"Hey now, little miss, won't you come along too?"
The quack doctor was begging with trembling shoulders, so naturally I wondered what this was about.
He brought me to the North Gate— the garrison— right out in front.
Several eunuchs were surrounding something, and circling them in concentric rings, court ladies had gathered.
"Good thing it's winter, eh?"
Beneath a reed mat lay a pale-faced woman. Her hair was stiff and matted, her lips turned blue-black.
For a drowned corpse, she was surprisingly intact, but still not a pleasant sight. It was truly a good thing it was the cold season.
The quack doctor, who should have been performing the examination, was hiding behind Maomao like a frightened maiden.
A quack through and through.
She had apparently been found floating in the outer moat that morning.
From her appearance, she was undoubtedly a court lady of the inner palace.
They couldn't very well handle the matter outside, so the quack doctor had been summoned.
"Won't you take a look in my stead, little miss?"
He waggled his carp-whisker mustache and peered up at me with pleading eyes, but I couldn't have cared less.
What did he take me for?
"I can't. I was told not to touch the corpses."
"That's rather unexpected."
That, too, was the familiar celestial voice — the one that spoke such impertinent things.
Needless to say, the ladies-in-waiting around them squealed with delight. It was so overdone it was like watching a stage play.
"Good day to you, Lord Jinshi ."
(There's nothing pleasant about standing in front of a corpse, but never mind.)
As always, I regarded the beautiful young man without a shred of emotion. Behind him, needless to say, Gaoshun stood at attention — the poor man who was always silently pleading with Maomao through his eyes.
"So, Maomao , could you take a proper look at this for me?"
"Very well."
With a slight blush, she looked down at the drowned body with obvious reluctance.
Cautiously, she lifted the reed mat she had draped over it.
Behind her, the ladies-in-waiting gasped in shock.
It was a tall woman, wearing rigid wooden clogs. One foot had been removed and wrapped in bandages. Her fingertips were bright red, her nails savagely torn.
From her clothing, she was clearly one of the imperial food tasters.
"You don't seem bothered by looking at it."
"It's a familiar sight."
Even a beautiful pleasure district, once you step one foot past the curtain, is a lawless zone.
It was not uncommon for young girls to be violated, passed around, and found in a gruesome state.
At first glance, courtesans appeared to be caged in and stripped of freedom, but one could also say the confinement served to shield them from the dangers that lay beyond.
"I'll hear your opinions later."
"Understood."
(It must have been cold.)
When the quack doctor finished the autopsy, Maomao the mat— carefully laid it over the body.
It was pointless to do so now, but.
She had been brought to the chief eunuch's room.
As always, the chief eunuch had been asked to wait outside.
The Jade Palace— was not a place where she wanted to discuss dead bodies.
It was not fitting for a place where a baby was present.
(They should just give her a room of her own.)
She bowed to the elder chief who had spoken.
She felt awful, as always.
"According to the guards, they're saying it was suicide by jumping."
She must have scaled the wall and thrown herself into the moat.
The girl was, as expected, a kitchen maid, and had apparently been working there until yesterday. If that was the case, then she had thrown herself into the moat sometime during the night.
"I'm not sure whether it was suicide, but I believe at least one person couldn't have done it alone."
"What do you mean?"
Jinshi, seated gracefully in his chair, asked in a refined voice.
He seemed a completely different person from the strangely flustered young man of the other day.
"There was no ladder against the wall."
"Well, naturally."
"Could you climb up using a grappling hook ?"
"That would be impossible, surely."
He posed each question as if testing me — truly exasperating.
I wanted to tell him to stop hounding me with every little thing, but with Gaoshun watching, I kept quiet.
"There are ways to climb without using tools, but that court lady certainly couldn't manage it."
"Oh? What kind of method?"
Back when Furou -hime's ghost was causing a scare, I had always wondered how she had scaled the outer wall. It wasn't the sort of thing you could simply climb.
That I pursue things until I understand them is just my nature, so I carefully circled the wall.
What I found were protrusions at each of the four corners of the outer wall. Bricks jutted out from the wall on purpose, and if you wedged your feet into them, climbing up wasn't impossible. Furou-hime, who excelled at dancing, could surely have managed it without difficulty.
"It would be difficult for most women, let alone someone with bound feet"
...is what it was.
The woman's feet had been wrapped in bandages and fitted with small wooden clogs.
Her feet were crushed, bound in cloth, and forced into the clogs. The practice was carried out under the principle that the smaller the feet, the more beautiful they were.
"Are you saying she was murdered?"
"I don't know. But I'm certain she fell into the moat while still alive."
Her blood-red fingers must have scraped against the walls of the moat again and again.
In that cold water — it was too horrible to even think about.
"Can't you investigate more thoroughly?"
It was vexing that she kept flashing that sweet, irresistible smile.
Some things just could not be done.
"I was told by my pharmacist master never to touch a corpse."
"Why is that?
The taboo — is that what you object to?"
He seemed to want to point out that as a pharmacist, she regularly dealt with the sick and wounded — so contact with the dead shouldn't be all that unusual.
"Humans can serve as ingredients for medicine, too."
Maomao murmured her reason in a quiet voice.
It was what the old man had told her: if she was going to do it anyway, she should save it for last.
He had told her with stunning rudeness that once she set foot down that path, she'd end up doing things on the level of grave robbing.
She wanted to say she had more sense than that, but for one reason or another, she had followed his instructions all the same.
Well, that was just how it was.
Jinshi and Gaoshun were struck dumb. They exchanged glances and nodded to each other, murmuring "I see." Gaoshun, for his part, was looking at her with an expression meant for something pitiable.
Maomao felt this was exceedingly rude, and her trembling fist...
was all she could do to hold back.
Later, she heard through the grapevine that the deceased daughter had been present at the poisoning scandal from a few days ago.
A suicide note seemingly in her handwriting was also discovered, and with that, the case was closed.
In this world, even lies can become true when shaped by the right person's schemes.