The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 14 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Yo

The tall new girl proved tenacious. Maomao finally had to admit defeat, and agreed to meet her on a day they were both off work. They were from different departments, and there were plenty more of these new court ladies where this girl had come from. It was easier than trying to schedule a break with Yao and En’en.

“I’m Yo. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the new girl said to Chue, who was there just as she’d promised. It was a very helpful introduction, since Maomao still didn’t remember the girl’s name.

Yo was less talkative than Changsha, the other new girl. Maomao tended to be a passive partner in conversations anyway, so silence naturally prevailed between them.

If we weren’t going to say anything, maybe we should have just met in the pleasure district.

Instead they had decided to meet at the dorm and walk—and the entire trip went by in silence. It was quite a ways from the dorm to the pleasure quarter, but Maomao, characteristically, still felt it would be a waste to get a carriage. She came from poverty—it was a hard mindset to change.

I guess I couldn’t ask a young woman to walk around alone in the pleasure quarter.

Maybe she could have had Chue come with them, but instead she would meet them at the Verdigris House. Unlike Maomao, who had been born and raised there, a decent girl wandering around the pleasure district alone was liable to get attacked. Maomao could put up with a little awkwardness.

As they went down the main streets, past the willows swaying by the canal, and finally past the small street stalls, the kinds of people they saw began to change.

Maomao and Yo went through a towering, shimmering gate. Guards standing on either side gave them a sharp look as they passed. Maomao recognized one of them, so she waved to him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said with a nod. “What, playing procurer now, Xiaomao?” He gave Yo an appraising glance.

“I’m not here to sell anyone!” Maomao replied.

Yo looked intimidated by the exchange. She gave Maomao a doubtful stare, but Maomao really wasn’t going to sell anybody into prostitution. She wished Yo would just relax.

Truthfully, though, an ignorant laywoman passing through the gate to the pleasure district could only be heading in to sell herself.

The air was thick with exotic perfumes and languid sighs. There were prostitutes seeing off customers heading home in the morning, apprentices bringing in the lanterns for the day, and pet birds singing from second-floor windows.

They walked down the district’s main thoroughfare—Maomao like she belonged there, Yo like she was very frightened.

“Try to walk straight ahead and keep your eyes forward,” Maomao said. “If anyone grabs your hand, shout as loud as you can.”

“Y-Yeah... Okay...”

After a bit more walking, they arrived at the Verdigris House.

“Oh! Maomao. Been a while.” Ukyou, the head of the menservants, greeted her. He was a good-natured character who had served the establishment a long time, and helped keep an eye on Sazen and Chou-u. “Interceding for another young lady? I hope she’s less trouble than the last one.”

“I’m not selling her,” Maomao growled again. Yo continued to look worried.

Why should they assume that Maomao was here to sell off any young girl she brought along? The “last one” who had been so much trouble was Zulin’s Sister—who’d indeed been up to no good the last time Maomao had visited. She wondered if the madam’s discipline had had any effect on the girl.

“And how is our troublesome friend doing?” she asked.

“Keeping her nose clean for now. She knows she’s not going to find another brothel that’ll take her in with her sister.”

Evidently, Zulin’s Sister was not such a fool that she couldn’t do the math. The old madam might be a miser, but few places were as well-off as the Verdigris House.

Yo was looking at them uncomfortably, but Maomao still had another question for Ukyou.

“Did they ever find that thief?”

She meant the one who had been Zulin’s Sister’s customer before breaking into Joka’s room.

“Yeah, they found him. An acrobat, spends most of his time earning small change by doing stunts. No way he had enough money to actually patronize the Verdigris House.”

“So what was he doing here?”

“Someone else must have put him up to it. Asked him to break into the brothel and steal something they were after.”

“And the person who commissioned him?”

“Haven’t found them. The acrobat was a lizard’s tail, you might say.” Ukyou held up his hands in defeat.

Anything else would be outside of our jurisdiction.

Well, nothing to be done, then. Maomao came back to the main point. “All right, is Sazen around? I wanted to see him.”

“Hmmm, not yet. This time of day, I think he might be in the field out back.”

“Thanks.”

Yo, still looking intimidated, followed Maomao toward the field. “U-Uh, he looked like he probably outranked you. Was it really okay to talk to him like that?” she asked anxiously. Maomao admitted that she didn’t speak to Ukyou with any unique respect. But she’d been on conversational terms with him for so long, if she started talking deferentially now, he’d only laugh at her. If anything, he would probably try to stop her from making him seem important.

“It’s not really a question of what’s okay. That’s how I was raised. The way I talk in the palace, I do that because it’s for work.”

“For work.”

Since Maomao accepted that she was at a job in the palace, she tended to be careful to speak politely to everyone, whether they were older or younger than she was. It was easier than risking a lapse into uncouth language.

They went around the back of the Verdigris House. In the field near the old shack where Maomao used to live was a man of middling build. “There he is,” Maomao said (politely). Then she called, “Heeeey, Sazen!”

She gave a big wave, and Sazen slowly worked his way upright. He’d been harvesting garlic. In addition to taking the edge off fatigue, it could serve as a vitality enhancer, so it was an essential herb around the pleasure district. Plus, a big, fat bulb of garlic was delicious in cooking.

“What is it? Here to check the inventory?” he called back.

“No—I brought someone who wants to meet you.” Maomao presented him with Yo.

“Me?” Sazen’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem to recognize her.

Yo didn’t look any more impressed than he did. “Uh, who is this person?” she asked.

Maomao glowered at her. “A somehow shady-seeming man who’s been an apothecary here for a few years now.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m being insulted?” Sazen said, staring at Maomao.

“That’s not him. I mean a shady-looking man! He’s lanky and has a handsome face, but half of it is covered and you can never quite tell what he’s thinking.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m being called not handsome?”

Maomao pointedly ignored Sazen’s questions. Instead she stroked her chin and tilted her head. “Sazen... Is you-know-who here?”

“You know, it just so happens he is.”

Maomao looked into the shed.

“Phwooo! Something up? Sazen?” came a sleepy and altogether unguarded voice.

A pretty-boy type with half his face covered emerged from the shed, yawning. He didn’t look like much; his belt wasn’t even tied properly. They could catch glimpses of his loincloth.

“That’s Kokuyou,” Sazen said of the swaying, but cheerful, cosmopolitan man. “He showed up yesterday, but because it was late, I let him stay the night. If you’re not looking for me, maybe you’re looking for h—”

“Doctor!” Yo cried the moment she saw him, and rushed over to him...

...only to punch him as hard as she could. There was a thump that sounded loud enough to make Maomao wonder if someone had broken their teeth—or their fist.

As if that wasn’t enough, Yo jumped on the toppled Kokuyou and started pounding him.

“Hey, stop that!” Sazen cried.

What the?! What does she think she’s doing? Dammit!

Maomao and Sazen between them pried Yo off of Kokuyou. She was weeping piteously, dripping snot.

“Ahh! Yo, is that you? My, how you’ve grown,” Kokuyou said, smiling in spite of the blood pouring from his nose. The bandages covering his face had come off, revealing his awful smallpox scars. It was very in character for him to keep smiling even after someone had punched him, but it was also sort of unsettling. “If you’re here in the capital, that must mean...”

“Yes, that’s right. It happened exactly as you said.” Yo’s fists, covered in blood from Kokuyou’s nose, were quivering. Then she said something that Maomao never saw coming. “The village was destroyed.”

Her sleeves had rolled up during the fighting: She had smallpox scars just like Kokuyou.

Maomao decided to start with some talking. They couldn’t very well have their discussion in the middle of the herb patch, so they went into the shed. The shed boasted only the absolute minimum of furnishings, so they turned over pots and buckets to make up for the lack of chairs.

“Sorry it’s so filthy,” Sazen said.

“Well, excuse me,” Maomao replied. She and her old man had once lived here.

“Isn’t there anywhere a little cleaner? Like, maybe we could rent a room in the Verdigris House?” chirped Chue, who had shown up somewhere along the line. She had never met Sazen or Kokuyou before, but inserted herself into the conversation like she belonged there. Very Chue-esque.

Admittedly, the shed was pretty cramped with five people crammed inside. Yo’s eyes were still puffy, but her breathing had calmed. Her hands were a bit swollen as well from hitting Kokuyou.

As for Kokuyou, he had some cuts in his mouth, but none of his teeth were broken. Yes, it had been a woman attacking him, but he hadn’t resisted at all, and getting hit would still hurt—but he himself continued to grin. He had cloth shoved into his nostrils to stop the bleeding; not a very heroic look.

“All right. I take it that you know each other, Yo and Kokuyou. Mind explaining what’s going on?”

Maomao poured hot water into some tea bowls and handed them out. Chue gave her a look as if to ask if she didn’t have any snacks, but, well, she didn’t.

“Shall I do it?” Kokuyou asked. Yo was still sniffling and didn’t seem in any position to tell a story.

“If you would,” Maomao said.

“Maomao, I told you that the village shaman took a nasty dislike to me and chased me out of the place, right?”

Yes, she recalled that he had said that. She’d met Kokuyou maybe two years before, when she’d helped him as he was being refused entry to a ship because of his scars. That had been on the way home from her first trip to the western capital.

“Yo and her family lived in that village,” he said.

“And the village was destroyed?” Maomao felt she couldn’t leave the subject alone. “Was it by a plague of insects? I know you said you were blamed for the plague, and they chased you out.”

“Yeah, yeah... That, uh, may not be the whole truth. I think it was...”

“The disease. Smallpox,” Yo said.

“Smallpox,” Maomao repeated. A highly infectious, highly fatal illness. First came a fever, then patients developed a rash, and even if they survived that stage, the rash would form pustules and leave lifelong scars. “That’s when you got the scars on your face too, Kokuyou?”

“No, I had my encounter with smallpox before I came to their village. Dangerous business, smallpox, huh? I thought for sure I was gonna die!” As usual, he didn’t sound the least bit concerned about it.

“We lived in a small pioneer town far to the northwest of the capital,” Yo volunteered. “We cut down the forest to make fields, but it was a very new village, and the fields weren’t enough to sustain us yet, so we sold the wood we cut down to buy food from outside.”

“I see. One of those frontier towns,” Maomao said, beginning to understand why the village had been lost. “You’d be the first to be hit when there was a shortage of food.”

Many pioneers were poor folk who had no land of their own.

Then a plague of locusts occurred.

Food got more expensive.

The undersupplied pioneer village could no longer afford it.

They starved.

That made everyone weaker.

Which made them sick.

A place like theirs would be the first to be abandoned during an outbreak of communicable disease. It would vanish before its name could even be added to the maps. Soon everyone would forget them, and it would be as if they had never existed.

Hence no word would come to the central government, and there would be no problem.

“I did hear talk that some smallpox cases had appeared in the vicinity just before I left. I did wonder...” Kokuyou said.

“But then you left our village didn’t you, Kokuyou?” Yo said, her voice low. “Why?! Why did you leave us there?! We couldn’t call a doctor, so we just died in droves!” Fresh tears started spilling from her already swollen eyes.

“I was chased out,” Kokuyou said, calmly and placatingly. “The village headman never liked me much—didn’t feel there was enough food to share with me. If I hadn’t beat feet, I probably would have ended up as a sacrifice in some ritual. He even claimed that my treatments were evil spells.”

It hadn’t been Kokuyou’s fault. Yo could blame the headman for chasing him away.

She knew that perfectly well. But for Yo, still in her early teens, her emotions could still overwhelm what she knew rationally.

“So what?! If only you had stayed...”

She stood up, tears plp-plp-plping to the ground.

After Kokuyou’s banishment, the smallpox had spread, and the villagers had succumbed. There had been nothing they could do but watch helplessly. One could only imagine the living hell that Yo had experienced.

“If you... If you had been there for us, Kokuyou...”

Kokuyou had already had smallpox, and supposedly those who had caught it once couldn’t catch it again. With his medical knowledge, Kokuyou might have been able to save lives.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Kokuyou apologized, but it wasn’t his fault. His banishment had been decreed by the headman, and when he was told in no uncertain terms to leave, he’d had no choice but to go. The beating Yo had given him was only a way of acting out. She knew that. But in spite of that knowledge, her impotent helplessness had driven her to take out her anguish on the grown-up Kokuyou.

Still, jumping on him and pounding him? She looked like she was raised better than that.

If it had been anyone but Kokuyou, she could have expected them to fight back.

“Why, though?! Why didn’t you stay with us?”

“I’m sorry.”

He may look flaky, but he’s surprisingly mature.

Kokuyou smiled at the puffy-eyed Yo, then clasped her head to his chest.

“All right! Sorry to interrupt this very emotional moment, but Miss Chue has a question,” Chue broke in. “You said, Yo, that you came to the capital with your family. So your village was destroyed, but your family was all okay?”

That was a very perceptive question. Maomao had been wondering the same thing.

Yo, who had finally calmed down a bit, took a sip of water and said, “In my case, Kokuyou treated me before the outbreak.”

“Treated?” Maomao’s ears pricked up, and she looked at Kokuyou with interest. Even Sazen must have been curious, because he looked very serious.

“Oh, it’s a time-tested method,” Kokuyou said. “Once you catch smallpox, it’s hard to catch it again. So you just give a healthy person smallpox!”

“You’re talking about putting pus with weakened toxin in a person’s body?” Maomao asked. She’d heard just a little about the technique from her father, Luomen.

“Yeah. You pull the scab off a smallpox scar—they can cause illness for almost a year after you get better, see.”

“Do... Do you think you could do that for me?”

Kokuyou crossed his arms and hrmmed. “I’d love to, really I would, but I don’t have a good scab here—and it’s tough, because it can go wrong.”

“Go wrong how? You mean it can turn into a serious illness?”

“Yeah, one out of every few dozen people gets it bad. Sometimes they die. And of course, you’re left with scars.”

“Yes, we can’t have you getting any scars, Miss Maomao,” Chue said, sipping her water. Maomao didn’t really see the problem; she already had scars.

“Sometimes they die? That makes you stop and think,” Sazen said, his brow furrowing.

“I wish there were some safer way, a way to get weaker toxin and use that,” Kokuyou said, staring into the distance.

“Wow, and you attempted that dangerous procedure on such a young lady. Didn’t her parents get mad?” Chue drawled.

“My father got smallpox once a long time ago,” answered not Kokuyou, but Yo. “Part of the reason he came to that pioneer village was because he’d lost his family to the disease, and poverty left him with no other choice. I didn’t exactly appreciate it at first myself. The fever was agony, and of course now I have these scars for the rest of my life.” She rolled up her sleeves to show them.

“Yo’s old man was really nice. He took me in when I was about to starve to death. But the rest of the villagers thought I was creepy and didn’t like me,” said Kokuyou, once more laughing off his dark past.

“In any case, that’s why me and my family survived. Most of the villagers died, and we brought the surviving children with us when we came to the capital. That was almost three years ago now,” Yo said.

It had been two years and change since Maomao had met Kokuyou, which must have meant that he had been wandering until then.

“So you started working in the rear palace to support your family,” Maomao said.

“Yes. The doctor taught me some basic reading as well, which helped with studying in the rear palace.”

Now Maomao understood why Yo had been considered an exceptional student.

“You owe him all that, and the first thing you do when you see him is punch him?” Sazen asked, utterly cold.

“Yes... I... I know. I know what you mean, but I just couldn’t...”

“Totally understandable! A person has a lot of emotions at your age, so they’re not very good at expressing them,” Chue said, acting very knowing.

“I think you could stand to use your words a little more too,” Maomao added. “You should have said from the start that you were looking for someone with smallpox scars.”

“Miss Chue thinks you’re the last person who should complain about people not using enough words,” Chue said. Then she started hunting around the shed. She came up with one lone bean bun, in a bamboo steamer on the stove. “Is this all you’ve got? Talk about depressing.”

“Don’t just help yourself to other people’s breakfast!” Sazen exclaimed.

“Okay, so a lot has happened to you, but in any case, you got to meet your mysterious apothecary—I mean doctor. What will you do now?” Maomao asked Yo.

“Nothing. I know Kokuyou is safe, and that’s enough for me.”

“And I’m so glad to know that you and your dad and everyone are all right,” Kokuyou said with a grin. “But it definitely looks to me like there’s something you want to know—and it’s not just whether I’m in one piece.”

“There is. What should I do if there’s another smallpox outbreak? That’s what I really wanted to ask you.”

“Hmm. I sure don’t know.”

“‘I don’t’? As in, someone else might?” Maomao asked. She was every bit as interested in this topic as Yo was.

“My own mentor was researching smallpox and other infectious diseases. But then...”

“Then what?”

“He died, sadly.”

“Oh, for...” Maomao’s shoulders slumped with disappointment.

“I think his research was probably coming along,” said Kokuyou. “Me and another person were both seeded with smallpox the same way, and I ended up like this, but the other guy was perfectly fine. I think he probably got the weakened specimen.”

“Hold on a second,” Maomao said, holding up a hand. “I don’t think I can ignore what I just heard.”

“How so? Oh! The other guy was my younger twin brother. Our mentor took us in because he said we would be perfect for comparing in experiments.”

Once again, he spoke blithely of a dark past.

“That’s important, but it’s not what I meant. A weakened specimen?”

“Yeah—it seems like my brother received a much weaker version of smallpox, but it’s not written down. And since our mentor is dead, I guess we’ll never know.”

“Where’s your brother now?” Sazen asked conversationally.

“He’s dead too,” Kokuyou said, grinning. “So there’s nobody left who knows about my mentor’s research. Real sorry!” He held up both hands in a would-be cute gesture.

“Is there no way to stop an epidemic?” Yo asked, her face grim.

“It sure wouldn’t be easy,” Kokuyou said. “Although maybe if we had Kada’s Book or something, that might help.”

Maomao almost spit out her drink.

He’s mentioning that here and now?

“Kada’s just a legend, right? He didn’t write any book,” Sazen grumbled.

“My mentor says he did. He says there was a physician named Kada a century or more ago, and that his disciples hid a book of his secret teachings.”

“In a pig’s eye,” replied Sazen, who had given up trying to reclaim his bean bun from Chue and was drinking some water.

Kada...

Maomao crossed her arms and thought. Her stomach growled, maybe from the effort.

“Oh yeah... I haven’t eaten yet,” she said.

“Ooh, let’s have something! A meal!” Chue had finished the bun and was once more searching for something to eat.

Maomao, remembering the stall they’d passed in the street, decided to go out and get some meat skewers.

They’d finished their skewers, and Maomao was scowling.

She, Sazen, and Yo were all packed into the Verdigris House’s cramped apothecary shop. As to what they were doing, they were comparing their inventory to a list.

They’d done what they had come here to do—namely, to let Yo meet Kokuyou—and Maomao had decided to bring Yo to the apothecary shop for some practical experience.

“Is it just me, or have herb prices ballooned recently?” Maomao asked, squinting at what they had paid for their herbs.

“I know, right? Highway robbery!” Sazen griped. “But Kokuyou says this is what we have to pay or he won’t sell to us. He’s our only purveyor of wetland herbs.”

Speaking of Kokuyou, the shop was too small for everyone, so he and Chue were outside, playing with the kids. Chou-u was among them. The moment he’d seen Maomao he’d pointedly ignored her, which annoyed her despite the fact that he was simply at that age.

“Ugh, this one’s expensive too. Look at him, squeezing us just because this thing only grows in bogs...”

There was a limit to what herbs they could cultivate in their little field. And with only so many ways to procure herbs otherwise, they weren’t in any position to make demands.

It probably doesn’t help that the palace is buying up supplies.

They were going through more and more medicine these days, and not just because the soldiers needed so much of it. Vast quantities of food and medical supplies had been sent to the western capital the previous year. The elevated prices were probably a ripple effect.

“One of these days, Yo, you’re going to have to start shopping for herbs, so now is a good time to start learning what things should cost.” Maomao showed Yo the list. It was not something she would reveal to just anyone, but she didn’t think Yo would abuse the knowledge. “Usually, you’ll be able to go shopping with another physician, but some shady sellers will wait until the doctor is busy with something else before approaching you to try to hawk something. ‘I only have a few left,’ they’ll say, or ‘I don’t know when I’ll get more in stock.’ You have to be especially careful then—they might try to foist bad product on you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Heaven knows it’s happened to me a few times,” Sazen said with a sigh.

“That’s because you’re a terrible businessman,” said Maomao.

“Oh, hush. I was just a farmer before this, you know.”

“A former farmer...”

Now that she thought about it, maybe she should talk to their current farmer, namely, Lahan’s Brother—sound him out on whether he could grow medicinal herbs in addition to potatoes and wheat.

He wouldn’t try to tell me he couldn’t do it because he’s busy growing spices to give En’en, would he?

Most of those spices could also be used medicinally. Maomao formulated a plan to ask him for any extras.

Once they had gone over the entire list, Maomao inspected their stocks and looked at the medicines Sazen had already compounded.

“Wh-What do you think?” he asked, studying her expression.

“Not bad. Not good. Passing marks.”

“Oh, come on! I did it just the way you taught me!”

“You need to do more than just learn. Think about how you can make the medicine easier to take.”

Sazen stuck out his lip but took out a notepad. It was full of medicinal recipes. Sazen was not a man of greater than ordinary intelligence, but he studied hard; that was his virtue.

Maybe I should work on compounding while we’re here, Maomao thought. “Yo. Can you make a medicine you know of using the components we have here?”

“If all you need is fever medication or salve for a cut, then yes.”

“All right. Go ahead and do it.”

While Yo was working on that, Maomao continued to study the inventory.

Yo’s movements were uncertain, but she was doing the right things.

“Did Kokuyou teach you to do that?” Maomao asked.

“Yes. The doctor taught many of the village children to read, write, and make medicine. Living in a frontier outpost, we had no end of injuries.”

Maomao had always thought of Yo as reticent, but she turned out to be surprisingly talkative.

“Did he treat anyone besides your family for smallpox?”

“No. My father knew how terrible the disease could be, but no one else really did, and they wouldn’t listen to him. The headman, in particular—he was also the village shaman, so he probably saw Kokuyou as horning in on his territory. I believe he did treat several of the children on the sly, though. They’re the ones who are now here with us in the capital.”

He just did that on his own initiative, huh?

Yet his choice had saved those kids’ lives.

“Some guys just aren’t very lucky, and Kokuyou is one of them,” Sazen piped up from where he was inspecting the inventory list himself. “Looks to me like he didn’t do anything wrong, yeah?”

I don’t know why you hit him, he said with his eyes. Yo looked down uncomfortably and focused on grinding the herbs.

Maomao glanced out of the shop, toward the lobby of the Verdigris House.

There are more menservants around here that I don’t recognize.

Bodyguards that Jinshi had assigned here, presumably. Maomao hadn’t used Joka’s name in association with the jade tablet, but of course he would have investigated on his own.

So, no problems here, I guess.

At just that moment, Joka came into the lobby.

“J—” Maomao was about to call out to her, but she started talking with the old madam, who showed her a list.

“Our sis Joka’s going to take things over after the old lady,” said a sour voice from above her. She looked up to see Chou-u.

“That old bag of bones is finally wearing out, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

That was all Chou-u said before he went back to Chue and Kokuyou. Chue was spinning a top, her performance earning applause not only from the apprentices, but even passersby. It was mystifying how she could do all that almost entirely with her left hand.

A few kittens scuffled at her feet. Nearby, Maomao—the calico cat—watched them with a newfound dignity. They must be her offspring.

So she really is retiring, Maomao thought. Joka was going to give up being a courtesan. The madam dealt with a great many different tasks, so the changeover wouldn’t happen quickly, but Joka would probably take less and less courtesan’s work.

After that, only Pairin would be left of the Verdigris House’s Three Princesses—and she, too, would be gone once Lihaku bought out her contract.

Maomao summoned memories of her earliest years. She remembered the princesses looking beautiful, with white on their cheeks and rouge on their lips, their hair festooned with hair sticks and clad in sumptuous outfits and pibo shawls.

How often had she chased their long sleeves as they slid across a red carpet?

There was Pairin, almost seeming to leave an afterimage as she danced in the warm glow of a red lantern.

Meimei, leaving customers speechless as she made the perfect move, speaking with her kind voice and placing a piece with her slim fingers.

Joka, producing poems that could leave her patrons gasping even as she affected to be too good for it all.

I won’t be seeing any of those things again.

It wasn’t precisely nostalgia—that would have been bad form—but Maomao nonetheless grieved the sense that the era of these ladies was coming to an end.