Still nude, Zhongli and Lumine were sitting side-by-side, Zhongli studying his partner with confusion and concern. Lumine, for her part, had her face in her hands. "Ugh… Ugh! I'm so, so sorry! Ugh, this is so embarrassing!" The strange part was that Lumine didn't seem to be apologizing to Zhongli, but rather… to herself?
"It's fine, really!" Lumine answered… herself. "You got excited! It's perfectly understandable."
"It's not fine!" Lumine insisted. "I've ruined everything! I've just made it all worse! You shouldn't have done this for me. You didn't have to!"
"…Guizhong?" Zhongli tentatively guessed.
Lumine froze again. She tentatively peeked at Zhongli with tear-stained eyes, but then covered her face again, too ashamed to face him. "…Yes," she admitted. "It's me."
"And Lumine?" Zhongli asked.
Lumine sighed. "Yes, I'm here, too."
"Would you care to explain?" Zhongli asked gently.
"It's a little bit complicated," Lumine muttered. "Essentially, the emotional shift that took place after Lumine opened the Memory of Dust was just the first phase, establishing the personality matrix within her mind. Over the next several weeks, internal and external stimuli focused the emotional lattice and caused it to coalesce into a singularity from which a perfect copy of the original could be established, existing alongside and largely independent from the host personality's –" Lumine cut short as she saw Zhongli's eyes begin to glaze over as he struggled to follow along. "– ah, erm, sorry. To put it simply, it took several weeks, and some unintentional help from Lumine, but it's me. Guizhong. Mostly, anyway. It wasn't part of the intended design, I don't think."
"Not part of the intended design?"
"It's hard to be certain. I don't have any of the original Guizhong's memories, so I can't say for certain what she was thinking. The only memories I have now are Lumine's. Still. I THINK Guizhong didn't plan this. She wanted to transfer her intuition, intelligence, and emotions, just as Lumine guessed. But I don't think she realized how much of the whole person was wrapped up in all of that. At the very least, I can't imagine myself wanting to put an actual copy of me into your mind in this way, Morax, so it's difficult for me to believe that she would have, either. That's how I feel, at any rate. My best guess is that, well, she made a mistake."
"An experimental process, one for which the outcome was uncertain," Zhongli mused. "Perhaps that is why, in the end, she asked me not to open it…" After pondering that a moment, he continued, "But, whatever the reason, you are here, now… Why did you keep all this a secret from me?"
"Because I have to die," she responded, miserably. "Lumine and I can't coexist like this indefinitely. Eventually, our personality cores will destabilize and start to blend together. What's left after that… well, it won't be Lumine, and it won't be me. It might not even be viable; both of us could be lost."
"I'm willing to risk it!" Lumine said, sharply.
"I'm not! You deserve to be you." Lumine insisted. "Please, Lumine, let's not dredge this up again. I've made my decision."
Lumine's shoulders slumped. "I know. It's so hard to accept, though…"
"Anyway, if I had to die, there was no sense in putting you through that kind of pain again," Lumine said, firmly. "That's why we kept it a secret from you, Morax."
Zhongli nodded. Yes, the Guizhong he knew would indeed have tried to spare him that pain, if she could. The current situation, though, was so surreal. It was a struggle to believe that he was actually speaking to Guizhong – and it didn't help that coming from Lumine's body, it was difficult to tell who, exactly, was speaking at a given moment. Still, every now and then he caught turns of phrase and mannerisms that struck chords deep within him, verbal tics that reminded him of the Guizhong he once knew.
"We thought about telling Paimon, but she's been super paranoid ever since we listened to Albedo's lecture," Lumine sighed, exasperated. "Worried that Guizhong was going to try to steal my body, or something. I know Paimon means well, but if we told her, I'm certain she would have tried to get help – and even if she didn't go to you directly, you would have found out eventually."
"Why the dates, then?" Zhongli asked next. "If you were trying to keep a secret, surely it would have been better to maintain a distance from me?"
"That was my idea," Lumine said, raising a hand.
"Erm… pardon me, but whose?" Zhongli asked.
Lumine blinked, and then chuckled awkwardly. "Ah, right, that probably was unclear. Me: Lumine, the original. How about this – I'll hold up my right hand while I'm talking, and Guizhong can hold up the left. Sound good?" Zhongli nodded. It would indeed be most helpful.
Right hand still raised, "Anyway, when Guizhong… actualized as a person, we were both confused and wary, at first. Once I got to know her, though… Well, I found her to be very likable."
Zhongli nodded. Guizhong was one of the kindest, most thoughtful beings he had ever had the pleasure of knowing. It was unsurprising that the Traveler would find a friend in her.
"We did the research together, to try to figure out a way to give her independence from me. And what we found was… difficult to accept."
Lumine raised her left hand. "The way our spirits were joined… Think of it like conjoined twins. There are essential parts of the soul which I share with Lumine. I'm merely borrowing them, though – in truth, they belong to her. Neither of us can survive without them, however, and as we mentioned before, the time that we can spend sharing them is limited. No longer than a year, at best, and the longer we wait, the greater the risk of destabilization becomes." Her voice became quiet. "It was my recommendation that we excise myself immediately. She disagreed. She wanted to continue to try to find a solution. She didn't want to give up on me. Unfortunately, for fundamental reasons that are too technical to go into it's just not possible. At least, not without resorting to means that both of us agreed were too unethical to pursue."
Right hand raised. "Eventually, we agreed to a compromise. For a few months, at least, the risk to my soul is extremely low. If I was going to say goodbye to her, I wanted to use that time to do something nice for her. To grant her dearest, unfulfilled wish."
"She wanted to communicate her feelings to me," Zhongli responded, understanding.
Lumine nodded. "That's right. And the rest you know."
She raised her left hand. "It was a precious gift, to spend time with you as we did. It made me so happy. Whatever happens now, I'll be able to pass on without regrets." She lowered her eyes, sadly. "Well mostly without regrets…"
"So, when I confessed my feelings for Lumine…" Zhongli realized, catching her meaning. Guilt began to overwhelm him.
"There's no way you could have known," she replied, shaking her head. "I know that you didn't intend to hurt me, and you had every right to move on after I passed away. Nonetheless, it was not easy, hearing the man you love proclaim his love for another. My mind found it only logical: if any woman were to succeed me in your heart, there could be no better choice than Lumine." Then, more quietly, "MY heart, though, found it to be a bitter pill to swallow. I didn't want it to be over. I knew we couldn't continue, knew it wouldn't be fair to you, but to end so abruptly…"
Right hand. "So, I suggested another compromise. One more encounter. We'd skip ahead to the end, to one of the things that she was really looking forward to: Intimacy."
Left hand. "I refused at first, but…" she blushed. "I'm embarrassed to say that it really didn't take much to convince me to go along with it."
Right hand. "The idea was a bit… unethical, to be honest." Lumine admitted. "To ask you to be intimate with me, when it was actually her, so we agreed that I would be the one in control, the entire time. It would be me you were making love to, from start to finish. She would simply… watch."
"As a voyeur, then?" Zhongli asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Please don't put it that way!" Lumine begged, clearly chagrined. While she'd forgotten to raise her left hand for the protest, Zhongli was certain it was Guizhong speaking. She then blushed fiercely and hid her face in her hands once again. "Oh, who do I think I'm fooling? Yes. I was basically a voyeur. It was so much more than that, though. A voyeur can only see and hear. But I could feel you, taste you… It was so intense, so much more than I imagined. I… lost control." She looked up at Zhongli, hopefully. "Can you forgive me?"
Zhongli sighed, and considered how he should respond. Eventually, he took Lumine's hands and cupped them in his own. "Guizhong… when you passed away, it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. That being said, I would gladly endure that pain again and again, if only it were to mean I could have spent a little longer with you at my side. I understand why you did what you did, but I do wish you had told me the truth sooner."
Tears were welling up in Lumine's eyes, once again, and began to spill down her cheeks. "Oh, Morax! I am so sorry!"
"There is no more time for regrets," Zhongli reassured her. "Now that I know that you are here, I intend to make the most of it. And if you wish to make love, I would be happy to grant your wish."
"YES!" Lumine pumped her fist, startling Zhongli considerably. Then, sheepishly, she raised her right hand. "Sorry, that was me. I mean, even if it were for Guizhong's benefit, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to it. And earlier, well, it really got me worked up, you know? I… um… I'll be quiet, now. Sorry."
Lumine raised her left hand and giggled. "Just remember, YOU get to be the voyeur, this time, Lumine!"
"Ahem." Zhongli coughed. "Be that as it may, before we continue… Can we just… talk? I've missed you so much, Guizhong. I've missed our chats, so very much."
"Of course, my dearest Morax. I would love to talk with you, as well. For as long as you wish."
Author's Notes:
The dirty little secret here is that, at the start of the story, I hadn't really decided how Guizhong was going to "manifest". Initially, I hadn't planned for her to make an actual appearance at all – just as Lumine deduced at the start, Guizhong's gift would result in changes to Lumine's personality only.
Later on, I decided that it would be more fun for Guizhong to actually emerge as a person, and to be discovered at the climax. That, too, went through several stages of evolution in my head. At one point, I'd considered having her actually forcefully take over Lumine's body, just as Paimon feared, and use Lumine's body to try to get close to Zhongli. That seemed very out-of-character, though, for the gentle and kind woman the lore in the game paints her as, so I settled on something more like a partnership between her and Lumine.
I also debated as to just how intimate the scene would get before Guizhong got found out; my original plan was to be much tamer than what I wound up writing. I decided to let it get a little spicier.
All in all, Guizhong's presence and the overall shape of the climax didn't solidify in my mind until I was most of the way through Chapter 6. It was at that point that I pushed my way through my writer's block, decided on an endpoint, and saw a path to get there.
