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Keqing dies at the unfortunate age of sixty-five.
Of course, it’s common for people to die before reaching even sixty, but sixty-five is young for an aristocrat of her stature, with her access to the greatest healers—this is the gossip around the harbor that Ganyu hears, passed along in hushed and reverent tones. But Ganyu understands how it happened. She’d seen firsthand how Keqing pushed her body and mind for hours, years, decades, until fatigue caught up to her.
When Keqing dies, Ganyu is with her. She is prepared, in the way a small city sees a vast army approaching its shoddy splintering gates. The few days before Keqing’s death, Ganyu doesn’t leave her side. She takes Keqing in her wooden wheelchair to see the land she loves so dearly. They stay out from sunup to sundown, taking generous breaks so Keqing can drink in the landscape.
“I wish I could walk these hills again with you,” she says with a fond sigh. “Or teleport up to those cliffs. Remember when I could still race you there and beat you?”
Ganyu knows she’s dying from the weariness in her voice and how it falters, and the way Keqing’s fingers struggle and tremble against her own when they lace them together. Ganyu knows, from the past millennia of seeing life cycle into death, what it looks like when the last drops of life are seeping from a living thing. But she’s never drowned in them like this before.
When Keqing dies, Ganyu doesn’t take her home right away. They remain beneath the shadows of the great tree they both loved so much until morning’s gold stretches across the hills, and Ganyu can no longer look at the peaceful dip of Keqing’s closed eyelids with the futile, naive hope that she’ll take another breath.
After Keqing’s death, Ganyu stumbles under the weight of the life still ahead of her. She carries it like she’s always done, but it brings her to her knees sometimes, and tears a hole in her chest with the way it grinds at her heart.
Madame Ping tells her it doesn’t get much easier, because the only way it would is if they forget, but, “You won’t ever forget,” she says, sad and slow and kind. “It’s a blessing and a curse. You’ll see her in everything. She’ll be there to remind you.”
She’s right, of course.
Ganyu sees it as a haunting at first, painful and cruel. Then she understands the blessing—Keqing, stubborn and steadfast in death as in life, has never stopped holding her hand.
Keqing dies at the age of sixty.
She is the young secretary who comes to work at Yuehai Pavilion a century later, with fire in her eyes and a quiver of arrows in her mouth. She manages to offend half the Qixing within her first week, yet also manages to stay employed.
Ganyu takes her under her wing, mentors her and guides her and smiles to herself when she spouts the same bold sentiments Keqing once had. She brings a life to the tasks that had become dull, and when she laughs, Ganyu can almost imagine it’s Keqing there instead.
She grows old too, and her hands tremble in the same way Keqing’s did at the end of her life. Ganyu visits her still after she retires, and they reminisce over their long evenings at work. But Ganyu isn’t there when she dies. The news comes to the pavilion in the morning, and Ganyu looks out her window and wonders if she’s with Keqing in the same place.
Keqing dies at the age of fourteen, or maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen.
She is the thin stray kitten that sits by the pond every morning, eyeing the fish. Ganyu begins to bring food out for it, but she can never get close, not at first. She learns to leave the dish by the grass and move to the distant steps of the terrace to watch. The cat prowls cautiously to the dish, finishes the food inside, and slinks silently back toward the hills.
It’s a year before the cat begins to watch Ganyu too. It perks up when Ganyu strolls past in the mornings. Sometimes, it meets Ganyu’s stare after it eats, and blinks slowly.
In another few years, the cat allows Ganyu to approach it. It sits by the spot in the grass, tail flicking from side to side as Ganyu sets the food down. The first time Ganyu reaches to stroke its head, it nudges its cheek into her palm with a gentle purr.
She thinks of how Keqing had loved when Ganyu ran her fingers through her hair after she unfurled it from its buns each evening. She thinks about the years it had taken for them to get there.
Ganyu never finds out where the cat goes when it leaves, but one day it stops coming back.
Keqing dies at the age of six seconds.
She is the fireworks exploding in the sky on the New Year. Ganyu follows the spark that races straight up, new and fearless and true. It blossoms in a burst of gold and white and scarlet, multiplying and radiating into the night to the applause and awe of the spectators on the harbor below.
And then the lights fall, fizzling out as they plummet into the sea.
Ganyu’s smile is soft but bitter. The brightest and most brilliant burn the fastest, and everything returns to dark in the end.
Keqing dies at the age of five thousand years, at least.
She is the stream become a river, flowing just southwest of Liyue Harbor. Ganyu has watched its growth from the beginning of her own life, has watched it carving its steady path into the ground from a trickling spring to a narrow river that rushes proudly through the landscape.
Its currents are louder and slower than Keqing’s nimble footsteps, but the way they roam the land reads like a love letter—the river's edges curl around rocks and lick over muddy banks to learn their slopes, and its waters glitter and dance under the sun.
At the end of its life, it gives its all, as Liyue diverts it to feed new crops and bring up new towns. Ganyu thinks perhaps it’s been reborn, watching over the land in a different way.
Keqing dies at the age of four thousand years.
She is the great tree they had loved. It had already been old by the time Keqing was buried there. Over the years, the branches continue to spread, and its roots cradle Keqing’s resting place.
Ganyu knows it’s dying when she places a palm on the trunk, and feels the hollow space underneath. The bark peels and splits in various states of decay, and curled leaves litter the ground around her even when it’s spring. The back of her hand is wrinkled too, like the bark she touches. She runs her thumb along a flaking ridge and understands that her time is soon.
Her end is coming, not tomorrow, or the day after, or even in a century, but Ganyu sees it looming, a hazy vision of a ship on the horizon coming to take her. She is not afraid.
Keqing dies at the age of eight thousand years.
She is the glaze lily that loves Ganyu’s song most, that wilts when Ganyu no longer sings to nourish it in quiet midnights on the outskirts of Liyue Harbor. No one else’s song would do.
Ganyu isn’t there to watch it crumble into the soil though, not in person. She’s in the skies with her beloved, hand in hand once again.
“Finally,” Keqing says, as if she’s been waiting six hours and not six millennia. She is real. She is beautiful, timeless, splendid, and her fingers are sure and strong intertwined with Ganyu’s own. Her arms are safe when they pull Ganyu into their embrace.
“I’ve decided I hate Liyue,” she murmurs into Ganyu’s hair. Her voice is muffled and wet.
Ganyu doesn’t pull back. “Why?”
“It kept you from me for far too long.”
Ganyu’s own laugh is thick and teary too. “You waited.”
“Of course I did.”
“You hate waiting.”
Keqing presses a kiss to Ganyu’s temple. “But it’s you.” Ganyu can feel the smile on her lips. “And when time is all you have, waiting isn’t so hard.”
Yet, waiting for Keqing is the hardest thing Ganyu has ever done.
So she holds tighter to Keqing’s shoulder, nestles into her warmth, runs a hand through her hair. Keqing sighs, the sound drawn out and shuddering. They stay like this for a long time. Keqing makes no move to pull away or rush along like she once did. Her palm is steady against Ganyu’s back. After all, time is finally on their side.