The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: In the Clutches of the Fox

When Maomao opened her eyes, she found a lovely nobleman in front of her. For some reason, he was leaning over her and reaching toward her collar.

She gave Jinshi a glare, causing him to exclaim, “W-Well, I—,” stumbling over his words and waving his hands as if to protest his innocence.

Normally, she might have held the glare a little longer, but she couldn’t help noticing a bandage on his face. “Master Jinshi, what’s that?” she asked, straightening her collar.

“It’s nothing. A graze.” He tried to hide it with his hand. Maomao looked annoyed.

“Let me see it.”

“It’s hardly worth showing to you.”

That, of course, only made Maomao more interested. She pressed forward, leaning toward Jinshi so fast that he backed up slightly.

When she finally had him with his back to the wall, Maomao reached out slowly. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. His perfect jewel of a face now had a wound, mended with stitches, running diagonally down the right cheek. It was more than just a superficial scratch; something had torn through the flesh.

The stitches were uneven; it would be best if they were redone as soon as possible. Maomao would have liked to do it herself right then and there, but her hands were shaking with immense fatigue.

“You were in the fighting,” she said.

“I could hardly sit back and watch while others put themselves in danger, could I?”

“Why not? You’re important enough.” Her annoyance was beginning to show in her tone. “I wish you wouldn’t go running into danger. If you get yourself hurt, it will only cause trouble for everyone around you.”

He scratched his head and smiled somewhat bitterly. “Yes, I confess it was most unfair of me to do that to Basen. It’s surprising how strong Gaoshun can be when he wants to.” He began awkwardly to reattach the bandage, but Maomao took it from him.

“I certainly didn’t intend to get hurt,” Jinshi said.

“Who does?”

“It’s just... Someone made a most unusual request of me.” He wrinkled his brow. There was sadness in his obsidian eyes. “Were you close with Loulan?”

The question seemed rather abrupt. “Relatively,” Maomao said.

“Were you friends?”

“I’m not sure I know.”

She really didn’t. She’d thought the relationship had been something close to friendship, or at least it had felt like it to her. But as for what Loulan had thought, she couldn’t say. Chatting with Xiaolan and Loulan—or rather, Shisui—hadn’t been such a bad feeling.

“There were many things I didn’t know about her.”

“The same, it seems, was true of me.” The pain on Jinshi’s face intensified. “And now we’ve lost the chance to understand her.”

Maomao took his meaning. “I see, sir.”

Of course. Maomao had known it would be this way. For when Shisui had left that room, she’d entrusted something to Maomao—and then gone out knowing she was to meet her destiny. All Maomao could do was honor what had been entrusted to her...

“Master Jinshi, don’t you want to rest?”

“Yes... I really am terribly tired.”

His complexion was not good. Jinshi was probably in far worse shape than Maomao, even though she was the one who had been kidnapped. He had unmistakable bags under his eyes, and his lips were dry and dull.

The obvious thing would have been for him to return to his own carriage and sleep, but to Maomao’s amazement, he lay down on the pelt in her own vehicle.

Maomao let her frustration show on her face. “I must ask that you not sleep here, Master Jinshi.”

“Why not? I’m tired.”

“Surely I shouldn’t have to explain?” Maomao looked around. There were five bundles in the carriage with them—the children of the Shi clan. “This place is impure.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then why—”

Before she could finish speaking, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. His hand felt very cold.

They found themselves lying facing each other on the animal skin.

“Then why are you here?”

“Even I know to take pity on children,” she said, reciting the words she’d rehearsed.

“Do you? I wonder.” Still lying there, Jinshi cocked his head. “Didn’t your teacher in medicine forbid you from touching dead bodies?”

Curse him for remembering that! Maomao fought the urge to scowl openly.

“Considering he felt the need to issue such a stricture, I don’t think you would last very long in a place like this,” Jinshi said. He picked the worst times to have sharp intuition.

Maomao struggled to think of some way to escape the eyes that now studied her so intently. While she was frozen in thought, Jinshi reached out again. He turned her collar back. “And what happened to you?” he asked, frowning. The skin under her collar bore a dark, ugly bruise where Shenmei had hit Maomao with her fan.

Maomao was a little embarrassed, but decided it would be best to move things along promptly. “I met someone who was less than nice.”

“You were attacked,” Jinshi said, his voice icy.

“It was a woman,” Maomao made sure to add. Jinshi seemed awfully concerned about everyone else’s chastity. She flinched as he ran his fingers along the bruise.

“You don’t think there will be a scar?”

“What, from this? It’ll be gone before you know it.” Discomfited by the feeling of his fingers on her skin, she backed away, but Jinshi only reached out farther. Finally, Maomao resorted to sitting up and straightening her collar.

“Don’t go getting a scar,” Jinshi said.

“I could say the very same thing to you, sir.”

Jinshi frowned. “I’m a man. What’s it matter on me?”

“Oh, you quite surpass ‘a man.’”

“As if I cared.”

“Then I don’t care either. If one scar is enough to obliterate my value, then so be it.”

“And after you gave me such a piece of your mind.” Jinshi didn’t sit up, but he didn’t let go of Maomao’s wrist either. Some of the warmth was beginning to return to his hand. “Am I such that one scar would obliterate my value?” he asked, his hand tightening on her wrist. “Am I nothing more than my face?”

Maomao instinctively shook her head. “Frankly, a bit of a scar might do you good,” she said, more honestly than she had meant to. Jinshi was too beautiful; he could only put those who saw him out of sorts. And those around him focused too much on his looks. Even though he wasn’t as flowery and delicate as he appeared, Maomao thought; he was made of sterner stuff. In her opinion, only a small handful of people around him understood that.

“Don’t you think it makes you look more manly than before?” she said. She noticed his lips tighten when she said that. He looked around uneasily, blinked, and shook his head.

“What’s the matter, sir?”

Jinshi scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. “Considering the circumstances, I thought maybe I’d simply grin and bear it...”

“No need to bear anything. If you’re tired, hurry up and—”

—and get out of here and rest, she had been about to say. But it seemed sleepiness was not what Jinshi was trying to endure. He pulled on her wrist again, and when she sat down facing him, he grabbed the upper part of her other arm.

“When I looked at your injury, I meant to act as calm as I could,” he said. His unsettling face got closer and closer to hers; she could feel the heat of his breath on her skin. “I’m surprised... I mean, I think I seemed calmer than I expected.”

“Huh?”

At that moment, she remembered: they’d been in a situation much like this one before, hadn’t they? And hadn’t it been really rather compromising? Her back was pressed to one of the carriage’s support posts; she had nowhere to run.

“Master Jinshi, hadn’t you better get some sleep?”

“I’m still all right.”

How could he say that with those giant bags under his eyes?

“I’ll re-stitch your wound, sir. Let me go get some painkillers...”

“I can live with it another half hour.”

“Another half hour, indeed!”

Jinshi ignored her. Maybe it was the fatigue that made his eyes look like a feral dog’s.

This isn’t good... She twisted and pulled, but he was stronger than she was.

Jinshi kept getting closer and closer, and when their noses were almost touching...there was a clatter.

Jinshi all but jumped into the air. “Wh—What was that?” When he realized the noise had come from where the children were resting, he looked even more stunned. That was perfect for Maomao, who shoved past him and toward the source of the sound. She felt the wrists of the swaddled children one by one.

No... No... she thought, and then she felt the wrist of the third child.

The small lips fluttered; there was an almost imperceptible hush of breath. She found a pulse, faint but detectable.

“If only these little ones were bugs, they might have been able to sleep through the winter,” Shisui had said. Those insects that made the bell-like sound—the females ate the males, and then they died too. Only their offspring survived, hibernating through the cold months.

Shisui had compared her clan to insects—and she’d given Maomao one other clue, as well.

There was another country where, sometimes, the drug was used in secret practices. It could kill a person, and then bring them back to life. It killed them with poison, but with time, the poison dissipated, and when it was completely neutralized, the dead person was revived.

Suirei had taught Maomao about the resurrection drug. Had that been part of Shisui’s plan too?

“They’re alive?” Jinshi asked from behind her, but Maomao didn’t have time to entertain his question. She was massaging the children’s bodies, desperately hoping to make the resurrection effect work. That was the whole reason Shisui had brought her here.

Maomao didn’t know what Jinshi would do with the revivified children—but she didn’t have time to explain, either herself or them. “Hot water! Master Jinshi, please, get some hot water. And something to warm them up. Clothes, food, it doesn’t matter.”

“Let the ‘dead’ lie, eh?” Jinshi chuckled. “She got me. The vixen got what she wanted.”

“Master Jinshi!” Maomao shouted. He seemed to be muttering to himself, but she didn’t have the time to care.

“Yes, of course,” he said, and she couldn’t shake the impression that there was almost a cheerful tone to his voice. His expression was much softer than earlier—though it carried some disappointment, as well.

Maomao was focused completely on the children, who were slowly starting to breathe again. When Jinshi returned with blankets and a bucket of hot water, he leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Can we continue this later?”

“Sure, whatever,” Maomao replied, too busy to think much about it. She had the little ones to worry about.