Maomao is a girl from a small village, she helps his father, an apothecary, with his job, and thanks to him she has learned to read and work.
One day, she sets off to deliver some medicines in a local brothel, and is warned to be careful, lately, several girls have been kidnapped.
Once done with her job, Maomao walks into town, just to be followed and finally kidnapped. Then she wakes up in the capital, where she’s sold off as a servant to work in the Imperial Palace.
Maomao is clever, and is grateful she is not in a worse position, however, in order to survive, she decides to settle and keep as low a profile as possible.
But thanks to her background education, she starts to draw interest from other servants.
Her strategy ends up foiled by her own inability to stay quiet. After all, she was able to deduce the sinister reason why the Emperor’s two children, by different concubines, are sick.
All because there is a poison in the ingredients of a face powder, the same used by the women at a brothel in her hometown.
And despite tying to stay out of troubles, Maomao decides to intervene by leaving a note on the windowsill of concubine Lihua’s.
Jinshi, the famous eunuch in charge of administration in the inner palace, puts the pieces together and eventually corners Maomao. After all, most of the servants can’t read, and she ends up falling in his trap.
Maomao’s actions come in time to save the princess daughter of the another concubine, Gyokuyou, but not the son of the skeptical Lihua.
Maomao is presented to Gyokuyou and she decides to keep her by her side, in order to prevent another poisoning.
Jinshi is no fool and understands that her main job is to be a poison tester for Gyokuyou. However, her experiments have made her largely immune to poison.
(薬屋のひとりごと)
“Ambivalent” ~ Uru
“Ai wa Kusuri” ~ wacci
