The Apothecary Diaries S2 Ep 19

Oh Maomao… Shisui said to stay put!

Not even a minute after Shisui left, Maomao looked outside and thought: Oh that field looks interesting! I wanna check it out! Add Kyo-u into the mix and the next thing we know, the two of them are walking out of the gate and breaking into the store house in question. And the next thing they know, they’ve walked into something very different and far more dangerous than what they bargained for.

Up until now, Maomao had no clue why they decided to take her as a hostage, and yet at the same time, have given her enough freedom to be thought of anything otherwise. But it’s clear now that at least Shisui and Suirei were probably trying to protect Maomao by keeping her off of Shenmei’s radar– and seemingly for a good reason too. Lady Shenmei is straight-up terrifying. You can see the evil is just oozing all over her ghastly face.

You could say Shisui did try to warn Maomao, perhaps hoping her wits would be able to read between the lines when the topic came up about how she had to be good at massaging, doing hair and such quickly, or else she’d get beaten or have hot water thrown at her. Hearing that, Maomao had initially thought Shisui had a bad master, but it was actually worse: It’s her mother treating her like that! Perhaps it could explain why she’s been making sure Kyo-u is taught to be humble and self-sufficient despite his status. She mentioned how ‘prosperous inevitably decay’, alluding that one may not always be able to continue living a cushy lifestyle. So it’s important for him to still be involved in doing simple chores likes cleaning up after they eat and the likes to be self-sufficient if worst comes to worst, but I digress.

Now Maomao finally understands what’s at play here. The store house she stepped into wasn’t just a place for Suirei to work on her “resurrection” medicine, but it also served as as cover of a sorts for a full blown feifa work-shop, creating weapons for  war. They are working closely alongside the Western Envoys, Lady Ayla who’s been providing the tools for them. Poor Kyo-u, as a child he had no clue what this stuff was, nor was it within his wildest imaginations such a thing would be found in their village, but now he’s been caught in the cross-hairs of a secret as big as this, now he too is in big trouble.

This circles back to a lot of the things Maomao came to learn about the village’s history in this episode. Shisui talked about how the tradition of praying to the Fox God of Harvest carried on forward from the few of the remaining local inhabitants of the area after they had been chased out by foreigners from the West. While they gained invaluable knowledge in bettering their fields, as more and more people invaded their territory to steal their resources, the villagers were pushed deeper and deeper into the forest– to where they are now.

The fox masks are painted white to reflect the foxes (native to the area), and then adorned with colors, typically red but also green to reflect the newcomers that settle in the region. Shisui also made a point that many of the men in their village have trouble differentiating colours, so some they painted green around the eyes instead of red (as you can reacall: Master Lakan’s color blindness test with the wine, suggesting it’s red when it’s actually green). So Maomao’s thoughts about how the white foxes were a ‘pretext’ for white skin (hence ‘people of the white fox’), and the paint colors changing reflecting intermarriage made her think back to the Shrine of Choosing actually shows she was connecting the dots that circles back to the tale of The Mother Royal. Thus Maomao concluded they’ve must have been the same group of people who came from the West.

That said there was a lot to unpack in this episode, and a ton of foreshadowing! Having already read the novels, it was a lot of fun to catch and recognize the clues that are foreshadowing future events. There were a couple of instances where I had forgotten some things were mentioned as early as they had been. Needless to say I can’t really talk about some of them at the moment, but I’ll certainly be talking about it when they are brought up later down the line!

Apart from that, it was fun to see Maomao go back to her typical eccentric apotheycary-nerd self again. As soon as she got the green-light from Suirei to start learning about the secrets behind the ‘resurrection’ medicine’s, all sense of self-preservation as out the window. Here Suirei was trying to tell Maomao about some of the dangerous side affects, such as paraylsis, scarring and even losing memories– and Maomao’s response to that is: ‘PLEASE USE ME (AS YOUR TEST SUBJECT)!’ She can say whatever she wants about Master Lakan, but she absolutely got this side of “obsessive fixation” from him, hahahahaha! It only became even truer to that when Maomao was so locked in to reading the books Suirei gave her (to keep her preoccupied while she and Shisui had to take care of other concerning matters), that Suirei took it upon herself to get her cleaned up in the morning.

Then finally there the ever-persisting hair-stick. It’s kind of funny how everyone’s like: Wow, this thing is super valuable, can I have it? But Maomao knows better that precisely because it’s so one-of-a-kind that not only she can’t sell it without it being tracked down, but she’d never hear the end of it from Jinshi if she were to melt it, sell it or give it away.

The last thing I do want to touch on is how precious little Kyo-u is. He’s a such cheeky little brat, but you can’t help but like the kid for his good nature and adventurous spirit. I felt sad for him when he saw what he thought may have been his mask fall into the lake because he had earnestly hoped his wish would come true. Wishes written on the back of the masks will only come true if they are fully burned, the others that fall into the lake will sink to the bottom to feed the harvest. But he’s lack of caution is coming back to bite him, tenfold by having been caught by the worst possible person: Lady Shenmei….