In any case, Maomao decided to have the poisonous herbs she needed for ingredients pulled up and gathered by others. If she did everything herself one by one, there was only so much she could accomplish.
"Over heeeere!"
Maomao
following
Sparrow
in the direction she was leading, heard a voice come from one of the dilapidated houses. Peering carefully inside, she saw the villagers and
Rikuson
in discussion.
"I understand. Then let's just pretend this never happened."
"I'm sorry. I feel terrible going back on a verbal promise like this."
"No, I can't say what will happen from here on. We were fortunate enough to prevent as much damage as we did."
She figured out what they were discussing from the bag sitting on the table. Before the locust plague arrived, he had offered to buy up their wheat at twice the going rate in order to hurry along the villagers who showed no sense of urgency.
*(This commotion probably isn't limited to just this village, and there'd be no good way to sell off the surplus anyway.)*
Rikuson, heading out of the house, noticed Maomao and the others.
"You're awake? Are you all right?"
Maomao showed him her head and the palm of her hand. Her head was fine, but her hand still stung a little. Thanks to Sparrow having applied medicine and wrapped it with a bandage while she was unconscious, though, it felt considerably better.
"You sure had a lot of money on you. This is the sort of place where thieves come lurking at night, you know."
Sparrow poked the bag Rikuson was carrying.
"Oh no, no. I'm just a lowly middle manager. I could never afford to buy up an entire village's worth of wheat."
Rikuson stuck out his tongue and showed them the bag's contents. Inside were go stones.
"Whoa."
"Old habit from my previous job. I just can't help carrying them around."
Maomao thought, *what a con artist.*
"Now then, was there something you needed from me?"
Even if told it was business—
It was hard to say that she simply wanted to confirm the situation.
"I'm terribly sorry for fainting so suddenly. It seems I caused you trouble."
She also bowed her head to Sparrow.
"No, as long as nothing serious came of it."
"Then—"
"Oh, it's already over?"
Even if told it was already over—
Maomao had plenty of other things she wanted to ask Lu Sun, but he still had work to do of his own. There were still plenty of locusts to deal with, and she thought it would be wrong to bother him.
"...You seemed remarkably composed, Lu Sun. Was there some experience behind that?"
That level of calm was hard to explain, even for someone who had served as adjutant to an eccentric military strategist.
Lu Sun's expression softened into a gentle smile.
"My mother taught me. No matter what the situation, never lose sight of yourself."
And then, for just an instant, Lu Sun's expression went blank.
"Her dying words were: the more you feel yourself losing your mind, the calmer you must remain."
"Dying words?"
"Yes. Our home was attacked by bandits. My mother and sisters hid me where I wouldn't be found, and they were killed right in front of my eyes."
What an extraordinarily heavy thing to hear.
"I knew that if I made a sound, I would be killed. So even though I wanted to scream, I couldn't. I bit down on my wrist, choked back my cries, and watched my mother and sisters die. That's how I survived."
Maomao agonized over what the right response would be, but as Maomao, there was really only one thing she could say.
"Because of that, this village was saved."
It didn't matter to Maomao what had happened in his past. But if the result was that the village had been saved, then she could only be grateful for Lu Sun's past experiences. His peculiar brand of boldness finally made sense, too.
"You're something else, Maomao. The way you think."
"Is that so?"
Even if she had offered something sentimental, Maomao wasn't Lu Sun, so she had no way of knowing how he'd take it. And as long as he wasn't some difficult girl at that age, there was no need for sympathy.
"Maomao and I are quite compatible, I think. Would it be all right if I proposed?"
"You must be joking."
Maomao's reply was instantaneous.
"Right?"
Rikuson chuckled.
(So he was the type to make jokes like that.)
Maomao found this rather surprising.
"Oh my, is Suzume left out of the loop? Won't you let me join this little love-hate drama?"
Suzume popped her face in.
"Suzume is a married woman."
Rikuson gently declined.
"Yes, married with children. Not that you can tell."
(You really can't tell at all.)
She knew more or less that Suzume had children, but Suzume showed absolutely no concern for them whatsoever. Or rather, Maomao didn't even know the child's name, let alone whether it was a boy or girl.
Her stepsister
Asami
took care of things well enough, but Suzume was quite the hands-off type.
"Well then, I'll go help with the locust extermination."
"I'll whip up some insecticide too."
"Yes, I was quite surprised that the poison actually worked."
"Poison..."
Maomao wanted to protest that it wasn't poison, but what she'd used was in fact poisonous herbs.
"I'll do my best as Maomao's guardian!"
It seemed Suzume would be keeping an eye on Maomao for a while.
"Please don't push yourself too hard, okay?"
«Next time, I'll be using a sickle to harvest them.»
Maomao showed the bandage-wrapped palm of her hand and headed toward the villagers gathering poisonous herbs.
Just as she finished preparing a sufficient quantity of insecticide, she was summoned by Li Bai.
"What is it?"
"Now that the poison-making seems to be done too, I'm thinking of taking you girls back to the western capital for a bit."
"...You're right. The insecticide."
Maomao looked out over the village. There was nothing special that only she could do. If the military officers were helping with extermination on top of that, there would be no problem even if she left.
"If we don't get back soon, that old man's going to see through my lie."
"...Come to think of it, it's really surprising your lie actually worked."
Even though things had been chaotic, she found it hard to believe that her deception had gotten past that eccentric military strategist, who with his incomprehensible sixth sense could more or less guess everything.
"Jinshi's mastermind is quite the schemer too. He used the old quack doctor."
The old quack doctor — in other words, the charlatan physician.
"He explained about you to the old quack doctor, and that way indirectly informed that old man."
"..."
Clever, Maomao thought. The old quack and the old man were getting confusing.
"You might be a soft touch for the old quack, but that old man seems to have lost his edge too."
The charlatan physician was a middle-aged, slightly plump old man, but in terms of classification, Maomao felt he belonged more in the dormouse or squirrel category.
"Once things have settled down, we'll have to come back, right?"
"But what should we do about this?"
Maomao looked at her palm.
"I have a change of clothes ready."
Suzume quickly produced a change of clothes.
"It wouldn't really hurt if you happened to mess up, would it? You've got plenty on your left arm too."
Li Bai pointed at Maomao's left arm. She hadn't explained it to him, but it seemed he had noticed all along.
"That's right."
Maomao reflected that, honestly, she'd never had to do anything as painful as getting a wound on her hand before.