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Albedo wasn't even aware of how spending time with people had changed him. The people of Mondstadt may not have known that he himself was not human, but when he spent nights in his mountain laboratory, memories of incidents when he had acted not quite human, not quite artificial, usually lingered in his mind, especially the people who looked at him with horror and incomprehension. When he first thought of the experiences, he felt something akin to shame. As the memories multiplied and the nights in Dragonspin lengthened, he no longer felt resentment towards them. He had to keep reminding himself that although the others accepted him as their own, he would never be one of them.
Apparently he didn't repeat his origins often enough. When he coughed so hard during his nightly experiments that he nearly dropped the tube, he simply waved it away and figured he'd have to wear a scarf and a hat on his next trip up the mountain.
It wasn't until a week later – when he had taken proper care of Klee, of all the business he had in the Knights of Favonius, and when he had put on warmer clothes – that he realized, after another coughing fit, that he wasn't human after all. He can't get sick, not in the true sense of the word. He can be injured; his creator had thought of every physical aspect of his body. His alchemical experiments left bruises, scratches, burns.
But he was never sick.
The very next day he returned from Dragonspine to Mondstadt. He hurried to the Knights of Favonius building and entered the library.
"Hello, Albedo. What brings you here today?" said Lisa. Albedo turned to her. The witch was sitting on the windowsill, lazily turning pages. She smiled sweetly at the newcomer.
"I need books."
"In the library? You don’t say," Lisa's smile widened. If Albedo were truly human, he'd probably be blushing right now.
"Do you have any books on diseases?" He decided to ignore her ironic remark.
Lisa looked up from the pages in surprise and looked at the young alchemist. She placed the book on the windowsill, from which she gracefully hopped down and gestured with her hand for Albedo to follow her.
"Are you interested in medicine now?" Lisa wondered as she began to search the shelves.
"Y-yes, something like that," lied Albedo.
"What disease is it?" Lisa frowned unconsciously at the spines of the books as she searched for the title that would be most helpful to Albedo.
"A general disease book would be most useful."
"Well, I can't help you with that. But what I can do," she deftly pulled out a book and tossed it into the man's arms, who only caught it by sheer luck, "is lend you general books on various types of diseases," she smiled and continued past the shelves. Every few seconds she would pull out a book, flip quickly through the pages, and then either put it back in its place or place it on the ever-expanding chimney in the alchemist's arms.
The whole process took about half an hour. After the sixth book in his hands, Albedo began to count the seconds, as the weight of the books did him no favors. Besides, he had a terrible urge to cough.
In the end, he took eleven books from the library. Lisa told him with a smile that they should be returned in four weeks and added with an even bigger smile that if he didn't do as she asked without notice, she would find him and take the books by force.
Albedo was no newcomer to the library, and was used to such warnings. However, he always returned his borrowings in advance, so he did not leave the room with fear or apprehension.
"What are you doing?" He was snapped out of his thoughts by the man standing by the door. His gaze wandered to the window. The last rays of the sun were visible. He must have spent the whole day in his humble quarters at the Knights of Favonius.
"Sir Kaeya, I would expect you of all people to know at least the basics in rules of etiquette. Weren't you taught to knock on doors?" Albedo said through his teeth, clearing his throat.
Kaeya chuckled and walked slowly over to the table where the alchemist sat. "Sir Albedo, I was indeed taught that. I also knocked, twice even, unfortunately you did not answer me. I was afraid that something had happened to you, so I did not hesitate to enter without your permission. I hope you will forgive me." Albedo rolled his eyes. He hated his colleague's behavior. The way he walked around as if he owned Mondstadt. The slight smirk, the narrowed eyes, and the hands that rested on his desk.
"Well," Albedo said, rising abruptly from his desk, "as you can see, I'm perfectly fine, so you can leave now," he walked to the entrance of the room and gestured as gallantly as he could to the door.
"No," Kaeya snapped, and the alchemist had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes again. "I heard from Lisa that you returned unexpectedly from Dragonspine. You're always there for a week or so, minimum, and only return when necessary. What happened?" Kaey's flirtatious tone was gone. He was looking at Albedo with... concern.
Albedo sighed loudly. He had an eighty-five percent chance that he was going to regret this decision, but either the cavalry captain could disappear immediately or after a few lies, and he wasn't in the mood to hide anything at the moment.
"I'm sick," Albedo confessed.
Kaeya just – for lack of a better term – stared at him for a moment. The cold eyes scanned the young alchemist, and he had the impression that he was about to hide from that piercing gaze. However, he was completely taken aback by the reaction from his colleague. Kaeya began to laugh loudly.
"What's so funny about that?" Albedo asked offended over Kaeya's laughter.
"My dear Albedo," the captain addressed him as he wiped tears from his eyes, "why don't you go rest? Tell Jean you're not feeling well. Drink tea with lemon and sleep a lot, you'll feel better."
Albedo frowned at the knight, walked up to him, and spoke in as serious a voice as possible, "I am not usually ill." He could only hope that by the tone of his voice and the tense posture of his body, he was able to convey a certain urgency to the other man.
Kaeya's eyes bugged out at the sudden violation of personal space and he nimbly backed up two steps. Any sign of laughter had vanished, and he regarded his colleague with an extremely interested look at that moment.
Albedo would have blushed again if he could.
"Okay," Kaeya said after a moment of silence, and walked over to Albedo's desk. He picked up a book, read the title, and then flipped to the end where the table of contents was located.
"What are you doing?" Albedo asked in confusion.
Kaeya looked up from the pages. He wasn't smiling, but the alchemist could see his eyes laughing. "I'm looking for the cause of your illness," he returned his gaze to the book as he finished the sentence.
Albedo chuckled, "Perhaps that won't be necessary. My abilities are sufficient to search the books myself."
He didn't look at Albedo this time. For a moment it looked like the cavalry captain wasn't going to answer. However, Albedo noticed when the passage began to bore him, for his grey eyes began to dart over the paper.
"I do not doubt your abilities, Albedo. But you must admit that going through so many books, word by word, must be terribly exhausting."
Albedo had spent a whole day going through one book on medicine. During those few hours, his cough worsened. But he didn't want to give his colleague the benefit of the doubt.
"If I help you, the work can be done faster," Kaeya continued, "Besides, you won't be so bored if I keep you company," this time, a smile was already on his face. But it was not the typical flirtatious grin that all Mondstadt residents knew. It was friendly and gentle.
"I don't want to burden you with extra work," Albedo reluctantly said. He didn't think he would mind the company, but with Kaeya he wasn't so sure. He never knew how he was supposed to act in front of him. He didn't know what part of his colleague made him so nervous, but there was something in his walk, in his movements, in his eyes that he recognized all too well, and yet something so foreign that he was terrified of it himself.
It wasn't until that moment that he realized this was their biggest conversation since they'd known each other.
"Nonsense," Kaeya grinned, turning to the next page. "I've done my job, and what I haven't done isn't going anywhere in a hurry. I'll be happy to take the time for you and your diagnosis."
Albedo ran out of arguments, so he just nodded slightly and returned to his chair. He motioned for Kaeya to pick a title from the stack of books. The cavalry captain then settled himself on the windowsill.
The sun had stopped shining on their work, and the moon was not a sufficient support for their search for information. Kaeya rose from his seat after sunset and lit all the candles in the study. Albedo smiled to himself; candles had always scared him when he way younger. Maybe it was his origins and foolish naivety that his body could be destroyed by something as small as a flame.
The alchemist was surprised at how seriously Kaeya took his work. At one point he left, and Albedo thought he would not return, that the constant reading of the scholarly text had begun to bore him, but the knight returned, bringing his parchment and quill with him. Then he carefully wrote down all the important information. When he disappeared for a second time, he returned with the steaming tea and placed it in front of Albedo with a sweet smile.
As he searched for information, Albedo couldn't help his curiosity and glanced at his colleague a few times. Kaeya sat hunched by the window, his brows furrowed, his expression intent, and the fitful flame of the candle giving his face a far sharper and more aggressive expression than it really had.
They had already gone through four more books together when they heard a stamping from the hallway. Jean burst into the room. Her carelessly buttoned coat suggested that she was getting ready for bed, and the circles under her eyes told the viewer that she hadn't been asleep for a long time. She gasped sharply, but when she saw Kaeya, her hand rested on the door frame and she laughed.
"Thanks Barbados for letting me find you, Kaeya. I didn't know you were keeping Albedo company. A trader from Liyue has come to us, he was attacked by the abyss mage near the Dawn Winery, we need to leave immediately."
Kaeya slammed the book shut, jumped down from the windowsill and raced to the door. Closing it, he took one last look at the alchemist.
"I'm sorry."
"It’s alright, I understand. Duty calls," Albedo replied, "Shall I come with you? I can be useful."
"No, no, that won't be necessary. You are ill. Just stay warm and keep looking for information," Kaeya smiled at him and left the office without saying goodbye.
Albedo tried to concentrate on the text for a moment, but then quickly got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He looked out onto the small courtyard in front of the main base, where Kaeya was communicating with Jean about the next course of action and giving orders to the other two knights.
The alchemist hadn't expected the cavalry captain to look up and see him in the window. Kaeya smiled broadly at his colleague and waved him off. Albedo waved back lamely, then stepped away from the window and swore softly, for it was one of the least understandable things he had ever done. He cleared his throat.
Slowly but surely, he was getting tired of searching through the various books. He felt like Lisa was picking them out with the mischievous notion that he would die of boredom while reading them. Even so, he carefully wrote down all the diseases that had coughing as a symptom and compared them with the ones he had already found.
For the umpteenth time that night, he put his hand to his forehead. No, he had no temperature. But he'd never had a temperature because his body didn't work the way a normal one did. He searched his notes for all the illnesses for which temperature was a symptom and crossed them off with a simple line.
When he coughed again, he felt like he was going to throw up his guts. He felt dizzy and didn't know what he was doing for a few seconds. When he came to consciousness again, he was lying with his head on the worktop and his hand over his mouth. He opened his fist. Inside it were several petals.
How had they gotten there? Albedo's eyes scanned the entire workroom to make sure there really wasn't a flower anywhere, and certainly not someone to slip the petals into his palm.
He coughed again. He couldn't stop. He covered his mouth with his hands. More flowers fell into his hands. Slimy and wet, ashy and disgusting petals.
"Wait," Albedo stammered, rubbing his hands up his thighs. He began flipping through each book and the notes he had made during the restless night. He tried not to cough again.
Did it start with an H… or an S? He wanted to start laughing when he found the note about the disease, since it coincidentally was his first, but he knew that if he laughed he would cough again. Maybe he wouldn't just cough petals this time.
Hanahaki disease - (hana - flower; hakimasu - to vomit) first described and discovered by Oyama Toshi on the Inazuma Islands; intense chest pain, coughing and vomiting of petals and blood. Cause - one-sided love. If not reciprocated, the patient dies of suffocation.
One-sided love? Since when did Albedo suffer from one-sided love? As Sucrose would say, Albedo's love was research. Alchemy can't make you suffer from such a disease, can it?
Albedo hadn't even noticed the sun was rising. He only noticed its warm rays when Kaeya entered the room. His uniform was dirty, his hair was disheveled and he had several wounds on his face, yet he was smiling at the alchemist.
"Stay there, you'll soil the books I borrowed otherwise," Albedo warned him. How he would have liked to relieve his body and cough!
"Of course, certainly," Kaeya said, leaning his hip nonchalantly against the door frame. "In the end, it turned out that there was not just one mage, but three, who scattered in all directions as soon as we appeared, so we hunted them all night," Kaeya narrated. "What about you? Were you successful with your research?"
"Unfortunately, no," lied Albedo. This time he couldn't contain himself any longer and coughed.
All signs of flirtatious confidence vanished from Kaeya's face as he walked over to the alchemist and examined him closely. "You look ill, Albedo. Is there anything I can do for you?"
It was as if Albedo could feel the warmth of the hand that flickered in front of his face. He could feel his cheeks burning, but not with sickness, but with shame, such shame that he would rather hide and never come out into the light again. He was sure, however, that the heat he felt from within could not be seen on the surface. He wanted so badly to reach out and feel it, that warm human caress, but as soon as he stopped coughing, he realized how weak-minded he must be.
"Leave," he said, far more rudely than he intended. In a softer tone, he responded to the surprised look on the cavalry captain's face, "I'm extremely grateful for your help, Kaeya, but I don't want you to get sick because of me."
Kaeya shook his head, and slowly walked back to the door. "If you're in any trouble or have figured out what's wrong with you, you'll let me know, won't you?" It was killing Albedo how distressed his colleague sounded.
"Certainly, Kaeya," Albedo attempted a smile. Kaeya returned the smile and closed the door behind him.
The cavalry captain must’ve heard the loud coughing fit that grabbed Albedo as soon as the knight left. This time he coughed up not only the petals, but the entire flower. A damaged, sickly-looking calla lily.
"For Seven’s sake," Albedo cursed. That smile, that stance, those movements. None of it really irritated him, and he was incredibly stupid. He really did spend too much time around people.
As he sat in his office, coughing up more of the flowers that matched the cavalry captain so well, he felt like he was going to cry soon.
The tea laid untouched on his desk, completely cold.