Volume 9, Chapter 15: Senburi

The aroma of fragrant tea and sweet confectionery filled the air.

Baby smooth skin. Ebullient chatter.

This description must evoke the image of young maidens at a tea party.

But, but…

“Lass, welcome baaack.”

The host of the tea party was an old man. Moreover, a eunuch.

It was the quack doctor. Tenyuu, as his conversation partner, was making listening noises while munching on dried dates. Rihaku was standing guard against the wall, but looked idle, trying to crack walnuts with both hands.

(Weren’t those the walnuts we brought over as medicine?)

Maomao had her suspicions, but she returned the quack doctor’s greeting for the time being. “I’m back. It’s pretty much like a medical office now.”

The medical office, which was set up in the detached building of Gyoku’en’s villa, got a major upgrade. There were more beds and shelves, and there were partitioning screens too.

“Lass, your room is the first one upstairs. You should know since that’s the room you slept in on the first day, right?” 

“Yes. What happened to my belongings?” Maomao had barely unpacked when she headed to the farming village. She hadn’t done any tidying up either.

“Lass’ belongings haven’t been touched. Although, your room was dreary, so I added a little more furniture. It should be a more comfortable stay now!”

Oddly, the quack doctor was really motivated. That is to say, he had been free enough to redecorate Maomao’s room.

“The beardless old chap put his all into redecorating, you know.” Tenyuu had his usual flippant smile. She had a bad feeling about it.

“Were there no particular issues?” After setting down her things, Maomao asked as she pulled out the drawers of the new medicine shelf. The bitter medicine stench she missed was soothing.

“Naah, nothing in particular,” the quack replied. “Like always, I would go out to give the Prince of the Moon a checkup, and occasionally a patient would come in…”

“Quite a lot of people have colds, I suppose. With the extreme temperature differences, there’s bound to be people with weakened immune systems from time to time,” Tenyuu cut in as if he found the quack doctor’s carefree way of speaking too slow. Maomao wanted a succinct summary too. She looked at Tenyuu, as she checked the stock of ephedra (麻黄).

“Someone got stung by a scorpion, but he’s fine. A person nearby administered first aid immediately after the guy got stung, so although he was hysterical, he won’t die, or so I was told.”

Tenyuu speaking for someone else was probably because it wasn’t a field he was familiar with. There was no way the quack doctor would know about this, so was there someone who’s an expert in scorpion venom?

“Was there someone who’s an expert in venoms?” She picked out senburi(Swertia japonica) from the shelf and shredded a tiny amount to suck on. It was so bitter she regretted it, but the fact that it was truly medicine* felt good.

(T/N: 当(まさ)に薬 ‘truly medicine’ is also a pun for the other name for senburi: 当薬. The plant is one of the big three Japanese folk medicine. It’s well known to be suuuuuper bitter.)

“Scorpion venom isn’t unusual around these parts. That’s why the old lady from the dining hall casually told me about it. Incidentally, I was criticised about whether I was still a doctor,” Tenyuu said.

“Yeah. In the western capital, they would deep-fry scorpions and eat it. How scary.” The quack doctor furrowed his brows.

“Let’s try eating that once!” Maomao’s mood instantly lifted. She returned the liquorice she had taken out.

“Ehh, no waaay.” The quack doctor shook his head.

Seeing how the two court physicians were like this, Maomao concluded that there had been no issues in particular. Although she was in the mood to play around with medicine for a bit longer, she reluctantly decided to go to her room.

She went upstairs and opened the door to the first room. The instant she did, she realised the reason for Tenyuu’s smile.

“What the heck, is this…”

The room that should have been simple and nondescript, had a pink curtain pitched over the bed. As protection against insects, it was terribly adorable and had embroidery in various places. There was also an embroidered tablecloth spread out over the table and on the chair was a western-style seating cushion with crochet stitching.

The window also had curtains with crochet patterns and the walls were decorated with floral print fabric.

There was a sweet smell in the air. A floral perfume that was much too cute for the likes of Maomao. And as testimony, dried rose petals had been scattered all over the place.

“….” Maomao trembled, wanting to redecorate right this instant, but the quack doctor was right behind her with sparkling eyes. He was facing Maomao with a look of anticipation.

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“Fufu, this crochet stitching is nice. A merchant had recommended this to me, saying that it’s perfect for young maidens,” he said.

Maomao wasn’t a young maiden or anything. Besides, in terms of age, she was soon to be an old maid.

“Lass, do you like it?”

Round eyes drew towards Maomao.

“…–” Maomao’s face froze and her shoulders slumped.

Behind them, Rihaku looked pitiful and Tenyuu was laughing. She decided to serve Tenyuu some senburi tea for dinner tonight.

.

.

.

After dinner, Maomao returned to her room. She had exacted her revenge towards Tenyuu, so her mood was a little better.

(What of it. It’s medicine, medicine.)

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Originally it’s a herb mixed with eyebrow ink that is used in the pleasure district. Apparently it’s effective with decreasing hair loss. Aside from that, it also helps with indigestion, diarrhoea and stomach pain, but it’s hardly used in the medical office of the imperial court due to its unpleasant taste.

Then, to say why it was brought here: it’s better accepted in society not as a digestive medicine, but rather for its effect in decreasing hair loss.

(It does come once every now and then, a consultation about hair.)

Of course, Maomao was different from the quack doctor; she protected personal information. Although, it wasn’t that she won’t accept favours that occasionally come by.

She sighed deeply at the room that was too damn cute. The quack will be sad if she were to immediately redecorate, so she had to change it slowly little by little.

She was going to change into her sleepwear, thinking that since today was already a pain,  she’ll work on it tomorrow. At that very moment…

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she said.

“Okay.”

Rihaku came in.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I wasn’t sure about talking about it in front of the old man and that Tenyuu guy, so I personally came to talk to you.”

She somehow got the idea that Rihaku and Tenyuu didn’t get along well with each other. It appears the large breed dog who meshed well with anyone had people he couldn’t deal with.

Rihaku looked like a fool, but he had a good head on his shoulders and was perceptive. Was it that he sensed that Tenyuu somehow had an untrustworthy aura?

“What did Tenyuu do?” Maomao asked.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with him. It’s just that I couldn’t talk about it during that playful banter with the old man,” Rihaku replied.

“Then, is it something that’s hard to talk to the qu–, court physician-sama about?”

“There’s no problem in asking him, but nothing will happen if I do anyway, so…”

“I’ll be grateful if you can get to the point.” Maomao, back from her travels, was sleepy. Her speaking got a little brusque.

“Apparently it appeared,” Rihaku said.

“Appeared? What did?”

“A flying head.”

“The heck?”

He said a head. A head. How does a head fly?

“Apparently a hitouban(飛頭蛮) appeared,” Rihaku said very seriously.

- my thoughts:
A hitouban (lit. flying head barbarian, feitouman in Chinese) is a Chinese monster that's pretty similar to the rokurokubi/nukekubi from Japanese mythology, except that instead of a super long neck that everyone's familiar with, the head detaches from the body at night to fly around scaring the shit out of everyone before returning to its body at sunrise... One folktale from a Jin Dynasty story compilation (捜神記) has a female servant of a general being one, story was that she nearly suffocated when her head couldn't return to her body, which had been covered by blankets no thanks to a helpful coworker lol. Another interesting thing is that it's apparently a clan of people from the south (Lingnan region) according to some Tang Dynasty book (南方異物誌) too. At least, that's what I got from Chinese/Japanese wiki.
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