"Freckles, aren't you done yet?"
Sitting on a tree stump with his legs dangling,
Zhao Yu
spoke.
(This is exactly why I hated this.)
Hungry ghosts were fickle. Bringing one along was one thing, but it was obvious it would become dead weight. The old woman had insisted Zhao Yu be brought along precisely because she wanted to get rid of the troublesome ghost that kept interfering with the men's work. What was this about being "lonely"?
Maomao ignored Zhao Yu's complaints and went on cutting the grass growing at the base of a tree. She only wanted the young shoots, but the sorting could wait.
"Hey— Freckles—"
"Quiet. You're the one who followed me."
Maomao said, stuffing medicinal herbs into a hemp bag.
Zhao Yu placed both hands between his knees and glared at Maomao, clearly dissatisfied.
"But I'm tired!"
They hadn't walked all that far, but the undergrowth and fallen leaves made for poor footing. Maomao understood that it would tire someone like Zhao Yu, whose body still carried lingering numbness. There was nothing to be done about that. But that didn't mean she was going to coddle him.
"Then wait here. I'm still going deeper."
"Huh?"
Zhao Yu gaped at Maomao, his face practically screaming that he had something to say.
"You're really gonna leave me behind?!"
"You're tired, aren't you? So wait here."
Zhao Yu grimaced and scowled, then dragged himself up from the tree stump. The old woman was right that he had a lonely streak. When they were in the pleasure district, he was usually hanging around the men or the servant girls.
"I'm going! I'm going, so don't you dare leave me behind!"
Zhao Yu stumbled along behind Maomao, his feet unsteady. Maomao watched him with cold eyes as she pushed deeper into the woods.
The forest had all sorts of trees. There were mostly broadleaf trees, so there would probably be plenty of fruit come autumn. Coniferous forests would be suitable for timber, but in this country, such woods were apparently found mostly up north.
Along the way, Maomao spotted some wild raspberries and popped them into her mouth. Zhao Yu tried doing the same, which was fine, but his mouth turned red and sticky.
"Now that's sour!"
"They're just starting to ripen, after all."
Even as she said that, she didn't stop plucking the wild raspberries.
"Freckles! Can you eat this mushroom?"
Zhao Yu spotted a small mushroom growing on a dead branch and pointed it out.
(How unusual.)
She'd thought this was the kind of mushroom found further south, but it had apparently spread this far—Maomao pinched off the tiny specimen.
"Can you eat it?"
"Unfortunately, it doesn't taste good. And it isn't poisonous, either."
In other words, it was of no interest whatsoever to Maomao.
Zhao Yu's shoulders drooped in disappointment.
Further along, they found some lingzhi mushrooms and were pressing on with growing excitement when they spotted a lake. This grove, apparently, had once been part of a great forest that encircled the lake, but as the villagers cleared land for farming, the forest had been broken into several smaller patches.
The remaining patches of forest bordered other villages. They may well have been deliberately divided when the settlements were first established.
Since certain plants grew only along the water's edge, Maomao headed toward the lake. A small island was visible at its center. At the boundary between the grove and the lake,
shimenawa
had been strung up like a fence. Since ancient times, bodies of water had been said to be gateways to the other world. Perhaps for that reason, there was a small shrine on the island. She had heard that the lake's master dwelled there, and that its form was that of a
great serpent
—an incarnation, she'd heard. The prohibition against killing snakes probably originated from that.
And to manage it all, there was a small hut on the lakeshore.
Maomao headed for the hut.
The hut was built on stilts. During heavy rains, the lake's water level would apparently rise all the way up to the hut, which was why it had been built that way. The hut's support pillars bore marks showing how high the water had come.
Zhao Yu poked at the watermarks on the pillars with evident interest. Maomao climbed the steps and peered inside.
Perhaps noticing her gaze, a shaggy-haired old man emerged from the back.
"Haven't seen you in years—I'd thought you'd gone off and gotten married."
"Sorry. I'm past my prime."
"That said, you seem to have a rather big child with you."
Maomao thought the old man was as foul-mouthed as ever. He seemed to be an old acquaintance of her foster father Luomen, and had apparently once practiced medicine in the capital. By all accounts he was skilled, but his curmudgeonly temperament and misanthropic nature had driven him to retire in this remote backwater.
Now he scraped by gathering medicinal herbs. He was called the keeper of the shrine, but apparently he didn't actually do much of anything. There was no boat on the lake, and it didn't seem like he ever went to the shrine itself.
"Here. Take whatever you need."
The old man lined up dried herbs on a rough-hewn table—herbs he had been hanging on the wall to cure. Herbs that were out of season or rare were much easier to procure from this old man than anywhere else.
Maomao stepped inside the hut and appraised the herbs, estimating their value.
The old man lowered himself into a chair with a grunt, hunching forward. He was more than ten years older than Luomen, so he could keel over at any moment.
In the three years since they had last met, his aging seemed to have advanced further.
But the herbs were properly and carefully dried, and the quality was not bad. Moreover, for a doddering old man, he had gathered an impressive quantity.
"Glad to see you haven't gone completely senile. Surprised you managed to collect this much."
"So the geezer really is as foul-mouthed as ever, huh."
The one who laughed at the remark aimed at Maomao was Zhao Yu. Maomao glared at him sideways, then laid the herbs she needed atop a cloth bundle.
"Oh, I've had a helper coming around lately."
"A helper? One of the village kids? They must be pretty reliable."
Maomao gave Zhao Yu an exaggerated look. He pursed his lips as if to say "What?"
"No, no. I picked this one up in the capital the other day. Quite capable, actually. Speak of the devil, and—"
As he said that, they heard the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs.
"Grandpa! I gathered the stuff you asked for! Oh? You've got a visitor?"
It was a cheerfully oblivious voice that sounded oddly familiar.
Swinging a large cloth sack, a young man with a bandage over one eye came striding in.
(It figures that it would be familiar.)
Standing there was the man who was supposed to be looking for work in the capital—
Keyou.
The man whose face still bore the scars of smallpox.
"So yeah, he told me he didn't need a doctor with a face as creepy as mine!"
Keyou recounted the story in his usual voice, which somehow conveyed absolutely no sense of his own misfortune.
The talkative man spotted Maomao and immediately began chattering away to her. The old doctor asked, "You know him?" and Zhao Yu remarked with exasperation, "You sure do know a lot of weird people, bro."
To put it simply, the man had apparently been making the rounds of clinics in the capital, trying to get a medical practice started. Each time, he was asked about the reason for his eyepatch, and like a fool, he honestly showed them the scar. Doctors without knowledge of the disease drove him away, saying it might be contagious and telling him never to come back. Even doctors who knew the infection risk had passed were still in a service business—and there was no reason to readily hire a suspicious-looking man with an eyepatch.
It was this old man, who had dragged his aging body out to deliver a batch of ordered herbs, who picked him up. He apparently stumbled upon the very scene of Keyou being thrown out of a clinic.
The old man was a misanthrope but a sure-handed doctor. At an age where even getting around was hard on him, he said he'd been wanting a decent helper. He quizzed Keyou on his medical knowledge, found it surprisingly competent, and so Keyou ended up here. In a remote place like this, a man with an eyepatch wouldn't draw nearly as much attention as he would in the capital, and the old man said he'd explained everything to the village chief.
"Haha. It's a tough world, isn't it? Well, as long as he can put food on the table, I guess that's good enough."
With Keyou being the way he was, and the old man having found himself a handy errand boy, neither of them seemed to have any complaints.
(Maybe I should have had him come here instead.)
Maomao thought she'd let a small opportunity slip, but it was too late now. Even if she had brought him along, the madam would likely have worked him to the bone just as relentlessly as her adoptive father Luomen did—so this arrangement might actually have been the better outcome for Keyou.
Keyou laid out the freshly gathered herbs.
"Fresh off the vine!"
Zhao Yu peered up at the grinning young man from below. He made a vacant, chipmunk-like face at Keyou and reached out a hand.
"Hey bro, what's going on under that eyepatch?"
"Oh, you wanna see?"
Prefacing it with "It's pretty gross, though," he removed the eyepatch. Zhao Yu let out a rude "Whoa!" and clapped Keyou on the shoulder.
"Bro, what a waste. You had a good face going—no way you're gonna make it in a service job looking like that."
"I know, right? I don't think I'm bad company..."
Maomao ignored the two of them and their idle banter, starting her appraisal of the herbs. She squinted at a large leaf she'd never seen before.
"What's this?"
"Tobacco leaf."
Keyou said while still tussling with Zhao Yu.
Tobacco and kiseru pipes were favorites of the madam and the courtesans, though they were surprisingly uncommon among common folk. Maomao had once repaired a broken kiseru with the intention of returning it to its owner, because she knew how treasured such things were.
Kiseru tobacco was a luxury. The reason the stingy old madam smoked it was because it was addictive. The courtesans wouldn't have smoked it either if the madam didn't. Her adoptive father Luomen had told her that smoking too much was bad for the body.
As far as Maomao knew, the tobacco used was usually imported. She'd only ever seen it dried and crushed, so she couldn't identify the plant.
"Cultivating it isn't that difficult, actually."
The one who spoke up from the side was the old man.
"Is that so?"
Maomao studied the leaf with great interest. If she could cultivate this in a garden, it might make for a fine business. But would he so readily hand over the seeds?
At best, she might get a few leaves to share, but she had reservations about cheaply acquiring them just to deepen the courtesans' habit of smoking pipes.
She would at least broach the subject.
"How much do you sell this for?"
"This isn't for sale."
The old man gathered the tobacco leaves and tied a few bunches together, hanging them under the eaves.
(For personal use?)
Yet there was nothing resembling smoking paraphernalia in the house, and she had never seen him smoke.
As if answering Maomao's doubts, the old man lifted a jar from the floor and set it on the long table. When he removed the lid, a pungent, distinctive smell wafted out.
"Gramps, that stinks!"
Zhao Yu exaggeratedly pinched his nose, peering inside while doing so.
"That's not a drink, is it?"
Inside was a brownish liquid.
"Whatever you do, don't drink it. It'll kill you. It's made with tobacco leaves."
"Ugh, why would anyone go and make something like that?"
Zhao Yu sat down on a wooden crate on the floor as he spoke.
"It's used to keep snakes away."
Maomao slapped her hands together in understanding.
Tobacco leaves were poisonous when ingested, and she already knew that poison was effective against insects. This was the first she had heard that it worked on snakes too. With insects, she had at least considered catching them, but the idea of repelling snakes had never even crossed her mind.
"It's not like we kill the snakes or anything absurd like that. We're being careful because things would get real troublesome if something important happened around here."
The old man spoke as if spitting the words out, while Keyong smiled cheerfully and prepared tea. When steamed buns appeared from the cupboard, Zhao Yu's eyes lit up.
"I mean, for decades now, nobody's given a damn about the shrine. So what if they say the snake god's messenger has shown up at this point?"
"Ahahaha. Curse-weavers are the worst, huh."
Whether out of personal grudge or not, Keyong agreed in a bright voice.
Maomao couldn't help but find it a little strange. Even considering the former village chief's dying wish, were there really villagers who would object that strongly to killing a snake? Perhaps it was because the village had originally worshipped the serpent deity.
"So this curse-weaver — is he really that persuasive?"
When she asked casually, the old man made a look like he was scoffing through his nose.
"Ha ha, well, the thing is, those devout ones all seem like they've been bewitched or something."
"Bewitched?"
Foxes, sure — but being bewitched by a snake was another matter.
(I mean, being bewitched by foxes is more than enough...)
As Maomao tilted her head, Keiyou opened the window of the hut. The lake and the shrine were visible outside.
The old man gazed outside and stroked his scraggly beard.
"Now, I haven't seen it myself, mind you. But according to the story, that curse-weaver..."
It was said that he had floated upon the surface of the lake, dancing across the water toward the shrine.
"He claimed to be an emissary of the lake's master."
That was what he had said.