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Maomao the apothecary was diligent-minded, if nothing else. If she kept her head down and did her job, she could hope to leave this place someday, if never, she assumed, to gain royal notice. Sadly, Maomao’s thinking was—let us say naïve. She didn’t know what was going to happen. No one does; that’s the nature of life. Maomao was a relatively objective thinker for a girl of seventeen, but she had a few qualities that continually dogged her. For one, curiosity; and for another, a hunger for knowledge. And then there was her budding sense of justice.
They had weighed their lives against their beauty, and in the end had lost them both.
None of this sprang from any masochistic proclivity for pain, but was fueled entirely by the interests of a girl whose intellectual curiosity inclined rather too much in the direction of medicines and poisons.
She couldn’t imagine what they wanted with such a thing, but the subject was one she would be more than happy to entertain. Forcing herself not to smile, she replied, “I need three things: tools, materials, and time.” Could she make a love potion? Oh, yes. Yes, she could.
She wasn’t the only one who showed no special desire for him, but she was the first to regard him as though she were looking at a worm. She seemed to think she hid the feeling well, but the disdain was clear on her face.
“Perhaps,” Gaoshun ventured now, “I might ask you to stop regarding Master Jinshi in the same manner in which you might look at a worm.” Damn. They noticed.
Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting tended to have one of two reactions to Maomao: either they were terrified of her, or they were terrified of her but still fought back. Guess I went a little too far.
And then, quietly so that no one else would hear her, she gave Consort Lihua some advice. A secret technique one of the older ladies of the night had told her it “couldn’t hurt to know.” Sadly, Maomao lacked equipment of the necessary size. But this particular technique seemed the perfect thing for Consort Lihua. Lihua’s face went as red as an apple when she heard it. What Maomao might have told her was a subject of lively debate among Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting for some time afterward, but it was all the same to Maomao.
The young man crossed his arms and lost himself in thought. He was so lovely, he could have been a painting. It almost seemed wrong for heaven to have given a man such unearthly beauty. And to then cause that man to live and work as a eunuch in the rear palace was deeply ironic.
Maomao was probably the only one here who sometimes tried poisons for fun. She was, let us say, an exceptional personality. If I had to go, I think I’d like it to be by blowfish toxin. The organs mixed into a nice soup...
Maomao backed away a half step and found herself up against the wall. She looked to Gaoshun for help, but the reticent aide was sitting by the window, idly watching birds flying through the sky. The obviously artificial nature of the pose made him look most disagreeable. I’ll have to sneak him a laxative later.
The old lady really seemed to want to make Maomao a courtesan. She’d been maneuvering toward it for years now. She kept telling Maomao to quit wasting her time with medicine already, but that was never going to happen. What, was she simply going to swap her interest from pharmaceuticals to singing and dancing? Not a chance.
