Chapter Ninety-Six: Ear
MIDAUTUMN arrived. The sky suddenly felt higher, and the weather had grown colder lately as well. Though the sun still dragged out the persistent heat of summer, the changing season had overtaken everything else. The wind, the color of the sunlight, the swelling buds of autumn flowers…
“It’s not time for the harvest festival yet, but it’s already so chilly…” I muttered to myself. I finished tending to some medicinal herbs and extracting the essence of a select few, then went into the garden where I came across Suzuiro and other ladies-in-waiting. They were laying plants out to dry, and when they saw me, they waved.
“Shall we have some tea?” I suggested.
One court lady perked up immediately. “Lady Sai! My family sent me tea from my hometown. Are you interested in trying some?”
“Your hometown is in Nosan Prefecture, right? Is it fig leaf tea, then?”
Her eyes widened. “You’re very knowledgeable. I thought my hometown was only famous for our rice.”
“Fig leaf tea has the benefit of improving circulation, but I hear that the skin also becomes overly sensitive to light. But in Nosan, you store them overnight in special caves where spirits live, so the tea leaves you produce are good quality and good for skin even during the day… Is that correct?”
“You know so much about a remote place like ours! Aw, that makes me so happy.” A dusting of pink colored her cheeks.
I always made an effort to remember as much as possible about the hometowns of my attendants. Information was vital for coming up with new ideas. Seemingly unrelated knowledge might connect when I had more pieces, and that could lead to inspiration for novel discoveries.
More than anything… I want to know more about them because fate brought us all together at Sekirei Palace, and I don’t want to waste these special ties. Maybe there will be something I can help them with eventually.
We carried the tea into the gazebo in the inner courtyard to enjoy while we chatted. Our conversation spanned a variety of topics: We talked about the development of the herb garden, as well as the plants we were planning to introduce. Soon we were going to purchase a field on the outskirts of the capital, and we discussed what medicinal herbs we needed to prepare and seed. We also gossiped about the latest trends and rumors among the young women of the capital, and so on.
The court ladies were helping themselves to warm roasted green tea and kinako mochi as they passed around a document about our sales. They began to engage in a lively debate about our next products.
“What should we plant next?”
“Weeell… During this period, the refreshing and lightweight toners were the most popular. I think we should consider making toners that are more hydrating.”
“But if they’re picking lightweight products, their skin must be hydrated enough already, right?”
“Skin only gets oily because it’s lacking moisture and then produces more oil to make up for it. If we advertise that fact and tell people to use more moisturizing products since we’re heading into a dry season, I’m sure that our reputation will increase too.”
“I see, I see.”
I talked about our wares mostly with merchants, yet whenever I was thinking about expanding our product lineup or looking for points to improve on, in the end it was much better to glean feedback from the court ladies. They were young and sensitive to what was in vogue, so what I gained from their candid conversations was always the latest information.
My target client base was mostly in Centoria, not Orient, so the merchants, by all rights, should have known the prevailing trends there better than all of us. Yet even the products they doubted and questioned the profitability of, once they tried out a sample, they would often scramble to restock it, proving that the court ladies were truly a vital source of marketing research.
One woman said, “Surprisingly, in the aroma category, the unscented products were the most popular. Maybe they prefer unscented since it doesn’t clash with the perfume and skin care products they already have over there.”
I mulled over all I’d heard. “Shall we expand our herb garden and plant more perennials? We’ll test out a few species, and we can request a proper farm to cultivate the popular ones in large quantities or—” I broke off abruptly.
A realization suddenly dawned on me. I was assuming that I would live in Sekirei Palace forever, as if that was the natural conclusion. That’s right. I’ll live here, celebrate the emperor’s wedding, then protect his wife and child…
A lady-in-waiting looked at me worriedly. “Um, Lady Sai?”
“Ah. Sorry…”
For some unknown reason, I felt as though I had been splashed with ice water. I fidgeted with one ear.
One court lady noticed. “Oh! When did you get your ears pierced, my lady? I’m surprised.”
I let out a small chuckle. “Ha ha, I did it on the spur of the moment. You know…” I mimed what the emperor had done on that day and made a pricking motion.
The women all gasped and started to cheer. None present had pierced their ears yet, it seemed.
“Did it hurt?” one asked.
I faltered. “Ye…s. It did…hurt.”
“It did? How did you do it?”
All of them were looking at me with curiosity. I didn’t know how to diffuse the situation when everyone was so worked up. At the end of the day, they were all young women around my age, so stopping them once they were intent on something was admittedly a challenge.
I selected my words carefully, hastily omitting the details as I went. “Um, well, I…sharpened the tip of an earring, sterilized it, and…pushed it through.”
“Waaah! That’s so scary!” gasped one attendant.
“You did it by yourself, my lady?!” another exclaimed. “Weren’t you scared?”
“I-I was, but…” I stammered. “Well, um, I knew that it had to happen one day, so…”
“How do you feel now? Do you feel different?”
“Uh, um…” I couldn’t meet their eyes.
It was strange—as I kept talking, my cheeks grew hotter, and I was increasingly at a loss for words.
I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened on that day. Sometimes I dreamed of it and woke with a start. Recalling even just a small part to explain to the court ladies was messing with my head. Whenever I remembered the emperor’s warm breath and the pain I had felt, my mind blanked, and I could focus only on clearing my thoughts until my pulse slowed again.
On nights when I simply couldn’t sleep, my heart jumping around in my chest like a baby deer, I climbed onto the balcony. Gazing up at the moon, I drank cool water and waited for the heat to subside.
“Do you feel different?” the court lady had asked.
If I were to give her an honest answer, the truth was, nothing had really changed other than the fact that I experienced those strange symptoms more often. But my “sickness” wasn’t due to the piercing—it was mostly caused by the events that had led up to the piercing.
Finally, I mumbled, “I’m not sure… The piercing itself wasn’t really, well… Um, what happened during the piercing was more… I don’t know how to explain it, but my body’s been acting weird…”
“Lady Sai?”
“It sounds strange, right…? My mind just…doesn’t think sometimes, and…I end up in a daze…”
“…Lady Sai?”
It took me a long time to realize what I was rambling. “Oh…” What am I even… Color drained from my face as I glanced around me.
The court ladies were drilling fiery gazes into me.
“Hold up, hold on just a second… I smell something fishy about that reaction,” one crowed.
“Wait, give me a minute to calm down… No way, Lady Sai?!”
A woman leaned forward excitedly. “Is it who I think it is?! Is it Lord Hiaki?!”
“N-No!” I exclaimed frantically, denying the accusation with everything I had. “It wasn’t him!”
But that only fanned the flames.
“Guys, you hear that?! She said it wasn’t him!”
“Which means someone else definitely did the piercing, right?!”
“Waaah! Wow, this is crazy, ahhh! What do we do?!”
They were like a bunch of excited students clinging to a juicy morsel of gossip in an all-girls school.
“U-Um, I, uh…” I stuttered, but my mind was static.
They continued to hound me until I fell completely silent, face as red as an apple.