notes (top)

we are going to ignore every single chenyu vale/qiaoying village lore crumb we've been receiving in fontaine bc i started writing this in april 2022.

if you're on pc, then you can hover over a few terms that look like this for some annotations on the intended chinese characters/wordplays going on. it should be understandable w/o it, though, so mobile users need not panic.

"Are you sure you want a laotong, Yanfei, dear? None of my friends have girls your age, so in all likelihood, she'll be fully human and live about a hundred years at most."

Little Yanfei, approximately seven years old, nods her sturdy little head and fails to notice the way her father sighs.

"I want one!!" she insists, ducking her head and ramming her nubbly horns against her father's legs, much to his joints' dismay. "Ganyu- jiejie told me about how she used to wish she had one when she was younger to confide all her secrets in."

Amused, Yanfei's father picks his daughter up by the armpits and gently butts their foreheads together. "Oh? Are you hiding secrets from your baba now?" he asks. His tone is serious, but not without its gentility.

Yanfei laughs, vigorously kicking her legs until her father holds her properly in his arms. "Nooooo," she sing-songs as she shakes her head back and forth. Then, she takes her father's face in her little hands, suddenly very serious as she says, "Ganyu- jiejie says that laotong have a relationship made by choice for the purposes of emotional support and fulfillment, and can be just as important in a girl's life as her marriage."

"Yanfei," her father says, a wry, toothy smile slowly spreading across his face. "There you go simply reciting things again! Laotong are no longer common because marriage as a matter of familial duty rather than an emotionally heartfelt choice is an old, old-fashioned concept by now, originating from the days when daughters were seen as useless branches of the family tree. You are my precious daughter; I would never ask you to engage in a relationship you would not have first wanted for yourself."

But all his reassurances manage to accomplish is make Yanfei pout. "I know, but…" she begins, only to hesitate.

"I still want one," she eventually decides, for want of a better way to articulate her desires.

Her father shifts her weight around in his arms. "I'm afraid I can't make a decision until your reasons enlighten your motives. Use your words now, darling, or else the court will never hear your case."

Admittedly, Yanfei knows she does not fully understand what she's been talking about, simply parroting what her beloved elder cousin Ganyu had absentmindedly explained to her a few days prior.

However, no matter how sweet or doting the adults in her life may be, it has lately been growing increasingly clear to Yanfei that they do not understand her all the way through. Such shortcomings make the young girl burn with a desire for someone whose heart is the same as her own, for someone whom she might someday know as her father knows his own old friends.

Yanfei reaches up her father's sleeve to fish out the notepad and fancy pen from Fontaine he always keeps hidden in there.

("Aiya!" her father cries as he flinches, but Yanfei manages to stay safe in his arms despite the tickled writhing.)

"I know that you and Mama and all the aunties and uncles love me— and I love you, too!— but sometimes, it feels like our hearts aren't balanced." As she speaks, Yanfei starts carefully writing out one of the words for ' understanding' , the one with the heart radical on the left and the weight radical on the right. "I want to know what it is like to be equal to someone in matters of the heart."

"Ahh," says her father, finally nodding in what looks to be the dawn of understanding. "So this must be what your mother meant when she said human children need playmates their own age for the betterment of their social health."

(Yanfei does not know what her father is talking about, but she assumes this means she must continue arguing her case.)

"I think it would make me happy," she says, scribbling on the notepad now. "You want me to be happy, right? We signed a contract and everything!" She stuffs the notepad into her father's face, pointing at the stick-like, rudimentary signature she drew next to 'understanding'.

Her father guffaws in surprise, then transforms into his xiezhi form to return Yanfei to the ground.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose we did do that," he muses, sitting on his haunches as he contemplates the situation.

It is in these next few seconds that Yanfei most wishes that all adepti could read minds, so that perhaps she could practice such a skill on her father for the moment. Luckily, she is not left waiting long, as her father shakes out his head and stretches his neck downwards to nuzzle Yanfei.

"Very well, I will have a chat with Ping-laolao down in the Harbor," he says. "She knows how to read fate and fortune; she will ensure that you receive a good match."

Yanfei nearly combusts in excitement.

~***~

Hiya! I hear there is a girl of eager character in the House of the Adepti. I am the little peach of the Hu Family in Liyue Harbor. You and I are of the same year and month— shall we be the same together?

~***~

I wish to tell you that your words fill my heart with gladness. I am the Yellow Xiezhi's daughter born half a moon under you. You and I are a fated good match. Though my father's blood gives me higher standing, I write to you today as a peer, for how else would we ever hope to become the same?

~***~

Soon after the customary first exchange of letters, Ganyu takes one of her rare days off to fetch Yanfei for a visit to the Harbor.

"Ganyu-jiejie," Yanfei asks as they pass through the foothills of Mt. Tianheng, "how come you never got to have a laotong? It seems so easy, surely there must have been a girl fated to be your good match when you were young, too!"

"Oh, well, it was never the right time," Ganyu explains with a shy sort-of laugh. "There was a lot going on at the time, and the relationship between humans and the adepti wasn't like how it is today, where we adepti sometimes walk amongst men—"

Something rustles in the bushes nearby.

Ganyu cuts herself off and stiffens her posture. In one smooth motion, she sweeps out an arm to shield Yanfei, her frost-pale bow materializing in her other hand with a shower of light. Stepping in front of her cousin, she calls out sharply, like a military scout:

"Who's there?" She nocks an arrow and takes careful aim. "Speak!"

The bush rustles again, emitting a high-pitched squeal.

Yanfei quivers as she hears her cousin tighten her drawstring, the frostflake at its tip ringing to indicate its charge. Three seconds pass in an eternity of silence, and then—

Out of the bush tumbles a little girl. With a yelp, she hops to her feet despite the numerous scarlet scrapes littering her bare legs and frantically starts waving her hand in greeting.

Ganyu breathes a sigh of relief and shoots the arrow harmlessly into the ground some distance away. Without anything to block her, Yanfei creeps closer and observes the strange girl with bated breath.

She's everything, is Yanfei's first thought.

(The full depth of this meaning is still beyond her.)

The girl wears a stiff, black dress embroidered in gold, and her long, brown twin tails are tied up with large, blood-red plum blossoms as ornaments. Her smile is wide, and Yanfei's eyesight is sharp enough to catch the gaps in her teeth from this far away. She comes bounding up towards the pair, her shoes tamp-tamp-tamping into the dirt until she digs her heels in and scraaaaapes to a stop.

"Hiya! I'm Hu Tao~" she chirps in greeting, dragging the last vowel sound into a happy almost-howl. The timbre of her voice is warm, reminding Yanfei of polished wood, and— wait, did she just say that her family name is ' Hu'?

~***~

Ganyu drops the girls off with Granny Ping that very afternoon, still profusely apologizing both for her busy schedule keeping her away for the drafting process, as well as for mistakenly threatening the young Hu daughter.

Granny, as mellow as ever, waves her off without much fuss, then takes each girl by the hand and leads them down to the local marketplace. She hands them a sum of mora in a single pouch, its weight delightfully profound in Yanfei's hands, and says:

"First, you must choose the paper on which you will draft your laotong contract. You may select anything you like so long as it calls to both of you, but do take care and bear in mind that this will be a legal document recording your vows of devotion to one another."

"Yes, Laolao!" Yanfei sings, while Hu Tao snickers and skips around.

"Let's go!" she says, tugging on Yanfei's arm with a shocking amount of force for a seven-year-old.

Yanfei yelps as she is yanked off-balance, and she instinctively changes into her xiezhi form to catch herself on all fours. However, she is not so lucky with the bag of mora, which falls to the ground.

(Well, at least it has the decency to remain tightly shut.)

"Oh!!" Hu Tao squawks, evidently delighted, while Granny Ping heaves one of those sighs that old ladies tend to reserve for rascally children.

"Now, now, Hu Tao, let's be a bit more gentle next time so that we don't disrupt other people's balance," she chides, shaking her head in exasperation but still giving the girls a fond smile.

"Yeees, yes, yes, okay, okay," Hu Tao says, running the words together with how quickly she brushes them out. She cheerfully picks up the bag of mora and gestures for Yanfei to follow. "Well, let's go!"

Yanfei shakes out her head and jumps onto her hind legs, transforming back into a little girl along the way. She trots after Hu Tao, taking in the sights and sounds of the busy marketplace all the while, from the brightly colored kites dancing on the breeze to the little glass bowls with a single tiny turtle in each.

"We should get something red," she says when she finally catches up, to which Hu Tao nods solemnly.

"Like flames," Tao agrees, "to represent our burning passion."

However, as Yanfei spies a paper merchant and runs off to inspect their wares, Hu Tao stops before a different type of store and stares at their display.

"Taotao!" Yanfei calls, a sheet of red paper in her hands. When her laotong-to-be does not respond, she tries different nicknames, but to no avail: "Xiao-Tao! Laohu!"

Eventually, she stops her foot and shouts, "Hu Tao-wuwu!" and somehow manages to mimic the almost-howl of the other girl's first greeting earlier.

This time Hu Tao turns towards her.

"Yo!" she calls, gesturing to the stall next to her.

Exasperated, Yanfei politely returns the paper she found to the merchant for safekeeping and scampers over to Hu Tao. "I want your opinion on what I've found," she says, taking one of Hu Tao's hands in both of her own. She starts to tug, but Hu Tao doesn't budge at all.

"I have an idea," Hu Tao explains, her bright blood blossom eyes alight with vivid delight.

Yanfei, drawn in by their allure, finds herself shown past sticks of incense and blank ancestral record tablets towards stacks of paper, gilded gold and silver.

"You're an illuminated beast, right?" Hu Tao asks, her voice hushed.

Yanfei nods. "My baba is, but Mama is human."

Hu Tao hums carefully. "You're still gonna live a long time though, right?"

Here, Yanfei gives pause. "I don't know," she says truthfully. "But I think so. Why?"

"Because I'm definitely going to die someday," Hu Tao answers, unflinching. "The old man at the funeral parlor told me that laotong last a lifetime, and if you're part adeptus, then that means I'm definitely going to die first."

(Yanfei feels anxiety creeping into her heart.)

But Hu Tao does not break gaze. "However, it just doesn't seem fair for our contract to end just because I'm dead and you're still going. Therefore, we should draft out contract such that it can be brought into the afterlife and legitimately recognized by the dead."

Yanfei follows Hu Tao's pointer finger as it guides her gaze back to the stacks of paper. She's seen similar back home, burned in the family's ancestral shrine alongside the incense, mostly by her mortal mother: "Joss paper."

"Yup!" Hu Tao grins at her. "If we write a second contract on some of these, then that means our promises can follow us beyond the grave, and you will never have to say that you no longer have a laotong!"

Yanfei coos in awe.

"Let's do it, then!" she says, and the girls hurriedly get to work.

~***~

One contract, written in stiff, but reasonably well-proportioned characters on smooth, yet sturdy, red paper:

We, Huang Yanfei of the House of the Adepti and Hu Tao of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, do solemnly swear to always be true to each other. We shall support each other through our endeavors and aspirations, and seek comfort in one another through our trials and tribulations. We shall remain impartial in our judgements of each other, and strive to balance joy with fairness in our actions towards one other.

On this day, we, Huang Yanfei and Hu Tao, have spoken to the true words within our hearts. We swear a bond to each other like a pair of mandarin ducks. For ten thousand adventures, we shall be like the flint and steel of the tinderbox: never without our spark. For ten thousand years, we shall be like the twin blooms of the silk bush: never growing apart.

Now do we declare, beneath the Archon's view: to our laotong shall we always be true.

~***~

For the next three years, the girls visit each other at their respective homes once every season, with Yanfei visiting Liyue Harbor around the solstices and Hu Tao arriving in Chenyu Vale in time for their equinoxes.

While such sparse meetings might normally stunt a budding friendship, the flurry of letters exchanged in the meantime allow the girls to tend each other's needs while apart and truly bloom when finally together. From the tales of daily school life (or adventures had in its stead, as often ends up the case for both girls) to lengthy debates about the best ingredients to toss into a hot pot, the girls quickly foster a deep and trusting bond that genuinely shines in their days spent in each other's company.

The year the girls turn eleven, Yanfei's parents decide to celebrate their anniversary by traveling outside Liyue. Madame Ping offers to watch over Yanfei while they are away, so that the girls do not have to miss out on their already precious little time together. As a result, they spend their whole entire summer together, and it is everything Yanfei had dreamed her laotong relationship would be from the start.

And they spend every moment together.

Finally old enough to roam the Harbor on their own, the girls make their mischief, hand in hand— prowling the streets for ghosts by moonlight; haunting the library shelves for books by daylight; and curling up next to one another to sleep in the same bed in those transitory hours of dawn and dusk.

"Let's plant a tree," Hu Tao says one afternoon, yawning lazily as they lie in the warm summer sun. "It can't be that hard, right?"

Yanfei frowns, picking at the grass. "The book I read the other day said that summer is a bad time to plant trees."

"Huh? But they're so robust at this time of year!" Hu Tao sits up, stretches her arms, and then bellyflops a few centimeters closer to Yanfei. "You'd think that they'd do really well, since the sun's out all the time. I guess maybe not as well as spring, without the extra rain, but still do just fine."

"Summer is when the tree roots are actively growing, so they need to remain in a stable environment in order to thrive," Yanfei explains. "Winter is too cold, obviously, but spring and fall should be fine."

Hu Tao hums, propping her chin up on her elbows as she kicks her legs back and forth in the air. "Let's do it at Moonchase, then," she says. "We can plant one here, and then when the autumn equinox comes and we go back to Chenyu to see your parents again, we can plant another tree at your place."

"That would be nice," Yanfei agrees. She rolls onto her stomach, partly to match with Hu Tao, but mostly because her antlers are getting a bit too long for laying her head down flat to be comfortable these days. "I want a peach tree."

"Because their fruits are so sweet?" Hu Tao asks.

Yanfei shakes her head. "Because it represents long life, and its name reminds me of you."

"Ohhh!" Hu Tao croons, her eyes wide and evidently impressed. Then, she grins and says, "I want a plum tree."

"Because their fruits are so sweet?" Yanfei asks.

Now it's Hu Tao's turn to shake her head. "Because it represents resilience, and I think they would look beautiful on you."

Yanfei's little heart flutters in her chest at the suggestion, and she stares at her laotong with a silly expression surely on her face.

"I can't wait until Moonchase," is all she can think to say.

When those seemingly endless happy summer days fade away, and midautumn rolls around, the girls keep their promise: they plant a plum tree in the harbor for Hu Tao, and a peach tree in the vale for Yanfei.

And so their relationship grows.

~***~

To my dearest Feifei:

I received a Vision the other day.

I was trying to visit my grandfather over the Border— he died two weeks ago, and I got to arrange his funeral myself— but I'm no longer even sure why I thought he would remain so close to this side after crossing over. He always said, "Live in life, die in death." Why would I have expected him to linger in death? It feels like ever since I got this thing, it seems so obvious that he would have left this world with no regrets, since he spent his life living exactly as he chose, and I've been puzzling over my own previous assumptions otherwise ever since…

Anyway, the new consultant, a Mr. Wang Zhongli (though he insists I should just be calling him 'Zhongli' without all the fuss of titles. Well, I can do that!), muttered something about it always being kids who get Pyro Visions. I wonder what that means? He also said that Visions are granted when Celestia judges a person's desires as worthy of their acknowledgement, and that they are, "crystallizations of a person's true will at that moment in their life."

You're good at assessing the value of things. What do you think makes a person's life worth receiving a Vision? Why do our lives have value at all? Why does anything have value at all?

Well, you've already explained before that a lot of things have value because people want them, but how much they are worth depends on how easily they can get them. I wonder why funerals are so expensive, then? Anyone and everyone can and will eventually have one, but you never see anyone coming into the parlor who really genuinely wants one.

Well, I guess Yeh-yeh wanted one. I also want one someday— I should start drawing up the plans now, since we never know when we're gonna die. Do you want to push the button to turn on the machine when I get cremated? I'm still thinking about whether I want my bones run through the cremulator or not before putting the ashes into an urn. It would be cool to have a party cannon at my funeral. We could launch my cremated remains over the ocean from Guyun Stone Forest! I know a lot of people are going to think my ideas are disrespectful, but if it's what I want for my own body, then who or what would it be disrespecting?

Anyway, Xingqiu told me the other day that he has a crush on someone, but won't tell me who!!! Can you believe him??? I'll get it out of him one of these days, alive or dead!!!! Although, for some reason, the ghosts can't seem to tell me either. Hmmm…

Deepest of heartfelt loves from your laotong,

Hu Tao

~***~

Although unusual, no one bats an eye when Yanfei starts putting her legal studies to practice at the tender age of sixteen. She is her father's daughter, and the judgement of an imperial xiezhi is known to be as sharp and precise as a knife.

(It helps, of course, that all her homeschooling came from her father, and that her every moment studying under him had been filtered through the lens of the law.)

She disclaims her advice to the Border, Beyond, and back with a shake of her head and a laugh, as nothing she says is binding without the proper paperwork, xiezhi heritage or none. But, heartened by the effusive feedback, she takes— and passes!— the Liyue Bar Exam with flying that spring and is bestowed the official title of Licensed Practitioner of Liyue Law by her own father.

"I'm proud of you," he tells her, with a warm, firm hand on her shoulder as he presents her with a judicial hat of her very own.

A swell of emotion has tears forming in Yanfei's eyes, but a tackle-hug from Hu Tao sends them flying before they can really settle in her expression. In fact, every trace of any terrifying, overwhelming emotion always seems to vanish in the face of Hu Tao's excited pride, and Yanfei spends the rest of her spring laughing in pure joy.

~***~

To my dearest TaoTao:

I received a Vision the other day.

(Let me preface the rest of my tale with the official statement that everything I am about to tell you was discussed in a public forum and is legal to share under the common-interest/joint defense doctrine. You know I would never disclose anyone's personal or private information without their express informed consent.)

It was right after you kissed me goodbye underneath the cool, dappled shade of our laotong tree, and I started my journey back to Chenyu to wish my parents well on their next adventure. A grandma came limping up to me, and she asked me to help her with a case she was building against one of the Chasm foremen.

Since at the time, I assumed that she was just one woman coming to me for last-minute advice, I stopped to listen to her story.

Her son has been a laborer in the mines for several years now, and he often works overtime to support both his aging parents and his young family. The woman herself, having been told that her son would not be granted time off for his father's birthday, took it upon herself to bring her son a bian-dang so that he may at least enjoy his portion of the father's birthday meal at the same time as the rest of the family. However, when crossing over some of the visitors' walkways to drop off the meal, something broke underneath her, and she injured her leg as a result.

This would have been simply unfortunate, she said, had the higher-ups not denied any responsibility for her injury.

By this point, several people had stopped to listen to her story, and although at first, I tried to shoo them away to preserve what I could of this grandma's confidentiality, some of them started coming forward with similar testimonies.

Liyue Harbor has no shortage of competent lawyers; yet, it seems too many of them are either too discerning and dismissive with their clients or affiliated with the Qixing themselves. And I, despite having only passed the bar exam last spring, have apparently already made enough of a name for myself that even the common folk know they can call on it in their times of need.

A crowd began to amass around me, arms outstretched in search of my attention regarding their issues with Chasm management. There were countless stories of loved ones who have been injured, disabled, or killed due to supervisor negligence; of families and surviving workers going months or even years without receiving adequate, fair, or even livable compensation for the harm they have sustained at work… and this isn't even getting into the long-standing issues they've been having about overwork!!

Something big is brewing with the Chasm laborers these days, now that the new Tianquan has entered office. Whereas the old Qixing would apparently turn a blind eye, or claim that their hands were tied, this changing cabinet has demonstrated willingness to act upon the people's interests, even if it will take some time to produce turnaround.

Adulthood is rapidly approaching, and it is a dangerous world we will be entering. Although I know you have already had one foot in both child-and-adulthood, running Wangsheng for as long as you have by this point, and although I knew from the moment my father gave me this judicial cap that I would soon be leaving my daughter-days behind me, it still feels so strange to be thrust into this role already.

And as I stood there, right outside the Harbor gates, trying to listen to everyone all at once, the feeling of being eaten alive began to creep up on me. Yet my heart, instead of falling into a prison cage of fear, began to inexplicably soar with determination, and I began to laugh as I thought, ' I could spend the rest of my life doing this.'

I organized my new clients' information as swiftly as I could, with what I hope was a reassuring smile upon my face, and as I readied to tuck them carefully away in my box of legal notes, there I saw it— my new Pyro Vision, winking smartly at me in the evening sun.

 

Remember when we were little, and you asked me what makes a person's life worth receiving a Vision? I still have that letter, tucked safely away in my dresser drawer with every other gift you've ever given me, but I reread a bit more frequently than the others sometimes because truthfully, I've never really known how to answer that question, or any of the questions you posed that day.

But, you must remember the steelyard balance beam my father owned, yes? He showed us once when we were children how there are many things in this world that can be used to balance an object's value, although Mora is often (though not always) the most reliable constant, which is why it is considered the value standard.

When I told him of the events down at the Harbor, he smiled at me and said that of course, such a momentous occasion is worthy of a yet another gift from the gods.

Suffice to say, that balance beam is now my most prized possession, hehe.

Anyway, when thinking about your questions again, I realized that since I now have a Vision of my own, it was possible for me to discover the answer to your question on value for myself.

On one end of the scale, I carefully placed my Vision, and lacking in any ideas towards what to weigh it against, I naturally began to measure its worth in mora. But, no matter how much mora I weighed it against, the balance beam would not budge, so in my frustration, I dumped my box of notes onto the opposing side, and to my surprise, the scales tipped and swayed until finally, they settled at the most perfect equilibrium I have ever seen in my life.

It was a deeply moving moment, and I found myself staring at the sight of my Vision, perfectly balanced against the most tangible symbol of my ambitions for a long, long time.

 

Anyway, I know this answer is long overdue, and only one of many, but I hope that it will satisfy that long-ago curiosity of yours.

With a binding oath to attest to your laotong 's love,

Huang Yanfei

 

P.S: Please do me a favor and keep an eye on the new Yuheng for me— Ganyu-jiejie was complaining about her almost every time we hung out this summer, and in light of the previous Qixing's role in the Chasm laborers' complaints, I would like to ensure that, at least when observed in good faith, her motives are just.

~***~

Yanfei lives for over a year and a half in the Harbor before something starts to feel not-right.

Never one to ignore her instincts, she begins her investigations, often accompanied by her partner-in-crime, but for all the legal loopholes Ningguang pulls shut in her wake, there's never any change in this foreboding feeling softly layering itself over her being. It bothers her, and after a while, it starts to keep her up at night.

(She dreams of the moonlight, pale and bright, as it haunts the weary thoughts in her mind.)

What could it be? she wonders one night, following Hu Tao up the hill she holds dear. Yet, before she has time to put voice to her thought, Hu Tao calls her name:

"Yanfei-baobei-ah~"

Unfazed, Yanfei looks up and tries returning the call:

"Hu Ta—" she begins, but her voice, which has served her so well in the courts by this point, is stolen away by the sight of her laotong framed by the round, silver moon just now breaking the horizon.

((It touches her chest, her tongue, and her bum; scrapes the top layer of her heart with its thumb. It's only a dream, 'till it's raw and it's real, and she—))

Hu Tao laughs.

"Scared you, huh~?" she teases, and she playfully gives Yanfei's shoulder a shove.

(She's burning— what's burning? Why is she how did this who am I dying to k—)

Yanfei cannot even find her words long enough to deny it.

(By the way her heart stutters and flutters and flips in her chest, like a fledgling fresh caught in the cage of her ribs— maybe it's safer to call it mere 'fear'.)

She visits her cousin on her next free afternoon. They sip tea and share gossip until…

"Let's not talk about work right now," Ganyu says for what might be the first time in Yanfei's life. "You wanted to talk to me about something, right?"

Caught off-guard, the younger half-blood can only blink owlishly at Ganyu as she lowers her teacup.

"Oh," says Yanfei, briefly lowering her gaze along with her own teacup. (A strange stone starts to settle in her throat, the coalescence of some emotion she does not know how to name and cannot hope to untangle all on her own.) "Yes. It's about Hu Tao."

She feels Ganyu's ancient gaze studying her intently.

"If you are having issues with your laotong, it is best to speak with the girl in question herself," Ganyu says gently. "And if it's not something you can tell Hu Tao, then Ping will likely better know what to do. As you girls' matchmaker, she knows Director Hu much better than I."

Yanfei hums, that stone in her throat now forcing its way down into her stomach, like a too-large mouthful of rice swallowed too soon, and dissolving into a much more recognizable feeling: guilt.

"I know," she says, avoiding eye contact with her cousin. "But—"

Here, she feels like a child again, unable to articulate her feelings and desires for the courtroom which exists always in her mind. She knows she's done nothing wrong— so why does she feel like a crime?

"I know," Yanfei says, that shapeless curd of guilt starting to twist into a long, thin worm in her gut. Her hands tense on her lap, an automatic response to the way they tremble. It feels awful, perhaps even downright unnatural to keep such a life-consuming secret from her laotong.

Yet, her bodily response to the mere though of sharing all of this— any of this at all— with Hu Tao is the same as it has been these last few weeks (if not steadily getting worse). Her breathing shortens; her heartbeat pounds. Her hands clench further into fists while her spiraling thoughts start blurring together in her mind, and—

"Breathe," Ganyu instructs, her voice collected and firm. "Look at me."

Yanfei obeys.

Ganyu demonstrates putting a fist to her chest, inhales deeply, then slowly motions the fist away from herself, as if physically drawing the breath from her lungs as one would draw water from a well. Following along, Yanfei feels the stress unraveling beneath her sternum, exiting her body like an exorcised ghost— but the guilt still remains.

"Guilt is a sign of a strong moral compass," Ganyu reminds her, and the way she mimics her father's voice soothes Yanfei's still-burning nerves. "But you must also never forget: neither those who never guilt, nor those who guilt too strongly will ever live for long."

Yanfei studies the sadness that flickers in Ganyu's eyes. Centuries— no, millennia— of grief hollow her out for all of a second until Ganyu plucks a qingxin blossom from her desk vase and starts to idly munch.

Growing up, Yanfei had occasionally emulated her cousin by eating the qingxin she left behind, but its strongly bitter flavor always reminded her of the harsh winds on Jueyun's peaks, and left a cold impression on her tongue. Yet, the blossoms pull strongly on her now, and she knows that Ganyu would never mind.

"Something's changed about my relationship to Hu Tao," Yanfei confesses at last, and Archons, that feels good to say. She'd cry from the relief of it all if the resolve to speak her fears to life and advocate her case weren't holding her together so tightly. "It's not bad— or at least, I hope it's not bad— but I can't quite tell if it's good or not either. It's just… different."

Ganyu nibbles at her flower petals in thought. "And you're worried that by asking Hu Tao about it, you'll find yourself the only one to feel that way, I presume?"

Yanfei nods. "We promised," she says, in a little, tiny voice. "We promised we would always feel the same."

And I don't want to be the one to change that.

Ganyu closes her eyes.

"Interesting…" she murmurs.

Yanfei's grip on the qingxin she pulled from the vase tightens.

And then, Ganyu lets out a breath that is half-a-sigh, half-a-hum. "I can't help but to feel that… in some ways, I'm worried that I feel the same."

"You're worried about Tao and me?" Yanfei asks.

Ganyu shakes her head and swallows her qingxin. Then, idly running a hand over her horns, she says, softly:

"A paradigm shift."

Yanfei tilts her head at her cousin, intrigued.

"The Yuheng, I… misjudged her," Ganyu continues, fine lines of guilt embroidering her sweet smile. "Not entirely! Just a little, when I told you that she reeked of pig-headed nobility, far too drunk on her privileged upbringing to see clearly the Liyue which Rex Lapis leads us towards."

Yanfei thinks of the Chasm Court Case she has now famously helped to win, and of the invaluable contributions of one Lady Chen Keqing, who had labored in the Chasm under the exact same conditions as any other common worker for no less than two months in service of her understanding. For all of the Yuheng's impiety towards their Archon, she pays her dues tenfold to the people.

"I still can't stand her, of course," Ganyu says, with that classically stubborn Liyue tone— (the one that suggests its speaker is pulling against a tide) —"And I don't expect that to ever change.

"But the light in which I now see her…" Ganyu murmurs, her gaze shifting somewhere faraway as dreams enlace her tone, "it's strange."

Yanfei waits for more elaboration, but when she receives none, she captures what she hopes her cousin means in the sketchbook of her brain. And then she knows her time has come.

She shoves the bitter qingxin in her mouth.

~***~

Summers in the Harbor have always been unbearable, but before moving here for keeps, Yanfei had never known how the heat could get so palpably thick. Muggy, buggy, and humid, not even an empty mattress is bare enough to sleep in this heat.

It's not a big deal when Hu Tao pulls off her pajama top, nor is it noteworthy when Yanfei follows suit. Nudity is not sacred— they'd bathe together still, as they had when they were children, if the bathtub weren't so small— so they strip down to barren skin.

The window is open, but there is no breeze. When Yanfei flops down, she feels hardly any more relieved.

"Psst, Feifei," whispers Hu Tao in her ear. "Do you wanna play a game?"

Yanfei groans and rolls over to face the ceiling. "What game would we play, Taotao?"

"I've got one— hold still," Hu Tao says, and the mattress trembles as she shifts her weight onto her knees. Her tongue darts out, and she quickly licks the tip of her finger, then says, "I'm going to write something on you, and you're going to have to guess what it is, okay?"

Yanfei stares at Hu Tao, picking up and logging every fine detail of her mischievous expression. This was the face of a young funeral director about to take on her fourth year of work. This was the face of a girl on one of the last nights of her daughter-days.

This is the face of her beloved laotong , whom she treasures and trusts more than anyone else in the world.

"Mm." Yanfei shuts her eyes with a nod. She feels Hu Tao's careful gaze scrutinize her naked body, waiting, waiting…

She gasps softly when she feels the first pair of characters traced lightly over her belly— four strokes, then eleven, all quick and familiar.

"The sun," she says.

Hu Tao hums, evidently pleased. She selects a new location: Yanfei feels her finger gracing her cheek.

"Comes ," —another hum, another location— "out " —"yes"— "I… bathe… in the… sun."

"Good," Hu Tao says, her smile somehow audible. She pats Yanfei's cheek, then blows on every word she wrote, sending sharp tingles of cool pleasure down each and every nerve.

 

(It's cooler now— at least she thinks it must be: her body burns in comparison to even the stagnant summer air.)

 

"Your turn now."

The mattress rocks again as Hu Tao flops down; Yanfei opens her eyes and scrambles to her knees before the motion settles.

She knows the matching line— it's one of her laotong 's signature poems— so there is no question regarding what she has to write. The question , she thinks, peering carefully at the smooth, blank canvas of skin beneath her, is where to write it.

Hu Tao's eyes are covered with both her hands, leaving only her wicked grin to sparkle in the dim moonlight. Yanfei's gaze darts down from her smile— to the hollow of her neck, to the gentle valley between her breasts, to the sensitive spot above her hips, and to the tender softness of her thighs. It's difficult to choose; just which one will her laotong least expect?

Yanfei licks her finger and traces her first characters in the space where the jaw meets the throat, right above the windpipe. Had Hu Tao not been grinning openly, perhaps she would have chosen the mouth— the place where life's first breath will enter the body— so the space where the slightest of excess pressures may end it will have to do instead.

She feels Hu Tao swallow beneath her fingertip's faint touch before she answers. "The moon ."

Yanfei smiles, pride aflutter in her chest. "Yes," she says, and she licks her finger anew. With every word, a new location; with every spot, the poem grows.

"Sun comes out, I bathe in the sun," Hu Tao sings under her breath once Yanfei has finished writing the final character upon her inner thigh.

Yanfei braces herself on her hands and knees and lowers her face to mere centimeters above her laotong 's skin. (She's burning up , she notes to herself.) Blowing gently on each word, just as Hu Tao had done for her, she takes her sweet time in order to draw out the moment, then raises herself up again right as Hu Tao opens her eyes.

"Moon comes out, I bathe in the moon~" Yanfei returns, just as quietly as Hu Tao had sung before her.

The girls stare at each other, keenly aware each breath they take in, until finally, Hu Tao giggles, the sound infectious. Yanfei tilts over to once more lie on her side; Hu Tao rolls over to face her and places a delicate hand on Yanfei's cheek.

"Turn around," she whispers. "There's something I want you to know."

The stars are shining in her laotong 's eyes; Yanfei cannot refuse the sincerity which sparkles and blooms like the plum blossoms in the dying winter in her dearest's expression. She flips onto her stomach, rests her cheek on her folded arms, and shuts her eyes.

My laotong, she knows of balance the best:
The value of trinkets and blink-its and think-its and lies
Of labor and love, and of art made divine.

Whereas I am the sigh of the bothersome guest
Who enters your home with nary a word
Of fortune or favor, nor wishes for life.

Her voice echoes proud through the court-house halls;
Her laugh lingers loud above the night-market stalls.
The people all hear her; the whole world endears her.

My voice sits low when the haunted hill blows;
My laughter unsettles the old pine boughs.
The whole world can see me; the people all fear me.

Indeed, I am the thief who comes solely to steal
The wisps of your breath, which steady your soul
And cradle it gently to journey Beyond.

Everyone loves her— not least of which I,
Whom no one finds worthy of that xiezhi's mercy:
That of my laotong's unfaltering faith in me.

Hu Tao blows lightly over her back, setting her words to sail the sea between their hearts. Yanfei's toes curl at the sensation, the coolness it brings worth a thousand nights of sweet slumber.

Hu Tao laughs, a brief and breathy self-satisfied sort of snicker, before she settles back in next to Yanfei, and the two girls lie face-to-face for a moment.

"The poem was beautiful," Yanfei says, the last faint traces of coolness still fading from her back.

"Thank you," Hu Tao simply replies.

She reaches out and grabs one of Yanfei's hands; Yanfei does the same to Hu Tao. Together, they lace their fingers tightly together, drawing closer and closer with breaths intermingling until—

"Lie on your stomach," Yanfei instructs, their foreheads now touching. "There's something I want to say back."

Hu Tao raises an eyebrow. "Oh? This sounds exciting~" she says, then rolls onto her stomach.

Yanfei first brushes aside her laotong 's long, dark hair, exposing the soft, pale canvas of her back. Next, she licks her finger, just as she had done before, and begins to compose:

My laotong, she knows of balance the best.
Whereas my only weights sit on the scales of just,
Her thoughts oft sit upon the scales of dust.

Serving the people as she knows it best,
Her work is not dirty; her love is not sin.
For though she may deal in darkness and death,

I've seen what she does for people in need,
The fairness she grants to both hapless and blessed:
She loves them in death. She loves them to life.

The world may paint her demonic and cold;
The people may pay her in judgement doled—
But she is my laotong; I love her to death.

I wish that the world would see
How deeply my laotong knows
Of the balance between life and death.

With a quaking breath, Yanfei blows lightly upon her final poem, just as Hu Tao had done for her earlier, and watches as goosebumps briefly shudder down her back, despite the blanket-thick heat.

She knows her reply is not as long or a elegant as Tao's composition— Yanfei has always been more of a practiced recital girl than a freestyle composer— but she hopes that it conveys her reply well enough: that she loves her laotong no matter how the rest of the world sees them; that this love is not despite , but rather an admiration of her work.

And for a moment, Hu Tao does not speak; she does not move, save for a fragile trembling centered at what appears to be where her stomach meets her ribcage. Head still nestled in her forearms, Yanfei wonders for all of that moment if her dear Taotao can still breathe like this or if—

Hu Tao rolls over and pulls Yanfei close despite how blazing hot their bare bodies feel to touch.

"Ahhh~" Hu Tao says, a long, drawn-out breath thickly laden with emotion. "Thank you, Feifei; that was beautiful."

(The gentle breeze that forms when she breathes delicately caresses Yanfei's ear.)

"I mean every word of it," Yanfei breathlessly replies, then buries her face in her laotong 's neck.

"I know," Tao says. Although it is difficult to see from their current position, it is still obvious to Yanfei, who knows Hu Tao better than anyone else in Teyvat, that the other girl is grinning that wide ghost-smile of hers. "You always do, o beloved of mine."

(Beloved…)

((Yanfei can feel the steady beating of her laotong 's heart against her breast and knows without a doubt that Hu Tao can feel her own in kind.))

"It's nice to know that even after all this time, the Adepti still look kindly upon the traditions of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor," Hu Tao continues, an almost faraway quality to her voice. "All I want is to ensure that everyone is given a proper death and laid to peaceful rest. That way none will ever have to mourn for long, the satisfaction of the ending fulfilling enough for all to celebrate that which had once lived."

A fissure of some sort opens in the space where Yanfei's strong, well-tempered heart meets her throat, and an old fear, as sharp as a fresh-sprung leaf, begins to once more unfurl within her.

Yanfei untangles herself gently from Hu Tao's arms so that the two may lie face-to-face in bed once more. The sincere and soft-hearted expression on her dearest Taotao's face never once wavers, and staring into it with this fragile, crackling heart of her own steadies Yanfei.

"When I was still a baby," the young half-adeptus softly says, "Rex Lapis granted my mother the blessing of longevity, so that she and Baba may both grow old together as they watch me grow up."

(Hu Tao watches her intently, never blinking, never looking away, while Yanfei tells this story.)

"I know this doesn't mean they will always be around," Yanfei continues, "but even now that they're away on their travels, they've never truly been out of my life. They send me letters, little gifts— and of course, they'll be home for Lantern Rite. But I still—"

The words start to choke as the beginnings of tears form in her throat. But Yanfei sniffles them away and continues confiding:

"But I don't know what I'll do if they are ever really gone," she whispers in confession. "I've never really lived without them.

"What will I feel when that someday happens? When one day, I'd like to sit down and pen a letter to my parents, only to realize I have nowhere to address it? When one day the home they made together, the home where I was born and raised, falls to time?

"How long will I have to live without their constant presence at my side, and how much of my life will that turn out to be in the grand scheme of things? Will I still be living a good life if I cannot say that which I wish to say? Will I…"

Hu Tao leans in, and Yanfei, nearly lost in her spiraling thoughts, only catches the fluttering of her laotong 's eyelashes as her plum-blossom eyes fall shut before she feels chapped lips pressing tenderly, indescribably tenderly, against the space beneath her eyes.

(Ah, so those tears managed to come to life after all .)

"Don't cry, Yanfei, my baobei -ah," Hu Tao whispers. "Your parents will have lived their lives; you can only ever live your own. When the time comes to see them off, both their lives and the rest of your future will be worth celebration."

Hu Tao kisses her tears away again and again, whispering, "don't cry, don't cry ," each time until the sun has come to rise.

~***~

After tea with Ganyu, Yanfei goes on a walk through the Harbor by herself.

(With pale breaths fogging up before her face, she recalls the immolating heat of Hu Tao's lips upon her eyelids, cheeks, and jaw— anywhere her tears would fall, her laotong had kissed each one way.)

She stops near the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, and she stares at the still-empty winter branches of their laotong tree.

((She has never had a reason to cry when her old same is by her side.))

Though empty, their tree is far from barren: small, wooded buds, still sealed tightly shut in the frigid evening air, nestle in the knots of the plum tree's boughs. The spring thaw is rising from her bed upon the horizon.

(They had never kissed before that night, but now, all she can recall are all their casual goodbyes marked by them beneath this very tree.)

There is a love for her other half within her that has always been different from all her other loves. This feeling, too— she thinks it love from how it always wants to overspill from within her dreams and lungs into her life and breath. It lives entangled in the web between lungs and breast, born from the softest of bone-marrow and living every day running through every chamber of her heart— it's love. It has to be.

((There is a gaping inside Yanfei's chest, somehow, as she looks within it for her heart; a long, deep ache like a sigh unfulfilled, a love denied a home.))

Eyes shut softly, Yanfei curls a hand over her chest as she takes a deep breath, then pulls all her doubts and anxieties away with a sigh.

So this must be what they call 'deep-heart love '… she decides.

And when she opens her eyes, she finds the first dark plum bud has dared show its face to the frost.

~***~

Spring thaws, autumn falls, and the moon waxes and wanes: four years in the Harbor fly by like swans, leaving only their faint footprints in the snow.

A mysterious blonde Traveler arrives in the Harbor for the Rite of Descension. Rex Lapis— Lord of Stone, Emperor of the Land of Contracts— falls. Liyue is thrown out of balance.

Amidst the chaos, Yanfei sees precious little of her laotong, so busy are they with the affairs of their domains— Yanfei, the laws of the living, and Hu Tao, the rites of the passing. While the former finds herself buried to the ceiling in paperwork of every sort, the latter vanishes from society on a voyage to Hell, each doing her part to care for the business that comes with the passage of the Prime of the Adepti.

Much of that first month and some days or weeks after Rex Lapis's death passes by in little more than a blur, but there is a memory nestled within that time, like the gem within a geode, that formed amidst its turmoil, and it goes like this:

Hu Tao shows up in Yanfei's office at the hour when only rats are expected to stir.

"Yanfei- baobei-ah," she softly calls, her normally warm and lilting voice thin and hoarse with what must be disuse. "It's not like you to still be at work this late. Come, let's rest together."

Yanfei groans, having lost track of the hours some time ago; her muscles now have their complaints to file. She stretches her arms and cracks her knuckles while her laotong swiftly glides to her side on the fleet and floating footsteps of a ghost. A familiar silk coat settles over her shoulders, and a familiar hand pulls her from her seat; their fingers lace together without a second thought.

The second she stands up, exhaustion comes to collect its debts from Yanfei, and her fragile human legs collapse beneath her like a newborn fawn; for the first time in several years, she transforms into a xiezhi to catch herself before she falls.

"Oh!!" Hu Tao yelps. She skips backwards with a laugh as she recaptures her own balance, then reaches out to gently stroke Yanfei's soft nose. "Guess I never did get that much more gentle."

Yanfei brushes away Hu Tao's hand and gently, but firmly, headbutts the funeral director in the shoulder a bit. Then, she shakes out her head and transforms back into a human. "Don't be silly," she yawns. "It would be nice I had half of your ability to speak to the aggrieved these days. Conflicts are always such a struggle to untangle when everyone's got an emotional stake in the outcome…"

Hu Tao opens her mouth, pauses for a second, and then says, softly: "Let's sleep at my place tonight. It's been a long while since we last had a sleepover, hasn't it?"

The moon, pale and bright and cold as corpse, hangs in the sky amidst the stars like a milky-white and unseeing Celestial eye, blind to the troubles of Liyue's people in the wake of their Archon's passage; yet it still lights the girls' path back home, guiding them through the doorway and into bed together.

The night is chilly, but the girls are warm as they lie in a comfortable tangle of limbs beneath the messy blankets.

It really has been a long time since they've shared a bed together. Growing up has left them with lives made busy by the other connections they have made, but Tao's bedroom will always be their home together in the Harbor.

It makes for a nice change of scenery, too, both familiar and homely in the face of Yanfei's otherwise monotonous days of late, doing everything within her power to keep the shaken Liyue people from falling apart in her little legal office. Now, with that oppressive tension of repetition broken by the fresh, yet familiar, setting, Yanfei finds herself unraveling: stress that she hadn't even realized she'd come to carry starts to dissipate from her body, freeing up her soul to wander as it pleases just that little bit more.

And just like that, grief swells within her breast like the cresting of an ocean's wave before it crashes to the shore: Rex Lapis is gone.

There are some things, assumed constants of the universe, so large or grand that the human mind is simply not meant to comprehend them, lest they fall into madness or despair.

The Geo Lord, who had ruled over her home country and guided its people, is gone.

Yanfei, although not fully human herself, has not yet grasped the Adepti's sense of scale either.

The Prime of the Adepti himself, who had attended her parents' wedding, who had been present at her own birth— has passed away.

How could she possibly understand the enormity of sheer inevitability when she herself has only just begun to notice the cumulative weight of all the tiny, concrete details of her world which have changed since her childhood, hardly two decades ago?

In his wake, there now sits a space in every person's life that none had ever even realized he had been filling before.

(It is through this now-obvious hole left by Rex Lapis's absence that Yanfei finds herself internally staring, unsettled by its raw emptiness.)

And yet…

(Hu Tao stirs beside her.)

…Yanfei releases the lacquered latch of anxiety embedded into the cage of her ribs, carefully, deliberately letting her soul loose. She shuts her eyes with a slow, shuddered sigh, and she feels, with a deeply-rooted impartiality, for where it settles.

Her soul's choice is obvious, of course. It longs for the one who knows every skipping rhythm of her heart and each breathy melody of her lungs and vice versa; the one who is attuned to the very wavelength of her soul; the one for whom Granny Ping searched the very stars to find and thread their fates together— the woman dearest to her, the girl nearest to her: her same old laotong .

For well over a decade, they have been like a pair of mandarin ducks: never far apart. For long, long past half their lives, they have been like the pair of swallows nesting in the eaves: happy as can be. Yes, for as long as they both shall live…

"I love you," Yanfei murmurs as her thoughts drift off to comfortable slumber.

Yet, when she rises the next morning, Hu Tao is nowhere to be found. Off on an emergency call to the Spirit Realm, she later learns, but doubtful fears, thin and sharp as a shard of glass shattered by the docks, needle their way into her heart all the same.

~***~

She visits Ganyu for tea once more on the eve of the spring thaw.

"Ganyu- jiejie," Yanfei plainly, if a little hesitantly, starts. "If I may ask… I'd like to know more about how things have been changing between you and the Yuheng as of late."

Ganyu visibly pauses for a moment. Then, she silently swallows her tea and lowers her cup, her gaze falling with it. Yanfei studies her cousin's long, pale eyelashes as she blinks delicately at what must be her own reflection, either in the highly polished wood of their table or within her glass of tea itself, with an expression that softly blends quiet humility and secret joy with a delicate thread of guilt.

One of her hands drifts to hold the opposite wrist.

"I forgot how strong my heartbeat was for a long, long time, until she made my blood boil with her disrespect," Ganyu muses aloud, a small smile fondly gracing her face. "But recently, she's been coming to me for advice regarding Rex Lapis's ideals and reign, and I've come to realize she and I are often exactly the same. That at her heart, everything she's ever done has come from a place of profound love for Liyue. That the reason she was so confident in her defiance of our Lord is because we managed to build a Liyue that was secure enough for the once-fragile human lives we guarded to feel able to take on that burden of protection themselves."

Another pause.

(Yanfei watches the dust motes dance like snowflakes on the late afternoon sunbeam.)

Ganyu finally releases her wrist, instead propping her chin up with her elbow.

"It's a sort of relationship that I think I have been wanting for a long time now," she finally admits, her frost-pale cheeks flushing into a dainty dawn-pink. "For someone to feel like they are my equal in how deeply and sincerely they care about things. To want others to care about their impact on the world so ardently they will challenge even us old immortals to view the world through fresh eyes."

Ganyu returns to sipping her tea. Yanfei follows her lead.

"I think," the old qilin's child says, "that once I saw her for her heart, it was inevitable that I would fall in love with her."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Yanfei holds her breath.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Ganyu- jiejie," the young xiezhi's daughter begins, her voice thick with emotion, "I'm scared of missing Tao someday."

Ganyu's brow furrows, but she attentively leans in anyway, inviting Yanfei to continue.

Yanfei takes a breath to cool her backburner of worried thoughts. "It's just that… all my life, I feel as if there have been two unwavering constants in my life. One is that Rex Lapis will always rule the land, and the other, well…" She sighs, no longer as effortlessly confident as she had been before. "I know that it's nearsighted of me, since a century of human life is like a dream to us Adepti, but I'm not even as old as many humans just yet, so I think that counts for something here…"

The look on her cousin's face tells Yanfei that she's figured out exactly what it is that Yanfei has been rambling around. But there is far more merit to admitting things out loud than keeping them inside, so she does her best to—

"These last few years, I really felt as if Tao would be with me forever and always," she admits. "It just felt like even if she were to pass on, she'd manage to stay by my side somehow, playing her ghostly little tricks each night. It felt so far away and impossible that she would be so truly and irrevocably gone that I would miss her.

"Because in my mind, I imagined that even when the grief was new, Rex Lapis would inevitably still be there, and I'd have some sense of constancy throughout it all, to keep me from spiraling through my thoughts of change and the countless little losses throughout my life thus far and all the uncountably many more I would inevitably experience moving through the millennia after. But now that he's gone…" she trails off again. "I feel like if Tao were ever to vanish and never come back again, I just wouldn't be able to accept that.

"I want her to be by my side through everything; I want to always be able to see her laughing and happy, to listen to her voice as she recites and sings her little compositions; I want the world to always know her, to always remember her, to always understand her the way I do."

Yanfei blinks once, twice: her eyelashes come back wet both times, and she discovers the pearls of tears dripping down her face.

Ganyu extends a hand. At a loss, Yanfei takes it, and her beloved cousin— one of the very few people in all of Teyvat capable of truly and fully understanding her position— gives it a reassuring squeeze.

"I know something you can offer her," Ganyu softly says. "If you can keep it a secret; if you want it."

Wordlessly, Yanfei nods.

~***~

Yanfei visits Wangsheng Funeral Parlor later that evening.

"Hu Tao-wuwu," she calls from the doorway, hands clasped tightly together before her chest, brimming with anxiety and hope.

Her laotong comes bounding over, blithe as ever. "Yanfei-baobei-ah~" she sings, arms outstretched in welcome. "How nice of you to come visit! Come in; let me make you some tea—"

"Tao," Yanfei says, softer this time. She does not budge from her place just outside the door.

Hu Tao's excited footsteps slow, then stop. She turns around with an almost regal air and gravitas, her expression soft, but sober. "I'm listening," she says.

"Would you like to live as long as an adeptus?"

(Yanfei counts her thundering heartbeats during the pause.)

One—

Hu Tao laughs, although it's not so careless as to sound callous.

((Yanfei's heart skips a beat.))

"Nope!" the mortician replies, with an easy smile that speaks of hours upon hours, if not days upon weeks, of thought put into that exact same question. "I'm happy to live for as long as fate has allotted me, no more and no less."

Hu Tao begins to approach the doorway again as she continues:

"Especially now that the Archon Era is starting to fade out, we have no one to tell us what our lives are for. As people, we have to make the most of our time alive because we have to make it worth something all on our own. Will we make anything meaningful in the end? That's never for us to know. With how little time we are truly granted here, it's difficult for anything we make to last longer than three generations.

"But is the fleeting nature of our own lives not why we mortals revere the Adepti so highly, why their lives mean so much to those over whom they watch and guide? While it is true that they too shall someday fall to time, they have a long, long life to make something of themselves, are given the chance to define themselves in blisteringly self-actualizing ways."

Hu Tao, having stopped just shy of crossing the doorway herself, folds her hands behind her back and leans teasingly close to that border between them. She wears a smile on her face that Yanfei aches to behold in its familiarity, for it is the one her laotong wears when she is at her most honest and sincere with her clients.

"I will not be the only joy of your life," she whispers.

(Her plum blossom-pupils waver as Yanfei tries desperately to engrave the sight of them into her memory.)

((The young immortal's hands fall empty to her sides.))

Hu Tao reaches across the doorway and rests her hearth-warm hand upon Yanfei's cheek, stroking it gently with her thumb. "But Yanfei, baobei, my laotong and love," she says. "You are human, too. And you promised your father you'd live as happy a life as possible. Do not dwell on the sadness of death, for the Land of the Dead is not a lonely place, nor does the Land of the Living have to be lonely after the passing of a loved one."

Hu Tao's free hand reaches over to grab one of Yanfei's and brings it up to her lips, warming her knuckles with her breath. "Everyone dies someday," she continues, and the brief pulse of a fiery Vision's glow confirms her conviction in this, "and while I, Hu Tao, will be crossing the Border without looking back the moment I arrive, know I will always look forward to the day when you join me as well."

Yanfei cries again.

She opens her mouth to speak— I love you; I need you; I can't possibly bear to let my other half turn to ash— but everything gets caught in her throat all at once. She feels like a fish, kept in Aunt Cloud Retainer's pond: something desperate and gaping as one by one those around it are pulled from the pond until she is left there, untouched and alone out of respect for the Adepti.

Hu Tao's hand drops from her cheek to instead hold her other hand. Now holding them both in her hands, she presses her lips to her laotong's curled fingers for several quiet seconds.

"Let me hold tight to the grief of your future," she says, breath skimming over the back of Yanfei's hands like the faint flap of a butterfly's wings. "Maybe then my life's love will keep your pain sutured, when someday— and soon, to your Adept life— my death-day shall come, sharp as a knife, and the smoke of my corpse in cremation will get in your eyes."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hu Tao," Yanfei says, her voice thick, yet steady. "My laotong. I swore a bond to you, to be like a pair of mandarin ducks."

Hu Tao's eyes catch the dying light. "For ten thousand years, we shall be like the flint and steel of the tinderbox: never without our spark," she recites.

Tender warmth begins to unfurl in Yanfei's chest. She gently untangles her fingers from Hu Tao such that she may hold her dearest old same's face in her hands. "For ten thousand years, we shall be like the twin blooms of the silk bush: never growing apart," she replies, then swallows.

They are standing in the doorway together now; neither inside nor outside the old funeral parlor, but somewhere on the boundary between. Will her other half understand? Will they still remain the same? She doesn't want to violate a contract, and oh, these kinds of cases regarding the changing of people's feelings are always the thorniest type to sort, but…

"I love you," Yanfei confesses. "I'm in love with you. Does that change anything? Are we still…"

"…The same?" Hu Tao finishes for her.

Yanfei counts her heartbeats again.

(One, two, three, four…)

Then she nods.

(…five, six—)

The blossoms in Hu Tao's eyes seem to twinkle as she grins.

(—seven    )

"Of course we are," she breathes, then lightly laughs a touch. Her hands wander up to hold Yanfei's face again, and she says, "I've always felt just the same as you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(They kiss in the doorway between life and death.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~***~

A second contract, written in thick, rounded strokes on a coarse, off-white sheet of bamboo joss paper:

We, Hu Tao of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor and Huang Yanfei of the House of the Adepti, hereby vow to remain old sames even when on opposite sides of the Border between Life and Death. We shall carry one another's memories in our hearts forever and always, and through them draw bravery from the flesh of our livers and hope from the marrow of our bones. Through the fire and the flames, may our mutual love be forged ever-stronger and linger wherever our souls once touched.

On this day, we, Hu Tao and Huang Yanfei, have spoken to the true words within our hearts. We swear a bond to each other like a pair of mandarin ducks. For ten thousand years, we shall be like the beautiful smoke and the funeral pyre: on opposite ends of life, yet never parted from one another.

The watchful gaze of Rex Lapis affirms our vow: we will be laotong for all the time fate shall allow.

notes (bottom)

fic title is a play on the fact that laotong (老同) literally translates out to "old same".

i was gonna put finishing this off for a while, bc i've been working on this long xiaoven fic for months now, but recently i think yantao came into my brain and decided to hold my xiaovens hostage, so now we're here. yanfei I love you but pls give me my xvs back ;-; (lol)

inspired very heavily by snow flower and the secret fan by lisa see, which I read when I was younger and had this one Really REALLY gay scene burn itself into my memory. I reread it for this fic, and it was actually GAYER than I remember. it's a pretty emotionally fraught read, but if you can handle that, i'd highly recommend reading it~

that's all. thank you for reading~

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