The Apothecary Diaries

After the Festivities

"A very energetic food taster you are."

Maomao had just washed her mouth out and was staring vacantly into the middle distance when a most unexpected, and altogether underemployed, eunuch appeared. She couldn't believe he had found her so far away from the banquet.

Not long before, Maomao had detected poison in the dish that was served just after the raw fish. She'd spat it out and retreated from the celebration.

I guess most ladies-in-waiting would be chastised for doing something like that.

She wished she could have been more discreet, but it simply wasn't possible. This poison was the first she'd had in so long, and it was inviting and delicious. She could practically have just swallowed it. But if a food taster eagerly swallowed whatever poison she came across, she wouldn't be able to do her job. Maomao had needed to remove herself from the situation before things got out of hand.

"Good day to you, Master Jinshi." She greeted him with her usual expressionless appearance, but she felt her cheeks weren't quite as stiff as usual; maybe a bit of the poison was still in her system. She resented that this might make it look like she was smiling at him.

"I daresay it's you who's having a good day." He grasped her by the arm. He looked, in fact, rather upset.

"May I ask what you're doing?"

"Taking you to see the doctor, obviously. It would be absurd for you to consume poison and simply walk away."

In actual fact, Maomao was the picture of health. As for the toxin in that dish—as long as she didn't actually swallow it, it could hardly hurt her. But what would it have done had she swallowed it instead of spitting it out? Curiosity coursed through her.

There was a good chance she would be starting to feel a tingle by now.

I shouldn't have spit it out. Maybe it wasn't too late to claim some of the leftover soup. She asked Jinshi if this might be feasible.

"What are you, stupid?" he said, scandalized.

"I would prefer to say I'm always eager to improve myself." Although she recognized that not everyone would endorse that sort of self-improvement.

In any event, Jinshi now had little of his characteristic glitter, even though he had replaced the stick in his hair and he was wearing the same elegant clothes as earlier. Wait—was his collar ever so slightly askew? It was! So that was it—the scoundrel! He'd no doubt claimed he was cold as a pretext to do something smarmy.

At the moment, there was no honey in his voice, and no lilting smile on his face.

Is that sparkle something he can turn on and off? Or was he simply tired after all that had happened? Maybe the reason for his absence from the banquet was because he had spent the entire time accosting—or being accosted by—ladies-in-waiting and civil officials and military men and eunuchs. Yes, that's what Maomao would go with. Talk about a man who kept busy.

I wouldn't want to be in his position.

Beautiful he may have been, but from where she was standing he looked much more like the young age she suspected he was. Younger, perhaps. She would have to ask Gaoshun to make certain that from now on, when Jinshi visited her, it was only after he had been up to something indecent.

"Let me tell you something. You walked out of there looking so spry that one person actually ate the damn soup wondering if there was really poison in there!"

"Who would be that stupid?" There were many different kinds of poison. Some didn't manifest their effects for quite a while after they were consumed.

"A minister is feeling numbness. The place is in an uproar."