"There's a type of poison made from tea."
Maomao
said.
"Poison?"
Jinshi
wore an expression tinged with mild annoyance. Within the palace, poison was an everyday occurrence.
"You put strong tea into a bamboo tube, bury it underground, and wait a month for it to become poison. The drier and higher quality the tea, the better, apparently.
This time it wasn't a bamboo tube, but the method should be the same. Still, I'd like to properly compare the bamboo tube and the vase to confirm whether it actually turned into poison, but the vase method wasn't in any book."
"There's no need to confirm — or rather, does such a book even exist?"
said Jinshi.
"If you leave tea sitting for a month, wouldn't it just rot and give you an upset stomach?"
said
Basen. He had been made to sit seiza as a form of self-reflection.
"It had properly become poison."
"Why did you say 'had become' in the past tense?"
Jinshi inched closer to Maomao.
"Hahaha."
Maomao tried to laugh it off, but Jinshi's glare didn't stop. Incidentally, when she had first made it, she'd used premium tea leaves from the Rokushoukan and gotten scolded by the madam. She had kept testing it, growing weaker by the day, until in a panic
Luomen administered the antidote. That was how things had gone.
"For now, solving the case is what matters."
Maomao deflected while carefully examining the broken vase and its contents.
"It doesn't feel fully aged yet. The reason a curse charm was pasted on it — either they viewed the poison-making as something akin to sorcery,
or they weren't actually making poison but merely making it look like they were casting a curse. It's one or the other."
"Hmm."
Jinshi groaned.
"Is something troubling you?"
"What is this poison used for, and what does it do?"
Jinshi asked, as if seeking confirmation.
"You administer a few drops to the target each day. Gradually, their stomach weakens, and after a few months, they die."
Maomao had suffered from nausea and stomach pain herself. With someone already in poor health, two months would be more than enough to kill them.
Jinshi
looked to Mami
for confirmation.
"There is a sickly girl in the manor where the cursed—no, the poison jar was found. She has a weak stomach and eats very little."
"That matches the symptoms."
"Hmm."
Maomao groaned.
"There's a contradiction if poison was involved."
"Where?"
"If they'd already been administering the poison, the victim would have been taking it for so long they could have died ages ago, wouldn't they? And if they started making more because they were running out, how much have they already forced the victim to consume?"
Maomao picked up a shard from the broken jar.
"If you made poison in a jar this size, using two drops a day, how many days' worth would that be?"
It was a jar that fit in both palms. Considering a few drops per day, that would be quite a large amount.
"Easily half a year's worth."
"Then I don't think the girl's illness is caused by the poison. From my own experience with that poison's stomach pain, if someone is already weak, two months would be more than enough for it to be lethal..."
Jinshi's eyes stabbed at her, clearly saying, "You damn well tried it on yourself, didn't you?"
"Ahem. In any case, could you give me an opportunity to check whether she's still taking the poison?"
"I would very much like you to do so, but—"
"Is there a problem?"
「I'm sure you noticed it too just now — the problem is which mansion it is.」
Maomao nodded in understanding.
He had said it was the empress dowager's family home. Maomao didn't know what sort of household it was, but at the very least, they were the family that had risen to prominence by offering the young empress dowager to the late emperor. She didn't know who the current head of the household was, but judging from Jinshi's reaction, it would be better to have nothing to do with them.
「During your time in the rear palace, didn't they send candidates to the Crystal Palace over and over?」
「……The Crystal Palace — setting aside the maids —」
Rifa
「— the consort's character was certainly outstanding.」
In other words, he had answered that the head of the empress dowager's family was not outstanding.
「Come to think of it, there was a consort who entered the rear palace from the empress dowager's family, wasn't there?」
「Yes. That's another part of the problem.」
「Could it be that the first consultation about the curse came because people thought the clan had been cursed on account of that consort?」
(Which one had entered the palace again?)
She thought it was the empress dowager's grandchild — no, it was a sibling's grandchild.
「The head's grandniece — that is, a grandniece even to the empress dowager — has entered the palace. And now, people around her are whispering that she may be pregnant.」
Asami added the explanation.
This was the family that had been trying by any means to get Jinshi sent back to the Eastern Palace. They were undoubtedly beside themselves with excitement over this.
「A curse or poison — either way, it's troublesome.」
「I wonder why he brought this headache upon himself.」
Maomao had let the words slip without thinking. Horse Flash was about to raise his voice with an 「Oi!」, but Asami slapped the back of his head and shut him up.
「If it's Lord Jinshi, then during his rear palace days it would have been one thing, but now he could push back without any issue, couldn't he?」
「It's a request from the empress dowager.」
「From the empress dowager?」
No matter what kind of family it was, it was still the empress dowager's birth household.
「The consultation was that the sickly daughter might have cast the curse. A jar was found near that daughter's room. She is the current head's youngest daughter. Normally, given her age, it should have been her rather than a grandniece who entered the palace. But because she was sickly, she was deemed unfit as a consort — no, they thought she would have difficulty marrying into any household at all — and so those around her have been pretending she doesn't exist.」
「When you say 'of marriageable age,' that's quite a wide age gap, isn't it?」
「Yes, she's a concubine's daughter. The moment the jar was found, the main wife tried to drive the concubine and her daughter out. The head of the household didn't lift a finger to protect them.」
But the Empress Dowager knew of her niece's existence and was aware of her unfortunate circumstances.
「I've been asked to help save that girl.」
「Then whether it's a curse or poison, it's a troublesome matter.」
Was the Empress Dowager asking for her daughter's innocence to be proven, or was she hoping that someone would properly look after her after she'd been cast out by the family?
As for Jinshi, he couldn't very well take in a young girl. In that case, there would be nothing better than proving her innocence, but while a curse was one thing, poison made things difficult.
Placing a cursed object near the person you want to curse is a common method. If it was a curse, one could make the excuse that the girl was the one being cursed, and that her frail health was the curse's doing.
But if it was poison rather than a curse, the situation changed entirely.
She would be completely transformed into a perpetrator—having attempted to use readily available ingredients to make poison in order to torment the family that had ignored her.
「What would you like to do, Lord Jinshi?」
「When you ask me what I'd like to do—the Empress Dowager is a compassionate woman. She probably doesn't care about the truth of the jar one way or another. She just wants the girl rescued somehow.」
(You're making an unreasonable request.)
Maomao crossed her arms and groaned.
「I really won't be able to tell until I see what it actually is.」
「I see.」
Jinshi wasn't exactly enthusiastic either.
Both Mami and Basen wore grim expressions. Only Suzume seemed as cheerful as always.