The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 14

The more Maomao accepted Jinshi’s feelings, however, the more he seemed to want to keep his distance. Maomao continually felt that Jinshi was too loyal for his own good.

“He’s like Maomao? All the more reason we should be careful of him, then,” Basen said earnestly.

What do you mean by that?

She looked back almost fondly on the way he had snapped those bandits’ arms like twigs in the western capital.

You may think that it’s no problem for Maomao as long as she’s under your protection, but then, at that point, does she really have a choice? To play along with you here would mean having to stay by you forever.”

Jinshi went a little pale.

“My, my,” said Chue, breaking in. “I know how much you love talking to Maomao about everything, Moon Prince, but I think she’s starting to feel like you don’t trust her.”

And I just saw him the other day...

On which occasion he’d declined to sleep with her. She felt as awkward about it as anyone would.

Jinshi gazed at Maomao, then gently reached toward her. He looked like he was going to take her hand, but he stopped just short.

“You’re not going to touch me, sir?” Maomao asked, and he looked awkward.

“I want to. More than that. I want to hold you close, as tight as I can.”

“And yet you don’t,” she said teasingly. This from the man who had never hesitated to put his hands on her no matter how many times she told him not to.

Then again, lately, he’d almost seemed to avoid her, if anything. Even when he’d been hauling her around like a sack of rice earlier that day.

“I’m holding back. Otherwise I fear I won’t be able to control myself.”

“You won’t, sir?”

“No. It won’t stop at holding you close—I’d bite you, I’d lick you.”

“A chill just went down my spine...” Maomao gave him a mild glower. She had goosebumps.

That was the pronouncement of a straight-up freak—even if he could probably get away with it on account of being so handsome. If Lahan were to say something like that, she wouldn’t stop at crushing his toes—she’d stab them through with a spear.

“Now, that is rude,” Jinshi said, but he didn’t look angry, just a bit resentful.

“Then, since I’m already being rude,” Maomao said, suddenly finding she wanted to tweak him a bit. She drank down her juice, but then she ran a finger along the condensation on the glass. She took her damp finger and placed it on Jinshi’s wrist.

There were only so many options here, so she resigned herself to the life of a sack of rice

“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.

“Okay, buddy. Here, have one of these.” Lihaku tossed a rice cracker into Basen’s mouth. He looked shocked for a moment, but didn’t spit it out; instead, he started chewing.