"It's gotten quite warm, hasn't it?"
The one leisurely soaking his feet in a bucket of water was the quack doctor. He had even been considerate enough to use a medical text as a fan.
"Not yet, it hasn't."
Maomao set the laundry basket down on the medical office desk.
It was still the rainy season, and the real heat was yet to come. Still, the dampness made the discomfort easy enough to understand.
The coming season, with its warmth and high humidity, was a perennial headache for Maomao.
Even herbs she had carefully dried would end up damp before she knew it, and medicines, if she let her guard down even slightly...
Mold.
Would begin to grow.
A dismal season.
And yet, that was precisely why Maomao had come to the medical office.
"Oh? And what might you be doing, young lady?"
The quack doctor spoke to Maomao as she pulled something from the basket.
"Nothing in particular."
What Maomao drew from the basket was bamboo charcoal—she had stuffed as much of it in as could fit, alongside a full set of cleaning supplies.
"Let's give this room a good cleaning."
She had come specifically because she could not bear the thought of precious medicines growing mold.
"Huh?"
The quack doctor's face immediately fell.
The quack doctor was not a bad person. If anything, he was a good-natured one.
But being pleasant and being competent were two entirely different things, as far as Maomao was concerned.
At the back of the room where the quack doctor worked, there was a medicine storeroom. Three walls lined floor to ceiling with medicine cabinets—it was a sort of paradise for Maomao, though hardly a perfect one.
The storeroom kept a large supply of medicines on hand, but they were used by the quack doctor. Plenty went unused long enough to gather dust or fall prey to insects.
And the current season was the dry goods' greatest enemy. The slightest lapse in attention, and mold would spread in no time.
Maomao didn't particularly enjoy cleaning.
Most of her visits to the medical office were just to kill time anyway, and she had no reason to help out here.
But it had to be done.
Fueled by that sense of duty, Maomao swung her feather duster.
"Miss, you don't have to go out of your way to do this. You could just ask someone else to handle the cleaning."
When the disinterested-looking quack doctor said something like that, Maomao inadvertently made the kind of face she normally reserved for Jinshi. To put it simply, it was the look she might give a stagnant puddle teeming with larvae.
"Eep!"
(That won't do, that won't do.)
Scruffy doctor or not, he was still a superior. She had to maintain a show of respect on the surface. Otherwise, he might not offer her rice crackers next time she came.
The Inner Court's snacks were far too sweet, with barely any salt to them.
"You're welcome to ask someone else to help, but what if someone switched out the medicines for something else?"
"..."
The quack doctor fell silent.
If she said that much, then her own unauthorized comings and goings to clean the place were equally questionable — but she kept that to herself. She couldn't afford to be thrown out.
After dusting off the shelves, Maomao opened each cabinet one by one and dry-wiped the interiors. Anything that had clearly gone bad, she discarded and noted on a wooden tablet. The medicines she rewrapped in fresh wrapping paper and returned to their original positions.
(They use good paper here.)
Paper that could be stored long-term was expensive, and most of the paper circulating among commoners was disposable, shoddy stuff. It could only be used once and offered no preservation, so the common folk generally preferred to do their bookkeeping on wooden tablets.
rather than paper. Firewood was abundant, and among it were pieces thinly sliced for easy lighting. That was what they used. Once they were done, the tablets could simply serve as firewood.
In the past, paper had even been exported to other countries — until the previous emperor, no, his mother the empress, banned the felling of trees used to produce high-quality paper. The ban had since been relaxed to mere restrictions, but even so, the supply was far from sufficient.
As for why the empress had banned the logging, it was said that no official at the time was reckless enough to even ask.
And the fact that restrictions remained in place even now suggested to Maomao that there must be some reason behind it.
As a result, most paper today — with the exception of certain luxury goods — was made from other types of wood, grass, and rag cloth. These couldn't yield as much as the original trees and required more labor to process, driving up costs. And because cheap knockoffs produced by cutting corners flooded the market, paper had earned a poor reputation: merely expensive and utterly useless.
The paper was indeed more convenient, but that was why its adoption rate hadn't even reached half.
"Whew."
"All done? Little lady."
The quack doctor called out to Maomao in a cheerful voice as she took a breather.
"No, there's still half left."
"..."
With so many varieties, there was no way to finish in a single day, and Maomao left the remaining work for tomorrow.
She set the charcoal she had brought in the room to let it absorb moisture. Still not enough, though, so she asked the quack doctor to place an additional order.
Just as Maomao was about to leave— A girl who looked about Maomao's age was waiting in front of the medical office. She was tall but had a somewhat childish face.
"Which household's servant is she?"
The clothes she wore were plain but not the kind distributed within the rear palace. If that was the case, she must have been working directly under one of the consorts.
At the very least, it was a face Maomao had never seen before.
"...Hm?"
Maomao narrowed her eyes slightly as she studied the unfamiliar court lady.
The court lady unconsciously tilted her head in return, so Maomao pretended not to notice.
"Maybe I'm imagining it, but something feels familiar about her."
The quack doctor emerged from the back going "Oh?" and hurried over. He took a cloth-wrapped bundle from a shelf in the room and handed it to the waiting girl.
"Thank you very much."
The court lady bowed politely. Her voice was somewhat high-pitched.
The quack doctor smiled and waved after the court lady as she walked away.
"Do you know her?"
The quack doctor was the only medical officer in the rear palace, but his practice was practically dormant.
"Ah, she's a court lady who serves the consort that arrived recently. Like you, little lady, she seems to know a bit about medicine."
"I see."
Maomao concluded that if she simply took the ingredients home instead of relying on the quack doctor, she would be able to prepare the medicine herself.
The quack doctor looked worn out, tapping his shoulders as he rummaged through a cupboard to assemble some snacks. He poured fruit water from a ceramic jug into cups and brought them over.
"When you're worn out, sweets are always the way to go, right?"
he said, and with a bamboo spoon, cut a portion of kinton, placed it on a piece of paper, and handed it to Maomao.
(This guy's a soft touch.)
Sweet potatoes were hard to come by this time of year, so the fact that he had made kinton with them was remarkable enough, but he also casually used high-quality paper in place of plates.
Maomao pinched off a piece of kinton and popped it into her mouth, then gazed at the circular grease stain left on the paper. The surface was smooth and glossy—clearly excellent quality.
"You use some really nice paper here."
"Oh? You can tell?"
She had only mentioned it offhand, but the quack doctor ran with it.
"This stuff is made at my family home. We supply it to the imperial court, you know. Pretty impressive, huh?"
"Very impressive."
Since it was being used right here in a place like this, that much had to be true.
Still, Maomao genuinely thought the paper was fine—not mere flattery. At her family's medicine shop, she always picked out the least terrible wrapping paper from among the cheap, disposable options. For keeping out moisture and preventing powder from spilling, something like this would be ideal. But considering their clientele, she had no choice but to cut costs on anything besides the medicine itself, or it would eat into their food budget.
(Maybe I could get a discount through a personal connection?)
While indulging in that slightly underhanded thought, Maomao sipped the fruit water. The lukewarm sweetness went down unpleasantly. Deciding it wasn't to her taste, she boiled some water and made tea instead. The physician's office kept fires burning at all times, so in that respect at least, it was convenient.
"The whole village works together to make paper. There was a stretch where we even thought about shutting down entirely, but we managed to keep going, so it all worked out."
The quack doctor launched into the story unprompted, as though he hadn't been asked at all.
In the old days, simply making paper was profitable. So they chopped down trees left and right, pounded the wood into pulp, and devoted themselves to papermaking. Selling abroad earned more than the domestic market, so they exported more and more as trade goods. During the quack doctor's childhood, the family had been wealthy enough to buy him all the sweets he could eat.
But whether that was what did it or not, they incurred the wrath of the Empress and could no longer fell the trees they used as raw materials. With no alternative, they made paper from different materials, but the result was inferior quality. Even the trading merchants grew angry, and from that point on, they stopped placing orders.
It was a complete reversal from the prosperous days they had enjoyed before. The quack doctor's grandfather, who had served as village chief, was berated relentlessly by the villagers who demanded he do something about it.
The village chief understood that continuing papermaking as before was impossible. But the villagers were not mature enough to accept that reality—they simply directed all their helpless fury at the village chief and his family.
Maomao poured tea into her bowl with a gentle trickling sound as she listened.
"The loneliness was because you went off to the Inner Palace."
They had moved the village to a place suited for papermaking, but without being able to do that, the location had no purpose. They decided to relocate, but they lacked the funds to do so.
Around that time, the Inner Palace was seeking ladies-in-waiting, so the elder sister had left.
"She kept laughing and saying things like 'I'm going to become the Mother of the Nation,' but in the end, we never got to meet again."
Even on new land, the problem was how to set up their operations. They needed even more capital, and then the younger sister announced she, too, would be following her elder sister into the Inner Palace.
"There was nothing to be done about it, so I decided to go myself."
When the Inner Palace expanded, eunuchs had to be recruited as well. Eunuchs, being even harder to come by than ladies-in-waiting, reportedly sold for higher prices.
(She had it rougher than I expected.)
Maomao thought this to herself as she drained her tea.
Cleaning was the sort of task where the more you did, the more dirty spots you uncovered. The medicine shelf took two days to finish, but what caught her attention next was the room beside it.
The quack doctor generally kept things tidy, but his attention to detail left something to be desired. It took three days of removing cobwebs from the ceiling and carefully wiping down the walls, and after that came organizing the tools.
The quantity of tools was far greater than she had imagined. The quack doctor had apparently crammed every tool he rarely used into one of the rooms.
(What an awful waste.)
She had assumed the neighboring room was completely empty, but it turned out to be a mountain of treasures for Maomao. Medical texts were piled up in abundance, and so it was decided that Maomao would happily set about sorting through them while the quack doctor reluctantly did the same.
And so, seven days passed from the start of cleaning with the pouting quack doctor in tow.
A eunuch arrived while the quack doctor was grinding medicine with his characteristic V-shaped brows furrowed. When she looked to see what it was about, he was being handed some kind of letter.
"Oh my, what's this?"
The quack doctor thought he might be able to slack off now, and eagerly unfolded the letter.
"Who's it from?"
Maomao asked out of mere politeness.
"It's from my sister."
The quack doctor showed her the rough-textured paper. Maomao thought the surface looked like nori seaweed. It resembled the cheap-quality paper you'd find sold on the streets.
(I'm pretty sure she said she was making paper.)
She figured they had sent it since it was family, so a flawed reject would be good enough—and then— "!?"
The quack doctor stared at the letter with a shocked expression, his eyes devouring every word on the page.
When Maomao stood beside him and asked if something was wrong, his shoulders slumped. He collapsed into his chair, then tossed the letter onto the desk, his head hanging low.
"You may lose your appointment as official supplier."
That was all it said, in simple terms.
Just days ago, he had bragged to Maomao about it — how his family's paper mill supplied the imperial palace.
"How could this happen? They were just saying they'd be able to produce so much more paper too."
Whether or not you carried the title of official supplier made a huge difference in future sales. The upper classes used high-grade paper, and they were exactly the kind of people susceptible to that kind of branding.
"So when you say they're going to produce a lot more — does that mean they cut corners?"
Maomao tilted her head and touched the rough surface of the letter.
"Of course not. He bought a cow and was going on about using it for the work. Swapping manpower for a cow — what difference does that really make?"
Making paper involved a lot of heavy labor. Replacing a person with a cow wouldn't change all that much.
"Still, looking at this, I can't imagine anything here is fit for the palace."
Maomao held up the letter that had arrived for the quack doctor, letting it flutter.
Poor-quality paper would tear at the slightest dampness. The surface was covered in lint, and the handwriting was practically illegible.
"......"
The sight of the quack doctor falling silent told her he understood it was junk.
"What a mess..."
He laid his head on the desk.
Maomao figured this was no time for cleaning and turned back to polishing her mortar, all the while studying the surface of the letter.
Cheap paper circulating among commoners was full of impurities, with coarsely ground plant fibers. Because they didn't bother grinding them fine enough, the paste couldn't bind properly, and the whole thing fell apart.
But looking at this, the fibers seemed to have been crushed evenly. The thickness was uniform, indicating careful and meticulous preparation. And yet the surface was covered in lint, and when she tugged at a corner, it tore away effortlessly.
Maomao reread the letter with her head cocked.
The letter described the process as unchanged from the old methods, using the same materials as always. It was a sister's letter asking her brother what to do, but unfortunately, now that he was only half a man, the brother could do nothing but panic.
"How exactly is the old process done?"
After giving her mortar a thorough wipe-down, Maomao set it back on its shelf and lit the brazier to boil some medicinal tea for a short rest.
"It's the same as ordinary papermaking. It's just that our family is particular about the method of crushing materials and how we make the glue. I can't tell you about that part."
(So he's not going to blab about that sort of thing.)
Maomao thought to herself as she reached for the tea canister on the shelf. She was browsing through it, wondering which tea would be best, when kuzu powder appeared from the back. She took it out and placed it in a tea cup, then relit the brazier under the kettle and brought it to a boil.
"Do you have special standards for the water as well?"
"Yes. We carefully draw spring water and adjust the temperature so the glue sets at just the right consistency. Beyond that, it's a secret."
So he really is a quack, Maomao thought, as she set down another tea cup. She poured in the boiling water and, before it could cool, stirred vigorously with a spoon. A thick, viscous liquid took shape.
Kuzu tea was ready.
"Do you make the glue by boiling rice-wash water?"
"No, I properly dissolve wheat flour. Rice-wash doesn't clump well enough."
The words slipped out, and the quack doctor clapped a hand over his mouth.
Whether it was rice-wash or wheat flour made no difference to Maomao.
Maomao set the finished kuzu tea in front of the quack doctor, "So, where do you keep your cows?"
she said.
"That sort of thing, even I don't know."
The quack doctor gave her a look that said, "Why kuzu tea of all things?" but began sipping the still-hot liquid. Because the tea was thick and sticky, it clung to the cup and proved difficult to drink.
"Young lady, you got the proportions wrong on this. I can't even drink it!"
Maomao handed a spoon to the protesting doctor.
"My apologies. Then, allow me to show you a method to make it easier to drink. Would you try copying what I do?"
"What are you going to do?"
Maomao took the spoon, licked it, then plunged it into the cup and stirred. She repeated this several times.
"That's awfully bad manners."
Despite grimacing, the quack doctor imitated her. After several rounds of putting the spoon in his mouth and stirring, he seemed to notice the change.
"It's not so thick anymore, is it?"
"I thought so."
"Looks like water, huh?"
While he gazed at her with a look of admiration, Maomao told him.
"Kuzu-yu and paste are quite similar, aren't they?"
"They're not completely unalike. If you mixed in saliva, would the paste become runny again too?"
"Exactly that."
The quack doctor gaped at her.
"Exactly what?"
The slow-witted quack doctor tilted his head while stirring his cup.
(He still doesn't get it even after I've explained this much) Wondering if he still hadn't figured it out, Maomao decided to teach him just one more thing.
"Cows store a lot of saliva inside their mouths, don't they?"
"Now that you mention it, that's right."
"Why not check where it's drinking water? Just in case."
Signaling that she wouldn't say another word, Maomao cleared away her cup and promptly headed back to the Jade Palace.
The quack doctor seemed to finally catch on, scribbled something on a piece of paper, and bustled out of the medical office to send off his letter in a hurry.
(Wonder if the cleaning will be done by tomorrow) As she thought that, Maomao watched the stout little eunuch hurry away.