"I-I'm so nervous,"
the moment she got into the carriage for the return trip,
Yao
blurted out. Realizing her voice had escaped, she immediately put on a composed expression as if nothing had happened, but it was too late. If
En'en
were here, she would have been making a face like "That naive young lady is so adorable." Instead, Maomao filed it away for careful observation.
The first house call was over, but Maomao could only describe it as inconclusive. They hadn't been able to check on the patient's condition with her father on the spot, so they were supposed to discuss it after leaving the detached palace.
(Too roundabout.)
Given that the patient had gone through the trouble of traveling by ship from such a faraway place, she'd expected them to have higher hopes for their medical care, but apparently not.
"So, how did it go?"
Her father asked how it went, but Maomao somehow felt that this gentle, kind, and extraordinarily gullible man already knew the answer. Nevertheless, she reported.
"Is the shrine maiden truly... ill?"
That was Maomao's honest impression.
"What are you saying? She came all the way from
Saō
, didn't she?"
Yao interjected.
"Yes, she went to the trouble of taking a ship on a long journey. I do believe she's ill, but I didn't think it was the kind of condition that would warrant seeking treatment from a foreign physician."
For the sake of appearances in front of Yao, she made an effort to keep her tone polite even with her father.
"Then what kind of illness is it?"
In response to her father's question, Maomao looked at the
record sheet
Yao had written and answered.
"Her symptoms include fatigue, insomnia, and diminished physical strength, with obesity also listed. And the thing she was most concerned about was—"
The bone fracture wasn't healing. The location was the little finger of the left hand, so it hardly affected daily life, but it must still have been inconvenient.
"I believe it's a condition caused by the depletion of feminine essence. It's not particularly uncommon—it afflicts people as they age."
It was primarily a condition brought on by the cessation of menstruation. As the feminine essence diminished, both mind and body became unstable. One of the symptoms was the weakening of bones.
Given her age in her forties, menopause wasn't entirely out of the question—it was perhaps a bit early, but not impossible. And if she had truly never been menstruating in the first place, she would have been even more susceptible to the illness.
"Is that so. Then, assuming Maomao's assessment is correct, let me ask a question. Medical practices differ from country to country. In Sara, perhaps they truly believed the priestess's condition couldn't be cured and so turned to Li for help. Is there any evidence to support that?"
"Yes."
Maomao produced a piece of paper on which she had written down what the priestess had been eating.
"The medications did not contain anything to boost feminine essence. However, based on her usual diet, she was consuming items that could serve as substitutes for medicine in such abundance that further supplementation would have been unnecessary."
"Wait—could it be... that time, when she bought out the entire shop..."
Yao seemed to have realized it. A few days prior, the priestess's attendant had purchased massive quantities of ingredients. Among them were many items known to be remedies for women's ailments.
The priestess had known how to address her own condition. And yet, she had gone all the way to Li—could politics have played a major role in that decision?
"So your conclusions are the same, both of you—is that correct?"
The old man asked Yao as well.
"I don't have as much medical knowledge as Maomao, but I did see the priestess's attendant purchasing large amounts of medicine the other day, so I have no objections."
She looked slightly frustrated, no doubt because she'd had to publicly admit her shortcomings. But her willingness to acknowledge them honestly was what made her endearing.
(So she already knows it's medicine.)
Then Maomao wondered—did the priestess also eat the snow clam with the awareness that it was medicinal? She'd have to ask her about that eventually.
The old man wore a troubled expression. He generally wore a troubled expression, so to describe this particular look, it was perhaps just slightly more troubled than his usual troubled expression.
"There's one thing I need to say."
"Yes."
"Yes."
Maomao and Yao both responded.
"We do work that concerns people's lives."
That went without saying.
"The medical treatment we provide to the priestess must never become something that puts her life at risk."
"Yes, that's true, but?"
Yao asked with a puzzled look on her face.
"Under no circumstances should we share what we discussed earlier with the priestess's side. All we need to do is provide appropriate treatment for her condition."
Even if the therapy in question was already being administered by the other party.
*(She still doesn't look convinced.)*
That was to be expected. For Yao, the question was why she had to recommend the very same treatment the other party was already using. Doing so would essentially be declaring herself incompetent.
*(Playing the fool is important too, you know.)*
The old man had just said, "It must never be something that puts lives at risk."
The "lives" he was referring to were Maomao's and Yao's.
With the stench of politics hanging over everything, carelessly speaking the truth could cost them their lives. It was still a concept the sheltered young lady couldn't fully grasp.
*(If En'en were here, she could have smoothed things over with some clever words.)*
But she was away on assignment, so there was nothing to be done.
"Yao, we'll be arriving soon."
Maomao peeked out of the carriage to change the subject. The return trip from the imperial court to the medical bureau was longer than the journey from the separate palace to the court, making it quite the chore.
"When we get back to the medical bureau, shall we look for medicines? There may be drugs that exist only in this country, and if they could improve her condition even a little, wouldn't that be worth it?"
"...Fine."
She was smart enough at heart to understand that making a fuss here would accomplish nothing.
She settled down for the time being.
When they arrived at the medical bureau, the old man promptly gathered his materials and went to file his report.
With his permission, Maomao and Yao entered the dispensary and began searching for medicines to prescribe. Some would be ineffective depending on the priestess's constitution, and some she was likely already using, but they laid them out all the same.
Maomao started pulling out the ones she recognized one after another, while Yao checked a reference book and produced them one by one. Though they had received permission, their takeover of the dispensary drew the curiosity of a medical officer who came poking his head in.
"What's all this, spreading everything out like this? What kind of medicines are these... whoa!"
The disgusted voice came from none other than an elderly physician who was an old acquaintance of the old man. He was one of the doctors who had previously accompanied them to investigate
Risu
the former consort's infidelity.
"Is something wrong? Were there some unusual combinations?"
Maomao made a puzzled face.
"No, no, I just had a momentary shudder thinking I'd be sent *there* again."
"There?"
"*There*."
The old court physician gestured toward the northern side of the palace grounds.
"The Rear Palace."
"Why? I did gather medicines for women's ailments, but the Rear Palace is a separate matter."
Maomao looked at the lined-up medicines with a bewildered expression.
"Ah, women's ailments. That, I understand. Since it's mostly men you deal with in the palace, you rarely write prescriptions for that, so I was caught off guard."
Did he have some unpleasant memories, perhaps? Come to think of it, she recalled that in the past, physicians other than eunuchs had been permitted access to the Rear Palace.
"Come to think of it, I heard you once served as a Rear Palace physician. Did something happen back then?"
"Nothing major. Just a few unpleasant memories, that's all. This one, this one, and then..."
He picked through the medicines Maomao and the others had set out.
"Mix in a few more varieties, and you get the special Fake Eunuch Medicine."
"Fake Eunuch Medicine?"
Maomao and Yao spoke in unison.
"It's nothing so grand. When a man who isn't a eunuch needs to enter the Rear Palace, it'd be trouble if problems arose. So it's a medicine to suppress a man's urges — not enough to call him a eunuch, but enough to do the job."
"Oh, I see."
Maomao nodded in understanding. She had wondered whether Gaoshun had run into any trouble when he used to come and go from the Rear Palace, aside from Jinshi — but he must have been made to take something like this.
"It sounds awful to taste, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, it tastes truly terrible."
The one who knew from experience spoke up.
"And once you get used to it, you start getting strange side effects."
"So there *are* side effects after all."
"There are. That's why I don't much care for them."
Now I understood why she'd made such an unpleasant sound. I wanted to ask what kind of side effects there were, but she went off to handle some work and left the pharmacy.
"En'en is really good at this sort of thing, though."
"She does seem to be."
"Given what we discussed about side effects earlier, shall we try confirming things through a written request, just to be safe?"
"Yes, En'en would be delighted."
Maybe she was starting to show withdrawal symptoms from her lack of young ladies.
But thanks to that, it was nice that I had gotten much better at talking with Yao. Maomao thought to herself as she considered what combination of medicines to use.