The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 13 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Joka and Her Little Sister

About a month after Joka showed her broken jade tablet to the two customers, her little sister Maomao came back for the first time in nearly a year.

“I’m home,” she announced with all her usual enthusiasm. She’d written ahead to say that she would be visiting the Verdigris House, so Joka was awake, though rubbing her eyes. There were no customers this afternoon, so most of the courtesans were getting a few precious moments of sleep.

“Maomao, it’s been forever!” Pairin made to grab her up in a hug, but the old madam got between them.

“Hrmph! You don’t look so different, considering it’s been a whole year.”

“Same to you, Grams.”

“Can’t believe you didn’t stop in the moment you got back to the city. I could almost start to think you didn’t care about me.”

“I have a job, you know!”

Maomao did indeed look very tired.

“You’re too young to be looking so exhausted,” the madam remarked.

“I had something else I had to do first thing this morning.”

“Hrm. I trust you’re not so tired that you forgot my gift.” The madam, stubborn as ever, stuck out a wrinkled hand as if to say Hand it over.

“Here.” Maomao showed her a cloth-wrapped package. Inside was what looked like an ash-gray stone.

“Well, I’ll be! You really did it! You brought me ambergris!” The old lady reached for it, but Maomao held it away from her.

Several other courtesans had gathered in the lobby in hopes of scoring a souvenir from Maomao as well.

“What’s the matter? Give it to me,” the old lady said.

“Oh, I don’t know. A piece of ambergris this large and this pure? I feel like it might be a little much to just give it to you.”

“How can you be such a miser after all I’ve done for you?”

“Here I thought selling you our medicine nearly at cost was plenty of repayment for that.”

“I’m renting you a space in one of the most prominent brothels in the pleasure district! Can’t you even bring yourself to be grateful?”

“It’s a landlady’s job to look after her tenants. And we’re practically suffocating in that tiny shop!”

So began one of the legendary arguments between Maomao and the old madam. Joka gave Pairin a look that said Oh boy. Here we go.

“Say this will cover a year and a half of our rent, or no ambergris,” said Maomao.

“A year and a half! Huh! For that fingernail-sized pebble? More like two months,” spat the old lady.

“Are you blind, Grams? How much do you think a chunk of ambergris this big would go for on the open market?”

Maomao had managed to make this about the rent. The man named Sazen might be running the Verdigris House’s apothecary shop at the moment, but the rent and other sundry expenses fell to Maomao and Luomen.

“What’s going on in here?” someone asked. Speak of the devil. Sazen had just come in.

“Exactly what it looks like,” Pairin told him. “Maomao and the old lady are going at it over the rent. Maomao hired you, so you’d better be rooting for her.”

“Why, Pairin, your color looks exceptionally good today.”

“Hee hee hee! I had a visit with an expert last night, someone I haven’t seen in a good year! It’s been so long, I took the opportunity to take care of him as thoroughly as I could.”

Her “specialist” was some soldier, Lihaku or something. He’d apparently been in the western capital all last year, just like Maomao. He was also, so one heard, indefatigable in bed, the perfect match for Pairin.

“Sazen, isn’t Chou-u with you?” Pairin asked.

Chou-u was a little boy, someone else who was here thanks to Maomao. A brothel was generally not a place to look after children, but enough money could convince the old lady to do just about anything, including accepting this young charge. He was well-liked by the ladies of the Verdigris House for his charming ways and drawing skills. He lived with Sazen in a shack near the establishment—Luomen and Maomao had occupied it once, but since they both lived and worked at the palace now, Sazen had inherited it along with the shop.

“Oh, him? He’s been going through a phase recently. I told him Maomao would be coming back today, but he just went off somewhere.”

“Really? I guess that explains where Zulin is, then. That girl! She spends all her time playing. As if she didn’t have her apprentice duties to attend to. Oh, it’s terrible!” Pairin groaned, making a face that suggested it wasn’t all that terrible.

“All right, Grams,” Maomao was saying. “Five months. Don’t forget it!”

“Grr! Who raised you to be such a grasping, covetous girl?”

The negotiations between Maomao and the old madam appeared to have reached their conclusion, so Joka and Pairin went over to them. It looked like Sazen had something to talk with her about, too, but he was willing to let her “sisters” have pride of place.

“Maomao! Have you lost weight?” Pairin said, clasping Maomao to her own voluptuous body in a hug.

Maomao looked like she might suffocate, but she managed, “I was always like this. I just put some meat on my bones when I was at the palace because they fed me well.”

“Really? Well, anyway, we need to sit down for tea and talk about everything that’s happened in the past year.”

Pairin was about to bustle Maomao to her own room, but Joka intervened. “Let’s talk in my chambers.”

“Oh?”

Pairin had just been with a customer last night—or more precisely, until this very morning. There probably hadn’t even been time to change the sheets on her bed. Joka, despite having been born and raised in a brothel, despised men. The last thing she wanted was to have a long, winding conversation in a room that still reeked of the previous night.

Joka’s room was lined with bookshelves. In order to entertain the civil service test-takers, she had to read not only the Four Books and Five Classics but all manner of learned books.

“For your souvenir, Joka, I brought this,” Maomao said, presenting her with a massive tome. It was a classical text, one Joka didn’t already own.

“I’m impressed you found this,” she said, and she really meant it.

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy.” Maomao gazed into the middle distance. Her stay in the western capital, which she had initially told them should be just a few months, had turned into an entire year—one that had included an insect swarm. Things had been tough, all right.

“What about me? What do you have for me?” Pairin asked, her eyes shining.

“This is for you, Pairin.” Maomao handed her a piece of what appeared to be silk worked with delicate embroidery. What could this be?

“What have we here?” asked Pairin.

“Underwear from an exotic land.”

“Oh, boy!”

This evidently met with Pairin’s approval. Her eyes sparkled even more brightly.

Maomao sipped her tea, but she seemed to be looking everywhere at once.

“What’s wrong? You look restless,” said Pairin.

“I was just thinking, I don’t see Meimei anywhere.”

“Ah! Meimei. Yes.” She was the last of the Verdigris House’s Three Princesses. “She got bought out.”

“What?!” Maomao was so shocked, she spilled her tea.

“Aw! What are you doing?” Joka said, mopping it up with a handkerchief.

“Sorry. It’s just...that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“I guess it would be. It sounds like you were pretty busy in the western capital, and Meimei told us we didn’t have to let you know, so we didn’t.”

“Okay, but...bought out? Seriously? By who? Was it that regular of hers from way back? It wasn’t some freak, was it?”

Maomao’s distress was understandable: Courtesans aimed to have their contracts bought out by good patrons, but not all patrons were good. From that perspective, though, Meimei hadn’t done too badly.

“Someone they call the Sage,” Joka said.

“The Sage? You mean, like, the Sage?!”

“Oh, Maomao, you know him?”

In an effort to regain her composure, Maomao began mumbling something to herself. When Joka listened closely, she realized it was the names of medicinal and poisonous herbs.

“What was he doing buying out Meimei? Was he a customer here?” Maomao asked.

“Ah, yes,” Pairin said. “Your daddy—er, I mean Master Lakan brought the Sage here before he left for the western capital.”

The Sage, known for his skill at the game of Go, had asked Lakan if there weren’t any suitable opponents for him—whereupon Lakan had brought him to the Verdigris House and pointed out Meimei.

“Meimei did spend all that time playing Go with that filthy, grinning, stubble-faced old bastard, after all,” Joka said.

“Yes, he may have smelled like he hadn’t bathed in three—well, make that ten—days, but she saw his play style up close,” Maomao reflected.

Meimei had always played down her abilities, but she might have grown even stronger than the departed Fengxian.

“Hee hee hee! Listen to you both. You’re terrible,” Pairin said with a laugh. “After he’d been coming here about six months, the Sage said he wanted to buy out Meimei’s contract.”

“Not that Meimei was eager at first. The madam gave her a nudge—she said there wouldn’t be a better patron down the line.”

“So that’s how it happened.” Maomao sounded like she could accept that.

“The Sage is an acquaintance of Master Lakan’s, and they still live in the capital, so you should be able to visit her anytime you like. That’s why she didn’t send you a letter.”

“Huh. I’m still pretty shocked,” Maomao said. Joka didn’t blame her.

“Meimei is very lucky, I’d say. The Sage said he’d take her on as a pupil,” she remarked.

“A pupil, huh? Even if he meant that, his family can’t have been pleased.”

“His wife has passed, and he has no children. Plus, he claims that he’s long since cut ties with the family who came out of the woodwork when he became the ‘Go Sage.’ I gather he has lots of pupils, but I think our dear sister Meimei will be able to hold her own.” Meimei was a full-fledged courtesan, and she had always been the best at the Verdigris House when it came to reading the subtleties of other people’s emotions. “Besides, with Master Lakan’s introduction, who could interfere?”

Maomao didn’t seem to like that, but she did seem to accept it. Courtesans tended to think of being bought out as the be-all and end-all, but life went on after the money was paid. Better to have a backer than not.

“Meimei is definitely the most newsworthy thing that happened around here. Let’s see, what else was there...”

Joka and Pairin proceeded to fill Maomao in on everything that had happened in the past year: how Sazen was managing with the apothecary shop, somehow. How Chou-u had become rather contrary lately. How, with Meimei having moved on, Zulin’s older sister was now the third best-selling courtesan at the Verdigris House.

“I guess the only other thing would be the effects of the locust swarm. Prices have gone up all around,” Pairin said.

“Oh, I see,” replied Maomao. More or less everything they had said was something she expected; other than the news about Meimei, she hardly seemed surprised by any of it.

It wasn’t just Meimei—it was safe to assume that soon enough, proposals would come for Pairin as well. The changing of the guard at the Verdigris House was inevitable, yet Joka couldn’t shake the sense that she was being left behind, alone.

Not that she had any intention of letting her anxieties show. She had to keep her customers convinced that she was a proud woman of noble blood. It wouldn’t do for her to be whining and whimpering.

Joka did, however, have her doubts: namely about the woman in front of her, Maomao. She’d always assumed her “little sister” was in the same position as she was; she had even looked after Maomao when she was but a suckling infant, out of sheer pity.

But Joka and Maomao could not have been on more different paths in life. Each had a courtesan for a mother, but Joka had chosen the path of the courtesan herself, whereas Maomao had taken the way of the apothecary. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Joka had had no other choice but the courtesan’s path, whereas for Maomao another possibility had been available. If Joka had had someone who could have been to her what Luomen was to Maomao, would her life have been different?

It wasn’t that Joka regretted the life she had in light of this hypothetical other existence. Nor did she feel any jealousy toward Maomao. That would be to strike down something Joka herself had helped to raise up.

While Joka was ruminating on all this, Maomao was telling Pairin about everything that had happened in the western capital: how she had gone as an assistant to the medical officers. How the freak strategist had been there (and what a pain it had been). How a man known as “the older brother of Lahan” had been along. She spoke about the swarm of insects and being attacked by bandits.

The fact that she seemed to skip over certain parts of the story was probably because there were things she couldn’t reveal publicly. Naturally, serving at court would bring one into contact with things that must not be spoken of—although there were plenty of customers at the Verdigris House who didn’t seem to understand that and would chatter quite freely.

“Okay, slow down. What’s all this about being attacked by bandits? What happened exactly?” Pairin pressed.

“Pairin, dear sister, you can see Maomao doesn’t want to talk about it. Leave it alone,” Joka said. But she had a question of her own: “Who’s this person you keep calling Lahan’s Brother?”

That was the only thing that she was really curious about. Lahan’s Brother came up in Maomao’s stories more than any other name—if you could call it a name.

“He’s the older brother of Lahan, and he definitely worked harder than anyone else on this trip,” Maomao said.

“I don’t follow.”

“He worked harder than anyone, and you left him behind?” Joka inquired. Whoever Lahan’s Brother was, he had certainly been through—and put up with—a lot.

“Sooo, Maomao, don’t you have anything else to tell us?” Pairin cooed.

“What do you mean?”

Maomao might not have realized it herself, but she seemed subtly different now from before she had left. Joka had noticed it, and it certainly wouldn’t escape Pairin, who was as sensitive as anybody to the telltale signs of love.

“Mmm, going to play dumb, are we? Then maybe I need to tickle you until you beg to tell me what you’re hiding!”

“Urk...” Maomao went pale. To be tickled by the foremost bedroom performer in the Verdigris House—indeed, in the whole pleasure district—would leave no one unscathed, not even Maomao.

As far as Joka was concerned, she wouldn’t push Maomao when it came to secrets she couldn’t divulge—but as for other subjects, even Joka felt a certain mischievous impulse. Of course, if Maomao really didn’t want to tell them, Joka wouldn’t genuinely force her. But Maomao’s expressions were unmistakably different from before.

“It’s... It’s really nothing much,” Maomao said.

“Oh, tell me another one. Do you really think you can lie to your big sister? You! Are! In! Love!”

Pairin’s hands ran up and down Maomao, who reacted like a hissing cat. “St-Stop that! I mean it.”

So she really didn’t intend to tell them, even in the face of Pairin’s tickle assault. That only seemed to inflame Pairin further; her eyes gleamed and grew ever more intense.

If Pairin was sensing something from Maomao, there was definitely love afoot. Joka believed she and Maomao had similar views of romance, and she knew that if she were to ever fall in love herself, she would certainly not want everyone teasing her about it. One more reason she tried to keep that word, love, at arm’s length.

That rapport inspired her to take pity on Maomao; she didn’t want to see the young woman pressed any harder on this subject. “Dear sister, I think she’s had enough,” Joka said. “If she were to wind up with any...strange proclivities thanks to you, who knows what it might lead to later?”

“Oops! You might be right about that.”

Maomao, having endured the tickling, lay twitching on the floor. After a few long seconds, she heaved herself up with a resentful look at Pairin.

“Anyway,” Joka said, “this is Maomao we’re talking about. If she has a love story, I’m sure it’s not fiery and passionate enough to be exciting to you, Pairin. If I had to guess, whoever he is, he just kept bugging her and bugging her while she waited patiently in hopes that he would give up already, but she finally lost that battle of wills.”

Maomao blinked and looked at Joka. Joka had been merely talking off the cuff, but apparently she’d been right on target. She heaved a sigh.

“Maomao, you’re very fortunate. This person is clearly very persistent, extremely stubborn, doesn’t know when to quit—”

“Gee, he sounds like a real catch,” Pairin interjected, but Joka ignored her.

“—and is good enough that even you were willing to let him win.”

Maomao looked down, which was something Joka knew she did when she was trying to hide embarrassment. It made Joka smile a little, but at the same time, she found herself feeling jealous. They had been raised in the same environment, with the same values, so how had their paths diverged so sharply?

“I don’t know who he is, but he must know how to tough it out,” she said.

In fact, it was a lie to say that she didn’t know who Maomao’s partner was. There was a time when Maomao had briefly returned to her apothecary shop, and one particular noble had visited her incessantly. When she’d entered palace service, it had been at his instigation. So Joka knew—it was her small act of kindness to pretend she didn’t.

“I will warn you of one thing, though. Don’t be content just taking. He may say he’ll give you anything, but don’t act like that’s the end of it. Take what you get and become your best self. If you settle for just getting, you’ll never be more than second- or third-rate.”

Although she was speaking to Maomao, Joka felt like she was talking to her past self. Maomao cinched her lips tight. She was a smart young woman; she didn’t need Joka to tell her this. She would have figured it out on her own.

“Well, well. Listen to you, Joka!”

“Pipe down, sister.” Joka pursed her lips. Pairin had started getting handsy with Joka instead of Maomao now, so she pointedly got up and moved to sit in front of her desk. She took a sip of her tea, which had gone cold.

“By the way, something happened practically the moment we got back,” Maomao said, trying to change the subject. “They found this corpse—the guy had been hanged. Murder, apparently. And right in the freak strategist’s office.”

Apparently Maomao had been so shaken by the experience that she was even willing to bring up the freak strategist of her own accord.

“Yikes,” said Pairin.

“Well, this conversation took an unexpected turn,” Joka said—not that she wasn’t intrigued.

“Did Master Lakan kill him?” Pairin asked in a tone that suggested this would not have surprised her at all.

“This guy was a soldier, a real beefcake. That old fart could never have done it by himself,” Maomao said.

“True enough.” Lakan was not a physically strong man. If he were behind this killing, he would have had to get some of his subordinates to do it.

As it transpired, the man had been a three-timing womanizer.

“What a creep,” Pairin said.

“I’m not sure we’re in a position to criticize,” replied Joka.

It was hardly unusual for a courtesan to entertain many, many customers in a single night. She might even beg a few minutes away from one client, claiming she needed to go to the toilet, and sneak off to entertain another customer.

“So all three of the women he was fooling around with got together and killed him? Serves him right!” said Pairin.

“To be perfectly honest, I thought he’d brought it on himself. Not just that, but all three of these women were pretty girls with black hair. He couldn’t have made his type more obvious if he’d tried.” Maomao munched on a tea snack.

“Black hair?” Joka asked, unconsciously touching her own dark locks. She thought of her client from a month before. He’d been a soldier too.

“Hoh! You’re every bit as beautiful as I would expect of one of the most storied residents of such a famous house. Your lustrous black hair is particularly stunning.”

“Say, Maomao. Do you happen to know the dead man’s name?” she asked.

“Hrm, what was it again?” Maomao thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure it was Wang Fang.”

Fang. That was the name of the man Willow Boy had introduced to her.

Joka heaved another sigh.

“What’s the matter, Joka?” Pairin asked.

“I think that man might have been a customer of mine.”

“Wow! Really?”

“Talk about your coincidences,” Maomao said, almost as surprised as her sister.

Joka felt a creeping gloom. She asked herself what to do, wondering if she should bring this up or not—but after a moment of internal debate, she took out the trick box from her desk.

“Isn’t that the thing you said was a memento of your mother?” Maomao asked.

“Something like that.” Joka took out the broken jade tablet and placed it in front of Maomao.

“Aaand there it is. The proof that she’s a nobleman’s illegitimate child,” Pairin said in a voice dripping with amusement—she knew Joka’s routine with this stone.

“A month ago, a man named Fang asked me to sell this to him, but I said no.”

“Really?” Maomao’s eyes went wide and she studied the old tablet.

“He came to me because he thought I might be some forgotten child of the Imperial family. I kept it ambiguous, like I always do, and sent him on his way. I see... So he’s dead.”

He’d certainly had the air of a playboy; Joka almost had to admire the nerve of stringing along three different women at once. Still, it nagged at her—and Maomao was even more sensitive to such things than Joka. She continued to study the jade intently. Then she said, “Joka. What kind of man did you say gave you this jade?”

Joka had told Maomao of the story just once, many years ago.

“According to the woman who bore me, he was a handsome man with a noble air. According to the other courtesans, he was good-looking but smelled like an animal. By their accounts, he didn’t really seem much like a member of the Imperial family.”

Maomao clapped her hands. “That’s right. You said you thought he was a bandit who must have stolen this thing and unloaded it here.”

“His being a thief seems more likely to me than his being an Imperial family member,” Joka replied. She had no real interest whose seed she had sprung from. At least, not anymore.

“So he smelled like a beast. Any other distinguishing features?”

“He had gnarled hands. No one of true noble lineage would have weathered hands, would they?”

“I’m not sure that’s quite true.”

“Huh?”

Maomao was still staring at the stone. Well, she was the one who served in the palace. She probably knew more about the Imperials than Joka did. Pairin, evidently not very interested in the conversation, was stuffing her face with tea snacks.

Maomao was muttering to herself: “From the color, it looks like this is rokan jade. Valuable stuff. It looks like the surface was shaved down before it was broken. I’m guessing the original size was about nine centimeters.” Finally she said, “Joka, may I touch it?”

“Go ahead.”

“May I chip it a bit?”

“What do I care if it gets a little more beat up at this point?”

“Pairin, lend me your hair stick.”

“Here you go.”

Maomao jabbed the jade with the tip of the hair stick—Joka had said she didn’t care if it got a bit more damaged, but she was still surprised by Maomao’s enthusiasm. Then Maomao measured the depth of the score. “This is jadeite,” she declared. She handed the hair stick back to Pairin with a “Here, thank you.”

“Did you learn anything?” Pairin asked.

“This tablet is made of jadeite, a hard material. The damage to the surface didn’t occur naturally; it was deliberately scraped away, and that was done before the tablet was broken.”

“My, my. I wonder why they would scrape the tablet. It would only make it less valuable.”

“I don’t know why they would break it in half, but I suspect I can explain the scraping.” Maomao’s fingers brushed the tablet’s broken surface.

“Well, why?”

“Nobles and imperials sometimes find their lives in danger from members of their own family. Someone wanted to make sure nobody knew Joka was the offspring of such a family.”

Throughout history, imperial succession had frequently inspired wars in which blood was washed away with more blood. The books in Joka’s room furnished endless examples.

“And he only scraped the surface? Why wouldn’t he just throw it away?” Pairin asked lightly.

“Some things you can’t bring yourself to get rid of. Even if you want to.” Joka put the jade tablet away—that was enough of that.

“You don’t happen to know where the other half of that tablet is, do you, Joka?” Maomao asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“Didn’t think so.”

There seemed to be something Maomao still wasn’t telling Joka—but if she was keeping it to herself, then it probably meant that she couldn’t talk about it, or at least that she thought it was better not to. Joka didn’t push her. If every mystery surrounding the jade were solved, Joka would no longer be Joka—and until she was ready to retire from the courtesan’s life, being Joka was how she supported herself. She needed a bit of mystery.