After the frog and hunting expedition incidents, the past few episodes have been pretty pretty chill!
Xiaolan has found herself in a pickle of looking for a new place to work once her term of service is up in six months. She doesn’t have a network, and Maomao’s mostly limited to only recommending the Verdegis House as an absolute last resort. She’s kind of avoiding Jinshi at the moment, but she has a valid reasons for not wanting Xiaolan getting dragged into any troubles. Thankfully Shisui had a solution to this problem, and that’s introducing them to the best place to network — the consorts’ baths.
The method is simple, offer services like massage and body treatment, and try to form a good relationship with the courtesans. So that when it’s time to go, they may have the opportunity to be hired to work for their families once they leave the Rear Palace. You could say Maomao was having more fun than she cared to admit, especially since she saw an opportunity to give a quality hair removal treatment.
However she did require permission from Lady Gyokuyou to continue going since it could potentially be a breach of trust and lead to conflicts of interest. However since has her trust, she can go– however she does need to report back to her for any interesting rumours and gossips that are going around.
Additionally, since Maomao has been hanging out with Xiaolan and Shisui a lot lately, she hasn’t really interacted much with the new additions of the Jade Palace. So it was suggested that Seki-u, (the youngest of three sisters that has joined the team,) tag along with Maomao and the other two doing their thing at the baths. Seki-u however was quite anxious about the whole thing, mainly because she’s very shy, to the point that she even gotten special permission from Lady Gyokuyou to use her private baths instead of the public ones they are supposed to use. She was also quite anxious about interacting with other consorts as well, understandably so.
But the most interesting turn of events of this side hustle was the unexpected encounter with Lady Lishu. While her food taster Kanan has turned over new leaf as her new Head Lady-in-Waiting, it’s clear that Lishu has yet to catch a break– prompting her to use the public baths instead of her own private one.
The reason this time? A ghost been appearing in her baths. Well as it turned out, the face she had been seeing was caused by a combination of things. The hot water, the deterioration of the building, and finally the copper mirror.
The copper mirror, unbeknownst to Lishu was actually what you call a ‘magic mirror’. Its purpose is to capture light to project an image in its reflection. In this case, the image projected was Lishu’s mother’s face. While Maomao had explained how it worked, all of that flew right over Lishu’s head, because she was so overwhelmed by the shit she’s been subjected to all this time, that she has immediately defaulted into blaming herself. I actually teared up when Lishu broke down, apologizing to her mother’s spirit for not using her mirror more since she had received the glass mirror from the envoys. For the love of god, someone help this girl! It was just such a heartbreaking scene to watch.
On that note, it was so refreshing to actually see Jinshi show how mad he was about this kind of behaviour for an exchange. By the rules and the role he is playing, he can only respond within means. But now that there was blatant evidence to prove the ladies-in-waiting’s misconduct and negligence. I mean, it just goes to show how bloody arrogant they were to openly treat Lishu this way in front of the eunuch responsible for keeping tabs on the Emperor’s flowers! This woman needed to get knocked off her high-horse and put into her place. But I suppose they gotten cocky because they’ve been able to get away with it for so long, but thanks to that they finally exposed themselves of their abuse towards Lishu. Still, it’s painful and frustrating that Lady Lishu has had to put up with this for so long. She deserves better.
That said, I do find it quite funny how both Maomao and Jinishi has shown their scary ‘no non-sense’ ways of dealing with stupid Ladies in Waitings, and their respective response to each other’s were: “Yikes, that’s scary.”
Should be noted though that Maomao and Jinshi were sort of avoiding each other up until now. Maomao is trying to forget that she touched his frog, and Jinshi is still bruised over the comment, and is frustrated that he hasn’t been able to properly speak to her about his identity and why he’s serving as an ‘eunuch’. Gaoshun has been pressing him to get it down and over-with because he wants Maomao on their side as soon as possible, but for Jinshi, sure he wants her to be a part of his team, but for him, it’s more than just that, and that’s what makes it complicated. So it’s really not just Maomao trying to stall this out, there’s a part of Jinshi that’s been doing the same.
But there was one big thing that did change between them: Jinshi has started to referred to Maomao by her name for the first time in Episode 13. The shift was drastic enough for Gyokuyou and Gaoshun to have noticed– especially since he’s been hesitant to do so all this time.
Next up we circled back a bit to Xiaolan’s progress she has been making, which is nice to see since it won’t be long before she departs. Fortunately She has been able to gain favour with a low ranking consort who will be leaving soon, as she received her hair pin (which is always a positive sign of favour). But her joy was short-lived when she made a grave error of accidentally walking into an eunuch delivering a very expensive block of ice and spoiling it. Had Maomao not been, nor Jinshi was close by to provide the resources they needed to turn this around, this could’ve gone very badly for Xiaolan. The problem for Maomao was that the delivery was for Lady Loulan, and right now she’s the only one of the four high consorts that Maomao has no relationship with. So it wasn’t like she could curry their favour thanks to her history and relationship with them. The only way to turn this around was to make something better out of that spoiled block of ice, and that was a delicious ice treat.
Of course once that was all said and done, hilariously they did have leftovers so they were able to actually treat themselves to some— with Shisui because this girl just loves popping out of nowhere and slacking off on the job. But seeing her and Xiaolan being all happy and friendly is something precious to Maomao. Usually she’d want to keep her head down, but as she said to Jinshi, she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she left Xiaolan alone to fend for herself.
As for Jinshi: Besides the fact he did want to help her out, he did capitalized on the opportunity to have Maomao owe him back. His request wasn’t anything too difficult, in-fact it was so outrageously simple that even Maomao was surprised. It was: Don’t interrupt him until he finishes speaking. We all know why he had asked for something like that, but since it seemed too simple for her, so he threw in a different request: To wear the hairpin he had given to her back at the garden party in the first season. It’s become an anchor of resolve for him to finally tell her when he gets the opportunity to.
That said, good thing Maomao hadn’t pawned it off for cash just yet. Jinshi had (correctly) suspected she might try to pull that stunt, but thankfully she still has it.
And finally, perhaps the most serious development by far: Lady Gyokuyou’s pregnancy progression. After hearing her make an observation about the direction the baby was kicking (in this case, downwards), Maomao became concerned about the signs of a potential ‘Breech Delivery’. And upon further investigation, it appeared that yes, there’s a very high likelihood of that happening.
The dangers that come with a breech delivery means increasing the risk for the mother. For a safer delivery, the head (which is the biggest part of the body) must come out first. If the feet comes out first, that’s the smallest, which would mean they’d have to do surgery by cutting her stomach open to get the baby out. Neither Maomao nor the Quack has the expertise to do that… but there is one person, and that is none other than her foster father (also great uncle): Luomen.
To Lady Gyokuyou’s credit, besides the fact she does trust Maomao, she knows above all, that the ‘crimes’ that had been recorded under the late Empress Dowager is one to take with a grain of salt. On the records, the ‘crime’ which Luomen had supposedly committed was left vague and unclear. The only thing that is known is that it’s related to Ah-Oh’s birth, which happened at the same time as the current Empress Dowager Anshi. So Gyokuyou isn’t going to let something as ambiguous as that to stop her from seeking care under the best doctor in the entire nation.
So now despite his expulsion, Luomen has been admitted back into the Rear Palace. And until he completes the task of managing the birth, he will be working in the medical office in the mean time. That said, it was quite funny how everyone was expecting someone to be a little more eccentric like Maomao. They were all so taken aback by how he seemed to be “normal’ – which they think Maomao lacks (for understandable reasons haha).
And lastly before we wrap things up: We did get some more teases of the new and popular, beautiful eunuch that have taken the servant ladies’ hearts by storm. Jinshi had a brief meeting with them, where he had learned the eunuch cannot use one arm, and is covered in scars. Though lets be real, it’s pretty obvious who is it at this point, but what are they cooking now is the real question, and who’s graves were they visiting?
