The sky was leaden grey, snow drifting down in sparse flurries.
"I had a feeling it would get cold—and sure enough, here comes the snow."
Yao blew on her fingertips, reddened from the laundry.
If Yanyan saw this, she'd be applying ointment right away, carefully and thoroughly.
"It was clear last night, though."
Maomao recalled how beautiful the starry sky had been. Winter days were coldest when clear. Her old man had taught her that without clouds to hold it in, the heat absorbed during the day simply escaped into the sky.
"This is going to make the garden party miserable."
"Yes."
Chatting as though it were someone else's problem, she carried the laundry-filled bucket back to the medical office.
"Huh? There sure are a lot of people."
Military officials, civil officials—they were all about, despite civil officials rarely setting foot in a place like this under normal circumstances.
When she realized they were all heading for the privies, Maomao clapped her hands once in understanding.
"They're the people attending the garden party. You have to take care of your business before it starts."
"But isn't it far from here?"
"The closest one is reserved for the dignitaries. After that, I suppose it would be the maids."
Maomao thought back to the year before last.
"What about His Majesty, then?"
"In His Majesty's case, a new one should have been built."
The ruler of a nation would never use a privy where just anyone might have been. That was what it meant to stand at the pinnacle of a kingdom.
Suddenly, Yao stopped in her tracks.
"What's wrong?"
"Maomao, let's not take this road."
She grabbed Maomao's hand.
"Won't that be a detour?"
"There's someone I don't want to run into."
A straightforward explanation.
Among the civil and military officials heading to the restroom, there was apparently someone she found disagreeable.
Maomao could well understand the desire to avoid an awkward encounter.
(Who could it be, though?)
If Yao had any acquaintances among the officials, it was probably her uncle, who currently served as her guardian. Or perhaps it was one of those people Yanyan had once labeled as having a "taste for little girls" — the very ones she had narrowly escaped being matched with.
It wasn't as though Maomao had any personal stake in the matter, so she quietly followed along.
The moment they returned to the medical office, Yao was cornered by Yanyan.
"Miss!"
"...Yanyan, it's a little cold."
Yanyan brought out a shawl and warm ginger tea for Yao, whose cheeks and ears had flushed red. She gave Maomao some ginger tea as well.
Maomao blew on the cup and took a sip, and a gentle warmth gradually spread through her. It seemed to contain grated citrus peel, and the aroma was lovely.
The room itself was kept warm in preparation for any injured or sick patients who might arrive, making her drowsy. During winter, military officers who came to slack off would often be grabbed by the scruff of the neck by their superiors and sent back to training.
Today, the loudmouthed medical officers were all out, and only the younger ones who were relatively soft on Maomao and the others remained. Without their superiors around, they all seemed a bit spineless.
"Ah, I'm all warm now. Shall we get back to work?"
"Miss, please stay here today. Maomao and I will handle the work outside."
"I can't very well do that. ...Judging by your expression, it seems Uncle came here, didn't he?"
"Miss..."
Just as Maomao had predicted, it was indeed her uncle.
"So, how did it go? You didn't cause trouble for anyone, did you?"
"N-No. It's just that I had intended to make them wait, but—"
Yanyan glanced behind her.
The young medical officer who had been sitting at his desk rose to his feet with a stern expression.
"I explained to him that this is a place for the injured and sick, not a rest area. Then when I told him he wouldn't make it back in time for the garden party, he left."
"Oh, I see. Thank you."
Yao gave a slight bow.
Yanyan glared at the young medical officer with barely suppressed jealousy.
(There's no need to worry. He's not after Yao — he's after Yanyan.)
For Yanyan, who lived to serve the young lady, any man lingering nearby was no better than a caterpillar.
Maomao transferred the washed cloth into a pot and set about preparing to boil it. She would have liked to laze around a while longer, but finishing the job came first.
"Maomao."
She turned at Yanyan's call.
"Please use this for firewood."
What she was handed was a cloth-covered board. It was two pages bound together, and opening it revealed a portrait of a man tucked between them.
"Incorrigible."
Exasperated, Yao took a coal from the brazier to light the stove.
Now she understood what the uncle had come for. It was a portrait of a matchmaking candidate, though there was no telling how much it had been beautified. It looked more like a theater print.
The young medical officer kept stealing glances at Maomao and Yao, silently begging them to leave the room. Even if they were alone together, Maomao didn't think he'd get anywhere with Yanyan. The other young doctors had long since given up on Yanyan, and then on Yao, who was guarded by Yanyan — yet this one refused to give in. For the record, Maomao noted that she herself had been out of the running from the start.
(Or had he actually made progress when they were alone together?)
A fair question, but this officer was quite the operator. The moment Maomao and Yao made to leave the room, he latched onto Yanyan.
"Yanyan, shall we continue where we left off? You should talk to Yao later, too."
"..."
If it could capture Yao's interest, Yanyan was willing to put up with a fair amount.
(She probably only thinks of me as a conversation-starter, though.)
As she headed outside toward the stove, Maomao thought to herself that Yanyan was quite the handful.
Around one o'clock, in the early afternoon, the boiling and cloth-drying were finished. They would have lunch upon returning to the medical office.
It seemed the garden party had also entered a break, as people kept crowding toward the restrooms.
"Yao, you don't need to use the restroom?"
"M-me, I'm fine, but what about you, Maomao?"
"I already went a little while ago."
Yao wore a betrayed expression. The crowd was only going to grow, so Maomao had slipped away to take care of it while Yao was busy hanging the laundry.
"You're really not going, Yao?"
"I'm not going!"
The restrooms were properly divided by gender, but venturing toward them with so many civil and military officials around would take courage. Besides, there were the occasional desperate souls who couldn't hold it and barged into the women's side. The court ladies who normally used them looked thoroughly uncomfortable.
"I hear you've been to a garden party before, Maomao."
"Did Yanyan tell you that?"
"Mm."
Sure enough, she knows all the gossip, Maomao thought.
"What was it like?"
"Cold. And it wasn't exactly the stuff of dreams, to be honest."
It was a splendid occasion, but for Maomao, who attended as a lady-in-waiting, it was a battle against the cold. Princess Lingli was still just an infant at the time, and Maomao had been desperate to make sure she didn't catch a cold.
Then there was the meal. At the tasting, everyone wore blank expressions, unable to actually savor the food. They ended up carrying spoons to cold soup.
(Poison would rarely be slipped in at such an occasion.)
After all, introducing something like poison carried enormous drawbacks.
The person doing it needed to be prepared for the consequences as well.
But there were those willing to pay that price.
That was how Maomao had once found herself putting poisoned broth to her lips.
(I want to eat it.)
"Maomao, your face is slipping, you know."
Yao peered intently at Maomao.
"Oh, sorry."
The taste of the soup came back to her once more. If it was poison, a bitter or astringent flavor would be expected, but there are plenty of things in this world that are poisonous yet delicious — puffer fish, wild mushrooms, and the like.
As she was about to pass by the latrine, she heard a retching sound — "blegh."
When she looked, several military officers were gathered around the well, swishing water in their mouths and spitting it out.
"I wonder what happened?"
The officers were officers, but the quality of their clothing was noticeably finer than usual. They must be attendees of the garden party. Some of the faces looked familiar.
"Would you like me to go ask?"
"Oh, well, just a little."
Maomao approached the well.
Among the broad-shouldered officers, there was one man who reminded her of a large dog.
"It's been a while."
"Hey, miss."
It was Li Bai.
He was a man who had also attended the garden party two years ago. It wouldn't be strange for him to be participating this year as well.
"What happened? You all seemed to be spitting something out."
"Yeah. Sorry for making you worry. Nothing weird going on. The food was just bad. Right?"
Li Bai called out to the officers around him.
"That's right, it was terrible. I had such high expectations since it was supposed to be imperial cuisine, but the cafeteria cook's food is way more edible than that."
"It being cold is part of it, but that soup was something else. No matter how you look at it, the proportions had to be wrong. I wonder if the same thing was served to His Majesty?"
"His Majesty's portion is separate. There's no way they'd serve us the same thing."
"Oh, right."
The officers laughed.
"The food was bad?"
Maomao knew what kind of dishes would be served. Even if some were served cold and others not, everything should have been delicious.
"What kind of dishes came out? You mentioned a soup."
If strange food had been served to the emperor or high-ranking officials, the cook could lose his head later. Or if something had been mixed in, that would be a problem in its own right.
"It was terribly salty. They were trying to be creative and made something southern, maybe. There were patterned boiled eggs in it as ingredients, and it looked appetizing on the surface."
But the moment he put the ingredients in his mouth, it was awfully salty. The soup in particular was so bad he nearly spat it out.
"I forced myself to swallow it, and then I was worried the rest of the dishes would taste strange too."
"Exactly. But everyone else around us was fine with it. My superior was even smacking his lips going 'delicious, delicious.' His taste buds might be completely shot."
The officers here had worried that something was wrong with their own palates. But since others shared similar impressions, they became convinced the food really was off.
"So how long has it been since everyone had the soup?"
"Hmm, about half an hour, maybe? I held back from spitting it out, and the moment we got a break I ran here."
Come to think of it, they were all slightly sweaty, Li Bai included.
"Half an hour. You seem to be in fine health, though."
"What's with that tone? Don't tell me you're going to say it was poisoned. See, I'm perfectly spry."
"Some types of poison don't start working until much later."
Yao slipped over quietly. Having experienced it herself, her voice carried genuine emotion.
"Oi, don't scare me like that."
Li Bai's face twisted.
"If anything happens, come to the medical office. I'll make sure we're prepared to help you throw up everything down to your last organ."
"You shouldn't be throwing up your organs."
While Li Bai turned pale, Maomao and Yao headed back to the medical office.
"Maomao, what do you think? About just now?"
"If I had to guess normally, maybe a chunk of salt had solidified. I don't think it would typically survive dissolving in soup, though."
Could they have put in a large chunk of rock salt? Or perhaps salt was added afterward?
Either way, if anyone felt unwell, they would just have to come back.
] "Indeed."
Yao also tilted his head, but decided to accept Maomao's hypothesis for the time being.