Chapter Text
See, Atsushi is man enough to admit he’s out of touch. He doesn’t know much slang and he’s never watched a movie. But goodness , at least he has a good reason for it!
Mr. Zhongli is, well, he’s a peculiar man. Although maybe all rich men are all like that. Wearing a tailored suit everyday, even on days that he isn't working.
He’s like a cartoon, forever stuck with one outfit. Which is probably an apt description for the guy because he quite literally has no pores . No pimples, no eyebags, no nothing. Just two, pretty amber eyes, red eyeliner, a nose, and a mouth.
Hu Tao, on the other hand, is a little too much. She’s the type who’d eat a popsicle in the middle of a snowstorm, giggling through the frostbite like it’s a party trick. She’s chaos in combat boots, dressed like she’s going to a funeral but somehow always in motion—twirling, humming. Atsushi swears she’s not entirely tethered to this plane of existence, and he means that in the most polite way possible.
She calls him “Little Sushi” with the same tone one might use for a pet cat they dressed in baby clothes. It’s… disconcerting.
“You need more meat on your bones!” she insists as she shoves a third steamed bun into his hands. “You’re, like, one good breeze away from ascension, and not the cool, cosmic kind!”
Zhongli merely sips his tea. “It is improper to comment on one’s physique so bluntly, Hu Tao.”
“Then why did you say he looked ‘fragile as a mourning willow’ yesterday?” she counters, eyebrows raised.
Zhongli looks as though time itself had wronged him. “A turn of phrase, artfully woven, is no insult— but a refinement of speech most noble.”
Atsushi just nods slowly, chewing on the bun like it might save him from the conversation. He’s not even sure how he got here, in this penthouse that smells faintly of incense and papered money, with two— let’s be honest— very strange people claiming to be his guardians. Temporary guardians. Probably. Hopefully?
Because, listen, they talk about “getting back” like they’re tourists who lost their return ticket, but there’s something off about it. Zhongli keeps mentioning ley lines like they’re train schedules, and Hu Tao once very seriously asked if the moon here “was always so small.”
But Atsushi doesn’t press. Not when he’s got a warm bed, three meals a day, and no one trying to beat him within an inch of his life.
Even if his new caretakers? landlords? cult leaders? are potentially magic.
“You really should watch a movie,” Hu Tao announces one evening, perched upside down on the sofa, hair brushing the floor. “What’s that one with the big sinking boat and the hot, poor guy who dies? So sad. So romantic. You’d cry for sure.”
“I… I think I’d like that,” Atsushi says, quietly.
“Then settled, it has been!” she declares, flipping herself upright in one swift motion. “Movie night! And if you cry, you owe me twenty mora.”
Zhongli looks up from his tea, the faintest crease in his brow. “Mora holds no worth in this realm, Hu Tao.”
She pouts. “Then what do they use here? Do you think tears can be bartered?”
Atsushi sighs into his cup of tea. Maybe he’s out of touch. Maybe this is all some elaborate dream conjured by his half-starved brain. But for the first time in a long while, he doesn’t feel like running.
There’s a rule Atsushi’s learned: if something’s glowing, pulsing, or making a low hum that feels like it’s inside your teeth— it’s probably Hu Tao’s fault.
Case in point: the living room.
More specifically, the weird chalk circle on the hardwood floor, surrounded by fire salt, seaweed, and what looks suspiciously like a fortune cookie split in half.
“ What ,” Atsushi says flatly, “is this.”
Hu Tao beams, as if she hasn’t just summoned a minor earthquake in the apartment.
“Prototype emergency homebound portal version six! And a half.”
“A portal,” Atsushi repeats slowly.
“Yep! Should’ve opened a teeny rift back to not-here,” she says with air quotes, “but instead it summoned a paper lantern and a very confused pigeon.”
She gestures to the pigeon, which is now sitting in Zhongli’s teacup. Zhongli, to his credit, hasn’t moved.
“I suspect,” Zhongli says, voice steeped in the kind of patient disappointment Atsushi has only ever heard from nuns and ancient scholars, “that the ritual array is imbalanced. As I warned thee thrice, Director Hu.”
Hu Tao scowls. “Okay, well maybe if somebody would let me use their power as a leyline anchor—”
“Absolutely not.”
Atsushi slowly lowers himself to the floor, careful not to step in the chalk. “You guys are… trying to get back home?”
Silence.
Zhongli sets down his tea. “In a manner of speaking.”
Hu Tao tilts her head. “You ever step out of your house, and the door closes, and it locks, and you don’t have your keys?” She taps her head. “It’s like that. But with, uh. Dimensions .”
“Right,” Atsushi says, nodding. Because normal people do that all the time— he thinks sarcastically.
Hu Tao giggles. “Aw, don’t be like that. You’ve got your own weird stuff going on, too.”
He wants to argue, but. Well. He does black out when it’s the full moon, which is weird. But that’s besides the point.
Still, it’s a little unsettling, realizing they’re stranded. Even more unsettling is realizing they don’t seem all that panicked about it.
“You’re not… worried?”
Zhongli folds his hands. “Worry ill befits those who still draw breath. If there is no path forward, we shall make one.”
“And if you can’t?” Atsushi asks.
Hu Tao shrugs. “Then I guess we just keep haunting you.”
Atsushi groans. “That’s not comforting.”
She winks. “Wasn’t supposed to be.”
The pigeon coos softly from the teacup. The pigeon blinks at Atsushi. It looks mildly offended, like it, too, had somewhere more important to be than trapped in a magical side effect of whatever Hu Tao had cooked up this time. Its feathers are slightly glowing. Just slightly. Atsushi pointedly doesn’t look too long at it.
“Do you at least know where home is?” he asks.
Hu Tao, in a rare moment of restraint, doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she scrunches her nose and taps her chin with a finger, eyes flicking to the chalk lines on the floor. “It’s… complicated,” she says, which is already a bad sign. “I’ve been trying to recreate the exact symbol formation from when we landed here. It had the triple swirl and the half-lotus overlay? With the sigil that looked like a crying radish?”
Atsushi blinks. “That… doesn’t sound real.” A little bit of him is starting to believe that these two escaped from the mental asylum and he should report them to the authorities, but then, who would provide him with food? He’s only starting to get back on his feet.
“It was real!” she insists, pointing indignantly at the circle. “For like three seconds before it fizzled out and dumped us in a…” She pauses, squinting at the ceiling like the right word might be written there. “A… a… you know! One of those weird little roads that’s not a road but also not a hallway— super narrow, smells like old soup and wet socks?”
Zhongli doesn’t even look up from his newspaper. “An alley, Director Hu.”
“A-ha!” She points at him triumphantly. “An alley! Yes! One of those!”
Zhongli, still somehow composed despite the pigeon currently bathing in his teacup, sets his newspaper down and folds his hands with quiet solemnity. “The sigil, as thou didst draw it, lacked the necessary balance. Its formation— hasty. It’s casting—fragmentary. It was no surprise the passage crumbled ’ere its course was complete.”
“I call it artistic improvisation,” Hu Tao says, puffing her chest out.
“You called it ‘oopsies’ at the time,” Zhongli reminds her.
She shrugs. “Well, the glyph mostly worked. Got us somewhere. Now I just need to figure out what went wiggly in the lines and why it felt like the ley lines laughed at me.”
Atsushi stares at her. Then at the glowing chalk circle, which pulses faintly and smells faintly of seaweed and singed air. “And you think recreating that is… safe?”
Hu Tao’s eyes gleam as she crouches beside the glowing chalk circle, fingers twitching like she’s barely resisting the urge to redraw it right then and there. “Safe? Nah,” she says, grinning as the sigils spark faintly under her breath. “But look at it— it buzzes like a lightning bug trapped in a lantern! Isn’t that fun?”
Atsushi covers his mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter. “You guys really fell into this world in an alley?”
“Dramatically,” Hu Tao clarifies.
“Disastrously,” Zhongli corrects.
“Tomato, tomahto,” she chirps, hopping over a chalk line. “Point is— we got here, and now I just have to draw the same sigils with less smoke and more dimensional stability!”
“…Those are not units of measurement,” Zhongli mutters.
“But they should be,” she counters, grinning.
Atsushi wipes at his eyes, still chuckling, when the chalk under Hu Tao’s boot gives a sharp fzzzt and flares briefly with light— an ominous pulse that makes the pigeon outside coo in alarm and Zhongli sit up just slightly straighter.
Hu Tao freezes mid-hop. “Oops.”
Zhongli sets his teacup down with an exhale that sounds like a leaf falling in slow motion. “Director Hu, thou didst disturb the resonance vector. Again.”
Hu Tao lifts her foot carefully, revealing a now-smudged sigil that looks like it’s trying to reassemble itself—lines wriggling like worms in reverse. “Okay, but hear me out— what if the resonance wanted to be disturbed?”
“It did not,” Zhongli says, already reaching for the small brass brush he keeps specifically for ritual damage control.
Atsushi leans back slightly from the circle. “Should we— uh, move?”
“I mean, technically, we’re still in the observation phase,” Hu Tao offers, watching the sigils flicker. “It’s only bad if it starts whining. Or glowing blue. If it glows blue, definitely run.”
“Why blue?” Atsushi asks warily.
“That means it’s inviting something,” she says cheerfully. “And it’s never dinner.”
Before Atsushi can respond, a faint hum stirs the air—subtle, but enough to ruffle the edges of the scattered paper talismans and make the lights dim for half a second. The sigils still now, eerie and waiting.
Zhongli finishes brushing out the faulty line with a practiced flick and, with a measured breath, speaks again—this time lower, older, like the world itself might be listening.
“Be still,” he says. “The ley remembers more than it tells. And thou wouldst do well not to wake that which sleeps beneath the veil.”
There’s a long pause where no one breathes. Even Hu Tao stays frozen. Then—
“…Okay, that was cool,” Atsushi whispers, wide-eyed. “Creepy, but cool.”
Hu Tao exhales, bouncing on her heels again. “Right? He gets all spooky when the ground talks back. It’s the best.”
Zhongli does not sigh, but it feels like he might.
“Let us retire for the evening,” he says at last, straightening with that serene finality that brooks no argument. “The array shall wait. Tea does not steep itself.”
Hu Tao makes a noise of protest but relents, throwing an arm around Atsushi as she herds him toward the kitchen. “C’mon, Little Sushi. We’ll get you some water, and maybe something sweet.”
Zhongli lingers by the array just a moment longer, one hand ghosting over the still-faintly-humming sigils. His voice, nearly inaudible, hums in the quiet.
Then he turns and follows.
Atsushi nursed the last of his tea, the cup warm in his hands, while the city below blinked like a field of restless stars. The hum of the world beyond their apartment faded, replaced by the quieter rhythm of the three of them sharing space in the golden stillness.
Something had been tugging at the edge of his mind all evening, and it finally slipped out before he could stop it.
“So… where are you from?”
Hu Tao blinked mid-spin on her barstool. “Oooh, getting nosy now, Little Sushi?”
Atsushi flushed. “You don’t have to answer. I just—” He glanced at the half-faded chalk sigils on the living room floor. “You talk about getting back like it’s a real place. And that thing earlier… It didn’t feel like a regular earthquake.”
Zhongli didn’t answer right away. He simply set his cup down, fingers brushing the rim with a care that made the gesture feel ceremonial. “It is a real place,” he said at last. “Far from this realm. Far from most realms.”
“Teyvat,” Hu Tao supplied, sliding her cup back and forth between her palms. “It’s got everything. Floating islands, vengeful ghosts, flower monsters that explode if you stare too hard. You’d love it.”
Zhongli gave her a sidelong glance. “Not everything explodes.”
“You exploded once,” she said brightly, pointing at him. "I heard that you did."
Atsushi froze, the cup halfway to his mouth. The words caught up to him a full second too late. He blinked once. Twice. Then slowly lowered the teacup like it might shatter if he moved too fast.
“…You…” His voice wobbled between disbelief and awe. “You exploded?”
Zhongli cleared his throat. “That was… another time. A necessary demonstration of force, and this one did not explode.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hu Tao waved him off. “He’s modest. Mr. Geo Archon used to rule a nation. Did you catch that part yet?”
Atsushi blinked. “Wait. You ruled a country?” Hefroze mid-sip, the rim of the teacup hovering just short of his lips. His eyes flicked up to Zhongli, who, with all the serenity of someone commenting on the weather, had just casually admitted to ruling a nation. Atsushi set the cup down carefully— deliberately— like too quick a movement might cause the whole world to tilt sideways again. His brows knit, mouth slightly parted, as if the words you ruled a country were trying to form but couldn’t quite make the leap out of his throat.
Zhongli simply folded his hands over one knee, posture impeccable, gaze distant with the weight of centuries. He looked like he could recite an entire dynasty from memory—and had probably written half of it himself.
“I oversaw Liyue,” Zhongli said with a quiet nod. “For thousands of years. As an Archon—an elemental god, in your terms.”
There was a pause.
Atsushi looked between them slowly. “…You’re gods?”
“I’m not,” Hu Tao said at once, grinning. “I just work with them. Kinda. He was one. He retired.”
“Voluntarily,” Zhongli added, as if that made it better.
Hu Tao snorted. “You say that like you didn’t ghost Celestia and vanish into early retirement with a tea set and an alias.”
Zhongli sipped his tea as if he hadn’t been called out at all.
Atsushi laughed—half in disbelief, half in amazement. “That’s… a lot.”
“Mmhm,” Hu Tao agreed cheerfully. “But we’re mellow now. Earthbound. On vacation.” She kicked her feet up on the bar, then added thoughtfully, “Teyvat was… chaotic. Beautiful. Kinda sad sometimes. But home, you know?”
Zhongli’s gaze drifted toward the dark window, where the city lights shimmered like reflections off the surface of a long-lost sea. The lantern glow softened the lines of his face, but something older lingered in his expression—like he wasn’t quite seeing the apartment anymore.
“There was peace,” he said quietly, fingers curled around his teacup. “And conflict. Gods walked beside mortals. Nations rose, fell. The wind carved away truths, the stone buried what it could not forget.”
His voice was steady, but his eyes told stories too old for words.
“And there was a traveler,” he added, barely above a murmur. “Always moving. Always searching.”
Hu Tao leaned back in her seat, her usual bounce subdued. She twirled the empty cup between her fingers, watching the reflection of the lantern light spin across the rim.
“She always showed up late,” she said after a beat, with a crooked smile. “But never too late. Got this way of arriving just when everything’s about to collapse. Like cosmic timing, or maybe bad luck. A little spacey. A little stabby.”
She chuckled once, dry. Then her hand stilled. “We didn’t get to say goodbye.”
The room settled into a pause, soft and heavy.
Atsushi glanced between them, hesitant. “Do you think she’s… still there?”
Zhongli didn’t answer immediately. He looked down into his tea, as if the steam might whisper the answer. Then he gave the faintest nod.
“She endures,” he said. “It is what she does.”
Hu Tao tapped her cup against her teeth, a light clink filling the silence. She stared into it like it might offer a different flavor this time. It didn’t. But the motion gave her something to do with her hands.
“She’s got Paimon,” she said, offhand, like that sealed it.
Atsushi blinked. “Paimon?”
Hu Tao’s grin returned, just a little too quick. “Tiny, loud, floats. Sidekick, mascot, chaos goblin. Real big opinions for someone who weighs less than a cabbage.”
Zhongli didn’t look up, but his tone was unshakable. “She is not to be eaten.”
Hu Tao shrugged, her smirk lazy and unconvincing. “Says you.”
Atsushi laughed before he meant to. The sound broke the tension, just a little. Not enough to erase it—but enough to make the silence that followed feel a little more like comfort, and a little less like loss.
Atsushi’s gaze lingered on the steam curling faintly from his cup, now only the ghost of warmth. “Do you…” he hesitated, then looked up. “Miss it?”
The question settled in the room like dust.
Hu Tao didn’t smile. For once, her fingers didn’t twitch, and she didn’t crack a joke. She just stared at her tea, lashes low, and gave a small nod. The kind that barely moved her head, but said more than words could.
Zhongli’s hand stilled on the table beside his cup. No dramatic pause, no poetic response. Just silence that agreed with hers.
Atsushi let the quiet stretch between them. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. He just sat there, surrounded by two people who had once been part of something bigger— something ancient and alive—and now shared a rented apartment in a city that didn’t know their names.
His tea had gone cold, but he cradled the cup anyway, holding onto the warmth that lingered—not from the drink, but from them. Their stories. Their steadiness. Their refusal to fall apart, even here.
He didn’t know how long they’d stay.
But as he watched Zhongli adjust a teacup with quiet reverence and Hu Tao nudge the rim of hers like it might sing back, he found himself hoping they’d linger. Just a little longer.
The quiet held for a while, the kind that wasn’t awkward, just full—like the space had made room for something that couldn’t be rushed.
Then Hu Tao tilted her head toward him, resting her chin in one hand. Her voice was gentler now, laced with that casual tone she wore like armor. “What about you, Atsushi?”
Atsushi looked up, startled. “What?”
She tapped the rim of her cup with a fingernail, letting it ring once before speaking. “Got anything you miss?” Her smile was easy, but not teasing. “Anyone?”
Atsushi froze.
It wasn’t a big question. Not really. But it landed like a stone in his chest.
He dropped his gaze, staring hard at the tea leaves settled at the bottom of his cup, like maybe if he looked long enough, they’d spell out an answer for him.
“Not… really,” he said at last, voice careful. “Nothing I’d go back for.”
Hu Tao didn’t push. She didn’t raise an eyebrow or crack a joke or ask why his shoulders had suddenly gone tense. She just nodded, like that was enough.
Zhongli, ever perceptive, glanced over but said nothing. Just lifted the teapot and refilled Atsushi’s cup with that same quiet grace, as if the act itself said: You don’t have to explain. You’re here now.
Atsushi murmured a thank you, barely above a whisper.
Hu Tao stretched, arms over her head, and let out a dramatic sigh that broke the moment like a yawn in a sacred hall. “Well, that’s enough melancholy in one night. Gonna have to light some incense to balance it out. Or summon a slime. You think the landlord would mind?”
Zhongli replied without missing a beat. “If you conjure another geo slime on the balcony, we will receive another warning.”
Hu Tao groaned. “Ugh. Authority ruins everything.”
Atsushi laughed quietly, the sound small but real. The ache in his chest hadn’t left, but it had eased. Just a little.
Hu Tao’s eyes flicked toward him at the sound, and in an instant, the atmosphere shifted. She sat up straighter, smile curling like smoke from a freshly lit lantern.
“Aha!” she said, pointing at him with dramatic flair. “That was a laugh.”
Atsushi blinked. “Uh… yeah?”
She grinned wider, like she’d just caught a ghost mid-prank. “Which means you’re emotionally vulnerable and therefore perfectly primed for a tragic romance.”
Atsushi stared at her, confused. “…What?”
Hu Tao was already hopping off her stool, practically vibrating with glee. “Movie night!” she declared. “You promised me twenty mora if you cried, remember?”
Zhongli looked up from his tea, brow faintly furrowed. “That… was not a formal agreement.”
Hu Tao waved him off. “Spiritual contracts count.”
“Those are not legally binding in this realm.”
“Pfft. That’s what you think.”
She darted toward the living room, already pulling up the projector app on the wall-mounted screen with a dramatic flourish. “Titanic time, baby!”
Atsushi hesitated. “Wait— is that the one with the—?”
“Big boat! Sad music! Sappy love!” Hu Tao called out, already rummaging through the cabinets for popcorn they probably didn’t own. “It’s perfect!”
Zhongli sighed into his teacup like it was a very small, very polite cry for help.
Still, when Hu Tao dragged over a beanbag and motioned Atsushi to take the middle spot on the couch, he didn’t argue. He set his tea aside, pulled the blanket Hu Tao tossed at him over his lap, and let himself settle in.
Maybe it was the warmth of the apartment, or the afterglow of the tea, or the absurdity of it all— but for the first time in a long while, Atsushi didn’t feel like he needed to be somewhere else.
He leaned back as the movie started, the opening notes of sweeping orchestral strings filling the room.
The screen glowed to life, casting pale blue light across their faces as the iconic title faded in. The apartment, high above the rest of the world, felt cocooned in that moment—just three people and a fictional boat bound for heartbreak.
Hu Tao sprawled out across the carpet, arms behind her head, already mouthing along to the dialogue like this was the fiftieth time she’d watched it. “Just wait,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “It feels like it’s about the boat, but it’s actually about class struggle and doomed love.”
Atsushi chuckled under his breath and tucked the blanket tighter around himself. His socks didn’t match, and one of them had a tear near the ankle, but the couch was soft, and Hu Tao had tossed a pillow at his side before flopping down. It was warm in that lived-in kind of way.
Zhongli, seated in the armchair off to the side, looked like a man preparing for battle. One leg crossed neatly over the other, arms folded. His eyes narrowed slightly at the opening scene.
“I find it curious,” he said, “that no measures were taken to reinforce the structural integrity of the lower decks, considering the projected hull stress.”
Hu Tao rolled onto her side and pointed at him. “No commentary, grandpa. Let the drama unfold.”
“I am merely observing a severe lapse in engineering foresight.”
Atsushi bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Do you… always talk during movies?”
Hu Tao threw a handful of unpopped popcorn kernels from the bottom of a bowl in Zhongli’s direction. “Only when he feels emotionally threatened by the plot.”
Zhongli caught one of the kernels between two fingers without looking. “False. I simply value architectural accuracy.”
“You cried during that animated film with the rat,” she shot back.
“That rat had an exemplary moral arc,” he replied, utterly unshaken.
Atsushi gave up trying not to laugh.
The movie rolled on. As the story deepened, the room quieted. The weight of the narrative pressed gently on the three of them, and Atsushi found himself forgetting to brace for the next strange thing, the next outburst, the next shift in world. He just… watched.
At some point, Hu Tao shifted closer, her head now leaning lightly against Atsushi’s knee. She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move, surprised by how normal it felt. Zhongli was still upright, but his gaze had softened. His tea had gone untouched for the last half hour.
And then it happened.
The music swelled. The iceberg loomed. Jack shivered. Rose sobbed.
Atsushi’s throat tightened.
He wiped at the corner of his eye quickly, casually— but Hu Tao caught him. She sat up slowly, slowly enough not to startle the moment, and gave him a grin so smug it should’ve been illegal.
He tried to beat her to it. “Don’t—”
“You owe me twenty mora,” she whispered triumphantly.
Zhongli raised a brow. “And what will you do with that currency, Hu Tao? Also, it is not mora.”
She waved him off. “Shh. I’m savoring my victory.”
Atsushi rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again.
As the credits rolled, and the music gave way to quiet, none of them moved right away.
Eventually, Zhongli stood to stretch, joints moving with a grace that somehow still felt ancient. “I shall brew something warm for the night,” he said.
Hu Tao yawned like a cat and flopped over backwards again. “Make it something that doesn’t taste like moral responsibility this time.”
Zhongli didn’t respond, but there was the faintest hint of a smirk as he walked toward the kitchen.
Atsushi stayed curled beneath the blanket, the screen now a soft, empty blue. Hu Tao nudged his foot with her own.
“Good movie, huh?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. It was… sad.”
Hu Tao tilted her head at him, thoughtful now. “But not bad-sad, right?”
He looked at her. Really looked at her. At the bright, strange person who’d somehow made a space between worlds feel like home. He shook his head.
“No,” he said softly. “Not bad-sad at all.”
The apartment was still and golden when Atsushi woke, the light filtered through gauzy curtains drawn just enough to let the sunrise in. Somewhere, faintly, the kettle whistled—soft, rhythmic, as if whoever was heating it had perfect timing down to an art.
He padded into the kitchen, hair tousled, socks mismatched again.
Zhongli was already there. Of course he was.
Fully dressed— in a waistcoat, no less— he stood at the counter like some ageless guardian of tea, pouring water over leaves in slow, deliberate circles. His sleeves were neatly rolled. The sunlight caught on the fine embroidery of his collar. He could have stepped out of a painting.
Atsushi opened his mouth to say good morning, but Zhongli beat him to it.
“You slept well,” he said— not a question.
Atsushi rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh. Yeah. Thanks.”
Zhongli nodded once, as if confirming a weather report. “The residual ley energy has stabilized. The atmosphere here is… agreeable.”
Atsushi blinked. “You mean the apartment?”
“It hums less.”
“…Right.” Weirdo.
Zhongli handed him a teacup. It was somehow already warm and exactly how he liked it, even though he didn’t remember ever telling Zhongli his preferences. The man probably read it in the steam or something.
They stood in silence for a while, sipping, watching the sky shift over the city. Zhongli eventually moved to the bookshelf, fingers tracing the spines as if listening for a story that wanted to be told.
By the time Hu Tao woke up— with a bang from her room and the sound of something falling— Zhongli had already swept the balcony, replanted the succulents, and filed a gentle complaint to the building management about “unidentified vibrations” causing structural anomalies (aka Hu Tao’s last chalk circle cracking the floorboards again).
Morning begins, as it always does, with order.
He wakes before the sun crests the skyline, the apartment still veiled in shadow and the gentle thrum of distant leylines beneath the floorboards. They are faint here— distant echoes, but they are present, and they speak in the silence before the world stirs.
Zhongli dresses carefully. Not out of vanity, but ritual. Fabric pulled smooth. Buttons done in order. Amber cufflinks polished without thought. There is peace in preparation, and in this realm of blinking lights and strange automation, he takes comfort in the parts of life he can still make deliberate.
The tea kettle hums before it whistles. Osmanthus. Always.
He pours three cups.
One he sets aside for himself. One for Hu Tao, who won’t wake for hours, but will drink it cold and claim the temperature “matches her vibe.” The third he leaves in front of Atsushi’s door, steam curling softly in the hallway light.
He does not knock.
Instead, he reads. The books in this world are made of strange ink and stranger ideas, but their structure is pleasing. He makes notes in the margins. Compares their histories to the ones carved into stone. Wonders what this world has lost, and what it chose to forget.
When the boy emerges— shoulders tense, hair askew— Zhongli greets him with a nod. He never pushes. He only makes sure there is a cup in hand, a chair waiting, and no need to speak until Atsushi wants to.
Midday is spent with errands.
He walks the city in silence, gloved hands behind his back, surveying this new world with the quiet reverence of a traveler who does not belong but refuses to treat anything with disdain. He watches children feed pigeons in the park. Buys fruit from a street vendor and corrects the price with a too-kind smile. Stops to listen to a street musician’s song that reminds him of a funeral procession in Liyue Harbor, centuries past.
At home, Hu Tao has taken over the living room with chalk circles again. The pigeon from three nights ago is back, nesting in a teacup. Zhongli doesn’t ask. He just steps around the chaos, fixes the symmetry of the array, and mutters a quiet blessing beneath his breath in Old Teyvatian.
He ends his day on the balcony, a book in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, and the city stretching out like a field of restless stars.
And for a moment—just a moment— he allows himself to hope they won’t find their way back just yet.
He reads as the sky dims—page after page under the soft hum of the balcony lamp, its glow flickering now and then in rhythm with the city’s breath. It’s a book about economics. Or perhaps about architecture. Or both. The definitions here bleed into each other.
Zhongli doesn’t mind.
The words anchor him. Concepts like “market collapse” and “inflationary trends” make little impression, but he admires the effort. The authors here are bold with what they do not yet understand.
He reaches for his tea, now gone cool. The osmanthus notes are muted, but the taste lingers, grounding.
Behind him, through the open balcony doors, he hears the faint shuffle of socks on wood. A moment later, a soft voice said: “You’re always out here.”
The old god turns, slow and fluid. Atsushi stands in the doorway, hair rumpled, hoodie sleeves pulled down over his hands. One of them still holds a half-eaten steamed bun.
Zhongli gestures toward the empty chair beside him. “The air is clearer here.”
He hesitates, then steps out. The city wind catches the ends of his hair. “I always expect you to be asleep eventually, but…”
Zhongli smiles faintly. “Old habits are stubborn. And sleep is… less necessary than it once was.”
The white-haired boy doesn’t press. He just sits, pulling his knees up to his chest, and they both look out over the rooftops—silent companions bound by different kinds of displacement.
Zhongli watches a plane blink red and gold as it cuts through the clouds. For a moment, he imagines it’s a Fatui airship. He blinks the thought away.
“I often wonder,” he says softly, “whether Teyvat dreams of us as we do it.”
Atsushi frowns faintly. “You think places can miss people?”
“Yes,” Zhongli answers, without hesitation. “Even the stone remembers. Especially the stone.”
A breeze stirs the corner of the book he left open, and he smooths it down with a gloved hand. “But grief is quiet. It doesn’t shout. It waits. Beneath mountains. Beneath skin.”
He doesn’t say it to be poetic. It’s simply the shape his thoughts take, after so many years of burying gods and nations.
Atsushi pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “I don’t know if I want to go back,” he says eventually. “Where I came from.”
Zhongli doesn’t respond with advice. He only sips his tea and lets the silence carry them forward.
Time passes. Not quickly. Not slowly. Just enough.
At some point, Hu Tao leans out the sliding door with a mouthful of crackers and a blanket wrapped like a cape. “Are you two brooding out here without me?”
Zhongli raises an eyebrow. “We are… reflecting.”
“Same thing,” she says, hopping up onto the railing like it won’t collapse under her. She spreads her arms, wind catching her sleeves. “I name this balcony the Brooding Perch. No one’s allowed out here unless they’re haunted by poetic metaphors.”
Zhongli does not look up from his book. “You named the coffee table the ‘Bone Table of Infinite Snacks’ last week.”
Hu Tao grins. “Exactly. I’m building a brand.”
Atsushi lets out a snort and hides it behind his wrist.
The wind shifts again. The stars begin to emerge, soft and flickering through the city haze. Zhongli does not say anything more, but he watches the lights—and in their patterns, he thinks, for just a moment, he sees the curve of Liyue’s harbor.
Memory is a loyal thing.
And tonight, it doesn’t hurt quite so much.
Hu Tao wakes up to sunlight in her eyes and chalk in her hair.
Perfect.
She kicks off her blanket, swings out of bed with one sock on and one sock missing (again), and immediately hums a funeral tune as she throws open her curtains. The city is loud and alive, and she loves it—it’s like a giant grave that never stops moving. So much spirit! So much chaos! She grins, fangs poking into her lower lip.
The tea on her nightstand is cold, but she drinks it anyway. Zhongli made it. He always does. He’ll pretend it’s just routine, but she knows it’s his way of saying good morning, quiet and polite and utterly transparent.
She stretches, spins, and throws on an outfit that looks like she stole it off a particularly fashionable ghost. Probably did.
Then: mayhem.
Mid-morning is for rituals. Not the boring ones—her kind. Binding symbols, chalk circles, glyphs drawn on the glass windows in salt and honey because they “feel right.”
The pigeon comes back. She lets it stay. It’s funny.
She drags Atsushi into rooftop ghost-trap painting, rooftop stargazing, rooftop everything really. He complains, sort of. But he shows up. And Hu Tao knows the look of someone who’s trying very hard not to admit they like being needed.
Midday is snack time. Always. Zhongli disapproves of her popping open soda and spicy instant noodles on the counter, but he doesn’t stop her. He just wipes the counters behind her when she’s not looking and pretends the ghost peppers weren’t that dangerous.
She tries to build a shrine out of shoeboxes. To what? Not sure yet.
Evening is movie hour— she picks something ridiculous, then quietly sneaks over to Atsushi’s side when he looks like he might cry. Not to tease. Just to be there. Then she throws popcorn at Zhongli when he critiques the film’s architecture.
She likes the quiet parts, too. When everyone’s winding down. When the magic hums low and the lights are dim. When Atsushi is too tired to keep his walls up and Zhongli’s voice goes soft with memory.
She leans on the back of the couch, hair spilling over the edge, and watches them like they’re both ghosts she managed to keep in this world just a little longer.
It’s not home, but it’s weird and warm and hers— and that’s more than enough for now.