"Just what is going on in there?"
"Who knows."
The one asking
was Gaoshun,
and
Jinshi
answered him bluntly.
The scene was in front of the lecture hall within the rear palace.
To fulfill their duties as consorts, the high-ranking consorts were currently receiving instruction.
Around them, the shut-out eunuchs and ladies-in-waiting wore
the same
expression as Jinshi.
When something is kept secret, people can't help but wonder—even some had pressed their ears to the door.
Just what was going on?
One reason curiosity was so piqued was that, for some reason, the instructor happened to be a young lady-in-waiting with a freckled face.
The story began ten days earlier.
◉●◉
When Maomao returned to the workplace after her short break, she found Jinshi looking troubled, watching her with a grave expression.
"It seems they want to provide consort education, now that a new consort has arrived."
"Is that so?"
Maomao answered with an air of disinterest and began wiping the floor. She cleaned as though stealing a maid's job, as though hunting her parents' killer. That had been
Maomao's
daily routine ever since she became assigned to Jinshi's quarters.
She had a feeling there was other work to be done, but having done nothing but a maid's duties all her life, Maomao honestly had no idea what else she should be doing. She just cleaned because it was the one thing she knew. Occasionally Jinshi would look displeased, but Maomao figured there was no need to do anything unless she was specifically told.
Originally, Jinshi's quarters had only the bare minimum of servants, and it would have been more than enough even without someone like Maomao, since Jinshi's nanny
Suiren
was there.
Maomao felt it was wrong to steal the diligent nanny's work. The physically demanding chores were one thing, but she believed she should stay within her own bounds.
Jinshi squatted down to meet Maomao's gaze. He held some kind of scroll in his hand.
"You've been asked to be a lecturer."
"Huh? Who?"
"You."
Maomao stared at him blankly. Even after becoming his personal attendant, it was hard to stop looking at him with those cold eyes—
the way you'd look at a speck of dust.
Jinshi noticed this and wore an expression that was hard to read.
"You've got to be joking."
"What part of that is a joke?"
Jinshi showed Maomao the document in his hand.
When Maomao narrowed her eyes to look, it contained matters quite unfavorable to her.
"Hey, don't look away."
"What are you talking about?"
"You just got a good look at it, didn't you?"
"Surely it was just my imagination?"
Jinshi spread the document open and pointed to the parts that were unfavorable to Maomao, pressing it insistently in her face. He was quite pushy about it.
"Right here—the name of the recommender is written right here."
"..."
Where Jinshi's finger pointed, it read:
"Virtuous Consort
Rifa."
"I really went and did it," Maomao thought.
"I wouldn't know about that."
At first, Maomao had been playing dumb, pretending ignorance over and over. But once Rifa's signature arrived on top of Gyokuyou's, she couldn't very well ignore it. She could easily picture the red-haired consort grinning with delight. They had even included a statement of the reward amount, just to be thorough.
Resigned, Maomao sent a letter to her old home and began making preparations. When she said old home, she didn't mean the apothecary — she meant the pleasure house where she'd been raised as if she were their own.
Several days later, along with the delivered supplies, the old woman charged her an expense account. That's quite the markup, Maomao thought, but she quietly tacked on an extra line and presented it to Jinshi. Jinshi looked suspicious but accepted it at face value — until the old woman appeared from the side, beaming as she glanced at the amount Maomao had written. She took it from Jinshi and handed it back to Maomao.
(She's something.)
Suiran handled nearly all of Jinshi's personal affairs by herself. That much was clear from the way she operated.
It didn't seem like it would be easy to swindle a sheltered young master.
Reluctantly, Maomao showed him the original price. Though he grumbled, he was eventually persuaded. If she had to bargain too hard on this one, it would come out of her own pocket, so she wanted him to leave it alone.
When the supplies were brought in, Maomao elbowed Gaoshun aside and accepted them. Jinshi was watching with an almost dog-like eagerness, but Maomao refused to open the packages and instead had a cart brought around to carry everything away.
Gaoshun came over offering to help, which she politely declined before hauling everything back to her room.
Jinshi demanded to see what was inside, but when Maomao widened her eyes and fixed him with a silent glare, he withdrew without a word.
She couldn't very well show him her teaching materials.
And then the day arrived.
The lecture hall that had been prepared was quite spacious — perhaps it could hold three hundred. Back in the previous emperor's era, when the number of female attendants in the inner palace had surged, it had been used to house the maids for whom no rooms could be prepared. Now it was hardly used at all. What a waste, though demolishing it would be an even greater one.
(It didn't need to be this large.)
She wasn't planning to teach anything particularly impressive, so why were people flocking in droves? From a distance, plenty of maids had gathered as onlookers. Those clustered mainly around the lecture hall were the lower- and middle-ranking consorts and their entourages.
It seemed this lesson held some significance for the consorts.
"I should mention that the lesson is open only to the high-ranking consorts."
Upon hearing Jinshi's words, the maids looked either disappointed — or, in more than a few cases, visibly relieved.
About half of them appeared to have come just to see Jinshi. Some seemed perfectly content simply hearing his voice, leaning against pillars with dreamy expressions. It was almost theatrical and looked ridiculous, but since there were more than one or two doing it, Maomao decided that was simply how things were here.
Sometimes she couldn't help wondering whether this eunuch was giving off some strange aura, like a phantom or something.
When the time came, Maomao moved to enter the lecture hall, only to find Jinshi following behind her.
She couldn't help but gape, staring at him through half-lidded eyes.
"What is it?"
Maomao gave Jinshi a shove on the back, spun him around, and pushed him out of the lecture hall.
"Why?"
"What comes next is a secret art not to be shared with outsiders. I was told to instruct the consorts—no one mentioned that you, Sir Jinshi, would be in attendance."
With that, she shut the door and wedged a bar across it.
She exhaled and surveyed the hall. Including herself, there were nine people inside—four senior consorts and one attendant apiece.
There was a ruckus on the other side of the door. Probably because they'd thrown Jinshi out. She had the nagging feeling that someone was pressing an ear against it.
Maomao pushed her cart to the center of the hall and bowed slowly.
"I am Maomao, and I will be your instructor today."
Gyokuyou was as beautiful as ever, waving demurely from behind her sleeve. Hongniang, Gyokuyou's attendant, watched her with narrowed eyes.
Rifa had returned to essentially the same voluptuous figure as before, regarding Maomao with a gentle expression. The attendant who had come along turned pale the moment she saw Maomao, but that was par for the course.
Risu was, as always, somewhat flustered. With three other senior consorts besides herself, she was probably on her guard. Her attendant was equally nervous yet still trying to protect her mistress, which was oddly endearing.
And then, the last consort.
It was a face Maomao had never seen before.
The girl who had entered after the previous senior consort, Ada, was the same age as Maomao. The new consort was
Rouran,
she said. She had gathered her lustrous black hair into a topknot and used feathers from a southern bird in place of hairpins. From her clothing, Maomao had taken her for a southern princess, but her features were more central. Her attendant looked the same, so Maomao concluded the outfits were simply a matter of personal taste.
As one chosen to become a consort, she was certainly beautiful enough, but not as glamorous as Gyokuyou nor as resplendent as Rifa.
Unlike Risu, given her age it was a foregone conclusion that she would end up in the Emperor's bed, but for the time being, she didn't seem like someone who could disrupt the rear palace's
harmony.
At least, that was the impression she gave.
*Not that it matters.*
Maomao wrapped up her brief self-introduction, then pulled textbooks from among her supplies and handed one copy to each consort.
As the consorts received them, their reactions varied—eyes widening, pleasant smiles, faces flushing bright red, brows knitting in concern.
*Yeah, that's about what I expected.*
Maomao then produced her tools. Half the women tilted their heads in puzzlement, half of those knew what they were for, and the remaining few blushed as they vaguely figured it out.
"What I'll be teaching from here on falls under the secret arts of the women's quarters, so I must ask that none of it be repeated outside this room."
With that, Maomao requested that they turn to page three of the teaching materials.
It was a full two hours later that Maomao finally finished the lesson.
(Maybe I crammed in a bit too much.)
Even Maomao felt somewhat drained from teaching. She shuffled listlessly across the room to remove the doorbar from the lecture hall.
"...That took quite a while."
The elegant and beautiful eunuch entered with his usual air of composure, though he was slightly out of sorts and, for some reason, his left ear and cheek were bright red. It was kind of Maomao not to point out that he had clearly been eavesdropping.
The moment Jinshi stepped into the lecture hall, his face went slack with disbelief.
"What's the matter?"
"I should be the one asking that."
Jinshi fixed Maomao with a penetrating stare.
"Even if you say that..."
Maomao had merely done as she was told and taught the concubines the knowledge necessary for life in the rear palace. As for how the concubines responded, their reactions were as follows.
Gyokuyou.
The consort was cheerfully bouncing about, excitedly exclaiming "the mannei detachment!" Her head attendant,
Hongniang,
followed along with her usual expression of exhaustion. Maomao thought she might be glaring at her from time to time, but chose not to worry about it.
Rifa's face was faintly flushed, but she moved her fingers as though
chewing over
the lesson content. She had a rather satisfied expression. When Maomao saw her attending maid beet-red, head bowed, and trembling all over, she thought what a fine young lady she must be.
Risu
was in the corner of the lecture hall, banging her forehead against the wall and muttering, "I can't... I absolutely can't," her face pale as a sheet.
Beside her, a lady-in-waiting who had only recently been promoted to head attendant was rubbing her back in concern. Maomao seemed to recall that she was the former poison taster.
Rouran
stared vacantly into space with a blank expression. Maomao couldn't quite tell what she was thinking.
Once Maomao had finished putting everything away, she accepted a cup of cooled tea and took a moment to rest. She was tired, but she looked forward to the envelope of money she would receive later.
Each of the consorts was carrying the now-familiar bundles that had been brought in as lesson materials. Some cradled theirs carefully, while others handled theirs with visible revulsion. In every case, the furoshiki wrapping had been tied with meticulous care, making it impossible to peek inside — she had specifically requested that.
Jinshi and the others who hadn't been present in the lecture hall watched this with puzzled looks.
"So, what kind of lesson was it?"
When Jinshi asked, Maomao gazed off into the distance and said,
"Please ask His Majesty for his impressions at a later date."
That was her answer.