White and red phlox blossoms bloomed in wild profusion. Among them, some had shed their petals and bore small, round black seeds.
Maomao pressed onward through them. A swath of tall grass stretched out ahead.
A sound like the tinkling of tiny bells drifted through the air — the song of insects.
Maomao parted the grass with her hands. At the center of the meadow, she spotted a figure crouching low.
The girl was tall but had a childlike face. She pinched up insects one by one and dropped them into an insect cage. It was only as she reached for the third that she finally noticed Maomao standing behind her.
"What's wrong? Want to help me collect them?"
Kosui grinned and held out the insect cage for Maomao to see.
Maomao shook her head and slowly bowed. When she raised her face and opened her mouth to speak, Kosui shook her head and pressed a finger to her own lips.
"Can't you let me stay like this a little longer? We only just became friends, after all."
"..."
Kosui seemed to have caught on to something from Maomao's demeanor. A faintly wistful expression crept across her innocent smile.
"I suppose that won't do."
From far away, voices were calling out. The court ladies were searching for Lady Rouran.
Kosui stepped in front of Maomao and held out the insect cage.
A bell-like chime rang out.
"This insect, you know — when the female lays her eggs, she eats the male. And yet it sings such a beautiful song."
Kosui lowered her lashes and whispered into Maomao's ear.
"Just like this place, isn't it?"
The voice that spoke was no longer the innocent voice of a young girl — it was the slightly hoarse voice of a woman. And then— "Bad insects bring misfortune. It's the apothecary's job to stop them."
Kosui walked past Maomao. When Maomao turned around, the innocent girl was nowhere to be seen.
A woman with a piercing gaze stood surrounded by several handmaidens. A lustrous robe was draped over the woman's shoulders. Rouge was applied to her unpainted lips, and upon her forehead— Flower marks— were carefully painted on.
When she put on the headdress adorned with the exotic foreign bird's feather, the familiar lady-in-waiting was no longer there.
"Lady, let us return quickly."
"I know."
A hard woman's voice left Maomao behind.
There was a clear wall there.
Between an ordinary court lady and a high-ranking consort, without the master-servant relationship, there was no connection whatsoever.
And there was no connection between Maomao and the consort wearing the feathered headdress.
The consorts departed as their long tail feathers swayed in the wind.
As though Maomao didn't even exist.
Then only the sound of a bell rang through the insect cage.
"A wicked bug will bring misfortune."
What had Koshi meant by those parting words?
Maomao grunted as she polished the silver vessels. If she stopped grunting and let her hands rest, the head maid Hongniang would appear from somewhere and likely give her a thrashing, so she didn't stop. Lately, those gouging knuckle blows had been improving steadily and really hurt.
(A wicked bug bringing misfortune.)
Was that some kind of metaphor? Or did it mean exactly what it said?
Misfortune was nothing to Maomao. In this world, bad things happened because there was always some root cause behind them.
However, being called a bringer of misfortune by someone who was a pharmacist—that did sound like it could refer to illness too.
(There are diseases carried by bugs.)
Was that the meaning?
(Or was she just teasing?)
It could be either.
Still, Maomao thought about the girl called Koshi. If one said she knew nothing about her, then she knew nothing. If one said she knew a fair amount, then she knew a fair amount.
In other words, she couldn't quite figure her out.
Night came without the picture becoming any clearer, and the Emperor paid a visit. He wore a complicated expression as he looked at Gyokuyou's swollen belly.
Apparently he had been faithfully visiting Rifa's chambers as well lately.
Maomao sipped the porridge flavored with fragrant vinegar and glanced at the Emperor.
He was gazing at his daughter, Princess Lingli, with a look of pure adoration.
There had been one occasion, when Gyokuyou was absent, when the Emperor had asked Maomao whether there was any way to determine the sex of the child in the womb.
All Maomao could do was shake her head and say she didn't know.
She remembered how the Emperor had murmured "I see" and let his gaze drop slightly.
If both senior consorts were carrying children, then the sex and order of birth would be what mattered.
If Gyokuyou's child came first, that would be one thing — but its sex was unknown. What if it was a girl?
If she were to voice an honest opinion, it was clear that the Emperor wanted Gyokuyou to bear him a boy.
But that didn't mean he was neglecting Rifa. Between Gyokuyou and Rifa, it wasn't so much a matter of favoritism — politically speaking, Gyokuyou simply seemed to serve the Emperor's purposes better in various ways.
With Princess Lingli perched on his knee, blowing on a pinwheel to make her laugh, he looked like a devoted father — but he was a man of the court. For those of noble birth, blood ties were both an ally and an enemy. Even if a son were born, history was full of cases where the consort's relatives would view the child's father as an obstacle and move to eliminate him.
At the very least, his thinking was probably that the risk of such interference from Gyokuyou's or Rifa's relatives was comparatively small.
(What a hard man to figure out.)
And then he would move on to the next consort.
Yesterday, it should have been Consort Loulan's turn.
"..."
"What's wrong?"
The spoon that had been scooping the porridge had gone still, and Hongniang asked with a slightly puzzled look.
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Maomao set her porridge bowl on the table and rinsed her mouth. Then, for the next dish, she set to work.
Here in the Jade Pavilion, Maomao was operating as the official taster — but what about the Crystal Pavilion? She was worried whether the maids in Rifa's quarters were actually up to the task.
She stole a glance at Gyokuyou, then closed her eyes.
Next time, she decided, she would ask Gaoshun about it.
The next day, Gaoshun came alone and held various consultations with Hongniang. Jinshi seemed to be busy, apparently having some other matter to attend to in the palace.
According to Gaoshun, the court ladies newly assigned to Rifa's retinue consisted of a middle-aged woman past forty, along with three younger court ladies.
He said they had been the ones who trained Rifa and the former head attendant back in the day, so that much was taken care of.
Maomao vaguely pictured someone who was like Hongniang and Suiren combined and divided by two, then clasped her hands toward the Crystal Palace's attendants.
"More importantly— Little Cat— "
Gaoshun said, the furrow between his brows deeper than usual.
Maomao felt a bad premonition and couldn't help but furrow her own brows in return.
"As for Consort Roulan's— sister— " he said.
Maomao flinched.
"Do you know of a girl who looks like this?"
Gaoshun pulled a piece of paper from inside his robe and unfolded it for Maomao. The portrait drawn in fine lines depicted a face that looked somewhat familiar. She was slender, with refined features. Her height was listed as five shaku, six sun.
"...This is—"
She resembled one of the court ladies who had once accosted Maomao. She had been tall as well.
Maomao recalled that the court lady had indeed been among the group led by Koushou that she had spotted during the Azure Rose incident.
"So this person is the real Shisui."
"Yes. It seems she normally goes by— Suirei— —is the name she uses."
Being the child of a concubine, her standing must have been a narrow one. If she had carelessly received a single character in her name, others might have resented her for it. All the more so if her half-sister had become a high-ranking consort.
(What a strange feeling.)
Shisui—no, Consort Roulan—had spoken of her sister with such delight.
Maomao, for her part, had never seen the real Koushui smile. She always looked somewhat listless, wearing nothing but bored expressions.
Would Koushui chat happily if it were Consort Roulan? Or was it one-sided adoration on the part of Consort Roulan? There was no way to tell.
"Whatever happened to that person?"
At Maomao's question, Gaoshun glanced around the room. There were no other maids present—only a single eunuch in attendance.
"It's said her mother was a woman from the common streets, and seems to have already passed away, but..."
Gaoshun spoke in a halting manner, as though reluctant to tell Maomao.
(Maybe I shouldn't ask.)
Yet even as she thought that, her swelling curiosity wouldn't be denied—she fixed Gaoshun with a stare, silently pressing him for an answer.
"It seems the one who raised Koushui was a former court physician."
"A former court physician?"
That would explain the sister who, as Consort Roulan had mentioned, knew so much about medicine. Presumably she had been trained in pharmaceutical knowledge just like Maomao.
If that was the case, all sorts of unpleasant possibilities began to surface.
"Yes. Apparently she was such an exceptional physician that she was sent to study abroad in a foreign land."
Studying abroad—now that was something. Maomao thought of her own father, Luomen. He too had spent years studying in the West.
An uncomfortable, creeping sweat began to bead on her, but Gaoshun continued.
"She incurred the wrath of the Empress and was dismissed from her position."
"..."
"And after being dismissed—"
"Ah, that's enough."
Maomao felt the urge to cover her ears.
She was on the verge of giving in to her curiosity, but the scale tipped toward self-preservation after all. Inside Maomao, a warning bell was ringing.
"The reason for her dismissal was that she got a lady-in-waiting in the inner court pregnant."
"..."
Gaoshun had gone and said it. He'd said it outright, with no holding back.
He was wading deeper and deeper into territory from which there was no turning back.
"Don't you find it odd that he became a eunuch?"
"..."
"In the past, court physicians were the only ones exempt from castration."
Gaoshun kept piling on things she didn't want to hear.
"After that incident, there were no more exceptions."
He had taken responsibility and been stripped of his official rank.
After that, every physician who entered the court was to be castrated.
(A pretty lenient punishment for an Empress Regnant, if you ask me.)
Maomao broke into a cold sweat as this question took root in her mind. Gaoshun quickly supplied the answer.
"The lady-in-waiting who became pregnant was reportedly a girl who had barely passed the age of ten."
It was the kind of story that made you want to spit in disgust. Were there that many people in the world with a taste for little girls? Were men really that desperate for youth? She wanted to spit those words out. Still, it would be a problem if peculiar tastes were the only thing proliferating throughout the world.
Maomao knew of roughly one person with an irredeemable taste for young girls. That person's reputation still lingered within the rear palace to this day.
"The reduction of the physician's sentence was said to have been a proposal from the late Emperor."
(Well, of course it was.)
"The child was taken in by the physician, and the lady-in-waiting remained in the rear palace."
(Huh?)
Something snagged in Maomao's mind.
Hadn't she heard a similar story once before?
"At the time, the lady-in-waiting had been a maid serving a high-ranking consort."
She knew what became of that maid. The consort had resented her, she couldn't leave the rear palace, and she spent her days clinging to nothing but ghost stories as her sole amusement — until she died.
"The former high-ranking consort has since been granted to Shouchou as a concubine."
And Loulan was that woman's daughter. And when it came to Shisui — (Hypothetically, if Shisui's mother was the child the physician brought back from the rear palace —) The previous emperor had only two children.
That assumption was overturned.
"Maomao, surely you understand by now, having heard this much."
Maomao neither nodded nor shook her head. She simply stood there, blankly staring into space.
When the tangled web of relationships was laid bare, Gaoshun wore an expression as though a weight had been lifted from him — looking for all the world like he was saying, *Now you're an accomplice too.* Maomao glared resentfully after Gaoshun's retreating figure as he walked away looking somewhat buoyant.