The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr

Character Profiles
Maomao
An apothecary in the pleasure district. Downright obsessed with medicines and poisons, but largely uninterested in other matters. Reveres her father Luomen. Nineteen years old.

Jinshi
The Emperor’s younger brother. Inhumanly beautiful. He can’t get Maomao off his mind, but by hook or by crook, she always manages to evade him. Real name: Ka Zuigetsu. Twenty years old.

Basen
Gaoshun’s son; Jinshi’s attendant. Doesn’t feel pain as acutely as most people, which gives him far greater physical limits than most have. He’s very serious, but that makes him easy to tweak. In love with Consort Lishu.

Gaoshun
Basen’s father. A well-built soldier, he was formerly Jinshi’s attendant, but now he serves the Emperor personally.

Lakan
Maomao’s father and Luomen’s nephew. A freak with a monocle. He’s a high-ranking member of the military, but his bizarre behavior causes people to avoid him. He loves Go and Shogi and is quite good at both.

Lahan
Lakan’s nephew and adopted son. A small man with round glasses, he has a soft spot for beautiful women and will try to chat them up anytime he sees one. He runs side hustles to try to pay off his adoptive father’s debts.

Luomen
Maomao’s adoptive father; Lakan’s uncle. Once a eunuch in the rear palace, he now serves as a court physician. He’s missing one kneecap, a punishment inflicted on him many years ago.

Empress Gyokuyou
The Emperor’s legal wife. An exotic beauty with red hair and green eyes. Twenty-one years old.

The Emperor
A real go-getter and possessor of prodigious facial hair. Prefers his women well-endowed. Thirty-six years old.

Yao
Maomao’s coworker. She’s fifteen, but her height and well-developed figure make her look older.

En’en
Maomao’s coworker. As Yao’s serving woman, she helps in the medical office along with her mistress. She’s devoted to her mistress with a love that borders on the twisted. Nineteen years old.

Hongniang
Empress Gyokuyou’s chief lady-in-waiting. She works hard, which occasionally leaves her at the mercy of her playful Empress.

Yinghua, Guiyuan & Ailan
Empress Gyokuyou’s longest-serving ladies-in-waiting.

Haku-u, Koku-u, Seki-u
Ladies-in-waiting to Empress Gyokuyou, they’re three sisters each separated by a year.

Prologue

“Make sure you smile.”

Her mother was always saying that to her. To be certain her father would be happy on those rare occasions when he visited. To ensure he would give her that coveted pat on the head.

Her mother was not her father’s main wife. Her father was old enough that he could have passed for her grandfather; he had a son by another woman who was as old as her mother. More like an uncle than an older brother.

Perhaps her older brother didn’t like having a sister so much younger than he was, for his own children were forever teasing her, pulling her hair and pelting her with mud pies—ordinary childish cruelty. They would repeat what the adults said about her. Always careful to travel in packs large enough that she couldn’t fight back.

They jeered at her, called her a concubine’s daughter. So she grinned back. The corners of her mouth turned up, just showing her teeth. Her brother’s children, who had known only obsequious smiles, backed away. She’d only smiled. What did they see when they looked at her? Their reaction seemed so ridiculous that it made her smile bigger.

Just at that moment, her father appeared. How must she have looked to him, covered in mud?

He began smiling too. He ignored his grandchildren, dressed in their finery, and came over to his filthy daughter. He wiped the dirt from her face and patted her head.

“I’m going to make you first,” he said.

She asked him what he was going to make her first in.

“First in the whole nation. I know you have what it takes.”

The other children didn’t have it. Only she did. Learning that she was special like this made her heart pound.

“Don’t let the sparkle fade from your eyes. The one thing you must never do is lose hope. Smile. And never let it slip.”

Smile? She could do that. So long as there was something the least bit amusing, it was easy. She didn’t need her father to tell her that. She spent all her time seeking out fun and pleasant things. Even after he sent her away. Away, to that den of iniquity full of women...