Was something strange about to happen again?
It wasn't that she lay awake at night dreading the sky might fall, but perhaps the reason she felt that way was that she had grown far too accustomed to troublesome affairs.
Maomao tidied up the medical office while drifting in thought. The work for the three medical assistants was now finished. Once they got back to the dormitory, she would cook a warm dinner.
"Ah, today was nice and easy, so it'd be great if tomorrow turned out the same. If there's time after this, maybe we could grab a meal—"
Yanyan
The young doctor who was sprinkling powder on her spoke as the work drew to a close.
"The journal hasn't been filled in yet. Doctor Liu will be back soon, so it would be best to write it up."
Yanyan set the journal down in front of the doctor, took out a coat, and
Yao
draped it over her.
"My lady, make sure you bundle up properly—it's getting cold."
"...I know."
She already had a scarf snugly wrapped around her neck.
Maomao pulled on her padded jacket and stepped briskly in front of the young doctor. Incidentally, he was
Doctor Li,
but the surname "Li" was shared by two others, so it was rarely used as a proper noun. His given name was
Tenyu,
but Maomao and the others had never once called him by it. The reason was that Tenyu had been the first to say, "Feel free to call me by my name." Maomao, Yao, and Yanyan—all three of them, each owing to their respective personalities, would absolutely never do so.
"Well then, if you'll excuse me."
"Excuse me."
"My lady, what would you like for dinner?"
(Completely ignored.)
He must have really been pestering her today. Back in the medical office, Tenyu was waving, but she showed no sign of turning around.
(Pork. Pork, pork.)
Craving fatty pork because of the cold, she tried to send her thoughts to Yao. When she stepped out of the medical office, the icy wind sliced at her ears.
"How about chicken, then? Something with a nice crispy skin."
Yao was not receiving Maomao's telepathy. Still, chicken was not a bad idea.
"Then we'll need something refreshing for a side dish."
Maomao jumped into the conversation without missing a beat.
"Mmm, I could go for some vinegared vegetables too."
Yao replied, and Yanyan looked at Maomao.
"Then, Maomao. We're short on vegetables, so go buy some."
Yanyan's eyes said loud and clear, "Those who do not work shall not eat."
Resigned, Maomao shrugged and nodded, shivering.
She parted ways with Yao and the others and headed for the market.
Since the sun was already setting, more than half the stalls had closed up. The open-air vendors were gone, so she looked for a proper shop, even if the prices would be a bit steeper.
(No melons this time of year, I suppose. Carrots and daikon, then.)
She spotted a shop with plump, fine-looking daikon lined up and approached. One look at the prices told her that, delicious as they looked, they were expensive—probably twice what an open-air vendor would charge.
(Maybe they'll throw in a little extra.)
She tried negotiating with the shopkeeper, a middle-aged man, but upon seeing Maomao's face, he gave her a token discount at best. If she had brought Yao along, he might have knocked off more.
"Here's the payment."
"Hold on a sec."
The shopkeeper examined the coins Maomao had handed over, scrutinizing each one.
"They shouldn't be debased, though..."
If coins were chipped or clipped, their value dropped. Even after getting a small discount, having the seller cry foul would be the last thing she needed.
"Ah, sorry about that. There've been some bad sorts around lately. Lots of coins with counterfeit metal mixed in."
"Nobody goes to the trouble of adulterating copper coins."
Tampering with gold or silver was one thing, but faking copper coinage was far more trouble than it was worth.
"Oh, right, sorry, sorry. I got hit a while back and I guess I got a little paranoid. Here, I'll toss this in to make up for it."
The uncle skillfully tied the daikon and carrots with string, and further
a turnip
he added one on top.
(Well, I suppose I can let that slide.)
The leaves would pair well with rice porridge if pickled in salt, and the root could go into a vinegar salad.
"It's not just coins—they seem to be tampering with hairpins too. You buy one thinking it's made of gold, but
plating
—that's the sort of story you hear about a lot, so you'd better watch yourself, young lady."
It was a common tale among open-air vendors. Since they could fold up their stalls in an instant, they'd talk a good game to lure in customers, sell shoddy goods, and vanish before anyone caught on.
"Coins are one thing, but once it comes to jewelry, there's no way to tell. You can't exactly bite into it to strip off the plating, and if they use a metal with a similar color, there's no distinguishing it."
"...There is, well, a way to tell without biting."
"Really?"
The uncle regarded her with a touch of suspicion.
"If it's real gold, it's heavier than other metals, so—"
Fill a vessel to the brim with water. Place the object you want to measure inside, note how much water spills out, and then prepare a volume of gold equal to that amount of water.
"If it's made of the same material, the weight won't change. The more impurities are mixed in, the lighter it gets."
"Oh. So there's a method like that."
"Right. But it only works because gold is extraordinarily heavy. With other metals, it might be difficult."
Once the uncle was satisfied, Maomao had no further business there.
Since it was cold, she decided to head straight home.
(Last night's chicken was really delicious.)
Maomao worked while recalling last night's dinner.
Mortar
she ground the herbs with a steady crunch, swallowing the saliva that welled up.
Yan Yan's cooking skills were quite impressive. Maomao considered herself somewhat capable, but she couldn't measure up to her.
Maomao's brother was supposedly some kind of chef, but she herself was more than a match for that claim.
The outer skin was baked to a crisp, and peeling it back revealed pale pink flesh. Biting into it, juice burst forth in a rush. The seasoning was salt and black, tingling granules — could those possibly be peppercorns? Yān Yān's dedication to Yào's meals was extraordinary; at this rate, most of her wages must be vanishing into food costs alone.
And with Maomao lately joining in for meals so often, those expenses had surely grown even further.
"......"
Thinking it over, Maomao reflected that perhaps she ought to be paying for her share of the meals. The food here was far better than anything she could get at a cheap eatery. She should at least cover the cost of ingredients.
"Mm-hmm."
"What are you nodding at?"
Yào had appeared beside her at some point.
"Liu the court physician has been calling for you for a while now."
"Is that so?"
Maomao began tidying away the herbs and the mortar.
"I'll handle the rest, so go on. What did you do this time?"
"Nothing so far."
Right — she hadn't done anything yet.
Reading Yào's expression, it was clearly her idea of a joke, laced with a bit of jealousy.
Maomao had more experience as a pharmacist than Yào and the others, so she often ended up assigned separate tasks from the two of them. Gathering medicinal herbs was one she was frequently roped into.
Yào seemed resentful that she never got the same assignments as Maomao. That little joke earlier had stemmed from that.
(She's gotten much softer than before, though.)
Whether Yào herself had changed, or whether Maomao's way of perceiving her had changed — she wasn't sure.
"Liu the court physician wants to see me?"
"Yeah. Here."
A note was handed over from the physician. It bore a wax seal, and the stamp was one she recognized.
(Gyokuyou.)
Normally, correspondence would be exchanged through a different channel, but if Liu the court physician had delivered it personally, there must be something urgent.
"They want you at the palace right away, apparently."
The contents of the letter were the same — no details were provided.
"Then, Luo—"
"No, you're going by yourself."
If someone were to meet with the empress, her father the eunuch would have been the natural choice. Being told to go alone, Maomao tilted her head.
"You may have your doubts, but since that's what they've told us, I have nothing more to say. Hurry up and get going."
Liu the court physician had his own reservations, but this was the empress they were dealing with. Even someone in his position leading the medical staff couldn't talk back.
"Understood."
Maomao decided to do as she was told.
From the medical office, she was taken by carriage to the palace where Gyokuyou resided. Though it was within the same palace complex, moving from the outer court to the inner court meant it would look improper for Maomao to go trotting in on her own.
Passing through several gates, they arrived at the palace where the empress was.
The rear palace quarters had always been impressive enough, but Gyokuyou's current palace was easily three times that size.
She stepped down from the carriage and stood before the door. The door opened on its own. It was a slender beauty who had opened it.
(
Shirowa—
was that her name?)
Maomao recalled. A colleague she had worked with for a time at the Emerald Palace. One of three maids who had come from Gyokuyou's hometown.
The three maids were sisters close in age who looked very similar, but they made themselves easy to distinguish by the color of their accessories. This maid wore a white hair ribbon, which was why she was called Shirowa.
The other two —
Akaha
and
Kuroha,
she recalled.
"I've been expecting you. Please, come this way."
Unlike the chatty trio of senior maids like Yinghua, the new trio had a quiet, more mature air about them.
Normally when Maomao arrived, Yinghua and the others would come bustling over to greet her, but today it was quiet.
"…What happened?"
To think that she was being summoned here alone—
"In this room. Please hear it directly from her."
Shiraha guided Maomao to the reception room and promptly left.
Inside, she found Empress Gyokuyou seated on a sofa, and next to her—
Hongniang—
was there.
Maomao bowed her head.
"It's been a while."
"Yes. It has been too long."
That said, it had only been about a month since her last check-up.
"Do you know why I had you summoned?"
Maomao shook her head.
Gyokuyou's voice sounded lower than usual. Here was the empress whose eyes always sparkled with excitement, always looking for something fun and entertaining.
(This expression—)
She felt she had seen it before.
When Maomao had first seen Gyokuyou—
Rifa—
when she was confronting Consort Rifa, she remembered that anxious expression—when she had been threatened by the undiagnosed illness.
"Rather than beating around the bush, it'd be faster to just explain. Hongniang."
The empress looked at Hongniang, her chief lady-in-waiting.
Hongniang placed a cloth-wrapped bundle on the table. When she unwrapped it, a single hairpin was revealed.
It was a hairpin made of silver. It had an unusual design, with a small basket resembling a Chinese lantern hanging as an ornament. The basket-work was exquisite—clearly not something any ordinary craftsman could produce.
But—
(It was blackened in spots.)
Silver corroded quickly, and the tarnishing had halved whatever charm the hairpin might have had. The craftsmanship itself was impressive enough, but looking at the whole piece, it came together in a strangely haphazard way that felt incomplete.
Maomao tilted her head.
"What about this?"
"I wore it to the garden party."
"The garden party?"
Maomao furrowed her brow.
"I know what you're going to say. There's no way I wore it to the garden party looking like *this*."
Hongniang cut in.
(About time.)
Even Maomao found the ornament underwhelming — there was no way Hongniang, who was particular about such matters even among the attendants, would have let her wear it without some kind of arrangement. There must have been additional pieces that accompanied this hairpin.
"I had a craftsman make it in a hurry, but it turned out quite well at the time. It's just tarnished now. Also, the cage had proper decorations inside it — about half the size of the cage itself."
"Decorations?"
Ornaments inside a cage that looked like a horned lantern. It would certainly be eye-catching. Walking would probably make them jingle like bells.
"But they're not in there now."
The mesh of the cage was fine. Nothing could have slipped through and fallen out.
"At the garden party, I was wearing this hairpin. I left the banquet briefly before noon to change my outfit, and when I did, the hairpin was already gone."
"……"
In the days of the rear palace garden parties, there had been no scheduled time for costume changes. But it should have been nearly impossible for anyone to get close enough to the consorts to do so.
"Could a pilfering attendant have snuck in?"
Not an attendant serving Empress Gyokuyou, of course — she meant the servers who had been brought in for the event.
Empress Gyokuyou shook her head. On the consort's behalf, Hongniang spoke.
"The hairpin turned up today, hidden among the tribute offerings presented to the empress."
Say, by some stroke of luck, the attendant who had stolen the hairpin felt a pang of conscience and decided to return it. But could she then, by yet another stroke of luck, have slipped it into a tribute package bound for Empress Gyokuyou?
(No chance.)
This was intimidation.
She was told she could go right beside Empress Gyokuyou whenever she wished, and that they could even sneak her into the inner palace.
During her time in the rear palace, Empress Gyokuyou had once been poisoned by another consort. She had since become the birth mother of the Crown Prince, her residence had changed, and she had thought the danger was not as great as before.
"You can come back any time, you know."
Those were the words she had been told more than once — whether Maomao would come work under Empress Gyokuyou again.
It was only now that Maomao realized it had not simply been said out of familiarity and fondness.
"Maomao. Can you catch the culprit?"
Empress Gyokuyou wore a troubled smile, but her fists trembled ever so slightly.