"Maomao, might I have a moment?"
As Maomao was finishing her work and heading back to her room, Gaoshun called out to her.
His master Jinshi seemed worn out from the day's work; he had finished his meal and was having a bath drawn.
"What is it?"
When Maomao asked, Gaoshun scratched his chin with a somewhat troubled look.
After a brief pause, he spoke.
"There's something I'd like you to take a look at."
The attendants today looked more troubled than usual.
What Gaoshun showed her was a document written on wooden tablets.
He laid them out on the table: a series of thin wooden slats strung together.
Maomao narrowed her eyes as she looked them over.
"These are records of an old incident, aren't they?"
They were from nearly ten years ago, describing a case of food poisoning at a certain merchant's shop.
Someone had fallen ill after eating pufferfish.
Maomao swallowed reflexively.
(Ah, I want to eat that.)
Gaoshun watched her with a knowing expression — just as he'd expected.
"Next time, I'll take you to a restaurant that serves that kind of food."
Though the look in his eyes clearly added, "Just don't eat the liver."
Even though some people actually enjoyed that tingling, numbing sensation, she thought—
if someone was treating her to a good meal, Maomao was more than eager.
"But what does this have to do with anything?"
"I was involved with this case years ago, in an official capacity."
"A former colleague recently reached out to me — a very similar incident has apparently occurred."
If he was a former colleague, that would have been before Gaoshun became a eunuch. He must have been a military officer or something of the sort.
"A very similar incident? What kind?"
Honestly, Maomao was more interested in the current poisoning case than in Gaoshun's past. She sets aside her earlier thoughts and moves the conversation along.
"Fugu..."
"...sashimi."
"Eating it has put a certain official into a coma."
(A certain official?)
Maomao had a bad feeling about this. Was this taciturn man perhaps talking a bit too freely?
She stole a quick glance at Gaoshun's face.
It was the same as always — furrowed brow, the face of a man who'd known nothing but hard work — but she had the distinct feeling he was studying her just as carefully.
"Forgive me, Gaoshun. Is this something I'm permitted to hear?"
She puts it out there bluntly, but Gaoshun's expression doesn't change. Hands buried in his sleeves, he nods slowly.
"Yes, no problem at all. Little Cat knows her place."
The nerve of him.
And then:
"Besides, now that we've gotten this far, it wouldn't do to leave the story half-finished."
"...Please, go on."
Maomao scowled slightly at Gaoshun's coyness as she spoke.
Gaoshun pointed at the wooden tablet and continued.
"This time, they say the sashimi was made with fugu skin and flesh that had been blanched. After eating it, the official fell into a coma."
"The flesh of the fugu? Not the organs?"
"That's right."
Fugu toxins are not destroyed by heat. However, the organs — particularly the liver — carry the highest concentrations, while the flesh contains comparatively little toxin. So if the poisoning was severe enough to cause a coma, she would have expected the liver to be involved.
(Could the toxin really have accumulated to that degree?)
Still, depending on the species and the environment in which it was raised, it wasn't entirely impossible.
It can't be said across the board, but there could certainly be cases like that.
What Maomao had eaten was the part with diluted poison. There were times she got carried away and put the liver in her mouth, but that was quite dangerous—she remembered being forced to drink water until her stomach turned inside out by that formidable old woman.
"Then there's nothing strange about that, is there?"
At Maomao's words, Gaoshun slowly shook his head.
"That's the thing…"
Gaoshun answered while scratching the back of his neck.
"The cook insists he didn't use fugu in his cooking. Both this time and last time."
Ignoring Gaoshun's troubled expression, Maomao licked her lips.
This sounded very interesting.
There were several commonalities between this case and the previous one.
The official who collapsed in this case, like the merchant in the previous case, was both a gourmet and fond of rare delicacies. This time, while the sashimi had used briefly blanched fish, he usually ate raw fish as well. Even fresh raw fish could harbor parasites, and most people didn't care to eat it—some regions even prohibited it.
It was precisely because these gourmets were the way they were that they were fond of eating fugu. Though everyone denied it, among gourmets there were those who deliberately ate meat with a bit of poison remaining to enjoy the tingling sensation.
(Not understanding the appeal of that…)
She thought that people ought to be more broad-minded about others' preferences.
The cooks in both cases maintained their innocence, claiming they hadn't used fugu in their cooking. Yet both their employers had suffered symptoms of poisoning.
In the kitchen,
among the garbage,
fugu entrails and skin had been found, and those were submitted as evidence.
(They investigated more thoroughly than I expected.)
Maomao was oddly impressed by that. There were plenty of incompetent officials in the world who fabricated charges and manufactured criminals from circumstantial evidence.
Both cooks claimed they had used fugu the day before but not today. If it were the height of summer, that would be one thing, but in this season when freezing days still continued, it wouldn't be unusual to leave food scraps sitting for a few days.
The ingredients for the sashimi had been a different fish, and scraps of that fish had also been found in the waste basket.
(The officials can't be said to be fabricating things, but that doesn't mean the cooks are necessarily telling the truth either.)
Unfortunately, there were no witnesses.
Because the official's wife would scold him for eating rare delicacies, he often ate alone in his room. The cook had brought the sashimi, but the only person who had seen its contents was a servant who caught a glimpse from afar—and there was no way to tell what kind of fish the chopped-up pieces were.
And the victim had apparently collapsed after finishing everything—about a quarter hour after eating, to be precise.
A servant who had come to bring tea found him convulsing, his lips turned blue as he struggled to breathe.
(Looks like pufferfish poison.)
So, for Maomao, the information Gaoshun had brought simply wasn't enough. She decided to hold off on voicing her thoughts and instead asked Gaoshun to go gather more information.
(What on earth could it be?)
As she muttered to herself, a refined face suddenly appeared beside her.
Without thinking, the nerves in Maomao's face went taut.
"Sorry, but that face of yours—"
"—it wounds even—"
"—me."
Jinshi said, his hair still wet. Suiren was busy dabbing at his dripping hair with a hand towel, murmuring, "Oh dear, oh dear."
Maomao forced her face back to its usual shape. Apparently she'd been making a face like someone had just ripped a screaming foreign carrot out of the ground.
"You seemed awfully eager listening to what Gaoshun had to say."
Jinshi remarked, looking somewhat unamused.
"When someone tells an interesting story, people naturally lend an ear."
"Wait a moment—you—my words—"
Mumbling something garbled,
Jinshi stared at her with an expression of pure
shock. She couldn't quite make out what he said at the end.
"Well then, since it's gotten late, I'll be taking my leave."
Maomao bowed to Suiren, who was busy wiping Jinshi's hair, and then trotted out of the room.
The next day, she found herself hoping Gaoshun would bring an even more interesting story.
And thinking about how she couldn't resist her own curiosity, even when it involved a death, she wondered whether the old man would have scolded her for it.