Chapter Text
The paper arrived on a gloomy day. It was heavy—the kind of thick, expensive scroll that didn’t belong in a room smelling of boiled vinegar and damp earth.
It didn’t bear his personal name. Instead, it carried the official black seal of the Ministry of Rites, granting her passage to the Western Principalities to continue her studies. A promotion, the old messenger had called it, nodding his bald head as if he were handing her a piece of heaven.
Maomao didn’t look at it twice. She didn’t need to.
He hadn’t come down the long stone corridor himself. He hadn't stood by the medicine shelves, his heavy, annoying silk rustling against the floor while he waited for her to look up. He had simply sat behind a screen somewhere, looked at the map of his massive new house, and decided where the dust should be swept. He had signed the ink and let the gates open for her, assuming she was a bird that wanted to fly, never bothering to ask if she preferred to stay by his side, even if it meant facing the storm.
Her mouth tasted like dry salt.
Inside her mind, where sharp, logical gears usually turned with a neat click-click, something felt jammed. A blunt, hot spike of iron had been driven straight into the machinery. She didn’t feel like crying; she just felt stupid. Stupid for thinking that a prince could ever look at a servant and see a person instead of a piece on a game board. He had "protected" her by throwing her out, deciding the course of her life for her the moment he put on his yellow robes.Not even asking her opinion..what if she wanted to stay.
"If he wants the room empty," Maomao said to the blank wall, her voice perfectly flat, "then I will take my box."
She didn’t pack the nice hairpins he had given her. She took only her small, chipped mortar, three changes of coarse green cloth, and the dried licorice roots that were too bitter for the palace kitchens.
When she walked out, she passed beneath the high western gallery. A grand procession was moving toward the main hall—a sea of black hats and sweeping banners. Through a gap in the guards' spears, she caught a single glimpse of him.
He didn't turn his head. He didn't look down at the gravel path where she stood clutching her small bundle. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on the great golden doors, his face as white and still as a porcelain mask.
Maomao looked away before the guards could tell her to move. Adjusting the strap of her wooden box, her knuckles steady and gray in the drizzle, she walked through the heavy side gate and into the city mud, leaving the palace bells to ring for someone else.
I will become the best physician, she told herself.
She boarded the ship and vowed never to look back.
[I suggest everyone to read chapter 2 before judging]