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If love makes a woman beautiful, what kind of medicine would it make?
It was those words that had sparked such curiosity during her tenure in the rear palace. Words that had consumed her mind when she was only seventeen years of age, at the time so mature, though now she looked back with barely concealed embarrassment.
The words had remained in her mind long after she first thought of them, like a lingering sickness that never seemed to disappear, infecting her until her mind and body had seemed intent to create its own experiment, one that she hadn’t willingly become the participant of.
It seemed the experiment had been a success, if the way she sat before the glass mirror, a gift, was anything to go by.
She was draped in crimson silk, golden chains and embroidery enveloping her from every angle as though she had been dipped in golden ink sent from the heavens. Her veil had been placed to the side, ready to be attached when she was finally prepared.
Everyone else had left the room. Chue, Suiren, Maamai, they had all seemed to understand the strange emotions that had been bubbling inside her since that morning, and had apparently decided it imperative that she be given a moment to breathe.
And so she did just that.
Her breathing remained practised and even as she took in the reflection before her, studying the lines and curves, the fullness of her figure and the warm, pale yet tan shade of her skin, and everything in between.
She traced each part of herself with her eyes, remembering her youth and the way her body had once looked. It seemed such a distant thing now, almost strange to reconcile that girl with the woman staring back at her.
Her hair was far silkier, longer too, carrying a certain elegance she thought looked quite pretty on her. It had begun to grow healthier after her diet changed, after she stopped spending quite so much time neglecting herself for the sake of her experiments and settled further into her role as a medical assistant.
Her cheeks had grown fuller, no longer hollowed from too little food. Her hips, too, carried slight curves where she had once possessed almost none. Small areas of softness had appeared slowly and steadily over the years as she began to look less malnourished and more like a grown woman, fed properly, cared for properly, and far too often forced to finish every plate of food placed stubbornly in front of her.
Her skin had grown more even. It remained the same warm tan shade it had always been, and likely always would be, but now it looked healthier. Even the dark circles she had grown accustomed to finding beneath her eyes each morning had faded after she began sleeping more, her body receiving more rest than she believed it ever had before.
Her hand traced the changes along with her eyes, fingertips running over the unfamiliar curves as though the mirror might simply be an illusion, as though she might touch herself and find that she had returned to being that girl from the pleasure district, unchanged and nothing more.
Yet some part of her knew that wasn’t true, because she had watched it happen.
She had watched every little change run through her body with the same curiosity she afforded any experiment, observing each development as it appeared and storing it somewhere in the back of her mind. Fuller cheeks, softer skin, longer hair, more weight upon her bones, less exhaustion beneath her eyes.
And whenever she had attempted to form some hypothesis as to why these changes were happening to her, her thoughts inevitably returned to one thing.
Or rather, one person.
Jinshi.
He had given her the opportunity to become a medical assistant and, with it, bestowed upon her the happiness she found in the role. It was work she genuinely enjoyed, work that occupied enough of her attention that her more reckless experiments had slowly become fewer and farther between.
He had fed her more, and better too. Plate after plate of food had been placed before her over the years, Jinshi watching her eat with barely concealed satisfaction. He would make certain she finished every last crumb before allowing her to leave, and even then, she was almost always sent home with far more leftovers than she required.
At first, she had found it irritating, before soon growing accustomed to it. Eventually, she had stopped noticing altogether.
Her sleep had only improved once she had begun allowing herself into his bed. His large body pressed against hers seemed capable of lulling her to sleep more effectively than any remedy she had ever concocted. His warmth kept her from waking throughout the night, and she would rise in the morning without the familiar stiffness she had long attributed to her own miserable excuse for a bed.
There was no medicine involved in that, no carefully measured dosage, no particular combination of herbs she could recreate.
There was only him.
And so it seemed… Love truly did possess the power to make a woman beautiful. As for the medicine it made, well, that was something she could never hope to recreate.
Jinshi had given her so much. He had remained beside her through every obstacle, had shown her patience even when she had given him very little reason to possess it. He had cared for her with every ounce of his being, openly and shamelessly, even during those years when she had barely known what to do with such affection.
And now, looking back, she could only wish she had learned how to return it sooner.
Her eyes remained fixed upon the woman in the mirror as memories passed through her mind.
She remembered those first days in the rear palace, when he had been little more than an irritatingly beautiful eunuch who seemed determined to interfere with her quiet existence. She remembered every strange incident that had somehow pulled them closer, every argument and reluctant conversation, every touch she had pretended meant less to her than it did.
She remembered their journeys to the Western Capital, the dangers that seemed intent on following them wherever they went, and every terrible occasion upon which she had been taken away from him.
More than that, she remembered returning. No matter how far circumstances had dragged her from his side, somehow she had always found herself there again, with him.
And perhaps her body was not the only thing that had changed. Her smile had changed too.
Once, such unrestrained happiness had been reserved almost exclusively for poison, some fascinating medicinal ingredient, or the promise of an experiment she had yet to conduct. Those things still brought that familiar excitement bubbling through her, of course. She doubted anything could ever change that.
But the smile upon her face now was different.
It was small and soft, almost embarrassingly tender as she looked at the woman Jinshi would soon take as his wife. There was no poison sitting before her. No rare herb clutched between her fingers. No new discovery waiting to be pulled apart and understood.
There was only the thought of him. Of the man waiting for her somewhere beyond those doors.
The man who had fed her, sheltered her, annoyed her, challenged her, protected her, trusted her and loved her through every strange turn their lives had taken.
Her fingers stilled against her cheek.
Everything she saw reflected back at her, the healthier body, the softness in her face, the quiet happiness she could no longer pretend wasn't there, carried some small trace of him.
Everything was because of him.
Her gaze eventually drifted towards the red veil resting to the side.
Her fingers traced the golden embroidery with the utmost care, following each delicate pattern woven into the fabric before she lifted it. She brought it carefully to her hair, pinning it into place against the tight bun she wore beneath it, every movement meticulous until the veil sat snugly atop her head.
There, almost ready.
Her hands lowered again, smoothing over the crimson silk covering her body, only to pause when her fingertips caught upon something hidden beneath all that finery.
Beneath the royal silks and glistening jewels, tucked almost completely out of sight, she wore a small pendant depicting the flower of a woodsorrel.
It was a weed.
Something she had been likened to time and time again throughout her life, sometimes with fondness and other times with considerably less charitable intentions. Small, plain and stubborn, growing wherever it pleased despite how often someone might attempt to pull it from the earth.
She had never particularly minded the comparison, there were far worse things to be than a weed.
Yet when she had once told Jinshi of the flower and the comparison others so often made, he hadn't rushed to contradict her. He hadn't insisted she was something grander, some rare blossom deserving of admiration, nor attempted to dress the weed up as something it wasn't.
He had merely stroked her hair, his fingers passing gently through the strands as his chin came to rest atop her head.
“Woodsorrels are my favourite,” he had said.
She had tilted her head slightly at that, suspicious of the convenient declaration. “Since when?”
“Since now.”
She remembered sending him a flat look, though it had done little to deter the smile spreading across his face.
“Truly,” he had murmured, pressing a kiss into her hair. “The prettiest flower.”
Her fingers curled around the pendant now.
It was such a small thing beneath everything else she wore. No one would see it once she stepped beyond those doors. The crimson silk would hide it, as would the layers of gold befitting the woman who was about to become the Moon Prince's wife.
But Maomao knew it was there, a little weed beneath all that gold. And somehow, that made her feel more like herself than anything else she wore.
She stood, taking another slow breath as she gazed into the mirror one last time. That young girl from the pleasure district was still there.
She was hidden beneath crimson silks and golden finery, beneath jewels and embroidery that the girl she had once been could never have imagined wearing, but she remained all the same. Stubborn and persistent as ever.
But there was something else reflected back at her now too.
A woman who was in love. A woman who was loved in return, and who wanted to give that love back more freely than she ever had before. A woman who was healthy and happy and, though she still felt somewhat strange admitting it even within the privacy of her own thoughts, beautiful.
Perhaps seventeen-year-old Maomao had been asking the wrong question all along.
If love makes a woman beautiful, what kind of medicine would it make?
Her younger self had wondered what properties such a medicine might possess, what effects it could produce and whether it could somehow be bottled, measured and recreated.
Now she knew better. It could not be recreated, could not be measured. And it certainly could not be bottled.
Her fingers curled once more around the little woodsorrel hidden beneath all that gold, her smile growing just slightly as she turned away from the mirror.
Love, it seemed, truly was the most powerful medicine of all.