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Three meters between the toes of his blood-tarnished boots and the entrance to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, the ferrylady stood her ground with more resolve than Childe would have initially given her credit for.
“...” she said.
“...” he replied.
Silence fell between them like the end of a bout at the Third-Round Knockout.
She relented. “...He really isn’t present, at the moment. You could try the Liuli Pavilion?”
But how silly of her, to think that Childe would go anywhere else. Perhaps she’d not had her morning silk flower tea. That or the reputation of the Fatui hadn’t fully sunk its teeth into Liyue Harbor. He made a mental note to rectify such preposterousness with the flunkies at Northland Bank. Really he could be making a lot more mental notes, if it weren’t for the effort that he was espousing currently to mute an open wound threatening to cough out all the vital organs from the right side of his body. All-in-all, it was awful comedic timing on the Traveler’s part. For how overpowered the kid was supposed to be, he couldn’t even hold off a couple of ruin guards without some Harbinger ex machina. Never mind another Foul Legacy Transformation, Childe was going to be out of commission for the next couple of days because of this tomfoolery.
“Oh, I don’t mind waiting,” he mustered as much cheer as he could, through gritted teeth.
“There’s a grieving family in the antechamber. 11th Harbinger or not, I couldn’t have you disturbing the deceased.”
But that’s the point, he wanted to tell her. Dead men are quiet. They tell no tales.
“I’ll keep to the consultant’s quarters only.” He made a final attempt. “I’ll be in and out of here as soon as he shows up.”
“Until who shows up?” came a voice from behind him, and he’s really such an unlucky bastard, Childe mused. Another five minutes of this back-and-forth, and he could have actually hemorrhaged himself into the afterlife. Would that have been so bad?
“Did you perhaps consider the Bubu Pharmacy,” said Zhongli, with about as much tact as Childe had come to expect, as he gingerly lowered himself onto the bamboo mat covering the embalming station.
They were inside the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor’s consultant’s chamber. A room crafted for Zhongli’s personal use, the walls here were a deep amber color hewn from wood that must have taken at least two weeks to cart over from the cliffs of Mt. Hulao. The furniture accents were all noctilucous jade as well, of AAA-grade quality. Even the scent of the glaze lily incense that permeated the vicinity clearly originated from flowers painstakingly plucked at its ripest bloom. Consults in this chamber were expressly limited to the matters of adepti Rites of Parting, so it saw little regular use. For a room so luxuriously decorated, his bed was really so uncomfortable. Then again, the adepti were really not known to be creatures of comfort. And at this point they would’ve been dead anyway. Childe digressed.
“Yeah right,” he sneered. “As if I’d let that snake see me in this condition. He’ll have his little zombie walk me out of there missing an arm and a leg, for how much he’d scalp out of me.”
“So you came to me,” Zhongli murmured. His gaze shifted to the fabric of Childe’s overcoat. It was a thick material, military-issue, coated on the outside with a special cryo spray produced in only one closed city factory in Snezhnaya. The main benefit was its blood-repellant property, which kept splatter to a minimum on the outside. The inside of Childe’s outfit however was an utterly different story.
“I, ah— needed a place to escape to. They would ask too many questions at the bank. And as I'm sure you know, there aren’t a lot of places in Liyue Harbor that take too kindly to Fatui.”
“I see,” said Zhongli. And then after a pause, “...I’d like to examine your injury. Do you mind?”
“I came here to rest.” Childe frowned. “But why not, I suppose.” As if the esteemed Mr. Zhongli had needed to ask at all. But it was probably one of those things that required a personalized admission, part of the natural procession of such an establishment. “You have my permission.”
As Zhongli peeled the jacket off his bare torso, Childe noticed his lips part briefly at the sight of the scarlet-soaked bandage covering the large gash on his side. Definitely not Childe’s proudest work, but it was about as much as he could scrape together in the five seconds that it took the Traveler to discover him in his most pathetic state, propped against the side of a wall in Dottore’s laboratory.
In the earliest days of Childe’s Fatui training, his instructors taught recruits to never let a single tear slip from their eyes by cryo-ing their tear ducts shut. Childe was one of the few that had never required this training in practicum. But something about the way Zhongli’s hands ghosted over his skin made his eyelids tremble slightly. Suddenly he was hyper aware of the amount of vulnerability he was secreting into the atmosphere of this room. But he’d already agreed to the exercise. It wasn’t like him to back down at this point.
“I’m going to use ground qingxin root as a local anesthetic, but it won’t offset the fatigue that you've already been carrying.”
Childe nodded, bewildered. He watched Zhongli sanitize his wrists and elbows, pulling on a pair of black gloves tucked away from a nearby shelf. He sucked inwardly on his cheek as long fingers probed at his wound, and shivered at the spread of the herbal paste against his skin. Moments after the qingxin root started to blossom within his bloodstream, he could feel the press of geo crystals into the affected area, possibly in an effort to suture the bleeding. Zhongli worked diligently, brows slightly knit in concentration as he smoothed all of Childe’s vital organs back into the right side of his body.
“You’re taking care of me,” he observed, rather belatedly.
“Did you think I was going to do anything else?” was all Zhongli said.
It had to be the glaze lilies. Their scent clung to Childe’s nostrils and tasted bittersweet in his mouth, as he watched Zhongli fuss over his wound.
“Hey, you’re pretty quiet today,” he tried again. “Why don’t you tell me a story? You’re usually full of those.”
A pause. Zhongli tilted his chin toward Childe. “Would you like to learn about the Goddess of Salt?”
“Never mind,” said Childe, and laughed to himself. “Why would I wanna hear about another one of your ex-lovers?” He’d said it without meaning to, and felt a blush rise up in his cheeks. Zhongli said nothing. Childe looked up at the ceiling. Damned glaze lilies. He was definitely getting them import-banned in Snezhnaya.
He woke to a dull pain in his upper body, numbed by the geo crystals lodged within his chest cavity. The scent of the glaze lily incense had been dusted from the chamber, which eased his discomfort somewhat.
His vision blurred when he opened his eyes, but he was able to settle on an outline of Zhongli, quietly at rest on the amberwood bench opposite his bed. Posture slightly unfocused, chin propped up with one hand, his black gloves discarded to one side. He stirred immediately to an upright position upon noticing Childe’s attempts to sit up, and moved from the bench. He left the room briskly, coming back with an amberwood tray, its sides inlaid with the same noctilucous jade that adorned the furniture in this room. The tray contained a steaming clay pot with a porcelain spoon laid out on its right. Inside the pot was a clear soup with some simple country vegetables, stewed to a softer texture.
“The base of this soup is a dashi. It was simmered with seaweed harvested from the southernmost shores of the Inazuma archipelago. The flavor of its brine has an uplifting mouthfeel, and will certainly help your recovery.”
“There we go,” Childe said teasingly, as Zhongli placed the tray on a small table in front of him. “Only the best ingredients for Professor Zhongli, even if it’s for a household veggie soup.” He took a sip from the spoon, felt the taste of the food warm up to his tongue and OK, maybe the seaweed was worth its weight in mora.
“You won’t be able to bathe on your own for a while, by the way. I’ve asked for a tub to be moved to this room.”
Childe nearly choked on a spoonful of soup. “Y-You did what?”
“Your wound,” said Zhongli, sounding way too matter-of-fact for this to be a joke. “I’ve dressed it properly, of course. You’ll disturb the violetgrass ointment if you move too quickly or get it wet. It’s fine. I can wash your hair. Is there a special way that you style it, or does it just naturally curl up like that? I’ve always wondered.”
You’ve always wondered? thought Childe, before he could help himself. “...No. There’s no special way that I style it. Knock yourself out.” He took in another mouthful of soup.
He shouldn’t have worried about it at all, he chided himself later, fully-clothed, feeling the tips of Zhongli’s fingers lathering his hair in silk flower-scented shampoo. He was in a freshly-laundered rendition of his harbinger regalia (just for how long had he been asleep?!), sitting with his head tilted back over Zhongli’s lap. The nape of his neck was braced against a brass wash basin supported in the air by two thin pillars of geo.
“You know,” he found himself saying, “I wasn’t expecting any of this.”
“What were you expecting?” Zhongli’s fingers stilled. The absence of motion made Childe want to lean further back into his hands. “You came to me with viscera spilling halfway outside of your body. How did you even come across such an injury?”
“I got swiped,” Childe shrugged, wincing at the tug on his bandages as he did so. “When I’m in my transformed mode, I focus most of the elemental energy to my weapons. Wasn’t expecting to have to do so much crowd control. Hey, don’t give me that look. It happens! And I haven’t died yet, so I’d say I’m doing a good job.”
Zhongli was quiet. His fingers started to move again, forming a gentle massage against Childe’s skull. “Please do a better job.”
“That’s no fair, Professor.” Childe sighed into his touch. “If you keep this up, I’ll want to get hurt very badly again.”
He felt rather apologetic to the ferrylady, as he exited the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor three days later.
“...” she merely said to him, at the door.
“...” he replied. And then relented. “...Look, I know I said I was going to be in and out of here. I wasn’t planning on an extended stay. As it is, I’m still alive and well, so isn’t that a good thing?”
“I would argue that in this line of work, it’s not so good,” she pointed out.
“Right,” said Childe. “Sorry about that, then.” He took the stone steps down from the terrace, and thought about taking his business to the Pearl Galley next time.