The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 6 [Complete] by Natsu Hyuuga

Author:Natsu Hyuuga
Language: eng
Format: epub

Maomao and the man were sitting in the kitchen again, Chou-u and the master asleep in the next room. They spoke quietly so as not to wake them.

“What was it you wanted to talk about?” the man asked.

“Do you know much about poisonous mushrooms?” Maomao said.

“I can’t say I thought that’s where this discussion was going,” the man said, but he wouldn’t quite look at her.

A few things about this case had struck Maomao as unusual. For one, you’d expect something rotten to taste sour. Sure, some things might turn bitter when they went bad, but a bitter flavor wasn’t enough to be certain you were dealing with rotten food. And if the taste was bad enough to cause the other two to spit it out, why hadn’t it bothered the old master?

Then there was the question of where the dumplings had even come from.

“Did you know that there are certain mushrooms that are bitter when raw, but that the unpleasant flavor goes away when they’re cooked? What’s more, those mushrooms are poisonous—they’re often behind cases of food poisoning at this time of year.”

This particular mushroom was frequently mistaken for an edible variety used in cooking. The surface was slightly slimy, which would fit with Chou-u’s description, as well as the mushrooms Maomao had observed in the filling of the dumplings in the trash.

If they’d gotten the food from a street stall or something, there might have been a public outcry about it—but in any case, nobody would go on eating something that tasted truly terrible.

Had they gotten the food from someone in the neighborhood? But there hadn’t been any talk of people getting upset stomachs—someone would have told them if there were.

Neither the street stall nor the neighborhood explanations seemed very likely.

“May I ask who brought the dumplings?” Maomao said. She looked at the paintings of beautiful women that seemed to adorn every wall. Each looked like a gorgeous female immortal, and each had distinctive, individual characteristics, suggesting the artist had used a different model for each one.

The deadline for the work the artist was doing now was drawing near, and when it was over, the master had claimed he would leave for the west. This man here had been trying to stop him. He claimed to be a colleague, but there was nothing about him that really said artist.

“What are you trying to say? It was just food poisoning,” the man said.

“Yes, it certainly was that. Food poisoning caused by some mushrooms.”

The dumplings weren’t actually rotten—but they were poisoned, and had been from the start.

“Why did you do it?” Maomao asked. “Why did you put poison in the dumplings? Why were you so desperate to make it look like an accident that you even got Chou-u involved?”

“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t get the impression you intended to kill him,” Maomao said, and the man didn’t respond. “If anything, I think you sincerely don’t want him to die. Am I wrong?”

The man was silent for a moment, then he closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

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