"Excuse me, are we not supposed to take this one apart?"
Tenyu
said as he regarded the fresh hanged corpse. Fresh or not, it had already been dead for over a full day—right around the time rigor mortis would be starting to let up, probably.
"Hey, do something about this guy, would you?"
"No way."
Colleagues and seniors alike were always like this with Tenyu. He'd heard it so many times he'd lost all motivation to even scold them.
"Hey,
Nian Nian.
Would it be alright if I cut out just the large intestine?"
He roped in the medical assistant who happened to be nearby. Her real name was
Maomao,
but to Tenyu she was Nian Nian.
"Since you're already splitting open the abdomen, all sorts of problems come with that, so please don't. Corpses really do stink, you know."
Nian Nian was busily tidying the medicine shelves, her eyes sparkling. She liked crude drugs better than corpses. She'd only been back from the long sea voyage for two days, yet she was full of energy—probably because she had such a wealth of medicine before her.
Tenyu and Maomao had been assigned small tasks in the comparatively quiet infirmary, perhaps out of consideration for the fatigue they'd accumulated.
"Why on earth is a corpse being kept in the infirmary?"
Carrying freshly laundered bandages,
Yao
arrived. As always, she was a young lady whose reasons for working as a medical assistant remained utterly unclear. And sure enough,
Enen
was sticking right to her. Enen was Yao's attendant and always put Yao first.
"Hey, Enen! Long time no see!"
Tenyu deliberately ignored Yao and addressed Enen instead. Yao didn't seem to mind, but Enen was scowling. She'd get hostile if he spoke to Yao, yet also get upset if he ignored her. He couldn't make heads or tails of it.
For a while, he used to poke at the two of them, wondering what would happen if they ever had a falling out. But now there were more interesting things going on, so he couldn't be bothered anymore.
"Dr. Li... right? You're not going to have this body removed?"
Enen spoke up in Yao's place, addressing Dr. Li. He was Tenyu's senior medical officer and had accompanied them to the Western Capital. Incidentally, Tenyu was also a 'Li,' but since that got confusing, everyone just called him by his name.
Of all the people who had headed west, Dr. Li was probably the one who had changed the most. His previously slender, bookish appearance had been completely transformed — his skin was tanned dark from the harsh sunlight and dry air.
On top of that, his spirit had grown several times tougher from dealing with the endless stream of patients, and he'd even started staring down the occasional ruffian who showed up.
Most of all, having assisted his well-meaning but unreasonable superior Dr. Yang — a man who relied above all on physical stamina — he'd become absurdly muscular.
It might have been because he'd been eating lots of meat and dairy to build up his stamina, or maybe it was from taking out his frustration with his demanding boss and with Tenyu by punching and kicking a futon-wrapped pillar.
By the end of his time in the Western Capital, he'd taken to drinking raw goat's milk mixed with soybean flour.
It had only been two days since his return to central duty, and over ten people had already asked him, "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the 'Li' who came back from the Western Capital, no mistake. As for the body, I still plan to investigate the details of the incident and carry out verification."
Dr. Li had been reading through roughly a month's worth of journals. His promotion had already been decided on the basis that, having completed the expedition, he was performing at the level of a senior medical officer.
Tenyu had also spent plenty of time cutting and suturing wounded patients' limbs, but there was no such talk of a promotion for him.
"Hey, hey, Dr. Li. The culprit's already been arrested and the inspection's done, so why are you still investigating?"
Tenyu was asking purely out of curiosity. But maybe he'd looked too idle, because a freshly washed wicker laundry basket had been plunked down in front of him, and Enen was silently pressuring him to roll up the contents and put them away.
"More or less."
"I suppose so."
Maomao said, sorting through discarded herbal medicines.
"What do you mean, 'I suppose so'?"
Tenyu asked Maomao.
When it came to animal anatomy, that was one thing, but on most other matters, Maomao knew far more than Tenyu did.
"There were three court ladies involved. Mathematically, logically, and on paper, it was possible for them to kill a single military officer. A haphazard plan can sometimes succeed by sheer luck. But conversely, the chances of failure were also enormous."
"Maybe it just happened to succeed?"
"I don't know much about politics or law, but the question is whether this truly succeeded by chance, or whether there was some other factor involved. If there was another factor, then they can't just carelessly leave a body that could serve as evidence lying around."
Dr. Li didn't react. In other words, Maomao's reasoning wasn't wrong.
"What's that supposed to mean? You and that scrawny one with glasses were the ones who proved it."
Tenyu tilted his head, completely baffled.
"So, are we dissecting it? Are we?"
"Don't you dare!"
Dr. Li set down his journal and stood before the corpse.
"Try not to make a scene every time there's a body here. We're used to it, but people from other departments turn green."
"Yessir!"
Tenyu took a knuckle rap from Dr. Li.
Perhaps because his muscles had been developing, the physical reprimands came more often than before.
"Yao, Yanyan, got a minute?"
Dr. Li called over to the two, who had been eavesdropping while keeping quiet.
"I checked the journal — is everything alright? It says here you're supposed to go back to the women's dormitory."
"What? That's the first I've heard of it."
The consort also looked at the two of them.
"Maomao, you didn't know? The women's dormitory is already full and can't take on any new court ladies, so they asked for volunteers to move out. Yanyan and I were barely there anyway, so it worked out perfectly. They let us keep your room as-is in exchange. I tidied it up now and then — was it dusty?"
"No, it's fine. Thank you. But moving out of the dormitory... wait, does that mean you're still staying at that house?"
The consort's face tightened slightly.
The words "that house" made Tenyu's curiosity swell.
"Well, that's how it ended up. We've accumulated more furniture, and moving would be a real pain."
"You've completely moved in, haven't you?"
"I've been paying my lodging fees properly, you know."
"Rahan-sama refuses to accept it, so I've been handing it to a trusted servant of his instead."
The consort glanced up toward the ceiling. Something awkward was clearly going on, and Tenyu's eyes sparkled as he tried to figure out how to steer the conversation there.
"Hey, hey — so where are you actually living?"
He asked, point-blank.
"I wouldn't know anything about that — you'll have to sort that out amongst yourselves. It's just that, once in a while, Yanyan's"
"cooking..."
"I'd be happy if you could partake in it."
"If Maomao says so, then I suppose I have no choice."
"I've gotten pretty good at making it too!"
Yao said, competing for attention.
Tianyou was completely ignored.
"Hey, hey—"
He tried to force his way into the conversation once more, but was seized by the scruff of his neck.
"You, get back to work."
Li the court physician's muscles were so well-developed that he could lift Tianyou up like a borrowed cat.
"There are three of us talking here, aren't there?"
"My hands are still moving."
Maomao was writing the medicinal herbs to be disposed of in the ledger, while Yao and Yanyan wrapped spun silk around their fingers and tidied it onto the shelves.
"Your job is this."
Li the court physician slammed down a journal he had finished reading right in front of Tianyou.
"You're to look into and verify the special treatment cases recorded in this journal. Understood?"
"...Yes."
He felt a distinct intimidation — as if, were he not to reply obediently, his neck might actually be wrung.