Maomao didn't think her words were absolute truth. But she had believed that speaking to Jinshi and the others would have some kind of effect. It had always been that way before, so perhaps she had gotten a little too full of herself.
In the attempted poisoning case involving the shrine maiden, the suspect remained—
Airin.
—and so the case continued on as before.
It was said that when Airin had been confronted, she confessed. As for her reasons: she hadn't come to this country of her own free will, but had been forced into it. She harbored resentment toward the shrine maiden, who was one of the key factors. Originally, Airin had been raised as a candidate destined to become the shrine maiden herself. However, that opportunity had been stolen from her by the person who refused to give up the seat.
If she was confessing while airing her grievances about both the shrine maiden and the country of Li, then the only way to see it was that she had given up entirely.
(Adding grievances about the Emperor as well would make for the worst possible impression.)
The narrative painted her as a shallow foreign woman who had attacked the shrine maiden out of spite.
That was the version that suited everyone best.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
Maomao couldn't help but spit those words out at Rahan, who had come to deliver the report. Since this wasn't something that could be handled over a simple errand, he had called Maomao out to speak with her directly, having brought her there under the pretense of a medicine delivery.
"Don't look at me — I'm in just as much of a bind."
He said this while downing the stomach medicine that was supposed to be the errand item. Maomao found herself thinking, even now, whether even a guy like him could get stomachaches.
"What about that court lady—
Yao,
or whatever her name is?"
"She's probably fine by now, but there may be aftereffects."
Thanks to the old man and
En'en
nursing her back to health, she had improved considerably. However, she still hadn't made a full recovery and was distraught over having "eaten poison without even realizing it." Maomao had been about to tell her that poisonous mushrooms were surprisingly tasty, so it was only natural she wouldn't have noticed — but the old man had gently stopped her. Apparently, it wouldn't have been comforting and might have backfired.
Maomao went to check on the shrine maiden's condition once a day, but honestly, she wasn't sure whether she was hiding her own expressions well enough.
If the shrine maiden was feigning her illness, then there was no need for Maomao to check on her condition at all — and more importantly, she would end up complicit in framing Airin for the crime.
It frustrated Maomao that even though she had the opportunity to meet with the shrine maiden, she couldn't bring herself to confront her about it.
Above all, what Maomao had said was merely speculation — she had no clear evidence. If this was all orchestrated to frame Airin, with someone deliberately arranging the trip abroad, what sort of leverage could they possibly have held?
It was far too—
The harm
was far too great.
"What leverage could that woman possibly have held over the shrine maiden..."
"Indeed. I had always assumed they were on good terms."
Rahan propped his elbow on the table and sipped his water. When Maomao remembered something and told him, "You'll upset your stomach if you eat on an empty one," he pulled a dissatisfied face and took out pastries from the cabinet. They were steamed buns filled with sweet potato paste. When Maomao asked, "Are there no meat-filled ones?" he told her, "There aren't." How boring.
Left with no choice, she helped herself to a sweet potato bun and continued the conversation.
"If they were truly on good terms, things wouldn't have ended up like this."
"At the very least, I believe Lady Airin held the shrine maiden in high regard. Otherwise, she wouldn't have made that statement — not if she was truly innocent."
"...That's a fair point."
"She was clearly told they would listen to any defense she had, yet she threw herself into self-destruction... Quite the actress, that one."
Rahan seemed to believe Airin was innocent.
He said she was confessing while slandering the shrine maiden, but the flip side was that she was taking the blame upon herself.
Maomao still didn't fully understand what kind of relationship the two of them had.
"How much did you ask Airin about her relationship with the shrine maiden?"
"Just casual conversation, really. Apparently, as a candidate for the next shrine maiden, Lady Airin spent about five years at the shrine maiden's side learning proper deportment. Even now, apprentices begin once a month and live in the same palace until they lose their资格 as shrine maidens."
She had heard that Airin was a shrine maiden apprentice, but she hadn't expected them to have been together for that long.
"Hmm... Wait, hold on."
She couldn't tell exactly how old a foreigner was, but she was probably in her mid-twenties. Working backward...
"That lines up perfectly with the period of the shrine maiden's pregnancy suspicion!"
"That's right. Did I not mention it? That's precisely why I asked you to look into it specifically."
"Wait — if they lived together for five years, she would've known whether the shrine maiden was pregnant or not!"
"...Is that so? A normal person wouldn't be able to tell someone's body shape through their clothing, would they?"
"Maybe you couldn't pull it off, but concealing a pregnancy is no easy feat — especially not when you're living alongside someone as an apprentice."
Rahan chewed his bun and washed it down with tea.
"Now that you mention it, perhaps you're right."
He might seem steady at first glance, but at the end of the day, he was still one of the Luo clan. A little loose upstairs.
"Besides, if he'd thought something was off back then, wouldn't it be stranger to suddenly decide to dig into it now?"
"Fair point."
Perhaps Rahan was weak when it came to beautiful women—his mental circuits seemed to be running a little slow. He pushed his glasses up with a click and furrowed his brow in thought.
"So then, how about this?"
Rahan crossed his arms and shut his eyes.
"In truth, investigating whether she had children was nothing more than a smokescreen."
"So that's the angle."
"Behind that bluff, they were hiding something even bigger. And the current crisis is a direct result of that."
"When you put it that way, the pieces do fit together."
The problem was what exactly they were hiding.
Maomao and Rahan both groaned.
"If only the old man were here."
"Uncle might actually know something. Though even if he did, he probably wouldn't be willing to talk about it."
Come to think of it, he'd been wearing an expression like something was nagging at him. Did he know something Maomao hadn't picked up on?
"If the shrine maiden had examined Uncle directly, we might have learned something."
"Sorry I'm so useless."
Maomao shot back with a hint of spite. But she was thinking the same thing herself—even though they were men, being eunuchs, they should have been fair game to examine.
"..."
"What is it?"
"Eunuchs."
Maomao pressed her fingers to her forehead. There were still plenty of scattered pieces of the answer lying around. She tried to gather them up.
She pulled a small notebook from inside her robe. The notebook contained notes she had jotted down during the shrine maiden's examination. Tucked in among them was also a passage Yao had written for her during the banquet.
"This is?"
"Ingredients the shrine maiden eats regularly. They're remedies for women's ailments—in other words, things that raise feminine vitality. These are their effects."
It was also an ingredient in the medicine the old court physician used to drink long ago. When Maomao made a disgusted face, he had initially assumed it was because it tasted bad, but after reading its effects, he could only manage a wry smile.
"…Maomao, shouldn't you be the one taking this?"
"Yes, yes, next, next. Go on, tell me the characteristics of a eunuch."
"You really don't hold back when it comes to your brother. Fine, fine, I'll say it. Masculine energy recedes, hair thins out, and the voice gets higher, I suppose."
"Additionally, they tend to gain weight more easily with age, and after that, they age all at once. You can probably tell just by looking at the old man, but there are other characteristics too."
Rahan looked on with keen interest, wondering what they could be.
"If castration is performed before male development begins, the voice doesn't deepen and body hair doesn't grow. Furthermore, without the masculine energy that governs growth, the limbs end up abnormally long…"
"I've never really looked closely at the shrine maiden, but could it be—"
"Tall for a woman, long limbs, and she only started putting on weight in the past few years. There are also illnesses caused by a decrease in feminine energy, and in the case of eunuchs, there are diseases with similar symptoms."
As far as characteristics went, it fit.
"Hey, hold on a moment. Surely even you can tell the difference between a eunuch and a woman. You at least confirmed the upper body, didn't you?"
"Yes, there were definitely breasts."
Maomao pulled out the record she had made earlier with a look of distaste. The note from Yanyan listed the effects of various medicines. Among them was snow clam.
"Snow clam — beneficial for beautiful skin and complexion. High in nutritional value and good for fortifying the body. However, overconsumption causes enlargement of the chest."
This was the ingredient Yanyan had been feeding to Yao. No wonder Yao had developed so well.
Perhaps this was also the reason the old court physician had smiled wryly. Joking about one's chest swelling from overindulgence was no laughing matter.
"The first thing you'd check to tell men and women apart is the chest. It would've been better if you'd noticed from the position of the navel, though."
Since she was well-endowed, even if something seemed off, it would have been hard to notice. If even Maomao, who was intimately familiar with both male and female bodies, missed it, then it was inevitable that Yao and Yanyan had harbored no suspicions.
The reason even eunuchs couldn't get close was, paradoxically, because eunuchs had physical characteristics even more similar to the shrine maiden. The fear of being found out was precisely why.
It had been orchestrated from the very beginning.
"To investigate whether the shrine maiden had ever borne a child."
At that point, it hadn't occurred to them that the shrine maiden was male.
(I've been had.)
They had been completely deceived. The old man's subtle expression had likely been prompted by the physical characteristics of the shrine maiden as relayed by Maomao, which hinted at this very possibility.
"So this is the secret the shrine maiden wanted to keep hidden at all costs."
It would become an inescapable weakness.
"No, but wait. Even if that were true, would they really come all this way to silence a woman who'd already become another country's consort? Going through such an elaborate process."
"That's the thing."
The shrine maiden was not a woman. If that assumption held, wouldn't everything else be turned on its head as well?
Suppose the shrine maiden had pinned the crime on someone — or rather, if Airin tried to take the blame. In that case, there was no clear reason to shoulder it. The ones who would benefit from having someone take the blame were, in fact, the kingdom of Li.
"...What if a citizen of our country had killed the shrine maiden?"
"She is, after all, the face of the nation. If things went wrong, it could lead to war. Lady Airin's confession right now is undoubtedly a blessing."
"So if it's Airin, there's no problem?"
"Not entirely, but it wouldn't come to war. It's just that, toward Saou, our country would be forced to take"
"a lower"
"stance."
No war, and they could hold their heads high against the neighboring great power.
Her head was spinning, but she had to calm down and piece this together. Let her think about the shrine maiden's gender.
"What happens if the shrine maiden is exposed as a man in Saou?"
"What if the ruler of this country turned out to be a woman?"
It was a foolish question. The very premise was impossible, to say the least. Li had never once produced a female emperor. That's right — the "Empress" who was the late emperor's mother had been nothing more than an informal title; her official designation was Empress Dowager.
If she had ascended the throne under a false gender, the consequences would extend beyond punishing the individual — the prestige of the entire nation would be shaken.
"In Saou's case, governance rests on two pillars: the shrine maiden and the king. If those two were to merge into one, the ones who'd find that amusing certainly would. Even if a new shrine maiden were appointed, their prestige would hit rock bottom. Everything built during the era of the white-haired shrine maiden would completely crumble."
The current shrine maiden's tenure had been long. Thanks to that, women in Saou had gained the ability to voice strong opinions. But if that shrine maiden was exposed as a man, everything would crumble from the very foundation.
"Say the shrine maiden's enemies — the king, or someone connected to the king — caught wind of it. The shrine maiden was in a position where she would be exposed sooner or later. That is why she embarked on a journey abroad, which she was never supposed to take."
Maomao spoke as though seeking confirmation.
"The reason she came on this journey was so the king and the others wouldn't discover her true identity —"
To be somewhere beyond their reach, out of harm's way. To leave no evidence behind.
Maomao pressed her hand to her forehead. No — surely, could this really be possible? She gritted her teeth. But when she considered everything that had transpired so far, the pieces fit together perfectly.
"To commit suicide."
Maomao rushed out of the room as soon as the words left her lips.