The gift is lovely; its giver, not so much, and Ganyu cannot think of the two separately right now. She hopes that this is the first and last gift she will have to accept from Keqing.
But the phenomenon continues, recurring until it becomes a routine, an expectation. Every time Keqing goes on a work trip, she bears gifts on her return, souvenirs from all over, some valuable, some less so. Starconch ornaments from around Yaoguang Shoal, tofu milled in Qingce Village, bolts of silk colored a refreshing green, even bottles of aged dandelion wine from a week-long stay in Mondstadt. They are thoughtful, yet clinical, always maintaining a sort of nothing-more-nothing-less.
A year turns into two and mounts into three. Keqing grows no less bold, and the other Qixing hardly more accommodating. But miraculously, they hold together. The nation churns on under their collective rule, and under Rex Lapis’s guidance.
The Qixing take to guessing what Keqing will buy them on each trip. They accept the goods readily when they come. Ganyu receives her own gifts reluctantly, with puzzlement. She resents the growing collection of items, kept in a box in the corner of her room, but she doesn’t know what she's supposed to do with it either.
She brings up the question to her lord once, but Morax only chuckles, his laughter a deep throaty rumble.
“They are gifts, are they not?”
Ganyu’s brow furrows. “Yes, I think so. I suppose so.”
“Then they are fully yours to use and enjoy freely,” Morax replies.
“It’s… hard to enjoy them,” Ganyu admits. “I keep wondering, why would Lady Keqing continue to give them to us?”
“She angers you still.”
“Yes!—and she angers the other Qixing too. I know she’s judgmental of them. And of me. I doubt she likes any of us very much, so why does she bother?”
“I think,” her lord says, “this may be much simpler than you’re trying to make it.”
Ganyu bows her head and sighs. “You’re probably right,” she concedes, although she doesn't understand. “I’m sorry to trouble you with such a small thing.”
Morax smiles. “Do not worry. It is no trouble. I believe you will understand, in time.”