Maomao took the letters and opened them in the room that had been set aside for her. The interior had been redone in her own fashion — simple, with medicinal herbs hanging from the ceiling.
There were three letters. They were from—
Rohan,
—
Yao,
—
Yanyan,
and.
(Come to think of it,)
She vaguely remembered being told to write a letter to Yao before she left.
(I didn't write a single one.)
Staring at the three letters, Maomao considered what to do and decided to set Rohan's aside for last. She wavered between Yao's and Yanyan's with a wave of her finger before picking Yao's. A sturdy oil paper had been pasted on the back so it wouldn't tear easily on a long journey, giving it a rough, crinkled feel. Normally, Yanyan would have added fragrant incense, decorative paper, or flowers, but it seemed functionality had taken priority this time.
(We're at such a distance that proper correspondence is all but impossible.)
The contents were, as always, icy at first before going all soft and lovey-dovey midway through.
Since no letters had come at all, Yao was writing to ask how things were going. Having heard about the locust plague in the west, she couldn't very well not write. She wanted to know whether things were alright over there, and so on and so forth.
The handwriting was neat and refined, though it grew forceful whenever emotion crept in. It was unmistakably Yao's writing.
(I'll write back, so—)
The problem was when a reply would actually arrive after being sent, but there was nothing she could do about that.
Next, she opened Yanyan's letter. Like Yao's, it had been reinforced with oil paper.
"……"
Maomao turned Yanyan's letter face-down, gazed up at the ceiling, and let out a long breath. She pressed her thumb and forefinger against the corners of her eyes.
She looked at the letter once more. The paper was the same size as Yao's. But Yanyan had written in characters no bigger than grains of rice, strung together row after row like scripture. Ninety percent of the content was about Yao. It felt less like receiving a letter and more like being shown a detailed observation log of Yao.
Perhaps Yanyan had been trying to say something important. But the more Maomao read, the more all she could parse was "Miss is adorable."
What did come through clearly, however, was that Yanyan was still troubled by the fact that Yao hadn't given up on doing the same work as a medical officer. There also seemed to be one more thing weighing on her mind, but all she wrote were coy hints before trailing off — which was frustrating.
Sorry, I don't have the bandwidth to read between the lines.
And so, she set Yanyan's letter aside.
Last up was this guy.
A letter from Raban was unexpected. If he was going to send one, she would have thought Jinshi would be the better choice. But perhaps Raban had assumed that, being Maomao, she wouldn't simply throw it away?
At any rate, it had arrived safely, so she would open it for the sake of those who had delivered it.
"Huh?"
She had spoken aloud before she could stop herself.
What she found was that the letter had been pasted onto oiled paper — the same format as Yao's and Yanyan's. The two of them were one thing, but for Raban to use the same treatment seemed odd. Though perhaps there was paper made in that specific format for sending letters over long distances.
She opened it anyway—
"Yao and the others are still at our place. What should we do?"
His bewilderment was plain in his writing. He also asked whether everyone in the western capital was doing well, but that felt like it was secondary.
Not my problem.
Maomao gently closed the letter. She would put all three letters into some kind of container for now. She had taken an empty box from the quack doctor — the one he'd used for his steamed buns — so she put them in there. The fact that Maomao couldn't bring herself to discard an empty box was proof positive of her commoner sensibilities.
○●○
Rikuson
His office had once again accumulated a mountain of documents. It was like this every day, but there was nothing to be done about it — it was necessary work.
He methodically, painstakingly checked through the contents. There weren't enough civil officials, so their share of the workload had fallen to Rikuson as well.
It had been one month
since the great locust plague.
There had been several attacks by flying locusts since then, but things had since calmed down. Only, it was the locusts alone that had calmed. Those wretched insects had gorged themselves on food and were preparing to leave behind the next generation.
And the trouble was that only the aftermath of the damage was visible to people's eyes.
If all one did was worry about compensating for damaged crops while neglecting extermination efforts ahead of the next locust plague, a naturally greater infestation would follow.
Before Rikuson lay the headache-inducing damage reports and the petitions for food supplies. If only he had the power to save all the people — but Rikuson was ultimately just a middle manager. There was only so much he could do.
He had to assess the damaged regions and their surrounding populations and provide commensurate support. He could not afford to miscalculate the distribution.
Rikuson wanted to tear his hair out. He had to cross-reference the data and figure out food inventories and distribution. It wasn't that he couldn't do arithmetic, but the sheer volume, coupled with the crushing weight of responsibility, bore down on him.
"If only Raban were here, this would be easy."
This kind of work would be second nature to him. With an abacus in one hand, he'd calculate everything mentally. In terms of raw numbers, he'd provide the fairest allocation possible.
Come to think of it, Rikuson hadn't received any letters from Raban lately. He called out to a clerk who was about to leave.
"Haven't I received any letters?"
"Nothing addressed to you, Sir Rikuson."
The clerk replied curtly. He was a man Rikuson had been working alongside ever since his posting to the Western Capital. He'd delivered letters on multiple occasions, so if there were none, then there simply were none.
Was Rikuson the only one who found this strange?
This was Raban they were talking about. There was no way he hadn't learned about the locust plague in Seisei Province within the past month. And he was a man whose curiosity was on par with anyone else's. Rikuson had expected him to reach out through correspondence.
Perhaps he was busy in the capital as well.
No—
Could Raban have sent a letter to someone else?
The moment that thought crossed his mind, Raban's sister came to mind.
He wondered whether he should ask if any correspondence had arrived from Raban, but decided against it.
From now on, Rikuson should keep his distance from her. And she, too, would not come closer—could not come closer.
That would be better for both of them.
It was for precisely this reason that Rikuson had made that half-joking marriage proposal. The overly protective people around them would react sensitively even to a joke.
For the time being, he decided to submit the documents he had finished reviewing. He stepped into the corridor and was about to call the clerk back when he spotted, on the opposite side of the courtyard,
Gyokuyou.
Several military officers surrounded her.
Rikuson found himself inexplicably reluctant to go out, so he returned to his desk and picked up a petition.
"..."
It was a petition from a farming village. Along with a request for food aid due to crop failure, it contained a section about conscription. Normally, this would never have crossed Rikuson's eyes and would have been dealt with accordingly. It seemed the clerks had accidentally filed it among the large volume of documents.
The petition was filled with the earnest words of farmers. It even mentioned past occasions on which Rikuson had personally used his own funds to compensate them.
The contents of the petition could also be read as the foolish wishes of ignorant commoners clinging to a benevolent leader.
A kind lord rescuing impoverished farmers—it seemed like an admirable tale. What would the common people think of it? The ignorant masses would consider it only natural that they should provide soldiers.
"Conscription"
Gyokuō, accompanied by military officers. What exactly did he have in mind?
Rikuson let out a slow breath.
Gyokuō, popular among the people.
An unprecedented locust plague.
The imperial brother and strategist who had come from the capital.
Various factors were converging, and the stage was being set.
But Rikuson still couldn't bring himself to feel certain.
Perhaps it was because deep down, he was thinking this.
That he wished Gyokuō would be a good lord.