Cooldown.
"My, my, what an energetic poison taster you are."
Just as she finished rinsing her mouth and was standing there in a daze, the elusive idle eunuch appeared.
It was remarkable that he'd found her, all the way out here so far from the banquet hall.
"Good evening, Lord Jinshi, sir."
She tried to respond with her usual blank expression, but the lingering effects of the poison left her cheeks somewhat relaxed.
It was somewhat irritating that he seemed to take it as a smile.
"You're the one in a better mood, aren't you?"
Suddenly, her arm was grabbed.
"What are you doing?"
"You're headed to the medical office, obviously. Don't try to act like you're perfectly fine after eating poison — that's no joke."
In truth, she was the very picture of health.
What would have happened if she'd swallowed it without spitting it out?
Curiosity coursed through her body.
By now, she'd probably be feeling numbness spreading all over.
(Maybe I shouldn't have spit it out.)
At the very least, couldn't she still have some of the remaining soup ?
She decided to ask Jinshi.
「You're an idiot, you know.」
"Please say I have high ambitions."
Well, normally, that's exactly the kind of ambition nobody would wish for.
Jinshi is usually needlessly dazzling, but right now something feels off about him.
He has a new hairpin in his hair, and yet he's wearing the same fine robes as before.
No — his collar is slightly disheveled. Something must have happened to muss it. Ahh, so that's how it is. What a scoundrel.
His sweet voice was somewhat hoarse, and the gentle smile was nowhere to be seen.
(Can you actually tune how dazzling you are?)
Or maybe he's simply spent from a tryst.
The reason he wasn't at the banquet must be that he'd slipped off with — or been slipped off with by — a lady-in-waiting, or a civil official, or a military officer, or a eunuch.
Let's just go with that.
Quite the active fellow, isn't he.
(This is actually better, if you ask me.)
He's certainly good-looking, but like this he could pass for a young man his actual age. No — if anything, he looks somewhat younger.
From now on, before he comes around, I should ask Gaoshun to make sure he's had his... indiscreet exercise beforehand.
Whether he'd actually listen is another matter entirely.
"You left here looking so full of energy that someone actually thought the poison was real and ate it."
"Who is that fool?"
The poison used was pufferfish toxin.
The effects don't manifest until some time after ingestion.
"The minister is still numb. Over there they're in quite a panic about it."
I see — at this rate, the future of the kingdom itself is in jeopardy.
"What a waste. You should have had them use this instead."
She rummages through her chest and pulls out a cloth pouch. It contained the antiemetic she had tucked into the false bottom of her chest.
"I made it so they'd be able to throw up their guts, and it worked beautifully."
"No, that's poison, isn't it?"
Jinshi replies with a tone of exasperation.
"There are medical officers here too. Leave it to them and there won't be any problems."
Maomao suddenly remembers something and stops in her tracks.
"What is it?"
"I have a request. There is someone I'd like you to have brought along."
"Who on earth are you talking about?"
He furrows his brow and tilts his head.
"The Virtuous Consort— Risu.
Could you have her summoned?"
Maomao says in a firm voice.
When Risu was summoned, she gave Jinshi a cheerful, spring-like smile and Maomao a flat, disinterested look — as if to say, what's with this girl. She seemed restless, rubbing her left hand with her right.
Young as she may be, she was still a woman.
They had been heading for the medical office, but a crowd had gathered there thanks to a certain idiot superior, so they had no choice but to use an unused office instead.
Comparing the two, one could see that even the architecture differed between the inner palace and the rest of the compound. In the plain, austere room, Risu wore a slightly sullen expression.
She had brought a whole retinue along, but Maomao had asked Gaoshun to leave only one attendant.
Maomao drinks the antidote dissolved in cooled tea. She would have been fine without it, but she was told to take it as a precaution, and she was curious about medicine prepared by someone else.
Unlike that quack, the medical officers here seemed quite competent.
Had she known it was pufferfish toxin, she would have realized that taking the antidote was pointless.
She sets down the cooled tea and bows to Risu.
"Pardon the intrusion."
"What?!"
She took the consort's left hand and rolled back the long sleeve. A pale, slender arm was revealed.
"Just as I thought."
What should have been smooth skin had red rashes breaking out across it.
"There's something you can't eat, isn't there? Among the seafood."
Consort Risu kept her head bowed.
"What do you mean?"
Jinshi asked, arms still crossed.
Without anyone noticing, she had once again assumed the ethereal grace of a heavenly maiden.
But her usual smile was gone.
"Some people have specific foods they can't eat. Besides seafood, there are eggs, wheat, dairy products, and the like. Speaking of which, I can't eat buckwheat either."
The ones who showed clear shock were Jinshi and Gaoshun. Their expressions practically said, "She eats poison without batting an eye."
(Leave me alone.)
She had tried to build up a tolerance, but it constricted her airways and made it hard to breathe. Since it was absorbed through the stomach and produced rashes, adjusting the dose was tricky and recovery was slow. So she had given up on desensitization altogether.
Someday she wanted to try again, but with nothing but quacks in the rear palace, it wasn't something she could safely experiment with.
"How did you figure that out?"
The consort spoke cautiously.
"Before that, how's your stomach? You don't seem to have nausea or—"
convulsions "—so that looks fine."
"If you'd like, I can prepare a laxative." The consort shook her head vigorously at the offer.
To suggest that in front of the celestial being she admired was rather cruel. A little payback.
"Then, please have a seat and listen."
Despite appearances, the diligent Gaoshun had already pulled out a chair, and the consort Risu sat down.
"Because your meals overlapped with Lady Gyokuyou's. Lady Gyokuyou isn't picky, so she eats almost the same things as His Majesty."
Even so, the first dish and the second both had different ingredients.
"Mackerel and abalone? What I can't eat is—"
The consort nodded.
Maomao did not miss the agitation shown by the maid behind her.
"This is something only those with the allergy would understand, but it goes beyond simple preference. This time, it was just hives, but it can cause breathing difficulties and heart failure. In short, knowingly serving it would be the same as poisoning someone."
She reacted with hypersensitivity to the word "poison."
"Lady Risu, given the atmosphere of the gathering it may have been difficult to speak up, but this was an extremely dangerous act."
Maomao's gaze drifted hazily between the consort and the maid.
"Please, whatever you do, be sure not to forget this."
She directed the warning at neither one in particular.
After a brief pause, "Please also inform whoever handles her regular meals,"
she said, but neither the consort nor the maid seemed to take it in.
Maomao explained the dangers in detail to the attendant maid and wrote down the proper countermeasures to take in case of an emergency.
The maid, still pale-faced, shook her head in small, jerky movements.
(So that's all a threat amounts to.)
The maid was the taster.
The woman who had been smiling.
After Lady Risu withdrew, Maomao became aware of a cloying atmosphere from behind and a hand reaching toward her shoulder.
She gave a cold look that said she would sooner stare at a shriveled, dried-up earthworm.
That was the contempt in her eyes.
"Since I am of low birth, could you please not touch me?"
She delivered "Don't cling to me, you lout" as tactfully as she could manage.
"You're about the only person who'd say something like that."
"Then I suppose everyone else is just being considerate."
She strode away.
Jinshi sighed at the voice that could give a man heartburn and looked around for Gaoshun with his cooling remedy, but his ever-loyal retainer was silently pleading with his eyes: *Please, just endure it.* "Well then, I'll be going to report to Lady Gyokuyou."
"Why did you deliberately have the poison-tasting lady-in-waiting put in the same room?"
He went straight for the heart of the matter—that was what made him so difficult to deal with.
"I'm not sure what you mean. I'm afraid I don't understand."
She answered with a blank expression.
"So you're saying the one who served the meal made a mistake?"
"I wouldn't know about that, either."
She feigned ignorance to the very end.
"At least answer me this much. The target was Consort Tou, wasn't it?"
"Not if there was poison in the other plates."
That was essentially what it amounted to.
Seeing Jinshi lost in thought, Maomao left the room, leaned against the wall, and drew a deep breath.
Now that the poison had been identified, adjustments were made.