Xingqiu froze. What else could he do? There were three people in front of him. One missing fatui harbinger, one random girl that seemed to have only lied with every word she spoke, and a three-year-old toddler that just claimed to be his friend that had gone missing over five years ago.
He stared blankly at the three of them until a hoarse laugh escaped from his throat. He didn't know why he was laughing. Honestly, he felt more like screaming and breaking something.
"You all better tell me what in Teyvat is going on before I end up doing something that I may or may not regret." Xingqiu ran a hand across his face and managed to stop the empty laughing. Tartaglia, Hisaya, and the boy calling himself Chongyun all looked very scared.
"Sir..." Zhushou started, trying to calm Xingqiu down, but she was interrupted as the little boy started to talk.
"I- I'm sorry, Miss Saya." He had started to cry and turned around to look up at Hisaya. "You told me to stay quiet, but I didn't and now the scary man is mad at us. I'm really, really sorry."
"No, no," Hisaya looked down at the boy and whispered back to him. "It- It's not your fault. No matter what happens, none of it is ever your fault, okay?"
"I-"
"Who are all of you," Xingqiu rose to his feet, trying to bring the room's attention back to him. "I want the truth now. No more half-baked lies, alright? I don't understand anything that is happening right now, but all I want is to find and help my best friend. If you know what's happening and if he really is Chongyun, please, just tell me. I will do whatever I can to help my best friend, just tell me what is going on."
"Well..." Hisaya looked to Tartaglia and the harbinger only shrugged. Hisaya looked up at Zhushou and held up the boy. "Do you think you could take him outside really quick?"
Zhushou nodded and held the boy close as she walked out the door. Xingqiu couldn't help but notice the sadness in the boy's eyes as he left the room.
"That is the Chongyun that you knew and grew up with." Hisaya started as soon as the door closed behind Zhushou. "He- he was taken to a fatui lab because of his surplus of yang energy. They experimented on him for five years by taking more of the karma harvested in Liyue and attaching it to his soul by inserting it into his bloodstream. I'm not sure if it did what they wanted it to, but it created a monster. What I think is happening is that there is a spirit of complete yang energy and one of complete yin energy both inside that boy. Right now and for the past while, the yang spirit has been in control of the body and takes the form of a little child. We don't know why, but he keeps getting younger and younger and he remembers nothing of his time in the lab or anything before that."
"So he..." Xingqiu had sat back down in his seat and was slowly shaking his head. "So he doesn't remember me?"
"No," Hisaya whispered. "I-I'm sorry."
"I-" Xingqiu looked at his desk. "Please continue. What about the other spirit?"
"Well, that spirit..." Hisaya looked at Tartaglia and then down at her hands. "It is driven by something inside of him, but other times it seems like it is on autopilot with nothing but a taste for blood. It looks something like Chongyun, but is much larger than any human. Its eyes are just these dark, empty pits and it has these claws."
Hisaya seemed to shiver at the memory. "We don't really know what we're doing. We just want to help him, and the first step was getting him out of that archon's forsaken country."
The three of them sat in silence after Hisaya's story. She and Tartaglia looked down at their hands and the woodwork of their seats. Xingqiu couldn't take his eyes off them. After several minutes of uncomfortable quiet Xingqiu spoke up.
"Alright," Xingqiu rose from his seat and walked around to the front of the desk. "I believe you and even though I don't trust you completely, I think that you are truly trying to help... Chongyun. I'll do anything that I can to help and I think I have a good idea where to start."
Hisaya and Tartaglia looked up at him, surprise clearly written across their faces. Xingqiu scratched the back of his neck.
"We're just going to need the help of some..." Xingqiu sighed. "Old friends."
~author's note~
Sorry this is so short and so late, but next week things are going to get interesting >:) Thanks for reading as always.
sorry, I can't find the artist.
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Cold Blooded
FanfictionChongyun has been burdened by his pure yang energy from the moment he was born. He never had a place in his clan, not when he was the only exorcist that has never actually seen a demon. Things have never worked smoothly when his job is practically i...
