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“Oh, yeah. I’m totally in love with him. Ever since the day we met. I have our first kiss, wedding venue, and kids’ names planned out.”
When Yun Jin’s face goes blank, there is a feeling of anticipation in front of closed curtains. Will she be the sharp-eyed, perfect straight-A student? The crooning, emotional singer bringing everyone to tears?
Today, she is a violent, laughing mess, pulling at Xinyan’s arm to make her half-lie down on the sofa over her.
“Where’s the wedding gonna be?” said Xinyan, smiling all the while pushing against Yun Jin’s spasms and slapping. “Dibs on BGM for reception.”
“Wuwang Hill, obviously,” she immediately threw back, biting back her own laughter. It was a record three hours of them focusing without a major tangent, but that was already three hours too much for Hu Tao. “Zhongli already knows and will officiate.”
She pictures the dark, misty forest decorated in tacky white lace, and channels the ridiculousness into an exaggerated swoon, almost toppling the electric guitar stand. “Oh, I’m so excited, my heart is about to burst! I’m gonna propose on Lantern Rite, actually.”
Xinyan’s guffaw fuels her lovesick impression as she slides down the wall. “Ooh, feminist.”
“My gods! How dare you, Hu Tao!” Yun Jin suddenly bolts up from her near-asphyxiation. In a drop of a hat, her joy is wiped off her face, the tear streaks on her face painting her in the cocktail of betrayal and scandal wafting from every syllable. “How could you do this to me, your friend, when you know I have been in love with him, too?!”
“Is this a challenge, Mistress Yun?” she says, three tones deeper than her usual as she rises from the floor. “Already you have part of his name, and now you lay stake to his other half? You are just the image of greed, are you not! For the heart of a fair youth, I challenge you to a bet!”
Yun Jin’s mask is rock solid, yet fluid, distorting her face into confidence beyond her years. “And what shall hang in thy scales?”
“Alright, you two, pack it up,” Xinyan claps, kicking herself off the sofa. “Dang, he’s going to be so weirded out if he hears this. Dude’s so serious most of the time.”
“If he hears about this,” Hu Tao corrects with full confidence.
The back garage of the Hu residence is, as is Liyue, littered with things she probably didn’t want to know. Just free enough to host Xinyan’s battalion of speakers, plugs, and amplifiers, but just cluttered enough to feel homey.
“Okay, seriously, now,” Yun Jin stands up, dusting off her dress. The betrayed, forlorn madonna is gone, and in place is a regular nineteen-year old, if a bit overdressed for a back garage. “I think we have most of the choreo ready for the finale. We just have to simulate it with Yan actually plugged into the amp so we can avoid tripping.”
“Roger that, Cap’n,” Xinyan says as she gets her guitar. “I’ve been feeling a bit rusty on the fingerstyle there, too.”
“And!” she says, turning around to point at Hu Tao. “You still haven’t fully performed your rap yet, Tao. It’s fine if you go off and do your own thing, but as a trio, I think it’d be better for us to have a heads up. So we know how to support you.”
Blocking, pitch, lighting. Undeniably, Yun Jin was a total master of the stage, puppeteering everything on it to her will. Everything in her own little world would be to her making, budget constraints be damned.
But in the end, when she is master of the stage, Yun Jin serves the stage, its finiteness, and all the moving parts building up its foundation.
When she steps onto the dais, Hu Tao sees the void, and how it can be bent to her will.
“Why would I tell you my proposal plans?” she pouts. Her poems are static, but on stage, her rhymes are alive. Bigger. Better. The void is unbound to paper, and her verses no longer bound to ink. “I’d like to keep some of my feelings for myself, please.”
A pang of reverb, and Yun Jin cringing. She wants to say it was her and not the screeching. “Alright, lover girl, if you say so,” she sighs. “But at least give us keywords, my gods! I don’t want to just flail my arms randomly in the back.”
“Won’t that be kinda funny, though?” she retorts with a smile. Yun Jin’s double-act costume was long hung up, but endurance is Hu Tao’s pride. Keep it up, until the audience is completely enthralled. Until reality is the stage, and nothing more. “That’ll be something Lantern Rite’s never seen.”
“I’d pay to see the voice of Liyue just start punchin’ the air on stage!” Xinyan agrees from the side.
“You guys, really?” she shakes her head, smile betraying the annoyance she tried to give off. “That’s no fun.”
“But no one’s as fun as us, right, Jinjin?”
She elbows her, prodding for her mask to fall off. Indeed, Yun Jin smiles, skipping over to Xinyan and clapping her on the shoulders.
“Practice, now. And one round of the other two, for good measure.”
There is a crowd waiting for them, and Hu Tao will give it all.
What is behind the act, for now, does not matter.
==
“Hey, about…him?”
“You mean the love of my life, pookie-dookie one and only?”
When Xinyan lets her hair down, and shut the twangs and screeches of her electric guitar up along with it, the rockstar is the epitome of tidiness, and shockingly, the person with the chillest reactions to everything she has to give. Even relaxed on the sofa, her motley of equipment was stacked neatly nearby, patiently waiting for their third member. “Didn’t even say who, heh. What’s with all that?”
Maybe it was precisely the lack of reverb, but Xinyan’s reaction read a bit subdued. Silent. Tired. Even with the cringiest, most saccharine names she could pile on someone unknowing of all of it, her grip on her audience is slack.
Hu Tao hates it.
“It’s all in good fun, you know,” she leans into the bench, looking at the entrance for their third member. Everything looks bigger under the lights, magnified to proportions unimaginable outside of them. It is Hu Tao’s and the audience’s – the void’s – sole marker of the falsity of it all, and the only shared ground they stood on. The bigger, the funnier, the less real, the better. “You laugh the hardest out of all of us.”
“‘Coz you’re so dang weird, Hu Tao,” Xinyan shot back as she brushed back her hair.
“So much for your lyrics. Thought you said you didn’t judge people,” she says. Scandal paints her face, highlighting widened eyes and a comically open mouth. Crazier, wider, all to reel them in.
“Thinking you’re bizzaro doesn't mean thinking you’re a bad person,” Xinyan shrugs. “You do you, that’s what I’m all about. Just that I don’t get the why.”
She drops her shtick, bringing everything back to normalcy. It is all about levels, and keeping them on their toes. What is real, and what isn’t? “It’s funny to think about, isn’t it?”
“What, because he tries avoiding you?”
Her, half-crazed for someone who she barely talked to. Someone who clearly wanted nothing to do with her, nearly a decade in. Utterly inconceivable, and beyond logic. Larger than life.
“Exactly!” she shot a finger gun at her. “And the world will tremble when I start chasing him in the name of love!”
“You better back that up,” Xinyan says, laugh not as hearty as it could be. “Jin’s really worried ‘boutcha whole rap for the finale,”
“Man, yes, of course. I thought Jin was supposed to be the terror teacher here,” Hu Tao pouts. “And Lantern Rite’s nothing compared to her fancy plays. Why’d she be antsy?”
“Heard her mom’s been nagging her ‘bout the whole rock thing, so I’d like to stick it to them.”
As Xinyan pulls the hair out of her face with a sigh, Hu Tao sees the opportunity as she puts one hand to her chest. “What better to move such a stoic mother, than love transcending gulfs in personalities wider than the Sea of Clouds?”
Her roll of dice lands, turning Xinyan’s sighs into a whoop. “Have I ever told you that time he joined the Red Strings practice?”
“Now you’re trying to steal him from me, too?” she says.
Xinyan laughs, and beyond herself, she feels her smile widen. Like the moon reflecting the sun as its own. She is no master – she is a parasite, turning all energy towards her into provoking verse, caught in a vicious cycle.
“Hey, I’m innocent; he’s the one who crashed,” Xinyan raises her hands. “All I’m saying is that he’s not always so prim and proper.”
Xinyan pats her shoulder as she stands up. “Good luck, though. I believe in whatever you choose to unleash there.”
“It’s probably nothing, though,” she says as she watches Xinyan pick up her guitar. It is a little peek past the curtain, an intentional slip in a role. A little reminder to everyone who beholds about who holds the reins – or who she wants to believe does. “For funsies, right?”
“If you say so,” Xinyan grins into her strings.
==
Total darkness, with nothing but faraway murmurs tethering her to the ground. Formless. Unintelligible.
“Are you nervous? I have some mints here if you want.”
Her eyes burst open, and Yun Jin is standing beside her, a mint container open for her taking. Obliging, she holds out one hand.
“There’s a bunch of people, alright,” she says, popping the mint in one go. “This is all your fault.”
“It’s Yan’s fault,” the singer retorts. “She’s been pulling crowds like this since Golden Apple. It only took another country’s event to get people’s attention here, but…”
The sound of the lights flashing startles them both, and the crowd cheers mix in with the sound check. In the corner of her eye, Xinyan fiddles with her guitar’s tuning, half-illuminated by the stage lights.
“But enough about us! It’s your debut, isn’t it?”
“Right, you two are professionals looking after poor ol’ me,” Hu Tao pouts. “Archons, I should have tagged along with people more nervous than me.”
The stage is barely bigger than her house’s back garage, and even shorter than Xiangling’s oversized pet – nothing compared to the Yun-Han Theaterhouse. “You probably eat this thing for breakfast.”
Yun Jin takes off her cap, and Hu Tao sees her hands are shaking, far away from the stability underlying every Lilies practice session.
“Oh, gods no. I’m so nervous right now, you won’t even believe it.”
She is staring straight ahead, right into the nothingness of the stage back, like she could see the buzzing void beyond the stage. Like she was paralyzed by its judgment.
“Mom things?”
She laughs. “Every single time. Especially now.”
“What can she do now, though? Throw a hissy fit and get dragged out by security?” Hu Tao says. “I think I’ll be the one throwing a hissy fit if you go no-show after micromanaging our blocking. Like, super pissed!”
She turns to her, conjuring up an exaggerated eye roll as she crosses her arms. Yun Jin giggles, subdued in the filtered lights.
“Sharp as always, Tao. Of course I’m not going to back down,” she says. “It’s all because I did it with you guys. You two always live so true to yourselves, no pretenses whatsoever. It’s made this whole experience so refreshing.”
Yun Jin smiles at her, but she can only stare back blankly. She is ready with another declaration, another lovesick ploy to break the silence, but Yun Jin has played chicken with her before, and Hu Tao has always won.
The curtain does not drop.
“Hey, guys, two minutes!” Xinyan’s voice comes from behind. “Xiangling texted me that they just arrived, but they can’t see anything from the back. I don’t think they’ll be able to get barricade.”
“Her fault for being short,” Hu Tao shrugged, looking at the ground. Two minutes until familiar faces turn into faceless void, unpredictable in how they’ll react.
When she looks up again, she feels the invisible curtains shake.
“Oh, but Xingqiu and I had a wonderful discussion yesterday over a delightful cup of tea,” Yun Jin says, her hands suddenly behind her. “About how a certain gentleman would like to spend his first Lantern Rite in the pit of a certain band.”
“Liyue Harbor, are you ready to feel the heat from Lantern Rite’s hottest trio?!”
Xinyan adjusted her guitar’s strap, grinning at her as she grabbed her wrists. “He asked me for tix, and who was I to say no, when you said you had something in store for him?”
“...What?”
“Give it up for the Blaze Lilies!”
The act is all-consuming, moving her legs out of her control up the stairs and into the stage, forcing down the shock into a skip to the middle and a large wave to the crowd.
Dragging her eyes across the sea of upturned heads for the splash of light blue.
This is all an act, she thinks as the first beats blast through the speakers, and she’d been caught in her own strings. Her lips upturn on their own as she bows down in sync with Yun Jin, exploding into a grin as the melody drags her along the rails of their first song – an old classic, pumping Yun Jin’s serenading voice with life by Xinyan’s strings and a new rap from her.
She raises her mic to her mouth, feeling the audience fall into silence as she launches into yet unknown territory.
Strung along every line, her eyes are on the audience, and their eyes are on her, and when they give her the energy, she amplifies it right back, dashing across the stage and riding their cheers into the choreography for the second song. Her smile never leaves as she waves at people, shooting winks and sticking out tongues.
The screams that follow give her a voice, pushing down the twinge of something she feels as she scans the barricade as the notes of their final song blast from the speaker.
There is nothing to worry about, she thinks, when the finiteness of the stage is all hers, and as the people actually in the barricade scream for her flourishes into the final chorus, so is what lies beyond.
This act is all for them, and in the vicious cycle, all for her. Master. Parasite.
All the universe’s mysteries,
In the strings and tunes within me
She meets eyes with her bandmates, poising herself to dash to the center. Wound up in the cycle she herself had started, every fiber of her gears up to release every trick, every show-stopping gimmick to rein in the mass of energy before her all for herself.
Stand your ground and let them see
Scream your heart out to the lilies!
“Hey! Li’l-lies, bow down, Hu Tao’s on now!”
With one hand in the air, it is like all the energy in the open space is drawn taut by her finger. She smiles, the power in her voice like drunk mania.
Only when the lights are this bright, and the bass this deep in her chest, will she hold this kind of power.
The bigger, the brighter, the faker, the louder the screams.
“All these John Does, trapped so hollow! With my bare hands–”
“Hu Tao! Hu Tao!!”
“Mount a defense, oh-!”
She remembers the beat, and how she pulled it all together. She remembers every verse, every iteration of it, twisted into form by her own hands.
She remembers the boy in front of her, so much younger than they are now. Stifled laughter. Confusion. All from a distance.
Things all hers, but spun out of control. The beat, booming in every person’s eardrums. The next lyrics. Him, the unknowing center of her obra maestra to scam the world of its laughter.
Him, now barely being held back by her friends.
When she swoops down with the beat, Hu Tao is smiling. She has to, when her act is nearing its climax, and all that beheld it would be completely fooled. The closer a lie is to the truth, the more it draws in.
When she grabs his outreached hand and pulls his starstruck face closer, for a moment, she wonders if this, too, is all an act for him.
Hu Tao catches the beat as she catches herself in the momentum, and the crowd goes wild as she gives her entire weight to his hand and continues, hanging diagonally from the ground:
“The everymen give all praise to gold over pen!”
Before she can think of anything else, he’s pulling her up, and her feet are on solid ground again.
“Cut through the ploy, wisdom in noise, the sky's our toy!”
Xinyan’s fingerstyle enters, and she is bouncing up and down, still with one hand in his as she beckons Yun Jin to come to her.
As the three of them converge to their final positions, she looks at the inadvertent fourth member before letting go. Xinyan is already in center position, and right at the penultimate beat, she slides in, bringing her arm in front of Xinyan before flourishing it outwards. Just like lilies, as the theater mistress so lovingly named them.
She thinks the final beat echoes for way too long, but when she looks down, he has slid right in front of them.
The backing track ends, and the crowd erupts in cheers. The wood beneath them shakes as the breathlessness and soreness finally set in, and she swings her hands back down, a loose smile on her lips as she heaves in a lungful of air and bathes in the sensation.
If this is what an act can get, she thinks as she bows, then I’ll act all my life.
“Thank you, everyone! This has been Yun Jin, Xinyan, and Hu Tao of the Blaze Lilies!” Xinyan says, to rancorous cheering. “And many thanks to our dear friend Chongyun for joining us on the stage tonight!”
In the end, the stage is just one stage, and everything let out on it has to go, clear for the next act. She vaguely feels being prodded along by ushers, until the lights and their heat are behind her.
Darkness, and muffled silence, again. She falls behind her bandmates’ steps, and almost topples as something crashes into her from behind.
He is out of breath, too, and the backlights don’t hide the red that remains in his face. His eyes are dazed, but slowly coming back into focus as she squints at him.
“Oh, no. Did I…ruin…”
“What are you talking about? I dragged you on stage!” she half-hisses, grabbing his shoulders to steady him. It feels unreal to talk to him, but reality was often much more absurd than anything she could come up with. “I…didn’t even think you would come.”
Before he could respond, Xinyan and Yun Jin come out from her peripheral, all smiles as they beeline for her.
“So, Wuwang Hill, right?” Xinyan said, clapping her back. “Hope the pines won’t mind my sound system!”
“I’ll still have a third of the name, you know,” Yun Jin says, one hand poorly hiding her giggles. “But one half will be better than one third, as you’d say.”
With one of her hands still on his shoulder, Hu Tao is in an extremely disfavorable position to fight back. The performance was over, and there was no more anticipation to be pulled for something that had passed.
Not more than the excitement in his eyes as she pulled him in, bigger than anything she could play.
She turns around with a small wink. “Did you ever doubt me, my friends?”
“Absolutely not!” Xinyan replies, two octaves higher than usual. Bigger, funnier, more ridiculous. The secret language of the act. Face-to-face with its disreality, she wants to amp herself up to meet it on its stage.
She finds, however, that the subtlety of a grin is skin-tight on her.
“We’ll go ahead and meet up with Xingqiu,” Yun Jin chimes in. “He said we can drop by Wanmin after!”
“Dang, I missed Wanmin hangouts. No more practice!” Xinyan claps as she bounds on ahead, with Yun Jin just behind her. “See’ya two there!”
Their figures get smaller, eventually disappearing into the crowd. The shining stars of the stage just minutes before, gone into the faceless void faster than Hu Tao could follow.
“What were they talking about?” she hears Chongyun ask as she stares into the mass of people.
“Nothing serious,” she answers, pulling at his wrist. Those two had walked the stage long before she did, understanding it better than she could. “But they’ll probably eat all the food without us. Let’s go?”
Maybe they’d realized long ago how fast an act can turn into reality.