Rifa
The consort's condition was worse than I had expected.
I remade the mixed-grain porridge into a thin broth, but
there was no sign of her accepting it from the spoon.
I pried her mouth open, poured it in, and slowly coaxed her to swallow.
She refused to eat. That was the biggest problem.
I fed her with dogged persistence, almost annoyingly so.
When I ventilated the room, the suffocating incense thinned, giving way to the smell particular to a sick person.
She must have been burning incense to conceal her body odor. It didn't seem like she had bathed in days. My frustration with those useless maids only grew.
The maid who had been
disciplined was reportedly sentenced to confinement. The powder was something she'd been keeping as a private stash. How pitiful — the eunuch who failed to confiscate it was whipped instead. Even one's punishment was determined by birth.
The eunuch in
charge,
Maomao
had glared at with the label "incompetent," filled with
contempt,
but it didn't seem to have had much effect.
I had a hot-water tub and cloths prepared, and together with the summoned maids, wiped down her body. The maids showed reluctance, but
when
Maomao fixed them with her glare, they meekly complied.
Her skin was dry and repelled water, her lips cracked and unsightly.
In place of
rouge, I applied honey to her lips and simply tied up her hair.
After that, I made her drink tea at every opportunity. Sometimes, instead of tea,
gruel
I thinned it and gave it to her.
The number of bathroom visits increased.
I had expected hostility toward the suspicious newcomer, but the doll-like Rifa was mostly docile and accepted care without resistance. Her vacant eyes gave no indication of whether she recognized anyone.
Once the amount of thick gruel she consumed per sitting went from half a bowl to a full one, I gradually increased the quantity of rice grains in it.
chin
without having to hold it, she
swallowed
on her own, so I added soup infused with the richness of meat and grated fruit.
By the time she could handle her bathroom visits without assistance, Rifa's lips suddenly moved.
"...why... won't you..."
I stood close to Rifa to catch her escaping words.
"Why won't you just let me die?"
It was a small, fading voice.
Maomao furrowed her brow.
"Then you should eat. Eating porridge means you don't want to die, right?"
So saying, she pressed warmed tea to Rifa's lips.
After a soft gulp of the throat,
"I see..."
A raspy laugh escaped.
The maids' reactions to Maomao fell into two camps.
Those who feared her, and those who, despite their fear, pushed back.
(Did I go too far?)
She couldn't help but think it was a bad habit—whenever her emotions boiled past a certain point, her reactions became extreme.
She was unsociable, but
As a mild-mannered person through and through, Maomao was quietly stung whenever people regarded her from afar with the kind of stares one might give a demon ormonster.
In this case, since it was said to be necessary for nursing Rifa, she resigned herself to it.
Whether it was the Emperor,
Gyokuyou,
or some order from the consort or whatever, she didn't know, but the dazzling
Jinshi
kept showing up. With the attitude of using anything and everything at his disposal, he had
an emergency construction
done to build a bath in the Crystal Palace. In addition to the bath that was already there,
a steam bath
was added.
She tried to subtly convey to him, in her own way, that he should stop coming when he had no business, but Jinshi kept turning up to laugh at Maomao, who was treated like some kind of monster.
He was far too idle for a eunuch.
He should take a lesson from
Gaoshun,
who always brought her boxes of sweets.
Someone that diligent would make a good husband, even if he was a eunuch.
Removing fiber, drawing out moisture, inducing sweat, and promoting excretion.
After two months spent thinking of nothing but expelling poison from the body, Rifa was able to go out for walks on her own.
Originally, the wasting caused by her melancholic illness had been severe. As long as no new poison was introduced, there was no problem.
It would still take time to regain her former voluptuous figure, but color had returned to her cheeks, and she would no longer drift on the brink of death.
The night before returning to the Emerald Palace, she went to pay her respects at Rifa's quarters.
She had expected that once Rifa regained her clarity of mind, she would be cursed at as a lowly commoner, but that didn't happen.
Rifa had pride but was not arrogant. Maomao had been imagining an unpleasant young lady based on all the talk surrounding the Crown Prince's consort, but
in reality, she seemed to possess a personality befitting a consort.
"Then, I shall take my leave at dawn."
After relaying several points of caution regarding her dietary regimen going forward and turning to leave the room,
"Tell me—will I never be able to bear children?"
Her voice was utterly devoid of inflection.
"I cannot say. Perhaps it would be worth trying."
"Even though His Majesty's favor—"
"I have destroyed—"
"it?"
It wasn't hard to understand what she meant.
Originally, she had conceived the Crown Prince because she had been filling in for the favored consort, Gyokuyou—
serving as a
bed companion.
The fact that the princess and the Crown Prince had been born three months apart
spoke
plainly of that.
"It was His Majesty who ordered me to come here. If I am to return, won't His Majesty come to Lady Rifa as well?"
Whether that was for political or emotional reasons, it didn't matter.
The task was the same either way.
"Can a woman who ignored Gyokuyou's words and let her own child be killed possibly defeat her?"
"I don't think it's a matter of winning or losing. Besides, one can learn from one's mistakes."
Maomao picked up a single-flower vase displayed on the wall. It held a
bellflower
with star-shaped blossoms.
"There are hundreds and thousands of flowers in the world. I don't think anyone should presume to declare which is more beautiful—the peony or the iris."
"I don't have Koki's emerald eyes or pale hair, and that's fine by me."
"As long as there are others, I see no issue."
With that, Maomao shifted her gaze downward from Rifa's face.
They say that's usually where one loses weight, but...
two cantaloupes
were very much there.
"Their size goes without saying, but the firmness and shape are true treasures."
Coming from Maomao, whose discerning eye had been honed at a pleasure house, this was no idle praise. That she found herself captivated each time she bathed her was something she kept to herself.
As someone who served Gyokuyou, she couldn't exactly play favorites, but she decided to leave behind one final parting gift.
"Would you mind lending me your ear for a moment?"
In a whisper too soft for anyone else to hear, Maomao told Rifa a little secret.
The pleasure quarters'
courtesans had a saying: "This is one secret you'll never regret learning."
What Rifa—whose face had gone as red as an apple—had been told became a topic of much speculation among the ladies-in-waiting for some time after.
After that,
at the Jade Palace,
the Emperor's visits dropped off dramatically for a time.
"Ah, to finally be free of sleep deprivation."
Gyokuyou remarked with a touch of irony, and the fact that Maomao's eyes darted away guiltily was yet another story entirely.