If it had been anyone but Kokuyou, she could have expected them to fight back.
“Why, though?! Why didn’t you stay with us?”
“I’m sorry.”
He may look flaky, but he’s surprisingly mature.
Kokuyou smiled at the puffy-eyed Yo, then clasped her head to his chest.
“All right! Sorry to interrupt this very emotional moment, but Miss Chue has a question,” Chue broke in. “You said, Yo, that you came to the capital with your family. So your village was destroyed, but your family was all okay?”
That was a very perceptive question. Maomao had been wondering the same thing.
Yo, who had finally calmed down a bit, took a sip of water and said, “In my case, Kokuyou treated me before the outbreak.”
“Treated?” Maomao’s ears pricked up, and she looked at Kokuyou with interest. Even Sazen must have been curious, because he looked very serious.
“Oh, it’s a time-tested method,” Kokuyou said. “Once you catch smallpox, it’s hard to catch it again. So you just give a healthy person smallpox!”
“You’re talking about putting pus with weakened toxin in a person’s body?” Maomao asked. She’d heard just a little about the technique from her father, Luomen.
“Yeah. You pull the scab off a smallpox scar—they can cause illness for almost a year after you get better, see.”
“Do... Do you think you could do that for me?”
Kokuyou crossed his arms and hrmmed. “I’d love to, really I would, but I don’t have a good scab here—and it’s tough, because it can go wrong.”
“Go wrong how? You mean it can turn into a serious illness?”
“Yeah, one out of every few dozen people gets it bad. Sometimes they die. And of course, you’re left with scars.”
“Yes, we can’t have you getting any scars, Miss Maomao,” Chue said, sipping her water. Maomao didn’t really see the problem; she already had scars.
“Sometimes they die? That makes you stop and think,” Sazen said, his brow furrowing.
“I wish there were some safer way, a way to get weaker toxin and use that,” Kokuyou said, staring into the distance.
“Wow, and you attempted that dangerous procedure on such a young lady. Didn’t her parents get mad?” Chue drawled.
“My father got smallpox once a long time ago,” answered not Kokuyou, but Yo. “Part of the reason he came to that pioneer village was because he’d lost his family to the disease, and poverty left him with no other choice. I didn’t exactly appreciate it at first myself. The fever was agony, and of course now I have these scars for the rest of my life.” She rolled up her sleeves to show them.
“Yo’s old man was really nice. He took me in when I was about to starve to death. But the rest of the villagers thought I was creepy and didn’t like me,” said Kokuyou, once more laughing off his dark past.
“In any case, that’s why me and my family survived. Most of the villagers died, and we brought the surviving children with us when we came to the capital. That was almost three years ago now,” Yo said.
It had been two years and change since Maomao had met Kokuyou, which must have meant that he had been wandering until then.
“So you started working in the rear palace to support your family,” Maomao said.
“Yes. The doctor taught me some basic reading as well, which helped with studying in the rear palace.”
Now Maomao understood why Yo had been considered an exceptional student.
“You owe him all that, and the first thing you do when you see him is punch him?” Sazen asked, utterly cold.
“Yes... I... I know. I know what you mean, but I just couldn’t...”
“Totally understandable! A person has a lot of emotions at your age, so they’re not very good at expressing them,” Chue said, acting very knowing.
“I think you could stand to use your words a little more too,” Maomao added. “You should have said from the start that you were looking for someone with smallpox scars.”
“Miss Chue thinks you’re the last person who should complain about people not using enough words,” Chue said. Then she started hunting around the shed. She came up with one lone bean bun, in a bamboo steamer on the stove. “Is this all you’ve got? Talk about depressing.”
“Don’t just help yourself to other people’s breakfast!” Sazen exclaimed.
“Okay, so a lot has happened to you, but in any case, you got to meet your mysterious apothecary—I mean doctor. What will you do now?” Maomao asked Yo.
“Nothing. I know Kokuyou is safe, and that’s enough for me.”
“And I’m so glad to know that you and your dad and everyone are all right,” Kokuyou said with a grin. “But it definitely looks to me like there’s something you want to know—and it’s not just whether I’m in one piece.”
“There is. What should I do if there’s another smallpox outbreak? That’s what I really wanted to ask you.”
“Hmm. I sure don’t know.”
“‘I don’t’? As in, someone else might?” Maomao asked. She was every bit as interested in this topic as Yo was.
“My own mentor was researching smallpox and other infectious diseases. But then...”
“Then what?”
“He died, sadly.”
“Oh, for...” Maomao’s shoulders slumped with disappointment.
“I think his research was probably coming along,” said Kokuyou. “Me and another person were both seeded with smallpox the same way, and I ended up like this, but the other guy was perfectly fine. I think he probably got the weakened specimen.”
“Hold on a second,” Maomao said, holding up a hand. “I don’t think I can ignore what I just heard.”
“How so? Oh! The other guy was my younger twin brother. Our mentor took us in because he said we would be perfect for comparing in experiments.”
Once again, he spoke blithely of a dark past.
“That’s important, but it’s not what I meant. A weakened specimen?”
“Yeah—it seems like my brother received a much weaker version of smallpox, but it’s not written down. And since our mentor is dead, I guess we’ll never know.”
“Where’s your brother now?” Sazen asked conversationally.
“He’s dead too,” Kokuyou said, grinning. “So there’s nobody left who knows about my mentor’s research. Real sorry!” He held up both hands in a would-be cute gesture.
“Is there no way to stop an epidemic?” Yo asked, her face grim.
“It sure wouldn’t be easy,” Kokuyou said. “Although maybe if we had Kada’s Book or something, that might help.”
Maomao almost spit out her drink.
He’s mentioning that here and now?
“Kada’s just a legend, right? He didn’t write any book,” Sazen grumbled.
“My mentor says he did. He says there was a physician named Kada a century or more ago, and that his disciples hid a book of his secret teachings.”
“In a pig’s eye,” replied Sazen, who had given up trying to reclaim his bean bun from Chue and was drinking some water.
Kada...
Maomao crossed her arms and thought. Her stomach growled, maybe from the effort.
“Oh yeah... I haven’t eaten yet,” she said.
“Ooh, let’s have something! A meal!” Chue had finished the bun and was once more searching for something to eat.
Maomao, remembering the stall they’d passed in the street, decided to go out and get some meat skewers.
They’d finished their skewers, and Maomao was scowling.