Kusuriya no Hitorigoto

"Uwah, won"t the la.s.s come along with me too?"

The quack doctor"s shoulders were trembling when he begged her, so she considered it with "why not".
He brought her along to the front of the east gate"s military station.
There were several eunuchs surrounding something, and in the vicinity, maids gathered together in a doughnut shape.

"It’s good that it"s winter."

There was a woman with pallid face hidden under the woven mat. She had matted hair and bluish black lips.
For a drowned corpse, she looked relatively nice, but she still wasn"t something people were comfortable to be looking at. It was truly good that it was cold season.

The quack doctor who should be doing autopsy was hiding behind Maomao"s back like a maiden.
He was, as a matter of fact, a quack doctor.

It seemed she was floating in the outside moat this morning.
No matter how you look, with her appearance, she was surely a court lady from inside the Inner Palace.
She couldn"t be dealt with properly outside, and so the quack doctor was summoned, but.

"Can the la.s.s look instead of me?"

Though his loach moustache was quivering and he came to look at her using upturned eyes, but it wasn"t that he didn"t know about that sort of thing.
He was probably thinking to do what to people.*

"I can"t. I"ve been told to not touch corpses."

"That is surprising."

Saying something rude yet again was the heavenly voice she was used to hearing.
Needless to say, the surrounding court ladies raised their coquettish voices. It was like watching a stage play.

"Pleasant day to you, Jis.h.i.+n-sama."

(Though it isn"t anything pleasant before a corpse.)

She looked at the lovely young man without any deep emotion as usual. Gaoshun, of course, was waiting behind him. He was a worldly-wise person who was always appealing to Maomao with his gaze.

"So, teacher. Will you look properly for me?"

"I understand."

Although his face was slightly reddened, he looked at the drowned corpse reluctantly.
He timidly turned over the mat cover.
Court ladies let out shocked screams from the back.

It was a tall woman. She was wearing stiff wooden shoes, and the one foot that wasn"t wearing it was wrapped in bandages. Her fingertips were deep red, nails were brutally damaged.
It was understood she was from Food Duty from her clothes.

"You look fine from seeing it."

"It"s scenery I"m used to."

If you go a little deeper from the clean prost.i.tution quarter, you go into the lawless area.
It wasn"t rare to find the miserable figures of young girls who had been pa.s.sed around and violated.
In one perspective, you may think that there isn"t a reason to enclose prost.i.tutes in a cage, but the flip-side was also to protect them so they don"t get dragged into the dangers around them.

"Let"s hear your opinion at the back."

"I understand."

(It must have been cold.)

Maomao, after the quack doctor finished his autopsy, politely covered the corpse with the mat.
Though there was no point in doing so at this point.

Jis.h.i.+n brought her along to the Chief Palace Official"s room.
As usual, the Chief Palace Official was on standby outside.

They avoided to speak about the corpse at the Jade Palace.
That sort of thing wasn"t appropriate in a place with a baby.

(He might as well get his own room.)

She lowered her head at the elderly Chief.
Apologies for every single time.

"The Palace Guard is under the impression that it was a drowning suicide."

Saying that she climbed the wall and threw herself off into the moat.
The girl was a Food Duty maidservant, as expected. She had been working until yesterday. With that in consideration, she could have only jumped last night.

"We don"t know if it was really suicide, but, at least, I think that it was impossible for her to do this alone."

"What do you mean?"

Jis.h.i.+n who was sitting elegantly on the chair asked her with a refined voice.
As if he was different person to the strangely fl.u.s.tered young man from the other day.

"There are no stairs on the castle wall."

"That is true."

"Can you go up with a grappling hook?"

"That might be impossible."

It was really hard to for her to talk with him asking like he was testing her out.
She wanted to tell him to stop asking for every single time she spoke, but Gaoshun was watching so she kept silent.

"Though there are ways to go up without using any particular tools, but it should be impossible for that court lady."

"What did you say? What ways are there?"

It was during Fuyou-hime"s ghost disturbance previously. Maomao had always questioned on how the other woman went up the outer wall. She wasn"t the type of person to scale the wall.

Due to her nature to pursue her curiosity about until she understood, she diligently went around looking at the castle wall.
What she found was protrusions at every respective four corners of the outer wall. By stepping on the bricks that were purposely made to protrude from the wall, it was then possible to ascend the wall. It would have been easy for the Fuyou-hime who was talented in dancing.

"It would be difficult for most women, much less for someone with foot binding."

The woman"s feet were wrapped in bandages and made to wear small wooden shoes. Her feet were crushed, bound in cloth and confined in the wooden shoes. It was the practice based on the standard that smaller feet were beautiful.

"Are you saying it"s a murder?"

"I don"t know. Just that, I think that we need to make sure that she fell into the moat when she was still alive."

There was no doubt that those fingers dyed in red blood scratched the moat wall many times.
She didn"t want to think about what it was like inside the icy water.

"Should we investigate more thoroughly?"

She was troubled even with that sweet smile that cannot be refused.
She couldn"t do what she can"t do.

"My medicine teacher taught me to never touch corpses."

"Why is that? Because you dislike mourning/taboo?"

Doctors come in contact with the sick and wounded. It seems he wanted to say that they will certainly have a lot of contact with dead people.

"Even humans can become ingredients for medicine."

Maomao murmured the reason.

"At any rate, if you must do it, let it be your last", her dad had told her.
"If you do it once, you"ll be like a grave disturber", he said something that was awfully rude.
She wanted to say that she had that much good sense for that, but all in all she abided by his words.
Well, it was something like that.

Jis.h.i.+n and Gaoshun both looked taken back, and shook their heads as though to say, "I see."
Gaoshun looked at her like she was pitiful thing.

That was completely rude. Maomao held down her shaking fists.

Afterwards, what was heard from rumours was that the dead girl was at the poisoning a.s.sa.s.sination commotion from the other day.
A testament was also discovered, and the curtains of the incident closed by saying it was suicide.

In this world, even someone"s speculation could become truth.

T/N: The t.i.tle of this chapter (自他) should be referring to the manner of the maidservant’s death. It’s a question of whether she killed herself or someone else killed her, so an alternate t.i.tle could be ‘suicide (自殺) or murder (他殺)’, maybe.