The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 12 [Complete] by Natsu Hyuuga

Author:Natsu Hyuuga
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 16: The Liar

Ever since he had heard that Maomao had gone to see Shikyou, a cloud had hung over Jinshi as he did his work.

“Perhaps I might suggest a brief rest, sir?” Gaoshun was trying to be considerate, but rest was the last thing Jinshi wanted.

“You think I could sleep?” he asked.

“A politician is one who can sleep no matter the circumstances.”

Fair enough, but Jinshi was not enough of an adult for his reason to be able to overmaster his emotions. In fact, he thought he was doing very well not to just stop working entirely.

“At first they said she’d be back within a few days. But how long has it been now?”

“Ten days, sir.”

“What’s taking so long?!”

He knew perfectly well what the reason was; he was taking his frustration out on Gaoshun.

Ten days before, when Jinshi had met with the emissary from the kingdom of the Ri people, the matter of the kingdom’s fourth prince had come up. Well, not explicitly, but that was almost certainly what they had been talking about.

If someone who stood in the line of succession was in another country—a country that wasn’t even specifically friendly—that was a serious problem. This situation was hardly better for Li than it was for the Ri people. They were the ones who had sent an emissary uninvited, but anything that happened might well be taken as a provocation. Gyoku-ou, he would have tried to bull through the matter—he probably wouldn’t even have deigned to meet the emissary. But Jinshi did things differently. He wanted this to go as smoothly as possible, and he trusted that his subordinates wanted the same thing.

Now, however, suspicion for kidnapping the fourth prince had fallen on one of the more prominent people in the western capital. And the day Shikyou had chosen to come to the main house was the exact day on which Jinshi was sitting down to a banquet with the Ri emissary. It was a ballsy thing to do—and could even be viewed as an intentional attempt to disrupt the talks.

It was understandable, then, that Baryou and the others under Jinshi would try to prevent Jinshi and Shikyou from having any contact, so that Jinshi could cut them all loose, Shikyou included, if the need arose. It might seem cruel, but that was what the politicians Gaoshun spoke of would do.

The moment someone he cared about had gotten involved, though, he had begun to panic. Maomao, blast it all, couldn’t have picked a worse moment to get tangled up with Shikyou. It had been immediately after he had come to the main house and gone on something of a rampage. She’d given him medical treatment, which would make it easy to deem her his coconspirator. They might have been able to wave away a bit of emergency first aid, but she’d actually sewn him up with a needle and thread. At that point, it got difficult to pretend to someone else had done the work.

As for Shikyou himself, Jinshi really didn’t know that much about the man.

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