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"You and Mr. Zhongli are always together."
Hu Tao eyes Xingqiu from her plate of vegetarian abalone. It's an observation that she finds redundant; a regular occurrence that needs no pointing out. She’s confident in their boss-consultant dynamic. That is as far as it goes, and will ever go. "It’s part of our job after all,” she replies, with that usual air of playfulness to cloud her slight irritation. “What about it?”
"While that may be true, your closeness makes it seem as though you two are... hm, how do I say this?” Xingqiu places down his chopsticks, making a tent with his hands as he leans sideways. “A thing."
The funeral director nearly chokes on the poor matsutake delicacy in response to his speculations. She ends up spitting it out into her bowl in a rather gross manner, shocking herself. While she knew Xingqiu was always one for gossip no matter the subject, she didn’t think he would be this forward with his suspicions. Her sudden yell drags the attention of the other patrons by their ears, her voice practically bouncing off the walls of the small restaurant. “What?!”
"Ah, so there is something that gets you flustered.” He perches his chin between his forefinger and thumb, looking at her in triumph. “The distinguished versemonger of our times, the flames of your vision blaze endlessly on your face.”
Hu Tao sticks her tongue at the food she just spit out before clearing her throat and smirking at him. “You seem quite proud, Guhua disciple,” she notes, crossing her arms and turning away from him. “Perhaps you are trying to weave yourself new lines with the strings of my mortification?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare, lest I end up becoming your very own client,” Xingqiu chuckles. “Still, your reaction was absolutely priceless, like a Pyro slime caught in the net of water.”
She raises an eyebrow at his response. She lets out a small humph. “Is that so? Well, I hope you know that Wangsheng always welcomes those with adventurous spirits such as yours.”
~
When she heads back to the parlor after dinner, Hu Tao appears to be in a rush. A passing Yun Jin briefly waves hello, but the director doesn’t return her greeting with bewildering peppiness, the hallmark of her character—to which the performer tilts her head in slight confusion before brushing it off. Perhaps she’d received payback from Xiangling in the form of slime dumplings, and was suffering the consequences. Meanwhile, Xingqiu’s words echo in Hu Tao’s mind. A thing , he says, followed by laughter. Now he’s gone and placed a thought in her head that won’t go away quite easily, and she lets out a sigh.
When a girl is asked about her crush, she blushes. Perhaps she’ll even bring her hands to her cheeks to confirm the burning heat. She doesn’t know why the thought of being with Zhongli in such a way sets off a feeling of unease within her.
Sure, Hu Tao could not deny that he was conventionally attractive, save for his amber eyes that seemed to tell a different story than that of mortality. Many women in Liyue Harbor view him as the perfect boyfriend, husband, or something similar. In her case, however, even a decidedly “ethereal” being such as Zhongli doesn’t fit the bill of her “perfect partner” despite his excellence in every standard. If anything, she’d probably choose to have a crush on him if she were given a selection of men and asked who she “liked” more.
At the entrance to the parlor in the evenings, she would hear Ferrylady sigh, shielding her cheeks with her gloved palms as they tinted red, explaining in concerningly full detail Zhongli’s appearance. The way he flutters his eyes after taking a gentle sip of the finest Chenyu Adeptea. How the locks of hair framing his face flow in the wind as he walks down Chihu Rock, like the whiskers of a dragon. Hu Tao would smile and nod, staring down young Qiqi as if she were the void that peered back with more frost in her gaze than her box of Adepti tricks.
As an undertaker who’s known the ropes since junior high, she’s quite smart herself, committing to memory the ins and outs of the transition from the mortal realm to the afterlife. Be that as it may, she can’t seem to wrap her head around this peculiarity.
(“You don’t see him that way? All this time I believed you two were engaged,” a woman running a perfume shop told her once—Xingqiu isn’t special.)
Alas, Hu Tao lets out a groan before jogging up the steps to Wangsheng.
~
Zhongli is on the first floor, examining the ceramic pottery and making sure they were in order. He looked as though he were deep in thought about something: the shine on the rim of the pottery provided by the chandelier, whether the table looked a bit unstable, or the fact that his boss was standing right behind him. Her eyebrows furrow as she, too, contemplates the next hour.
“Old man,” she says, eliciting a quick response from him.
“Ah, Director Hu,” he lilts, slowly turning towards her. The tone of his voice is gentle, unassuming, fitting for a person of his caliber. Suddenly, Hu Tao is very aware that after hours, only the two remain. “You’ve returned earlier than I anticipated. Was your dinner with Xingqiu alright?”
“It was okay, I guess.”
“You guess ,” he repeats. He looks rather concerned, his attention no longer on the ceramics. “I assume something came up; shall we discuss it?”
As she takes off her hat, Hu Tao supposes she’s going to be doing much of clearing her throat tonight. “Ah, I mean—it was swell. I indulged myself in the finest food the harbor has to offer, after all!”
“Hm, alright.” Paying no mind to her slip-up, Zhongli glances at the clock, and Hu Tao’s eyes follow. “Then perhaps a glass of water and a good night’s rest will relieve you of your worries. Tomorrow, we will be much busier.”
“...right.”
~
“Actually, there’s one thing I must ask of you before we turn in for the night.”
Zhongli’s hand barely grazes over the doorknob when Hu Tao speaks up. He crosses his arms. “And that is?”
The implications of a woman asking a man to come to her room make her feel iffy, because of all the possibilities, but she tries it anyway. This “experiment” could be worth the risk, or it might not. She’s no stranger to putting herself out there, anyway. She steps closer to ask: “Could you come to my room for a brief second?”
“What a strange request.” His look of confusion on his face is within reason. Hu Tao bites the inside of her cheek; she knew how he would respond, and he did so according to her predictions. Still, she pushes onward.
“Dearest consultant, do spare me a smidgen of your precious time.” Her tone carries hints of urgency, as though she needs an answer to something weighing on her mind like the Oratrice of Fontaine.
Defeated, Zhongli gives in. “Pardon my intrusion.”
Now that he thinks about it, despite being practically glued at the hip, he has never seen the inside of her room before. When she opens the door, it looks just as he would expect it to: organized chaos that only she could navigate, with a few crumpled up papers scattered near her desk which he assumes contains lines of poetry that would never see the light of day. Framed photos taken from previous Lantern Rites are standing upright on the dresser; some are even stringed across the wall adjacent to the desk.
By the corner next to the window is a bed with lots of pillows and probably the most comfortable duvet. Hu Tao takes a seat there, feeling tense. Despite their warm camaraderie, she still invited a man into her room. A man! It feels weird; she’s never experienced butterflies fluttering in her stomach for a situation such as this—at least, she thinks it’s butterflies. Perhaps it’s normal for someone to feel anxious around someone they like, she supposes. When she looks up, Zhongli hasn’t yet taken his seat. Instead, he leans against the closed door, amber eyes demanding an explanation for this impromptu meeting.
She conceals the fact that she’s on edge by laying flat on her back on the bed, stretching. “Why don’t you join me, Zhongli? The memory foam makes sleeping here quite the treat!”
They both know she isn’t fooling anyone. “Director Hu,” he starts, “I fail to understand what warrants my being in such an intimate location.”
Drat. She hadn’t planned this out beforehand. It’s true; it was in the heat of the moment that she’d asked this of him. To dismiss him now still wouldn’t dispel the strange feelings nesting within her. “Okay, sorry. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”
“You could have said so from the very beginning.” He wasn’t necessarily wrong; still, she grimaces.
“Again, I’m sorry, but this is kind of important. Could you just, y-you know—sit down here?”
And he does. “Considering I am already here, I may as well.”
Hu Tao waits with bated breath for him to say something. Though, since she was the one who asked him to come here, she should be the first to speak. Uh-oh, now she’s overthinking things. The only time she overthinks things is, well, never— damn it, Xingqiu, why did you have to say something like that?!
“Out with it,” Zhongli warns, one prevarication away from standing up and leaving. Hu Tao scrambles to find the right words to say, coughing them out.
“C-can we kiss really quick?”
An absolute bombshell of a question stops him dead in his tracks, looking at Hu Tao as if she’d grown a second head. Bemused, he can only utter a simple, “Excuse me?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself,” she retorts adamantly, despite her internal panicking, her inability to take back the five-word request she’d verbalized so stupidly.
The forwardness of the girl before him is bewildering. Zhongli can’t help but wonder what brought this about. “What in the world makes you think I will do that?”
“I just... I just need to see something.” Hu Tao’s eyes shift to her lap, her fingers drumming along her skin. He stays silent, though he does change his sitting position on the bed so he’s a little more turned towards her. Zhongli doesn’t have to say anything for her to know that he deserves an explanation that’s much, much better than that. “I’ve never really thought about how I felt towards men, but at dinner, Xingqiu told me he thought you and I were a couple. It was really weird, or like, it made me feel weird.”
She continues, her eyes shut, her face glowing red, and her heart thumping from how nervous she was. “I’ll be honest. The last time I talked to my parents, they told me that if it wasn’t for my job, I would be the perfect wife to a husband. I brushed it off at first, thinking they just didn’t like me going into carrying out funeral rites, but after today, I’ve got to see for myself if I’m actually attracted to men... to you. Because I trust you the most.”
Zhongli listens to every word she says with intent in spite of the abnormality of it all—which is a first considering the shit he has to deal with working with her on a daily basis. He does what he does best, answering with what he believes is the right course of action... even if it’s unorthodox, overstepping the boundaries of a boss-consultant relationship.
“If it will help you gain clarity, I suppose I can lend a hand.” Another bombshell, this time courtesy of the funeral parlor’s very own consultant.
“Wait, really?” Hu Tao looks at him with eyes wide open.
He nods slowly. “I’ll allow it.”
The butterflies flap their wings a little harder within her stomach when he looks down, gently places his hand on her shoulder, and leans in. She clenches her eyes shut and leans in as well, her thoughts racing in her mind. Their lips briefly brush against each other, lingering for a few seconds. Hu Tao is the first to pull away, rubbing her own with the back of her hand as if they were scalded by piping hot tea.
That was so weird.
It’s supposed to be her first kiss, yet there was no spark. The strange feeling in her stomach remains, though now it feels more like discomfort than anything else. If anything, she felt as though she was going to throw up.
“Are you alright, Director?” Zhongli still addresses Hu Tao so formally, despite having just kissed her. His hands were on his lap.
“N-no,” she admits. “I-I—this wasn’t a good idea.”
The two sit through an awkward silence. Her hands rest beside her thighs, while the man stands up from the bed. Though they both agreed to the kiss, a part of him felt very ashamed to see her react that way. “I’m very sorry if I... if I made you uncomfortable.”
“D-don’t be, just... I guess I’ve learned something about myself today.”
Zhongli keeps himself quiet. He doesn’t want to leave yet, if she still has anything more to say. He may as well.
“I-it’s not that I don’t feel anything towards men. I just... don’t like the thought of dating one, or even kissing one. It makes me feel so weird”—how many times has she said that word, whether out loud or in her head?—“in my stomach, and... it doesn’t feel good.” She looks up at him one last time. “What does that make me, if I don’t like men?”
Zhongli thinks about that for a bit. Suddenly, he has an idea. He recalls such a phenomenon happening once before with one of his friends from his days as Rex Lapis. It explained how Guizhong felt around him, compared to how she was with Streetward Rambler. There was not yet a name for confusing discomfort with love, until a scholar coined a term that would later be used throughout Teyvat among others like her. “Director Hu... I think what you are experiencing is called ‘compulsory heterosexuality’.”
“Compulso-what now?”
“Often shortened to ‘comphet’,” he starts. “When a woman—or nonbinary person—is conditioned to believe that they are supposed to be attracted to men, they’ll often question whether they truly like being with men, or simply the idea. Sometimes, they’ll find that it is merely the latter, and that’s when they realize they are a lesbian. Do you find yourself feeling that way?”
If not for that job of yours, you would be the perfect wife to a husband.
She places her hand in her hair, trying to sort her feelings out, but it’s difficult. “...yeah. I do.”
Zhongli smiles, crouching down to meet her eyes as she’s still sitting on the bed. “Then perhaps, Hu Tao, you are a lesbian—and that’s perfectly normal.”
“...really?” Her voice was quiet, devoid of its usual playfulness.
“I have friends who have had experiences similar to yours. They think they could be happy dating or marrying a man in theory, but they dread it in practice. There’s more people like you all throughout the world than you may think. Yes, there are some who deem it abnormal, ‘unfit for a lady’, but they are ignorant. Their views are terribly old-fashioned, considering the current times.”
Hu Tao found it a little funny how he criticizes “old-fashioned” minds when he himself is quite traditional. She puts her hand down, returning his smile awkwardly. “Yeah... I guess you’re right.”
He nods, his eyes slowly shifting between various areas of her room and her. “I hope you know that as much as I... find your antics very tiring, I care for you. I wish to keep being someone you can trust, so I will be here for you if you need anything.”
“...that really means a lot.”
Hu Tao sees him out, closing and locking the door behind her. She had taken the leap and learned something new about herself today, and she always did like learning new things. She could add that to her many accomplishments, like proving her parents wrong—only now, she’s done it twice. After taking a brief shower and slipping into some comfortable sleepwear, she lays in bed and stares at the ceiling.
“A lesbian, huh... maybe that’s what I am.”
She’d have to think about this a little more, but this was certainly a start.