Chapter 2
1151 Words
“I had it commissioned when you passed the upper exam,” he said. “You were seventeen. I never gave it to you because I figured you’d just pawn it for more scalpels.”
Yue blinked hard. “…I would have.”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m giving it to you now.”
She looked down at the pin in her hand. Then, with a forced smile, she slid it into her hair without ceremony, twisting it through the braid at her crown.
“There,” she said. “Now I look slightly more like a respectable palace woman and slightly less like an escaped herbalist.”
“You’ll do,” he said mildly.
Then, more quietly: “Be careful, Yue.”
The use of her name without title made her chest tighten.
She stood. “Don’t start acting sentimental now, old man. You’ll give me emotional hives.”
“Go pack,” he said instead, waving her off. “And no sarcasm in the official paperwork.”
She grinned and made a sharp bow with a theatrical flourish. “Of course, Head Physician Bai Song. Your most obedient servant.”
“Don’t lie.”
__________
By the time the sun dipped low and turned the tiled roofs of the State Clinic a dusty gold, Linh Yue had packed everything she needed into a single travel case. It was long, narrow, and worn at the corners — like her. Inside were three sets of clean robes, her medical kit, two notebooks (one for patient notes, one for scribbled complaints), several jars of dried herbs, and a small pouch of coin Bai Song had slipped her without comment.
She closed it with a click and straightened just as Xiao Ren barreled into her room.
“You’re leaving already?” he asked, breathless, as if she might vanish before he finished the sentence.
“I leave at dawn,” Yue replied, tying a strip of cloth around the handles. “You still have time to organize a protest.”
“I’m this close to it,” he said, holding up his fingers. “I can’t believe you get to go to the palace. The actual palace. You’re going to treat the Crown Prince.”
She turned to face him with mock solemnity. “Yes. Me. Not you.”
“You’re not even excited!” he cried. “If it were me, I’d have fainted already from joy!”
“You did faint once,” she reminded him. “Because you thought powdered deer horn was edible.”
“It looked like sweet root!”
She burst out laughing, and despite himself, so did he.
But when the laughter faded, he looked down, twisting the hem of his tunic.
“You’re really going?” he asked, softer this time.
“Mm-hm.”
“You’ll… come back?”
Yue hesitated. Then reached up and flicked him on the forehead.
“Of course I’ll come back,” she said. “I can’t leave you alone with the sterilization process. You’d mix the vinegar with the powdered ink again and set the entire lab on fire.”
“That happened once!”
“Twice.”
He tried to glare but ended up looking like a sulky cat.
She grinned and grabbed her case.
Together, they walked through the outer halls of the clinic — the smell of fresh herbs, the echo of footfalls on worn wooden floors. A few apprentices waved as she passed. Some bowed. Some whispered.
The royal seal on her clearance paper had spread through the place like wildfire. She didn’t blame them for gossiping.
At the front courtyard, Bai Song was waiting beside the clinic gate. His hands were folded behind his back, and his expression was unreadable — which meant he was trying not to say anything sentimental.
“Don’t forget to tell the palace staff you need a boiling basin at all hours,” he said when she stopped in front of him. “And don’t trust anyone who offers ‘pre-prepared infusions.’ Brew your own.”
“Obviously.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Then pulled a small packet from his sleeve and pressed it into her palm.
“For pain,” he said. “Yours or his.”
Yue stared at the packet, then at him.
“You think he’s in pain?”
“I think he’s hiding something.”
She opened her mouth to joke, to ask if he’d finally decided to dabble in court conspiracies, but something about his tone made her pause.
Then he added, almost too softly, “They don’t always want you to heal the body.”
She looked up.
“Sometimes,” he continued, “they just want you to say it can’t be healed. Because then it stops being a problem.”
Her fingers closed around the packet.
She didn’t ask what he meant.
She just nodded, once, and bowed — a real one, this time.
And with that, she turned and walked through the gate.
The carriage sent by the palace was lacquered black with golden trim, its wheels near silent as they turned over the stone road that led through the capital. The horses were immaculate, their manes braided and polished. The footman didn’t speak to her, nor did the guards riding ahead. Yue sat alone inside, fingers drumming on the wood panels.
She had worn her cleanest robe — pale blue with stitched magnolia blossoms — and pinned her hair back with Bai Song’s crescent pin, though it felt too formal, like someone else’s accessory.
The city gave way to quiet courtyards and walled paths. Then, beyond the rising mist and trimmed hedgerows, the Imperial Palace loomed into view.
It was massive.
Not just in scale, but in presence — like a silent deity watching from its hilltop throne. Curved rooftops overlapped like dragon’s scales, tiled in deep red and blue enamel. The entrance gate alone had more carvings than the entire clinic’s library.
Yue leaned out slightly, peeking through the open lattice window. “Well,” she muttered to herself, “at least it’s not ugly.”
The guard beside the carriage didn’t react. Obviously.
The carriage rolled through the outer gate, then another, then another. At the fourth checkpoint, Yue was asked to step out. She did so, dusting her sleeves, trying not to squint in the rising morning light.
A woman in dark green robes approached. Her hair was braided into a tight crown, and not a single strand was out of place. Her expression had been boiled out of her face sometime in her early twenties.
“Physician Linh Yue?” the woman asked, flatly.
“That’s me,” Yue replied cheerfully.
The woman blinked once. Slowly. “You will be searched. Then escorted.”
“Lovely,” Yue said. “Is there a complimentary drink, or…?”
No response.
- Writer
