The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 1

She must have been much admired for her beauty in those halcyon days before she had arrived at the palace, but when she got here, she discovered she had known as much about the outside world as a frog who had spent its life in a well.

“My sincere apologies,” Maomao said. “I couldn’t think of compensation that would be worthy of you, Master Jinshi.”
Would’ve been rude to give a eunuch an invitation to a brothel, right?

Maomao was a relatively objective thinker for a girl of seventeen, but she had a few qualities that continually dogged her. For one, curiosity; and for another, a hunger for knowledge. And then there was her budding sense of justice.

It was always possible he was the current emperor’s guardian, but considering Jinshi looked to be about twenty years old, it was hard to imagine. Maybe he was the son of the Emperor or something, but then why become a eunuch?

What I wouldn’t give for some good street-stall meat skewers. Maomao looked up at the overcast sky and sighed. She lived in a world that was at once a place of unparalleled, sparkli

I need something to write on.”

Your face powder is poison. Don’t let it touch the baby.

“You’re telling me I lost out to that? That I was bested by a bauble some hack felt obliged to give you?”
Wow, I’ve never heard him talk like that, Maomao thought, puzzled by Jinshi’s unfamiliar tone. Clearly, something was wrong.
“I gave you a hair stick, too, as I recall,” Jinshi went on, “but I didn’t see hide or damned hair of you when you needed someone to vouch for you!” He looked positively sullen. His alluring smile had been replaced by the pout of a petulant boy, and suddenly he looked hardly older than Maomao. Perhaps younger, even.

was too easy, with Jinshi’s unearthly beauty, to forget that he was born of woman just like anyone else; it might have been easier to believe sometimes that he was the thousand-year-old spirit of a peach.

Some days later, a gorgeous noble visitor appeared in the capital’s pleasure district. He came with money enough to make even the old madam goggle—and for some reason, an unusual herb grown from an insect. And he wanted one young woman in particular.