The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 11

Maomao.” She heard Jinshi from the other side of the curtain. “I think things are going to get tiring. I need a charge.” His hand poked through the drapes.

“A charge?” Maomao asked.

She studied the shelf Chue had indicated. She took a mooncake wrapped in paper from a basket on the shelf and pressed it into Jinshi’s hand.

“Huh?!”

The mooncake dropped to the ground. The paper came off and, sadly, it touched the floor. Maomao moved to pick it up, but her right hand was caught by Jinshi’s. She felt his fingers slide between hers as if to make sure she was there. The fact they were both using their right hands made it oddly awkward.

Jinshi’s long fingers pressed into the back of Maomao’s hand, while his palm pressed against hers. She could

There was one reason, and one reason only, that Rikuson wanted to destroy the family register—and that was because he felt a duty to Gyokuen

“By the way, Lahan’s Little Sister...”

“I’m sorry, what did you call me?” Maomao looked like she was ready to spit in his face.

Under the present circumstances, I think that it would be safest to return to the central region.”
Safest for whom to return, Maomao wondered, but then she realized—he meant her.

A high wall, however, appeared in front of Maomao. Thoom. Jinshi had risen from his seat and was standing smack in front of her.

“Yes, sir?” she asked. Jinshi continued to look less than pleased.

“It has come to my attention that this man with whom you claim not to be especially close recently proposed marriage to you.”

At least he was to the point.

The quack doctor was still cowering, so Maomao grabbed the duck as it went by. Lahan’s Brother buried his face in its feathers.
Duck therapy...

He’d given Gyoku-ou hell for what he’d done to the Yi clan those seventeen years ago, but even then he hadn’t disinherited him.

Speaking of Lahan, it had been a long time since Rikuson had gotten any letters from him. The last one had come maybe two months before the swarm.

“My father,” he said miserably. “I don’t think he has any idea what’s really going on. I got a letter from him, here in the middle of this emergency, and what did it say? ‘I’m waiting for your report!’ And meanwhile, I thought I was going to die!”

Yet at the same time, he harbored an anxiety he couldn’t give a name to. It was just a feeling, something too faint yet to quantify in numbers.