Xingyun Oneshots

136 - Death Date

Hello all thankfully I'm not dead 🙏 College is kicking my ass rn and just in general the ao3 curse has yet to leave me so here we are

As a disclaimer this is an angst fic and does have a major character death, so read at your own discretion and stay safe! As always, love you guys and thanks for reading my fics 😊

Xingqiu knows to anyone else besides him that this looks bad. Xingqiu knows that anyone watching him walk further and further away from the funeral parlor and closer to the exit of the Harbor must think he's selfish, and doesn't care about his friend's death, and would rather stick his nose in a book than pay him a visit.

Xingqiu knows that people don't get it. He doesn't get it himself. But he does know that if he shows up at the wake, seeing the open casket and Chongyun's perfectly preserved body, his porcelain skin and carefully combed back hair his mother brushed out for him like when he was a child, then he'll sob and sob uncontrollably and never be able to get the image out of his head.

So rather than dwell on it, he continues to trudge away and out of town, his head swirling with a million buzzing thoughts that don't leave him with any more closure than before.

Xingqiu recalls from reading a death procedural book some years back (and he never would've expected it to come to use so soon) that discussed the death notification process.

The first step, as he remembers, is information gathering - where the Millelith figure out all the necessary facts of the case, like who was involved, who the victim was, what time they died, etc. etc.

In this case, it was Chongyun versus a number of monsters while he was coming back from training, which normally wouldn't have been an issue - Chongyun's more than capable of taking on even three ruin guards by himself, Xingqiu's sure of it. But Chongyun versus a number of monsters on the edge of a cliff is a different story.

The victim, obviously, is Chongyun, and he'd died sometime in the earlier afternoon - just before the time that he and Xingqiu would typically meet up for lunch if the two of them were together. They weren't always. That day, they weren't.

The general conclusion from looking at the scene was that Chongyun had been hit hard enough to fall back and off the cliff, and he'd hit his head on the way down and that's what did it. Thankfully it wasn't a straight drop of a cliff, nor was it a terribly big one, so his body didn't go everywhere - but when he'd been found by a couple that was taking a stroll of the area, they'd reported that his clothes were soaked through with blood, and the back of his head was cracked open.

The second step is control and direction - going to tell Chongyun's parents what had happened and hopefully have it go as smoothly as possible. As smoothly as possible. As if anyone could be anything less than hysterical at finding out their only child who'd just turned 18 a month prior died with seemingly no further explanation.

Xingqiu had actually been at the house that day when the Millelith stopped by. He'd been planning on surprising Chongyun when he came back from his usual morning training, curled up on the corner of the couch right in front of the door with a book from his family's exorcism index collection after having helped Chongyun's mother with her garden in the backyard.

Oftentimes when Xingqiu would come over, if Chongyun wasn't in his room collecting laundry in the house or in the kitchen brewing tea for his parents after work, then he was out in their tiny backyard with his gloves bunched up in the grass, dirt-stained fingers pulling weeds and helping to cover the tomato plants and wildflowers with more soil.

He loved how doting Chongyun was with his parents; always helping out, always sweet, always a mama's boy back in the garden or hanging up laundry. So he'd always run back to help them when he was over, even if Chongyun wasn't there yet.