The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 11 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Tianyu

After some discussion of how to handle Dr. You’s shy streak, it was determined that Jinshi should grant him some object he could wear or carry.

“As long as all I have to do is wear it!” said the good doctor, but he was effectively convinced. Maomao thought such a gift was likely to get him even more fawned over than just saying he was there because of the Moon Prince, but she wasn’t sure he realized that.

They should just give him a sash or a jade ring to put on his belt or whatever and be done with it.

It had been decided that Dr. Li should get something as well, and he, for his part, was much honored. When, after work, they’d told him about it, he’d actually refused.

“S-Surely there is no reason for me to have anything!”

“Wait! I can’t be the only one who gets something!” Dr. You exclaimed. Dr. Li looked at his boss uneasily.

“Is it just the two of them?” Tianyu piped up. “If Dr. Li doesn’t want his, I’ll take it. My name’s Li too.”

It was indeed; the fact that Dr. Li and Tianyu shared the same surname was no end of trouble. And Maomao certainly wasn’t privy to Dr. Li’s personal name. Not to mention Lihaku was there as well, meaning there were no fewer than three Li’s right there in that room.

“You’re not getting it!” Dr. Li snapped. It couldn’t be easy, having such...distinctive personalities both above and below him.

“Well, it’s getting late. I think we should be on our way home,” said Chue, packing her belongings. The clinic was closed for the evening. Chue was highly capable at everything she did, and that seemed to extend to cleaning a room.

Then she asked, “Say, what’s this package?” Maomao thought Tianyu had brought it back with him.

“Oh, that’s just...” Tianyu tried to swipe the package from Chue, but it fell. The contents went rolling across the floor.

Everyone looked on in silence. They were lucky that Basen and the other guards had gone to the bathroom and weren’t there for this.

“Say, young lady,” said Lihaku, giving Tianyu a grim look. “You think I should restrain this guy?” He looked like he meant it.

“No, let’s see if we can find out what’s going on here first,” Maomao said, taking another look at the scattered contents of the package. It was a human arm. Just an arm, a single human body part lying there on the floor. It didn’t get much weirder than that, but the people in the room at that moment included the doctors, Maomao, Lihaku, and Chue.

“Care to explain the arm?” Maomao asked.

“I mean, look at it. I don’t think it can be reattached, not with the way it was cut off,” Tianyu said, picking up the appendage and blithely showing them the state of the stump.

It was a mess, all right; it didn’t look likely to stick even if they tried to reattach it.

“The grasshoppers chewed through a rope that was securing a sign. The sign dropped down and the arm popped right off. The guy it used to belong to said he didn’t need it anymore, so I took it.”

“You...took it.”

The guy had probably been in the pits of despair at losing his arm; Maomao figured he’d thought Tianyu would take it to give it a proper burial. Not to do...whatever this was.

“Niangniang, I thought maybe you and I could dissect it tog—”

He was interrupted by Dr. Li, who plucked the arm away from him—then dropped a knuckle on his head.

Ooh! He’s strong.

“Yow! Ow! I was just trying to learn something!” Tianyu objected.

“That’s enough out of you! We’re going to bury this, and bury it properly! And don’t just leave that there! It stinks!”

“Aww...” Tianyu glowered at Dr. Li’s back.

Dr. Li’s gotten stronger, Maomao thought. People sometimes underwent transformations when they were pushed beyond their limits. Dr. Li had seemed like he might be too fragile for this assignment, but he had transformed into good material indeed. Then again, maybe Dr. Liu had seen it in him all along—that would be impressive.

Tianyu, meanwhile, could be a little bit frightening—just look at what was happening—but if there was one thing good Maomao could say about him, it was that nothing ever fazed him. Also, they absolutely could not give him Jinshi’s token.

Dr. Li dragged Tianyu out of the room to go bury the arm. The clinic wouldn’t see anyone as long as the two of them were away. If any patients saw two of the medical personnel burying an arm, who knew what rumors would start? They asked one of the guards to stand watch while they worked specifically so that no one would see them.

Dr. You turned to Lihaku and Chue with a smile. “Let’s just pretend we didn’t see that, shall we?”

“We shall! Far be it from Miss Chue to have loose lips!”

“I understand,” Lihaku said.

The doctors’ dissections were technically forbidden, and were supposed to be secret. At least these two would know how to play along.

Maomao studied Dr. You, who smiled so readily as he tried to keep things under wraps. “Hm? Something the matter, Niangniang?”

“It’s not Niangniang, sir. It’s Maomao.”

“Really? All right, Maomao, then. Maomao. Right. I’ll remember that. Anyway, is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine, sir. I was just thinking, you seem to be awfully nice to the younger doctors.”

There was a hint of contempt in her words, but Dr. You seemed unruffled; he kept smiling. “Ah, you mean Tianyu. It was Dr. Liu and I who drew him into this world, so I feel some responsibility toward him. Tianyu’s quick to gripe about nepotism, but he’s benefited more than anyone else from his connections.” He crossed his arms and nodded as if to affirm his own point.

“You and Dr. Liu got him into medicine? What connections do you mean?” Maomao asked, puzzled.

“Oh, you don’t know?”

“As much as Tianyu likes to stick his nose into other people’s business, he doesn’t volunteer much about himself.”

Then again, Maomao hadn’t asked either.

“You want to know about Tianyu, then? Since you’ll be working with him in the future?” Dr. You asked as he cleaned up his tools.

“Do you think that’s all right?”

“If I know Tianyu, the only reason he hasn’t volunteered the information is because nobody’s asked him.”

“Fair enough.” Maomao couldn’t criticize; much the same applied to her.

“He comes from a family of hunters. I remember going with Dr. Liu to get some bear gall once. We found a kid—maybe you could call him a young man, just—dissecting the bear all by himself. Careful, precise, totally unbothered by any of it. He plucked out only and exactly the organs we needed. Even Dr. Liu was impressed. And that boy was Tianyu.”

Dr. You continued to clean up as he spoke, so Maomao kept making medicine while she listened. “That’s how you discovered his talent and put them on the path to becoming a physician?” she asked. “But that makes it sound like he got the job because of his skills, not his connections.”

“It was his connections, in a way. I said to his father, the hunter—I said, ‘Ever thought about sending your boy to be a doctor?’ I was only joking, but he went pale and started to shake. If he knew what the doctors did in secret, maybe it didn’t sound like such a joke to him. The way his fear manifested, though... It was strange.”

Why would he be afraid of a doctor’s work? Yes, it could be unsettling to the average person, but Maomao would have expected a hunter to understand.

“I asked him why he was so upset, but he wouldn’t tell me. In fact, he practically chased us out.”

“What did you think was going on?”

“For the moment, there was nothing for us to do but go home—but Tianyu came chasing after us. He begged us to make him our apprentice. He knew his father would oppose it, but he was ready to run away from home to do it. Of course you know, Maomao, that Dr. Liu isn’t the kind to just let a little boy tag along and abandon his family.”

That’s true. She could practically picture it.

“Tianyu said to us that he was a descendant of Kada, that doctoring must be his vocation.”

“Kada, sir?” Maomao couldn’t help it; she stopped working and looked at Dr. You.

“That’s right, but not the famous physician of legend. The Kada who was punished for cutting up the body of an imperial prince to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. You do the work of a doctor, Maomao. I’m sure you’ve heard the story.”

“Yes, sir.”

Long ago, there had been a doctor called Kada because of his superlative medical knowledge and skills. But the combination of skill and ambition can make a man curious, and Kada’s curiosity got him severely punished.

If Kada had in fact been a real person, there was no reason his descendants shouldn’t still exist—but they might very well be invested in making sure that they didn’t repeat the mistakes of their forebear.

“So Kada’s descendants became hunters?” Maomao asked.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Hunters have been connected to doctors’ work in the gathering of medical materials since ancient times. It’s perfectly plausible that Kada might have become involved with some hunter’s daughter, and when a name is passed down, why shouldn’t it be the more famous name?”

Maomao had to admit that made sense.

“So you made Tianyu a doctor because he was Kada’s descendant?” she asked.

“No, not at all. Neither his talent nor his lineage was a reason to just make him a physician. If anything, the reason...was his eyes.” Dr. You stopped and heaved a sigh. He was holding a small knife slick with human fat. He must’ve used it in the course of his work. “Dr. Liu said that if we left him to a hunter’s life, in time he would come to carve up humans just as he did bears or deer.”

Maomao was silent at that. She couldn’t deny it. In fact, she was all but convinced that he absolutely would have done exactly that.

“By nature, the human animal follows its desires. By educating a person, we create what we call rationality. But even then, not everyone can overcome their appetites.” Dr. You wiped the knife clean and put it in a basket. “Tianyu’s appetite takes the form of curiosity, and he can’t overcome it. It was Dr. Liu’s considered opinion that when he tired of animals, he would turn to people. Who knows how many folks a hunter living alone in the woods could dismantle before anyone noticed?”

“You don’t think that might still be a problem even as a doctor?” Maomao asked frankly.

“That’s a matter of the path he’s guided down. At least, that’s what Dr. Liu said. Any ship will steer straight if you keep a firm hand on the rudder. Dr. Liu can be a harsh man, but he has a softer side.”

“If you say so,” Maomao replied, not quite believing it. She did, however, believe the story of Tianyu’s origins. “Why are you telling me all this?” Officially, she was nothing more than help for the real doctors. There was no need for Dr. You to go out of his way to let her in on this story.

“Oh, no reason. Seeing the fruits of Luomen’s teaching just put me in a talkative mood, I guess.”

He knows Pops? Dr. You had been a physician for a long time; it wouldn’t be surprising if he and Luomen knew each other. I wonder... If I hadn’t had my old man to raise me, would I have looked the same way to them?

Much as she hated to admit it, she and Tianyu shared a similar temperament in some ways. If Luomen hadn’t been there, running his apothecary shop in the pleasure district, and raised her himself, she had no idea how she might have turned out.

“They must be about done burying that arm,” Dr. You observed. “Shall we go back?”

“All right,” Maomao said, and got ready to leave. She knew Tianyu would soon return, probably shuffling in with his shoulders slumped, but she resolved not to show him any particular sympathy. If anything, she intended to kick his ass and tell him to get a move on.

The visit to the clinic had gone without a hitch—but there was still the trip home, and it would be a long one.

The problems started almost as soon as Maomao stepped out the clinic door.

“Miss!” Lihaku shouted, grabbing her and pulling her back. At the same moment, a ball of mud landed with a splat at her feet.

“You brought the bugs! It’s your fault!” a child shouted. Maomao looked around, but she couldn’t tell where they were.

“Miss Maomao,” said Chue, who had come up behind her. “I saw who it was. I could still catch them. What do you want me to do?” She was asking Maomao because it was Maomao who had been targeted.

I’m sure glad it was me, she thought. Maybe the child had chosen her for a target because she looked like the slowest moving one. They were just lucky they hadn’t picked Basen.

“It didn’t even hit me,” she said. “There’s no need to haul them in, Miss Chue.” She supplemented this with a look that said: Absolutely do not go after that child.

“Understood!” That was easiest for Chue, as well. What good would it do them, chasing down and collaring a child here and now? Once they had caught them, they would have to punish them. All well and good if they could be let off with a gentle smack on the behind, but if there was a pretext—if, for example, they got violent with a lady-in-waiting serving the representative of the Emperor’s younger brother—that modest spanking could quickly become a hundred lashes. Maomao didn’t want that, and Chue probably didn’t either.

Although knowing her, she would do it if I asked.

Sometimes, though, discretion truly was the better part of valor. It might sound like she was being soft—but Maomao thought the world could use a bit more softness sometimes.

We brought the bugs, did we?

“Funny, considering the bugs came from the west,” she muttered. It didn’t make sense.

“Yes, and we came from the east,” Chue added.

That wasn’t really what the child had meant by bring. Those who believed in charms, curses, and other superstitions saw only a plague of insects that coincided with the arrival of people in the western capital who didn’t belong there. Of course they would blame the swarm on the visitors.

Maomao would have loved to sit the kid down and explain the reality, but she doubted she would get through to them. She doubted they would even try to understand what she was saying.

Instead she ignored the mud ball entirely and turned toward the carriage. “Things are getting ugly here,” she said.