"Put them out together."
"I know."
It seemed the conversation room had been secured right away. The room could fit about ten people, so with just the three of them, it felt quite spacious. They sat with their heads close together over a long table as Maomao set out the baked goods with a "here you go."
She examined the three cloth bundles. The number of baked goods was seven, seven, and six—one bundle had one fewer than the rest. Yao was the one who'd brought the shorter set. She averted her gaze with an awkward expression.
"I-I just nibbled on one a little!"
"I see."
Maomao looked at the scrap of paper with half the characters smudged from where it had been torn, and spoke. There were exactly seven paper scraps. Just like Maomao's own, each one had two or three characters written on it.
Yan Yan, on the other hand, had all her baked goods accounted for, yet there were no paper scraps at all.
"Haven't you taken yours out yet?"
"No. There were none inside mine at all."
Yan Yan showed the hole in the cylindrical, oddly shaped baked good. Nothing was stuffed inside. If her words were to be trusted, then the meaning would have to come from the characters written on the fourteen sheets—seven plus seven.
(If I rearrange them, will they make sense?)
Yao appeared to be thinking the same thing as Maomao, mixing and rearranging the papers. To keep them from getting mixed up, Maomao had folded her scraps to mark them.
They rearranged the characters, but Yao, Maomao, and Yan Yan all tilted their heads in confusion.
"Yan Yan, can you read them?"
"I'm sorry. I only ever nibbled on them, so I can still manage spoken language, though."
As she'd suspected, Yan Yan had actually watched their father writing the letters, which meant she had at least some literacy. Yao, apparently, couldn't read at all.
Yao looked at Maomao with an aggrieved expression.
"What about you?"
"I'm about the same. I can make sense of them if the words are arranged in the right order."
She was probably no better off than Yan Yan. Still, when she tried rearranging the strings of characters, the meaning seemed just within reach yet remained elusive. She felt that if she kept at it methodically, she'd eventually figure it out, but it would take an absurd amount of time. Unfortunately, one of the scraps had a tooth mark and a splotch of drool that rendered one character completely illegible. Perhaps Yao was aware of that, which was why she'd been so subdued.
"Isn't there anything else that might serve as a clue?"
Maomao looked at the baked goods. They were all the same shape. Well, not exactly identical, but they didn't differ enough to tell apart by appearance alone.
"What about the taste?"
Maomao sniffed the pastries. They all smelled the same, and even placing a crumb on her tongue yielded the same result. Besides, there was no way of knowing which paper slip had been in which pastry.
"So there really isn't any particular meaning to this?"
En'en tilted her head.
"Come to think of it, there was a temple somewhere that used to put
lot
lots inside pastries to tell fortunes."
If these were supposed to be fortune lots, then the characters written here should carry meanings of good or bad luck. But as far as Maomao could tell, that wasn't the case at all.
"If these are supposed to be lots, then why leave one person's portion completely empty? That's what bugs me."
The other two nodded in agreement with Maomao's observation.
When the pastries had been handed out, there had been no visible indication of which was meant for whom.
"Huh!?"
Maomao looked at the cloth the pastries had been wrapped in. Hers and Yao's cloths were plain, while En'en's was the only one with a pattern.
Maomao examined the patterned cloth. The fabric appeared to have been dyed after weaving, with angular shapes scattered all over it.
"Could this be..."
Maomao spread the cloth across the table. Then she carefully compared the pattern to the paper slips, placing each one over the angular shapes in the design. As she tilted her head and continued layering them, every single paper slip fit perfectly into place.
"So in other words..."
The characters were arranged in two horizontal rows. Several words emerged. It formed a sentence.
"Um, how do you read this?"
"'White,' and then 'question mark.'"
"And 'know,' perhaps? The last one is... 'true identity,' maybe?"
One section where the character had faded was illegible. But by cross-referencing with the other words, the meaning came together.
"'Girl,' perhaps?"
"It seems so."
Putting it all together:
"Would you like to know the true identity of the white girl?"
A chill ran through her entire body.
(Give me a break.)
Wasn't this already done and over with? Yet now, dragging it back up again would only cause problems. Annoying—far too annoying.
"The white girl?"
It was Yao who tilted her head. Unlike Maomao, she apparently didn't know about the White Lady that had set the town buzzing. En'en silently studied the string of text.
Maomao decided she should report this matter to Jinshi right away. Just as she stood up, her wrist was seized.
"Where do you think you're going?"
It was En'en who had grabbed her.
"Even if you ask me where—wouldn't this count as a matter to be reported?"
Maomao answered honestly. She was cautious by nature. She wanted no part of shouldering troublesome secrets all on her own.
Her conduct could be considered exemplary.
"I don't think reporting it would be wrong," Yao said.
Yao, surprisingly, had sided with Maomao. Maomao thought that if Yao spoke, En'en would fall silent—but.
"What sort of person would suddenly drop a puzzle like this on a mere medical apprentice?"
En'en looked at Maomao. Her tone—as though Maomao knew Airin personally.
(No, I don't know her that well.)
But she could tell this was someone quite formidable. The sort of person who would infiltrate the rear palace single-handedly to escape the country. Even if they reported this, the person likely knew every trick for getting away.
Or perhaps—
"Could this also be some kind of test?"
"A test..."
Come to think of it, she was right. The screening to become a medical apprentice was even stricter than for other court ladies. Even after passing the examination, one could be dismissed the instant they were deemed useless.
It wasn't an outlandish idea.
(No, but still—)
Still, this felt beyond the pale for a medical assistant's duties. First of all, solving this puzzle required at least some grasp of the Western language. And more than anything, there was no guarantee that these three would share their information about the baked goods honestly.
It was as though someone were examining various overlapping facets, searching for a candidate with strong adaptive skills.
As though...
As though
a spy.
That was what it felt like.
If Jinshi had a hand in this, it wouldn't be entirely impossible.
In that case, rather than reporting every little thing, it might be acceptable to listen to Airin on a case-by-case basis.
It might be— but—
"I have a report."
"You were listening in! What if this had been a test?!"
Yao went after Maomao.
If it had been a test, she would have failed for sure. Maomao had already earned her qualification as a medical assistant. Surely they wouldn't cut her workload any further than this.
"Rest easy. The two of you, please contact the consort."
These two were more than enough to pass the additional test items. If they passed the supplementary exam, there was no telling what she'd be made to do next.
Could I even handle that?
All Maomao wanted was to do odd jobs at the medical office—laundry, tea preparation, whatever came up—while having her father and the other physicians teach her about drug compounding, and occasionally testing new medicines on the sturdy-looking guards who dropped by now and then. Small comforts like that were all she needed.
But the two of them looked terrifying.
They grabbed Maomao firmly and glared at her. Mostly Yao.
"This was something we could only figure out together, the three of us. If you report it on your own, we'll be treated as accomplices too."
"Fair enough."
What they were trying to say was:
"You're an accomplice too."
Yao and En'en spoke in unison.
Maomao raised both hands slightly and gave a wry smile.