The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 9 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Practical Exercises

They started with chickens. Still warm, in fact, not yet stiff. Only the breast and abdomen had been plucked; the birds hadn’t even been bled. When Maomao stuck the sharp, carefully polished knife into it, blood sprayed out.

“Take out the internal organs—carefully. I don’t want to see a single scratch. Those are going to be dinner, so be gentle with them.”

Have to be careful to drain all the blood or the meat will smell bad, Maomao thought. The task of bleeding had been left to them to force them to hone their skills.

There were five or six other people there besides Maomao. From the faces she recognized, she concluded everyone else was an apprentice physician.

She’d been told to come along on a medicine run, but she’d found herself on a chicken farm some distance from the capital. It started with catching one of the free-range birds, which would be nearly impossible in physician’s clothes. Instead they were given farm clothes with grimy leather aprons and set to work. When they caught a bird, they had to wring its neck, then proceed into a nearby hut to start cutting.

Who would have imagined that these were doctors, the elite, the cream of the capital’s crop?

“Just be grateful we aren’t asking you to vivisect them,” Dr. Liu said. He almost sounded like he was enjoying himself. Having delivered his instructions with all the pomp he could muster, he began haggling with the chicken farmer. They were working out the value of everything medicinal that might come from a chicken, from its liver to the dried lining of its stomach.

Maomao had the distinct impression that she was more used to jobs like catching and butchering chickens than the rest of the apprentice physicians—which made it sting when Tianyu was the first to grab a bird. The annoyance spurred her to ask, “Say, did you grow up on a farm?”

“No. This is my third time through this training, so I’m starting to get the hang of it. Never feels good, though.”

She’d been right: the bloodstained outfits had shown that the apprentices had already started real-world practice.

“Now I’ve got a question for you, Niang-niang,” Tianyu said. Maomao twitched an eyebrow at the name. She didn’t like it very much, but he’d only started using it more since he’d seen it got a rise out of her, so the best thing she could do was not say anything. “How’d you get Dr. Liu to come around?”

Tianyu’s eyes were gleaming. He was somewhere in his mid-twenties, but at that moment he looked like a ten-year-old boy with mischief in mind. To think, he normally showed no interest in Maomao, reserving all his energies for En’en.

But he loves some gossip...

He’d peppered En’en with rumors as well, so at first Maomao had taken him to be simply quick-eared, but it seemed he had innate curiosity as well. For all his loquaciousness, though, he had never let slip a word to Maomao about what the physicians’ practical exercises entailed. It seemed he didn’t share the quack’s loose lips.

In any event, Maomao didn’t feel like talking to him, and knew she wasn’t likely to get much useful information out of him if she did.

“Instead of talking, how about concentrating on the task at hand? I’ll thank you not to split that gallbladder.”

Doing that would get bile everywhere and make the meat taste terrible. Moreover, an animal’s gallbladder was a potential medicinal ingredient, and so ruining one would most likely earn them a taste of Dr. Liu’s knuckle.

Tianyu was a chatterbox and overall seemed like something of a worthless excuse for a man, but he at least seemed to be good with his hands. He cut through the slippery bird flesh with ease.

“As you work, consider how the organs correspond to their human counterparts,” Dr. Liu instructed.

Humans and chickens were built differently, of course, but this was still a sensible first step. If you couldn’t catch a fleeing chicken, how were you ever going to treat a thrashing patient? If you didn’t have it in you to wring the neck of a live bird, where would you find the audacity to cut into a human being? And if you weren’t adroit enough to cut up the bird even after it was dead, then you stood no chance working on a human body.

This practice was as basic as it got, but there were apprentices who couldn’t handle this first stage.

“What do we work on after chickens?” Maomao asked—on the assumption that she would, in fact, make it to the next stage.

“Pigs,” replied Tianyu. “They’re big enough that we work in groups of three. When we get to cows, it’s groups of five. But there’s a lot fewer people by that point. Once you start to get the hang of it, they make you wear your doctor’s uniform and tell you not to get any blood on it. There’s another step after that, but I don’t know what it is.”

“You haven’t gotten there?”

“No, they made me start again. They claimed I wasn’t serious enough.”

“I can see why,” Maomao said before she could stop herself. Another thing she hadn’t been able to stop herself from doing, ultimately, was reaching out to Tianyu—he looked so much calmer than the other apprentices. For that matter, everyone else except Tianyu—who had been here before—had blanched at the sight of the chickens’ blood.

“It could be worse. If they decide you’re just not suited to this work, that’s pretty much it for you.”

Not suited, huh?

She wondered what happened to doctors who couldn’t manage a bit of dissection—maybe they got transferred to other departments. They would be, as it were, severed from any potential career as physicians.

“I can’t give my sweet En’en the life she deserves on an apprentice physician’s salary!”

The guy still hadn’t given up—didn’t he know when to quit?

Hang in there, En’en!

As people cut into their chickens, the odor of blood began to pervade the room. One apprentice who couldn’t stand it pressed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, but the moment Dr. Liu got back the senior physician grabbed it away from him. “Wearing a mask is correct protocol when treating a patient. But not here,” he said.

Under the handkerchief, the apprentice’s face was as bloodless as his chicken. Soon he was too sick to stay in the shed and went running outside.

“Geez. How many times is that now? He’s gonna run out of chances,” Tianyu said as if it didn’t affect him at all.

Maomao arranged the internal organs on a tray. The heart, the liver, the intestines, the stomach.

The intestines are easy to damage, but delicious. I could almost eat them right now. Chicken intestines were small and delicate, though, frustrating to wash. What I wouldn’t give to put the gizzard on a skewer and grill it up. A dash of salt, that’s all it needs. If they had gotten the blood out correctly, it would be delectable. And the gallbladder’s in one piece. Perfect. Spilling bile everywhere would have ruined the entire bird.

She set the organs carefully on the tray. When she had finished, Dr. Liu came around to look. “All right. Put them back in and sew it up,” he said.

“I’m sorry?” But she already had them arranged by cookability!

“I can tell you’re eager to dig in—and I can’t let you do all your work in that condition. You’ll start to see patients as nothing but hunks of meat.”

“I sincerely doubt that, sir,” she said, but in fact he had seen straight through her.

She put all the organs back where they belonged, taking special care not to damage the gallbladder.

“You know what to do with this?” Dr. Liu asked, thrusting something under Maomao’s nose. It looked like a fishhook and some thread, carefully wrapped in cloth.

“Yes, sir, more or less.”

The thread was probably silk; that would explain the distinctive sheen. She threaded the hooked needle with the silk, then pressed the sides of the cut together with her fingers as she sewed it shut.

At least I’ve done sewing before. Always with a straight needle, but the hooked one proved easier to use than she’d expected. She could see how much more effective it would be once she got used to it. They sure give you nice stuff when you’re official.

Thus she went along, sewing and being impressed in equal measure. If she could have asked for anything, it might have been a slightly longer end to the hook—it was somewhat short and difficult to hold. This would have been easier with something she could grip tighter.

Tweezers wouldn’t work to hold it. I need something I can grip better.

She was still thinking about whether they might develop a new tool just for her when she finished the job. She glanced over and saw that Tianyu had already finished. There was that frustration again.

“Let me see that,” Dr. Liu said, inspecting the sutures. “Hmph. All right, you can do what you want with it after this. But I’m collecting the organs that we can use for medicine. You can have the rest.” He turned away, not looking particularly impressed. This was what passed, it seemed, for his approval. “Make sure to wash those needles. Boil and disinfect them. They don’t come cheap.”

From their shape to their delicacy, the hooks were clearly the work of skilled craftsmen. Maomao had quietly been hoping to take one home with her—so much for that idea.

She cut the sutures and took the organs out once again so she could clean them off.

Maomao graduated from chickens to pigs, and thence to cows, and it was around that time that she received a delivery.

“Thank you very much,” she said, taking it from the woman who ran the dormitory. It was already after dinner; work had run late. The woman had been waiting for her all this time. She was also...grinning a little? Maomao looked at the sender and discovered it was, of all people, Gaoshun.

I can guarantee she’s got the wrong idea.

It might have come in Gaoshun’s name, but only one person could have sent it. Jinshi. He could have used Basen’s name as well, but that seemed likely to cause distress if Basen ever found out, so Gaoshun it was.

Maomao was still going to Jinshi’s villa once every several days. She’d worried about how she would hide that from Yao and En’en once the year-end break was over, but the problem turned out to solve itself.

“I know you think you’re getting ahead of me, Maomao, but you’re not!” Yao had declared. She evidently thought Maomao’s visits to Jinshi were further excursions for “practical exercises.”

I guess she’s not entirely wrong, Maomao thought. In any case, she was grateful for Yao’s convenient misapprehension. From the way Yao acted, it looked like she, too, had chosen to walk this brutal path.

Gaoshun’s name on the delivery led Maomao to think of his son. I never see Basen around the villa. He was as strong as a charging boar and about as subtle. He was probably being deliberately distanced from Jinshi’s personal life so that he wouldn’t notice any change in his master.

Looks like he still accompanies Jinshi at work, though. To the medical office, for example. It was natural not to clue him in to what was going on, but even Basen would get frustrated if they didn’t handle him carefully. Thankfully, Gaoshun would know how to do that. Or at least, Maomao hoped he would.

Once she was safely back in her room, Maomao opened the package. There was a letter and something wrapped in cloth, something with a faint scent.

“Elegant as always, I see.” She undid the wrapping to reveal a ceramic vessel with incense inside. She brought it to her nose and sniffed.

Sandalwood base with some additions.

The mix-ins were probably all very fancy, but the smells didn’t complement each other very well, and she couldn’t escape the impression that the result felt cheap. A bit of a poor showing from Jinshi, who always had only the best.

No... Wait.

Had he purposely sent something not quite as good because it was for Maomao? She seemed to remember him saying something once about how you could tell a person’s class by the incense they used. From that perspective, this was a little nicer than what one might expect for a court lady, but not too much.

That still left the question of why Jinshi was sending her incense at all. She sniffed her sleeve and discovered a faint odor of blood.

I thought I got the smell out before I saw him...

Lately, she had been covering for her dissection trips to the farm by claiming she was going out on house calls. The animals themselves were easy enough to explain—the organs were medicinal, and the meat was for food.

Today, it turned out, a hunter had had the good fortune to catch a bear, and the doctors were able to be involved in the dissection. Dr. Liu had been ecstatic; he’d told them that this was a very rare opportunity. The blood had to be drained quickly, lest it taint the meat, so the doctors rarely got to observe.

They’d changed into their dissection outfits and put on leather aprons. Once everything was over, Maomao had taken a bath before going back to court.

Nice to get out to one of the public baths every once in a while, she thought. There was no bath at the dorm, so this was a particularly pleasant opportunity. One of the pleasure district’s few luxuries, which Maomao had experienced growing up, was that people took baths every day. Even in the rear palace, she’d been able to wash up once every few days.

Did she like baths? If pressed, she would have to say that she did. This time they even paid for her admittance to the public bathhouse, and taking a bath in the middle of the day was a pleasure all its own.

Oh... Maybe it’s my hair. There wouldn’t have been time for her hair to dry, of course, so she’d gone without washing it.

She wondered if Jinshi understood what was necessary to become a real doctor.

Some of it, maybe. But I’m not sure he knows about the human corpse dissection.

Evidently he’d picked up on the odor she brought with her when she came to examine him. He could be fussy about the strangest things.

Still pondering the situation, Maomao took a teaspoon of the incense and lit it. Then she put a basket over it, and on top of the basket she set the clothes she would wear tomorrow.

Let’s start with this. She used just a pinch of the stuff; she wasn’t even sure if it would be noticeable.

Thus prepared for the following day, she decided it was time to go to bed. She was about to change into her nightclothes when there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” she said.

En’en entered with some spring rolls in her hand. “This is left over from dinner. You want it?”

“Absolutely.” Maomao would never pass up a chance for some of En’en’s cooking. She wasn’t that hungry right now, but it could be tomorrow’s breakfast. What with all her outings these days, going to see Jinshi and doing medical practice, she hadn’t had many opportunities to enjoy En’en’s home-cooked meals.

En’en put the plate of spring rolls on the table—and then she spied the incense. “Now, that’s not like you, perfuming your clothes.”

“I have my moons. It just so happens there’s been more blood than usual lately.” It wasn’t untrue; this was precisely that time of the month when she became rather melancholy for a few days. “I know Yao does it, and I thought it might be a good idea.”

She knew, of course, that was probably En’en who was actually doing the work.

“Oh, I see.” Maomao had expected some pointed comeback from En’en, but she said nothing more than that. Even though she had surely noticed how often Maomao was out these days.

So she’s not going to try to sound me out about anything?

As long as Maomao wasn’t dragging Yao into anything, En’en seemed content not to stick her nose into her business.

Maomao placed a cloth over the spring rolls and went back to changing.

When Maomao arrived at the medical office the next day, she found Yao talking to Dr. Liu and not looking very happy. The two young women often missed each other at work these days, so they hadn’t seen much of each other—and it looked like the reunion might be a stormy one.

I hope she doesn’t say anything suspicious, Maomao thought anxiously as she set herself to organizing the medicine cabinet.

“And you don’t feel the need to send me out for anything?” Yao said.

Aaand there it is.

Yao was resolute, seemingly intent on looking every bit as fearsome as Dr. Liu.

“No, I don’t,” the senior physician responded, and then looked through the daily report as if to say that was the end of the discussion. The report reported only that there had been nothing much to report yesterday.

“Funny. You seem to have errands to run all the time these days, Maomao,” Yao said. Great. Now Maomao was involved.

“Yes, it seems I do,” she replied. There was no point arguing it.

“And where did your errands take you yesterday? To do what?”

“I was retrieving some bear gall,” said Maomao. At that moment, in fact, she was putting away the gall she’d obtained the day before. The hunter had given them some, already processed. It was a lovely medicine; it looked sort of like a misshapen dried persimmon.

She thought she caught a hint of a glare from Dr. Liu, but he didn’t say anything to stop her. He knew she wasn’t saying anything incriminating.

“Gall is such an important medicinal component, I asked to be shown how it was prepared. I also helped with dissecting a cow to see if there were any stones in its gallbladder. Which, I’m sorry to say, there weren’t.”

“Stones in a cow’s gallbladder—you mean bezoars? I hear those are found in barely one out of a thousand animals. Why would you go looking for something you know almost certainly isn’t there?” Yao asked.

“Fair question. The chances of finding a bezoar are much higher if the animal displays symptoms of gallstones. The stones get much more expensive the moment they go on the open market, so if you see an animal showing the signs, it’s perfectly logical to look on the spot.”

Maomao walked a fine line, trying to prevent Dr. Liu from getting upset with her while also not saying anything strictly untrue. She felt a bit guilty toward Yao, but she needed to bail out of this conversation. I know it isn’t quite fair of me...

She was hiding behind Jinshi. Yao might give her a hard time for dirty tactics, but Maomao wasn’t in the mood to talk. She had other, more pressing things to do.

Yao looked at her and grimaced. Dr. Liu looked back at the daily report. He seemed to be saying he was satisfied with Maomao’s answer.

I understand, Yao. Believe me, I do! Maomao knew what Yao really wanted to say. “Why can’t I come too?” That’s what you want to know.

It was Dr. Liu who finally supplied the answer. “If you want some errands to run, start by going to the cafeteria.”

“Th-The cafeteria, sir? Why?”

“Let me guess: you’ve never killed and plucked so much as a chicken in your life. You think Maomao was just watching them chop up that bear? That’s what’s going on here—and she’s used to it by now.” It was a rare compliment from Dr. Liu, but somehow it didn’t bring Maomao pleasure.

“Well, what about En’en, then? She must be even better than Maomao at butchering chickens.”

“Maybe so, but why bring someone who’s not interested in the errand in the first place? What, did you think En’en would go on ahead and leave you alone? I’m not going to press-gang anyone who lacks the ambition. You think it’s unfair that only Maomao gets to go on these errands? You want things to be different? Then start by making sure you’re not dead weight to the people around you!”

Ah, there was the usual Dr. Liu, relentless and unsparing.

Yao clutched her skirt; the physician’s words obviously pained her, but she didn’t say anything. She knew it was true—she’d never even held a cleaver in the kitchen. The spring rolls Maomao had eaten for breakfast this morning had been entirely En’en’s work.

We’ve got something else to worry about...

There was an audible sound of teeth grinding from behind Yao. It was En’en, who was reaching for a bottle of disinfectant alcohol. Scary. Very scary.

Yao, however, reached out and stopped her. “En’en,” she said. She so often seemed to do as her lady-in-waiting wished, but at this moment she showed that she knew how to handle an overprotective attendant. She turned back to Dr. Liu and said, “I understand what you’re saying, sir. I’ll learn how to handle a cleaver right away.”

“Hoh! You will, will you? Well, start by beheading a live chicken.”

“B...Beheading?”

It was true that if she couldn’t manage that, she wouldn’t be able to follow the path Maomao was on. Even one of the apprentice physicians had broken down in ugly, snotty tears as he killed the pig he would use for his dissection. If that was how farm animals affected you, you were never going to be able to work on human beings. After all, a physician might very well find himself having to amputate an arm or a leg without even an anesthetic for the patient.

Happens all the time on the battlefield.

In war, you didn’t need your father’s hidden anatomy books—you would see enough human organs for a lifetime. The ability to ban a book on dissection was, in its own way, a luxury afforded by a time of peace.

“I wonder if you’ve got it in you to hack at someone’s organs while they’re still alive,” Dr. Liu said with a smirk.

“I do! I can! That’s what I came here for,” Yao insisted. She wasn’t just trying to be contrary with the senior physician; she genuinely seemed to want to acquire the skills of medicine.

If Yao was only here in the medical office as a way of getting out from under her uncle’s thumb, this would be an excellent time for her to give up and go home. In spite of the physical injury she’d suffered while tasting food for poison, Yao was still young, beautiful, and smart. There must have been plenty of suitors out there who would be eager to have her.

Stop that. I’m thinking exactly like her uncle.

Yao and En’en both despised Yao’s uncle, but there was, admittedly, some level on which he was still thinking of Yao’s happiness. Li was, by and large, not a place where a single woman could live comfortably. Too many habits, customs, and circumstances militated against it. It wasn’t Maomao’s place to say that to Yao, though. If she had decided that this was what she wanted to do, then Maomao would keep her peace.

That was when she caught a glimpse of En’en, standing behind Yao and looking at the mocking Dr. Liu. Maomao knew that En’en would, like her, refrain from comment on whatever Yao decided to do. At that moment, however, there was uncharacteristic indecision in her eyes.

I wonder how this is going to play out.

However that was, though, it still didn’t involve Maomao. She jotted down her freshly obtained ingredients as she put them in the cabinet.

Yao lost no time: come that night, she was standing in the kitchen. En’en watched her inexpert handling of the cleaver with trepidation. Maomao, who was home early for once, watched them both and waited patiently for dinner to be ready.

“So I take this, and—” Whack!

“M-Mistress...”

Yao brought down the knife like she was chopping wood; she looked like she could have cut through bone, not just meat. Even if Maomao had wanted to help, it didn’t look safe to get too close.

“I-It’s dangerous, working like that. You should start with something smaller!”

“No, meat! I need to cut flesh!”

En’en was distinctly panicked. She was normally so coolheaded that Maomao would have expected her to make a better teacher for Yao, but they weren’t going to get anywhere this way. Maomao decided to pretend she hadn’t seen anything and just leave the room—when, unfortunately for her, her eyes met En’en’s. En’en gave her the look to end all looks, then pointed at the table. There was food there. Ready to eat. Chili shrimp, no less.

Maomao swallowed heavily. Had En’en prepared something ahead of time? Steam puffed from the fresh dish, which consisted of bountiful, huge shrimp and a whole medley of vegetables. Knowing En’en’s cooking, Maomao was sure that she’d used soy paste to give it a kick, but probably also some fruit juice to round out the flavor. It would be heavenly over rice. She could almost feel the juicy shrimp in her mouth.

It was all too clear that En’en was sending a message.

“If you want dinner, then help us,” huh?

Maomao scowled but went to wash her hands. She couldn’t beat puffy shrimp.

She began by selecting a cleaver a size smaller than the one Yao was holding. Then she put a single carrot on a cutting board. “Start by chopping this, Yao,” she said.

“A carrot? But I’m trying to learn to cut meat, here!”

“I think I can hear Dr. Liu now: You? Cut flesh when you can’t chop so much as a piece of ginseng?” Maomao replied, substituting something more traditionally medicinal for the carrot.

“Fine,” Yao said after a moment.

“Good. Now, take this cleaver. There are actually different kinds of cleavers, and you have to cut with them in different ways. The knife you’re holding now is for smashing through bone. It’s not meant for something as delicate as soft flesh. If you were practicing amputating a patient’s arm, it would be perfect.”

Yao didn’t have anything to say to that; she bit her lip and switched knives. En’en looked relieved. Yao was dedicated to her studies, so she would know certain things that medicine had in common with the culinary arts—but that didn’t include the types of cleavers. When it came to kitchen matters, she was more knowledgeable about eating than cooking.

“Okay, now let’s work on how to hold the knife. Do it like this. And when you cut the carrot, it’s like this.” Maomao moved Yao’s hand inch by inch. “Once you have it fixed in place so the carrot doesn’t move, you can cut nice and slow; you don’t have to hack. En’en takes good care of the equipment, so this knife has an excellent cutting edge. You don’t need a lot of force. Remember that when you cut through festering skin or flesh, you’re severing living blood vessels.”

Thunk went the knife as Yao made an unsteady cut.

“All right. Now slice it into about five pieces.”

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Yao was a perfectly capable young woman; she just needed someone to show her what to do. It was worth remembering that as grown-up as she looked, she was still only sixteen.

“There!” she said as she finished chopping the carrot.

“Okay, this next.” Maomao set out a daikon.

“No more vegetables,” said Yao.

“All you’ve done so far is slice a carrot,” Maomao said. “Let’s work on peeling a daikon neatly before we move on to meat.”

If anything, peeling the skin off a daikon was the harder task, but Maomao wanted Yao to do her learning on produce. She didn’t want her charging into Dr. Liu’s office just because she’d managed to chop a little meat. Well, to be fair, she would need to strangle a chicken first.

Yao looked unhappy, but resigned herself to working on the radish.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t make you peel the whole thing at once the very first time. Cut it into smaller pieces that will be easier to peel.”

“Sure. That’s exactly what I was going to do,” Yao pouted. While she worked on peeling, Maomao contemplated what to do with the carrot.

“Maomao,” said En’en, pointing first at the pork Yao had been attempting to chop, then at some dried shiitake mushrooms. The mushrooms were a luxury ingredient; Maomao decided not to ask how she had gotten them. The only other thing she saw nearby were some spices.

“Make sweet and sour pork,” is that what I’m hearing?

In fact, there just happened to be sweet potato starch right there. Might be perfect for covering the pork, which could then be fried.

Maomao couldn’t help longing for the shrimp, which was sitting there getting cold, but En’en was fixated on watching Yao to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. Maomao was left with no choice but to go ahead and make the pork.

“Maomao,” said Yao this time. “Just so you know, I’m not giving up on the physician’s path.”

“Women can’t be physicians,” Maomao replied, unwilling to lie to Yao. The most Maomao and her compatriots might be permitted at this point was to obtain equivalent knowledge. They would be given no title and gain nothing from it, other than to satisfy their own intellectual curiosity, and, perhaps, to know that they could respond should some emergency ever arise.

“But they’re already teaching you the things you need to become a doctor, right?”

That brought Maomao up short. She didn’t answer; if she was set on not lying to Yao, then silence was the only response.

“I’ve been thinking hard about it,” Yao said. “I mean, since we found the book in Master Lakan’s house.”

That wasn’t a name Maomao liked to hear, but giving Yao a foul look wouldn’t help anything, so she just listened quietly.

“It’s true, I find it hard to accept that way of thinking, but I can understand that it’s probably necessary for those who practice medicine. Master Luomen made that perfectly clear. I always assumed we would learn these things eventually, but now I see there’s something else you need in order to put them into practice.”

Intelligent girls were all well and good, but sometimes ignorance was bliss. If Yao hadn’t known, or if she could have pretended not to know, then a simpler, easier path might have been open to her. Maomao felt the wish for Yao to be happy—and if even she felt it, how much more keenly must En’en?

If Yao was going to learn the same things as a physician, however, then ignorant, blissful happiness would only get further away.

“Yao,” Maomao said slowly, “being a doctor will mean taking a knife to people sometimes. If a pregnant mother can’t deliver her child, you may have to cut her open to get to it—and you may have to do it knowing that at best, only the baby will survive. You might have to amputate an arm or a leg from a patient begging you not to, and there might not even be anesthetics available to numb the pain. You may have to stuff spilling intestines back into an abdominal cavity and sew up the skin right over them.”

“I know all of that.”

“This is a bloodsoaked profession. It may mean there will be no one willing to spend their life with you. People might revile you because they consider blood to be impure. You have to really want this life, or you’d be better off steering clear.”

“I wouldn’t be interested in any man who’d be frightened off by a little blood. Would I, En’en?”

“Y-Young mistress...” En’en, usually so eager to keep any man at bay when it came to Yao, looked conflicted.

Normally, someone like Yao would be walking a more proper path. Even Maomao could see the disappointment of it, but there was no reason she should stop Yao. She could only pray that a little light might shine upon the path Yao chose.

“Oops, it broke. Peeling a daikon is a lot harder than it looks,” Yao said, scowling and showing them a thick strip of radish peel.

“You’re right, it’s not easy,” Maomao said.

“En’en can make them look like peony blossoms!”

“Yes, well, she’s special.” That was the honest truth. While she talked, Maomao dunked the battered pork in the oil and fried it up good. Yao was continuing to give the tattered radish peel a dirty look.

It looked like it was going to be a while before they got to taste that shrimp.