"It seems things have gotten rather interesting."
(Somehow this snide tone felt like it had been a while.)
Maomao had been made to stay behind for the routine checkup after sending the quack doctor home.
Officially, it was Shuiren and Tomei who were due for a health examination, but in substance it was a question-and-answer session with Jinshi.
"
Rikuson seems to be quite close with you, doesn't he?"
"We're not particularly close."
"Is that really so?"
(No, it's the truth.)
Jinshi fixed Maomao with a steady gaze.
Suzume stuck out her tongue and tapped her forehead lightly with her right hand.
(Yeah, that's irritating, you know.)
Suzume knew it was part of the job—of course she did, but still...
"And what about when you tried to accompany her to the farming village?"
"Because I know that commoners find shared carriages more economical."
"I see."
Jinshi's expression was one of considerable indecision.
"Then may I be excused?"
Since then, she had been told by Physician You to additionally prepare styptics and ointment for scrapes, and was currently hard at work making them.
A tall wall suddenly appeared before her. Jinshi, who had been sitting, was now standing right in front of her.
"What is it?"
As expected, he did not look pleased.
"We are not even particularly close, yet I hear you have been receiving marriage proposals lately."
He had come straight to the point.
"It was apparently a joke."
"Is that something to say as a joke?"
"I believe it was the same as Li Bai's hairpin — just a social pleasantry."
She recalled how Li Bai had been somewhat persistent back then too. Maomao believed that as long as you stated things clearly and forthrightly, there would be no problem.
"..."
Jinshi looked around.
Sukuyou, Suirei, and Tomei were all in the same room. Though she could not see them, Baryou was also nearby, and Bashen should not be far away as a guard.
He seemed to have something to say, but there were too many onlookers. His expression suggested he wished he had sent them all away beforehand, but under the current circumstances, that would be impossible.
(Unlike Anan, if you step outside here, you're completely visible.)
He couldn't call her outside, and he couldn't kick her out.
"..."
The silence stretched on. Jinshi himself seemed to be weighing what to do.
"Um—"
She was about to ask whether she could be excused when— She felt a touch on her left hand and looked up to find Jinshi's hand there. Maomao's left hand was lifted by Jinshi's right, their fingers interlacing. His long fingers pressed firmly against the back of her hand, his palm flush against hers.
Thump, thump — she could feel her pulse. His nails were neatly groomed, but his palm had developed hard— calluses.
The sensation of his touch. His fingertips were slightly stained with ink and damp with sweat.
(This is taking quite a while.)
Maomao was starting to get sweaty palms too. Before that happened, she wanted him to let go, so she opened her mouth to speak.
"What are you doing?"
"...Just a bit of replenishing, that's all."
Jinshi let out a sulkish voice and finally released her. There was a faint red mark on the back of her hand.
"Replenishing?"
"Replenishing?"
"That's right. There's plenty to do when you're a guest. It's tiring work."
Maomao looked at Jinshi's desk. There was a half-finished letter.
Scraps of paper were piled in the wastebasket. Given how stained his fingertips were, he must have written quite a lot.
(A letter to the capital?)
Reporting the situation, describing the extent of the damage, stating how many relief supplies were needed. Even if the ruler of the Western Capital was Gyokuyou, it might go more smoothly if word came from Jinshi. Then again, his accomplishments might get stolen.
"Jinshi, doesn't it bother you to have your achievements taken from you? The people of the Western Capital must think the supplies came from Lady Gyokuyou."
At Maomao's words, Suirei smiled gently and silently, while Tomei and Suzume nodded in agreement. It seemed they, too, had their thoughts as attendants.
"I don't care what people in the Western Capital think of me. Either way, it'll go more smoothly if the supplies are distributed through Lady Gyokuyou. Besides—"
"Besides?"
As expected, Jinshi had no desire to stand out. As long as the people were saved, that was enough for him.
"It's not about how many people recognize you. It's about who recognizes you."
Jinshi looked at Maomao.
(Who recognizes you, huh?)
Be that as it may.
"May I go now?"
"Do as you please!"
Understood, Maomao said, and left the room.
The maids' gazes felt strangely lukewarm.
Leaving the room, Maomao held her palm up with her back to the door.
"...No, hold on."
Just because people were watching, there had to be something more, something different.
(No, no, no, no) At a loss for words, she slumped against the door.
"This is much less embarrassing, isn't it?"
The moment Maomao muttered that to herself.
"What is?"
"!"
Startled by Batsen, who had been standing guard outside, Maomao jumped slightly.
The tenth day after the first wave of locusts arrived.
A second swarm of locusts, appearing to be the main force, approaches. Compared to the first, their numbers are fewer, and countermeasures appear to be in place.
The thirteenth day.
An arson fire occurs. It seems it was set to seize food supplies; the culprit is apprehended quickly.
The fifteenth day.
Food shortages. Hoarding occurs in various places. Skirmishes among residents break out everywhere.
The sixteenth day.
People who had suffered damage in other provinces arrive in the Western Capital. Among them, there are reportedly some demanding the Imperial Brother be handed over.
The eighteenth day.
"You were alive after all."
Maomao stared blankly at the vagrant. Calling him a vagrant felt harsh, but there was no other way to describe his appearance.
"I'm alive!"
A man with a beard, shaggy hair, and a kimono torn to shreds in places. His appearance had changed considerably, but he was the one who had set off to distant lands— Rahan.
Her brother.
One of the refugees had mentioned Maomao's name, which led to her being summoned by the officials. And when she arrived, there was Rahan, looking completely ragged. He must have put up a fight, because while you couldn't quite call it a jail cell, he was locked in a narrow room. There had been a lot of rioters lately, and the officials were on edge.
He looked so pathetic that she had Sparrow prepare a change of clothes for him. In the meantime, she decided to ask him what had happened.
It had become standard for Sparrow to accompany Maomao whenever she went out. Li Bai served as their bodyguard.
"Still, I'm glad you're safe. Everyone was terribly worried."
"Ah, yeah, we were worried."
Maomao and Li Bai exchanged the requisite pleasantries. Rahan did give off a stubborn, hard-to-kill sort of vibe, so it wasn't entirely true that no one had been worried about him. But to say they'd been jealous of him—that was something they absolutely could not admit.
"What the hell? That's way earlier than I expected! The locust plague broke out, you know! We scrambled to deal with it!"
"Yes. Everyone was saying it went smoothly. As expected of a true—"
"professional."
"—that's what they said."
"Spare me the 'professional' talk! Ah, I really thought I was going to die. I practically did die. For all I know, I might actually be dead right now."
"You're alive. It's fine."
Maomao poked and prodded at Rahan. He definitely had a physical form.
"Your head's gotten pretty chewed up too."
Li Bai was running a comb through his tattered hair. It wasn't really a bodyguard's job, but perhaps it was his way of making amends for what Rahan had been through. However, given that Li Bai was a big man, the work was a bit rough and heavy-handed, and Rahan's face twisted in pain.
"Ow, ow!"
"Hm? What's this?"
While Maomao was prodding him, she felt something near his back.
"Oh, this here?"
Rahan took off his tattered outer garment. Pressed against his back was a small cloth bundle wrapped in a hand towel. She opened it to find stalks of wheat inside.
"It's wheat, isn't it?"
"It's wheat."
Maomao and Li Bai peered in.
"That's right."
"Why keep wheat so carefully?"
No matter how much he wanted to protect the wheat from locusts, she couldn't think of a reason to carry such a small amount on his person at all times.
"Well, you see, right before the locust plague hit—"
Rahan began to tell them about a village. It was a village that grew a lot of wheat, and the village head had mentioned something to him.
"One family's wheat, you see. Their yield was always higher than the other families'."
"Oh?"
"So I was asked to go look into how they grew it, visit their fields, and investigate."
The family didn't do anything particularly special in their growing methods, and the soil and sunlight of their fields were no different from anyone else's.
The only difference was— "When growing wheat, you save some from the previous harvest to use as seed. But by chance, a particular variety was abundant in that family's wheat."
"A particular variety?"
Maomao examined the wheat carefully. She didn't notice anything particularly different about it.
Sparrow returned with a change of clothes, so Rahan shrugged off his tattered outer garment and began to change.
"Oh my, what a nice body you've got."
Sparrow chimed in with a tease.
"It's hard to work with someone staring at me like that."
Rahan shooed Sparrow away.
"No, really, you're well-built. You could probably become a military officer."
"A military officer? Is that so?"
Rahan didn't seem entirely displeased at being called a military officer type. He was probably unused to it, since people normally treated him as nothing more than a peasant.
"Sorry, please continue with your story."
"...Fine."
Rahan spoke with a hint of disappointment as he continued his explanation.
"That wheat was considerably shorter than other wheat. My guess is that when they grew it in the same field over and over, shorter wheat showed up, and those became the only ones that kept multiplying."
"And being short means what exactly?"
Suzume asked.
"It's not just wheat — rice too. The taller they grow, the more they get battered by the wind. They become prone to toppling. If they fall and the stems snap or rot, that's the end of it."
"I see, I see."
So that was how it happened — shorter wheat had occurred by chance in that field, and it had simply kept spreading from there.
"One more thing, though this is just a hypothesis."
Rahan had changed into slightly more presentable clothes. He'd been given a hair tie and was beginning to gather his disheveled hair.
"Compared to other wheat, the grains seem to cling firmly to the ear."
"Cling firmly?"
"When you harvest, how many grains remain on the wheat ear — that affects yield enormously. What happens if grains fall from the ear before harvest? Farmers are too busy to go picking up every grain that hits the ground. If ten percent fall before harvest, you lose ten percent. Twenty percent fall, you lose twenty."
Simple math.
"Right. These ears still have plenty of grains attached. If you grow from this seed — wheat that stays short yet also doesn't shed its grains easily — you could expect a significant increase in yield."
"So you brought it all this way specifically for that."
Not just Maomao — even Suzume and Li Bai were impressed.
The two of them were undoubtedly thinking the same thing Maomao was.
(A born-and-bred farmer, this one.)
Come to think of it, the first person to report the locust plague had been Rahan, through his letter.
(I really ought to show proper appreciation for his contributions.)
Food was still scarce, but Maomao thought that today she would have to cook up something special for him.