A drizzling rain was falling. Every year, as this season brought the heat rising, Maomao found herself feeling gloomy over all the rain.
Maomao opened a drawer in the medicine cabinet and checked whether the medicines inside had gotten damp.
(Last year I did this in the clinic.)
She had been tidying up while kicking the backside of the quack doctor who kept everything so haphazardly. After another year, had that quack managed to ruin the contents of the cabinet again?
While Maomao sorted through the medicine cabinet, at her feet—
Momo—
—was lying on its back, belly up. Utterly lacking any trace of its former wildness, it was such a slovenly sight that Maomao, finding it in her way, nudged it into the corner with her toe. Momo raised its face with a disgruntled look, but since moving seemed like too much bother, it simply stayed pressed against the wall.
Maomao flicked aside the spoiled herbs and added the shortages to a wooden tablet. Some of the items could be found at the market, but others would need to be brought in by asking a merchant.
(These look obtainable.)
Several of them were plants that grew during this season. She would make a short trip out to gather them.
(The rain has stopped, too.)
It was damp, but not so much that rain would resume. Once the notion struck, there was no better day for it. If she waited for a clear sky, she would never get any work done.
Maomao looked outside the medicine shop. The courtesans were mostly sleeping to prepare for the night's work, so the only people around were the men and the young girls being made to practice their writing.
Maomao headed for the room where the men were stationed. She slid the door open with a clatter to find them sprawled lazily across the floor. Among them—
Sazen—
—was there.
"Mind the shop for me."
"Huh? Just like that, out of nowhere?"
Sazen scratched his head with an annoyed air and got to his feet.
"I'll be back by evening. Just heading to the nearby village."
"Sure, sure. So just minding the shop is all?"
After being drilled by Maomao into learning the job, he had apparently grown sharp enough to handle at least that much.
"The herbs hanging from the ceiling to dry—grind only the dried ones into powder and have them ready. Store them the same way as always."
"Sure, sure."
Sazen stood up with a groan, hooking his fingers under his collar to scratch his belly. Maomao watched him with half-lidded eyes. She could see dirt caked between his fingernails.
"Wash your hands properly."
"I know, I know."
His memory wasn't bad, but it might do him good to be a little more careful about hygiene. There were plenty of customers who would use something like that as an excuse to make trouble.
She would have to make sure to drill that into him.
(If I leave now, I might make it in time for the shared carriage.)
Hiring a private carriage to take you somewhere was expensive. If it was a nearby village, carts passed through several times a day carrying food to the capital. On the way back, with no cargo to haul, they doubled as shared carriages. The ride was dreadful, but they were cheap, no two ways about it.
Hurrying to finish her tasks, Maomao emerged from the men's quarters to find a pair of sparkling eyes fixed on her.
"Freckles. Are you going somewhere?"
He finally showed off his newly grown-in front teeth as
Chou U
said. Beside him,
Shitsurin
was tagging along like a proper little sidekick.
Maomao made no effort to hide her distaste. She elbowed past the nagging brats and returned to the pharmacy, where she bundled up the tools she needed in a cloth wrap.
"Hey, you're heading out, right? To the market? If you're going shopping, take me with you!"
Chou U clambered into the pharmacy and scooped up MaoMao, who had been sprawled on the floor. Take me, take me — he kept using MaoMao's front paws to poke at Maomao. MaoMao let out an annoyed "Mrrr~" and nothing more.
"I'm going into the forest. It's a boring backwater — even you'd have nothing to do there."
"The forest! I wanna go to the forest! Wanna go, wanna go, wanna go!"
He kept smacking MaoMao's front paws against her. MaoMao had apparently had enough and kicked its back legs wildly, wriggling free of Chou U's grip.
Chou U threw himself onto the floor and pitched a fit. Maomao thought that surely by the age of ten he'd have outgrown this sort of tantrum, but perhaps being spoiled had stunted him that way. In other respects he was surprisingly mature, and Maomao held her head in her hands over the contradiction.
Shitsurin was trying to imitate his boss Chou U, so she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and forced him to his feet.
"I'll get the old woman to deal with you."
When she threatened him with that, he snapped to rigid attention and nodded his head vigorously up and down.
"What's all the racket about?"
The madam arrived looking half-asleep. Shi-Shin flinched at the sight.
"I want to go gather some herbs before it starts raining. There's no point dragging this one along—he'd just be in the way."
Maomao pointed at Zhao Yu, who was rolling around on the floor.
The madam narrowed her eyes and looked at Zhao Yu. She let out an exasperated sigh, then said to Maomao:
"Take him with you."
"Huh?"
Maomao pulled a face. She had assumed the madam, being a thorough pragmatist, would have no reason to drag a nuisance of a brat along on a job.
"Wait, no way! You mean it, Granny?!"
"Yes!" Zhao Yu leaped to his feet and started hopping around with glee.
Shi-Shin tried to copy him, bouncing up and down, but the madam held her head down.
"Not you."
At those words, Shi-Shin drooped. Unlike Zhao Yu, who got special treatment no matter what, Shi-Shin was...
a baldy.
If she were seen going out, it would set a bad example for the other baldies.
As Shi-Shin sulked, Zhao Yu patted her on the shoulder.
"I'll make sure to bring you back a souvenir."
"And who's paying for that?"
Maomao was quick to shoot back.
"If you wanna go outside, just bear with it a little longer. I'll buy your contract before long."
"!?!"
Where did he learn a line like that? As a rule, customers who say things like that tend to be trouble.
Leaving the brats to their celebrating, the madam poked Maomao.
"So why are you taking them along again?"
Maomao asked with undisguised displeasure.
The madam scratched her collarbone as she watched the brats.
"You went off on that trip not long ago, didn't you? Do you know what kind of shape Zhao Yu was in back then?"
She had no clue about that. He was probably carrying on as noisy as always. The head servant's
right-hand man, Ukyō,
had taken a liking to him, so he'd manage just fine even without Maomao.
"He was still in low spirits, though. He doesn't have any parents and he's stuck here, so even just not having someone like you around is enough to leave him feeling lost."
"I can hardly believe—"
"—that those are the words of an old woman—"
"—who buys children from a procuress."
Maomao said with cutting sarcasm. It seemed that until her adoptive father Luomen had taken her in, no matter how much baby Maomao cried and screamed, she was shut in a room and left alone. Eventually, having realized that crying was pointless, the infant simply stopped. This might also be why her tear ducts were so remarkably stubborn.
She wasn't harboring any resentment over it — in fact, she didn't even remember it. The woman who had given birth to Maomao had to work, and the woman who had nursed her,
Byakuren,
had her own work as well. The Rokushōkan had been on the decline at the time, so Maomao could well have been seen as a target of envy.
She considered herself lucky just to have not been strangled to death.
The madam slipped both hands into her sleeves.
"There's nothing to be done about being sold off to a procuress. That's the parents' karma, nothing to do with me. But if a useless brat who skips work and can't do anything grows up here, I won't be able to keep this place running either. Don't you think it's only kind to educate them so that doesn't happen?"
"What about Zhao Yu?"
"Dealing with that boy is your job. I'm just making sure he doesn't die. I have to raise them for what I'm paid, after all."
That much was fair. Still, Maomao grumbled about how much the old woman was squeezing out of them. The madam simply said "Well, who can say" and slipped away somewhere.
After half an hour of rattling around in the shared carriage, they arrived at a village near the woods. It sat along a river and had a similar atmosphere to Yabu's hometown, but here they grew rice and vegetables. The paddies, freshly planted, reflected the sky above like enormous mirrors.
"Wow..."
Zhao Yu leaned out of the carriage, gazing at the scenery outside.
Indeed, the paddies at this time of year were breathtaking. There was no sign of rain so far, and the sky was a clear blue. Surrounded by blue on all sides — above and below — the world felt utterly surreal.
"Hey, Freckles. What's that?"
Zhao Yu tugged at Maomao's sleeve. Following where he pointed, she saw two mounds of sand with stakes driven into them, connected by twisted strands of straw. They were set up along the river flowing beside the paddy fields.
"That's"
Shimenawa
"a shimenawa, isn't it?"
Maomao didn't know all the details, but she was pretty sure
it was some kind of curse.
It was supposed to create a boundary to keep evil things out, or something along those lines.
The rope's shape looked a little different, probably because local folk beliefs had been mixed in.
(Huh?)
Maomao leaned forward. The shimenawa looked quite different from the ones she had seen before. She remembered them being simpler in shape, but this year's seemed a bit twisted, with strips of white paper woven into them. The design looked more refined than before, but did something like that really change its shape so easily?
"We'll be there soon!"
The farmer driving the cart called out. Even though it was a shared ride, right now only Maomao and Zhao Yu were aboard. The advantage of this kind of cart was that the fare didn't change regardless of how few passengers there were. On the other hand, some shared carts got cheaper the more people rode, but Maomao disliked them when they were too crowded, and the horse's pace slowed as well, so she preferred this option.
Maomao stepped down from the cart and looked at the grove.
The grove here didn't technically belong to the village. But you could ask the village head for permission to enter. Pay a little money and he wouldn't complain. For a long-term relationship, these things were necessary, and if he remembered your face, he would go out of his way to help with all sorts of things.
Maomao took Zhao Yu by the hand and headed for the village head's house.
"..."
"There's nothing here."
There was indeed nothing, but that didn't mean he had to say it. She rapped Zhao Yu on the head and made for the house at the far end of the village.
Under the eaves of a shabby house, dried vegetables hung in bunches. They were probably being dried as preserved food, but this time of year, you had to be careful or they'd
go moldy
in no time. Beside the dried vegetables hung a shorter version of the shimenawa rope they had seen earlier.
It had been about three years since Maomao last visited this village. Her duties in the rear palace had kept her away for quite a while, and she hoped the village head would still recognize her.
"Hello."
She knocked on the door with a few light taps, and Zhao Yu mimicked her, pounding away. She scolded him and held his head still, and a young woman came out of the house.
"Who might you be?"
For such a rural area, she was remarkably pretty, dressed in simple but sturdy clothing.
"I'd like to see the village head. If you tell him I'm a disciple of Luomen the pharmacist, he should know who I am."
It was because using her foster father's name instead of her own was easier to understand. Most people wouldn't believe her if she said she was a pharmacist. Once she got a bit older, that wouldn't be an issue anymore, but since she had no reason to show off her profession, she used words the other person could readily grasp.
The woman called someone from the back of the house, and a middle-aged man appeared.
If Maomao's memory served her correctly, this should be the former village head's son. The son seemed to remember Maomao as well, and nodded with an "Ah."
"My father caught a cold last year and it got complicated..."
"I see."
Never underestimate a common cold. If you let your guard down, it can worsen in an instant and turn into pneumonia before you know it.
The previous village head had been the type who refused to take any medicine. He was a hearty man who insisted that drinking some alcohol and sleeping it off would cure anything. He would never have been a customer, but Maomao didn't dislike him.
"I told him firmly to see a doctor, but, well, there was nothing to be done. Anyway, let's put an end to this gloomy talk. You're heading into the forest, right?"
"Yes."
Maomao offered the usual fee to the new village head, but he shook his head.
"No need. If you don't get going, the sun will set on you."
"...If you say so, that would help."
What kind of wind was blowing today? As Maomao moved to put the money back in her pouch, Zhao Wa reached out.
"Freckles! Buy me candy with that! Buy it!"
"You earn your own money."
Maomao secured the money firmly and headed for the forest.
"Watch out for snakes this time of year."
"I know that well enough. They make for good ingredients."
"No. That's not what I mean."
The village head shook his head in denial, then pinched the sacred straw rope hanging from the eaves and showed it to her.
Looking closely, the two ends of the rope were shaped differently. One end tapered to a thin point, while the other grew thicker and split open at the tip. It looked remarkably like a snake.
"If you kill a snake, the villagers might attack you."
"...What do you mean by that?"
This was completely incompatible with Maomao's belief that upon seeing a snake, one should immediately think "grilled eel."
Before, no matter how many snakes she caught, they had simply thanked her for her "pest control efforts."
The village chief smiled wryly as well.
"It was my father's dying wish, you see. Before he passed, his nerves got the better of him, and he called in a curse worker."
In exchange for incense to ease his suffering, he was told to spread the teachings throughout the village.
So that's why these peculiar shrine customs had taken root — Maomao nodded to herself in understanding.
"We've been worshipping the snake god around here since long ago. That's what it amounts to — the worship."
The village chief smiled wryly. He wore the expression of someone who felt there was nothing to be done about a long-standing faith, but something about it snagged at Maomao's thoughts.
"But what about the venomous snakes?"
Vipers.
The likes of them were the enemy of agricultural labor. If someone were bitten, there would be nothing to show for it.
The village chief whispered with a wry smile.
"We kill them when no one's looking. Some folks are truly devout, but that can't be helped."
The village chief must have had his own share of justifications to maintain. A young woman — presumably his wife — was glaring at him icily.
Having to watch your own husband whispering secrets right before your eyes couldn't have been pleasant.
"Come on, let's go."
"Right."
Maomao took Zhao Yu along and promptly headed into the woods.