I'm sorry, this story will probably continue for one more chapter.
When I opened my eyes, a beautiful nobleman was right in front of me. For some reason, he was leaning over me with his hands on my collar.
"Wh-what is this?"
When Maomao glared at him with narrowed eyes, Jinshi stammered and flailed both hands about. Normally she would have kept glaring a bit longer, but Maomao noticed that Jinshi had gauze wrapped around his face.
"...Jinshi, what happened to your face?"
Maomao straightened her collar and asked.
"It's nothing. Just a scratch."
He blocked her view with his hand as if trying to hide it.
Maomao frowned.
"Let me see."
"It's not worth showing."
Being told that only made her more curious. She pressed forward relentlessly, closing in on Jinshi. He backed away.
She cornered him against the wall, then slowly reached out her hand.
"..."
That face — one could call it a treasure — had a diagonal gash running across the right cheek. It had torn not just the skin but the flesh beneath, and it had been stitched shut with thread.
The wound had been treated neatly, but the scar would never disappear.
"You went out to the front lines?"
"I can't exactly stand somewhere safe and watch from the sidelines, can I?"
"You could have just watched. That's the position you hold."
Maomao spoke with a touch of irritation.
"Please don't go out of your way to dangerous places. When you get hurt, it causes trouble for everyone around you."
At Maomao's words, Jinshi scratched his head and managed a wry smile.
"Ah, I've done right by Ma Sen. Gaoshun's fist really packs a punch."
Saying that, he clumsily began wrapping the gauze back around his face. Maomao snatched the gauze from Jinshi and wrapped it around his face for him.
"I didn't mean to get hurt."
"Well, nobody does."
"I ended up listening to a strange request, though."
Jinshi lowered his lashes. Overflowing from those obsidian eyes was a deep sorrow.
"...Were you close to Loulan?"
Jinshi asked Maomao suddenly.
"Relatively."
"Were you friends?"
"I'm not really sure."
She truly wasn't sure.
She thought it had probably been something close to that. At least, that was how Maomao felt. But whether the other person had felt the same way, she couldn't really tell.
"She really was a hard person to read."
"...For me too."
Jinshi's expression grew even more pained.
"It ended without me ever really understanding her."
Maomao wasn't the kind of person who failed to grasp the meaning behind those words.
"I see."
It was something she already knew. When Loulan had left the room that time, she had entrusted something to Maomao. And then she had walked out with her resolve firmly in place.
All Maomao could do was carry out what had been entrusted to her—but—
"Jinshi, wouldn't it be better for you to get some rest?"
"Yeah, I'm exhausted."
Jinshi's complexion was poor. He was probably feeling far worse than Maomao, who had been the one captured. Faint dark circles showed beneath his eyes, and his lips were dry and lacking any luster.
He should have gone back to his own carriage and gone to sleep already, but instead, the fool lay down on top of the fur where Maomao had been sleeping.
Maomao's face visibly contorted.
"Jinshi, please don't sleep here."
"Why not? I'm tired."
"Tired or not, that's still not an answer."
Maomao looked around. Inside the carriage lay five bundles — burial wrappings. They were the bodies of children from a certain noble clan.
"This is an ill-omened place."
"...I know that."
"Then—"
Before she could finish, her wrist was seized and yanked. The hand that grabbed hers was ice-cold.
They ended up lying face to face atop layers of fur.
"Then why are you here?"
"Surely you don't think I'm devoid of all compassion for children."
She recited the rehearsed line she had prepared beforehand.
"Is that so. I was just a bit curious, though."
Jinshi tilted his face slightly while remaining on his side.
"Weren't you told by your medicine master never to touch corpses?"
(He remembered that?!)
Maomao nearly scowled.
"I find it hard to believe that someone like you would spend extended periods in a place like this."
His intuition was disturbingly sharp.
Maomao's mind raced, trying to figure out how to escape that unblinking gaze fixed upon her.
While she sat frozen like that, Jinshi's hand reached out. He grabbed the collar of her garment and pulled it aside.
"And what about you — what happened there?"
Jinshi asked, a furrow creasing the space between his brows.
The exposed skin bore a long red knife wound. There were also bite marks on her shoulder and neck — but had he spotted those as well, things would have gone even further.
Though somewhat embarrassed, Maomao decided to press on matter-of-factly.
"There were some rather unsavory people."
"So... you were attacked?"
A cold voice reached her ears.
"It was an attempted attack."
She made sure to add that detail.
This man insisted on making a fuss about other people's virtue at every turn.
"I repelled them, and for a time, rendered their manly functions rather inoperable."
She had crushed them, but they probably hadn't ruptured.
Hearing this, Jinshi's face turned pale.
"No, I know they brought it on themselves, I know, but—"
As someone of the same sex, he probably understood to some degree. Jinshi's expression was pained. With that same pained look, he reached out his hand.
His finger traced along the wound, and she flinched involuntarily.
"There won't be a scar, right?"
"Just one layer of skin was cut."
Feeling uncomfortable from his fingertips brushing against her, she leaned back, but Jinshi's hand followed. Unable to bear it any longer, Maomao sat up and straightened her collar.
"Don't let it scar."
"Might I return those same words to you?"
At Maomao's words, Jinshi broke into a smile.
"I'm a man. It's no problem."
"Your Excellency surpasses any such concern."
"What do I care about that?"
"Then I don't care either. If a single wound would make me lose my worth, so be it."
"But weren't you just saying all manner of things to me moments ago?"
Jinshi remained lying down, not letting go of Maomao's wrist. The hand that had been strangely cold moments before had grown a little warmer.
"Am I the kind of man who loses his worth over a single wound?"
As Jinshi asked the question, his grip on Maomao's wrist tightened.
"Are you just a pretty face?"
At that question, Maomao naturally shook her head.
"If anything, a few more scars might be an improvement."
The honest words slipped out before she could stop them.
Jinshi was too beautiful — just looking at him was enough to throw everyone around him into disarray. People focused too much on his appearance. Maomao believed his true nature wasn't as lavish as his looks suggested, but something far more earnest.
And the only ones who understood that were the very few people close to him.
Maomao let out a soft breath, and her lips curved into a faint smile.
"You've become more of a man than before, haven't you?"
The moment she said it, she felt Jinshi's lips press tightly together. He looked around restlessly, blinking his eyes open and shut, shaking his head this way and that.
"What's wrong?"
When Maomao asked, Jinshi scratched the back of his neck with his free hand.
"...Given the circumstances, I was trying to hold back."
"Hold back? If you're sleepy, then just quickly from here—"
She was about to usher him out — *please leave and go to sleep.*
But rather than holding back sleep, it seemed his patience had given out, because her wrist was tugged once more.
She found herself sitting facing Jinshi, both her forearms pinned and grasped by his hands.
"When I was looking at your wound earlier, I intended to keep a cool head."
With an uneasy expression on his face, he drew closer to Maomao little by little. His warm breath brushed against her face.
"Or rather — I managed better than I expected."
"Wha—?"
Jinshi's face drew slowly nearer, their noses almost touching, when—
A loud creak echoed through the room.
Jinshi sprang back as if startled.
The sound had come from the area where they had put the children to sleep.
"?!"
Maomao pushed Jinshi aside and moved toward the source of the sound.
She grabbed the wrists of the swaddled children one by one.
(Wrong, wrong.)
It was when she touched the third child.
"..."
The small mouth moved ever so slightly.
The pulse was faint, but it beat — thump, thump.
"If these children were insects, they could have survived the winter."
She remembered Loulan's words.
The insects that sing like bells — the female devours the male, and then dies herself. Only the young survive the winter.
Loulan had compared her own clan to insects.
And Loulan had given Maomao one more clue.
Amaryllis.
It could be both poison and medicine. It was what had been on the paper Loulan showed her.
At times, in foreign lands, it was used as a secret medicine.
A drug that kills a person once and brings them back to life.
She recalled the former court physician who had been held captive by Shenmi and forced to create an elixir of immortality. Even if it wasn't immortality itself, wouldn't they have studied any drug even remotely similar? In the books the former physician had used, there were separate sheets tucked between the pages. Among them were fish fins and pufferfish fins.
To kill a person once, you use poison — but by mixing multiple poisons together, they counteract one another and become non-toxic. When they become non-toxic, it was said that a person who had died once could sometimes be revived.
"Is it alive?"
Jinshi was behind her.
But Maomao had no time to worry about that. What mattered was rubbing the child's body and somehow managing a successful resuscitation.
That was why Loulan had brought Maomao here.
She didn't know what Jinshi would do with a revived child. But she had no time for such excuses.
"Jinshi — hot water, prepare hot water! And something warm! Clothes, food, anything!"
"...Someone who already died once, huh."
Jinshi let out a soft chuckle.
"Outplayed, huh."
"Your Excellency!"
He was muttering something, but Maomao couldn't be bothered to listen. Eyes narrowed, she shouted.
"Ah, fine, I got it."
She thought she heard Jinshi reply in a slightly brighter tone. His expression looked far more relaxed than before, yet there was a hint of disappointment in it all the same.
Maomao threw herself into reviving the children one after another as they gasped back to life. As Jinshi left carrying the blankets and hot water basin she had requested, he leaned close and whispered in her ear.
"Shall we continue this another time?"
"Ah, yeah, sure."
Too busy to think deeply about it, Maomao offered only that brief reply before plunging back into tending to the children.