Thunder sounded across the cloud-filled sky. Raindrops began to fall one by one and a light drizzle emerged. Hurriedly panicking, GuoZhao expressed his urgency.
“Pardon me for just a moment but is there any shed and stable to keep the horse and carriage? I brought some supplies along as well.”
“There is no need to be alarmed. My assistants will handle that for you. On the other hand, I already prepared some tea at the store. Please follow me.”
“I will be honored. Let’s go, ReZhui.”
Nodding at his response, YaoMing gestured for two men to move the horses to the back of the residence. They both wore similar white tunics with the Xu surname written in a bold black font at the back. As they rushed to attend to the horses, YaoMing turned on his heel and walked back to the main building behind the front entrance gate with ShiYan following behind full of relief. GuoZhao and ReZhui dashed straight forward, beating the father and daughter to arrive at the main building. YaoMing soon fastened his pace afterwards.
---
After they were given some towels to dry, YaoMing called out to ReZhui to introduce him to his new workplace.
“ReZhui, it is a pleasure to meet you again.”
As he froze in surprise, his father gave him a light nudge.
“It is a good afternoon to you as well, sir.”
Seemingly unfazed by ReZhui’s anxious demeanor, YaoMing continued.
“I have heard about some good things about your studies into the art of trade from Elder Woo. I expect to see similar results during your stay here so pay close attention and don’t hesitate to clear any doubts.”
“Understood Sir.”
“Alright, for now, ShiYan will give you a brief rundown about the store. This consists of an introduction to common routines and procedures that run about the store premises, the individual locations of important areas, such as storage for inventory, etc as well as the other employees that would be your fellow workers for the next week. If there are any questions that are left unanswered after your makeshift induction training, you are welcome to ask me after I entertain your father. Understand, the two of you?”
“Yes father!”
“Understood, Sir…”
With no return of a reply, YaoMing turned to GuoZhao and gestured his hand for his office study.
“Mr Zhang, after you.”
GuoZhao made a quick glance at ReZhui before turning his attention to ShiYan.
“Please go easy on ReZhui. I know that he may be over enthusiastic at times but I hope that makes the experience more enjoyable, little ShiYan.”
“O-of course, Mr Zhang.”
“That’s good.”
As he said his words, the two adults made their way into the office, followed by another servant holding a tray of cakes and biscuits. The door closed soon after, leaving the children with an awkward atmosphere around them.
“Wh-why don’t we start, ReZhui?” ShiYan stuttered as she fumbled her words.
“Sure…I will do my best to keep up,” ReZhui replied eagerly.
---
As ShiYan gave a tour around the apothecary, she gave instructions and details about what they are used for and the sequence order for running the shore at maximum efficiency.
“Overall, the store is built in a rectangular layout. As you can see on the left, two-thirds of the pharmacy is placed with chairs and tables, each laid with a jug of water and decorative plants. The assistants would escort patients to these seats and provide first-aid if they had wounds or ongoing illnesses. They would sort out the priority of patients through a number card system and rank their injuries on a scale of red to green with red being the most urgent for my father to diagnose.
On the right is the counter and medicine cabinets. Here, assistants would take shifts into giving out the appropriate proportions of herbs and chemicals based on the symptoms told by the customers. These customers would normally be at the green level of importance since their injuries or illnesses might range from common colds to slight bruises or small cuts.”
Stopping midway into her explanation, she reached out under the counter to bring out several card examples.
“Inspect them for yourself!” she said with pride.
ReZhui picked them off the counter table, looking at the bright red, yellow and green faces. On the other side of the card were written numbers with the highest he currently held being 34. He nodded in approval and placed them back on the table top. ShiYan tucked away the brought out cards in numerical order on the tray and spread her arms wide in front of the tall cabinets, embracing the wide display of the numerous vases and wooden boxes that housed many different kinds of plants, animal parts and fluids. The height of the cabinets reached the ceiling and he saw a ladder attached to a railing at the far end. The shelves were partitioned with wooden planks to separate each group of classified ingredients to ease with identifying and resupplying, as explained by ShiYan. Moreover, under every compartment, a label was added for additional aid for the staff.
“My father is quite the organized individual, isn't he?” ShiYan boasted with pride. However, before ReZhui could come up with a reply, she giddily went forward with the tour.
ShiYan demonstrated the payment of cash and how to time it in correctly with the calculations done by the abacus. Her fingers ran rapidly across the wooden frame to and fro as she muttered the multiplication table under her breath.
“Six…Two…Twelve. Nine…Three…Twenty seven.”
As she did so, ReZhui realized that the method she was using was taught to them by Teacher Woo back at school during math class. Recalling his former lackluster attitude towards such exercises, ReZhui felt embarrassed at his recent past. Fortunately, he tried his best to catch up in the last two weeks under quite the intense training during afterclasses.
‘Therefore, I can do this. Although my speed might…No, it would not match the standard of Mr Xu yet, but I will use this opportunity as a big progression point.’ ReZhui grinned to himself and readied his hands, stretching and clenching them as ShiYan was at the last line of numbers on one of the account books. His turn was up…
---
“Quite decent, ReZhui. Some careless mistakes here and there but overall, much better than the average street vendor.”
“ShiYan, you are taking this mentor role really seriously, aren’t you?” He asked merrily.
“Why of course I am. I am enjoying it while the chance is there.”
Afterwards, ShiYan placed back the account books on the drawer below and made her way to her father’s operation room. ReZhui followed behind her, walking straight past a double door which led into a room filled with countless cabinets filled with special jugs and metal needles. Long scrolls hung from the walls, displaying diagrams of acupuncture points and body dissection illustrations. At the center was a long sofa, an adjustable stool and a portable table with stacked wooden trays. At the corner was a tall vase of boiling water and a ladle on its lid. Turning around, it faced the entire view of the main store and was aligned with the Xu residence’s outdoor entrance.
ShiYan proceeded to explain the ins and outs of the place and did some additional demonstrations for some tools that she felt confident of. She cleansed an assortment of small knives and pretended to slice a patient’s skin based on what she observed from her father’s past surgeries. Taking a forceps and tweezers, ShiYan imagined herself pushing aside veins and flaps of muscle tissue.
“ShiYan…” ReZhui looked at her in worry.
Following that, she planned to make a herbal mixture that her father always made for himself. Normally, she would only do it under the supervision of her father but she pressed on with the concoction by herself.
“Are you sure about this, ShiYan? I don’t think it's necessary to do this since it doesn’t really help with what I came here for. What if something wrong happens? I think Mr Xu just wanted you to inform me about the whereabouts of each specific item. Moreover-”
“ReZhui, I have been training under my father for 3 years now. This should be as easy as breathing for me currently,” ShiYan insisted.
Firstly, she used the pester and mortar to crush a plethora of seeds in the proper proportions before dropping a spoon of honey and rosewater. Lighting a small fire, she poured the mixture into the heated bowl and added an equal volume of water. Thereupon, ShiYan brought out a specialized cleaver and started dicing a bundle of ginseng. As she slowly fastened her chopping pace, growing increasing surety of her precision, blood splattered.
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She accidentally cut the nail of her middle finger while chopping halfway through the hardened ginseng. An intense sensation of shock delayed her reaction to the rising pain as the blood started to drip off her finger at regular intervals.
“Ah…darn.” ShiYan grimaced at the sight; she cursed in pain as the wound revealed to be quite deep.
“What-what are we supposed to do, ShiYan?!”
Despite the dripping blood, she tried her best to remain calm and instructed ReZhui on what to do as she applied pressure around the injury with her other hand.
“ReZhui…go…go get the cloth wraps on the railing and bring a bowl of water from the vase over there and drop some ice into it.” She gestured with her head.
In less than a minute, ReZhui ran across the room to get the requested items and placed them on the portable table.
“Good…Now, urgh! Now, go get the bandages at the fourth shelf and a brown ointment inside the first cabinet.”
“Understood”
As he rushed to inspect the long line of cabinets, ShiYan dipped a cloth wrap into the cooled distilled water. Then she squeezed it in her clenched fist and started to clean the wound. It took several wrappings to clean the wound and her hands before applying the ointment ReZhui brought moments before. The finishing touch was the bandage and all was well right after.
“…”
“Ahh…” ReZhui wiped the sweat off his forehead.
The two of them sighed in relief.
“ShiYan, I will clean this up before your father comes out. You can rest outside for now.”
She gave him a quick frustrated look.
“Alright let's get up now…” ReZhui approached the girl and supported her as he pulled her up. Suddenly, his hand was shoved away.
“GET OFF ME!!!”
“...”
‘I…I messed up!’ she scowled herself in frustration and embarrassment.
ShiYan’s face was hidden under her long black hair. The air around her started to change as she strided past him to the outside seats.
“ShiYan?” ReZhui questioned as he retained his outreached hand. She didn’t answer back and the silence remained until the sound of the loud pulling of chairs could be heard outside.
‘Alright, let’s clean this up first.’ ReZhui reconfirmed to himself.
---
It had been several minutes since her sudden outburst. ShiYan settled down on one of the chairs of the store, staring at bandaged finger. A red glow was becoming more and more apparent on the bandage that she rushedly made, further increasing the creases on her brows. Still lowering her head, she reluctantly moved to relax the strain on her neck. Her heart raced with vigor and anger.
‘Why? Why?’
She contemplated her reason for anger.
‘Was it because of ReZhui?’
Yet, she still kept thinking.
‘Even if so, what did he do to me? All he wanted was to work alongside my father. That’s the reason why Teacher Woo sent us the letter. However…Surely that means he will be my rival to inherit my father’s skills. My dream to become an Imperial doctor would be in shambles.’
Nonetheless, she questioned herself once more.
‘But wait! Is that what he truly wanted? Have I ever walked up to ReZhui in the last two weeks to know more about his goals? Why didn’t I do that in the first place? Everytime we arrived at school, he would be super busy with classes. That time spent must’ve paid off at the calculations he had done earlier. There was no chance to…’
Despite that, she realized that she was making excuses.
‘Yh, it’s not because I didn’t have the chance for a proper talk with him. All I did was make assumptions.’
She realized her ignorance and fear. She knew her fault.
“I…I’m-”
“ShiYan!”
“...”
She turned to see him return out of the door and in his hands were two cups filled with normal black tea. He walked to where she was seated and placed the cups on the table. Pulling another chair beside him, he closened the distance between himself and her. Taking a long gaze at ShiYan, her head was still lowered and her long hair blocked her face from his view.
“Are you alright, ShiYan?”
She remained silent.
“I…I do not know what is going on here but…if you want some private time for yourself, we can do the rest of the tour at a later date. Actually, I will go introduce myself to the assistants on my own for now. I am sure that the two who brought the horse carriage to the stables should be back here any moment. So, excuse me.”
“Wait.”
ShiYan reached out for the sleeve on his tunic, grabbing it tight. In a soft and weak tone, she asked him.
“Do you still support my dream to become an Imperial doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Are we still close friends?”
“...Yes, certainly so.”
“Therefore, if I told you that your actions will get in my way of achieving my dream, would you still move forward?”
“No”
“Why is that?”
“I made a promise to you on the day Nan died. You are the first person I said this to so I honor this promise the most.”
“You’re so annoying.” she chuckled.
A fist flew in the air, hitting ReZhui square in the face. He stumbled backwards and tripped onto the ground. Covering his red cheek, he questioned ShiYan in bewildernance.
“What was that for?!”
ShiYan stood her ground and pointed her finger at him, eyes filled with bitterness.
“You never knew how I felt being left out on what’s going on. After you did a 180 degree change in your carefree attitude for some reason, you now act more reserved at times, more considerate in others but I can still see that coming out of you…
However, the next time I saw you, you paid more attention in class and improved your grades by a large margin. Soon after, you were announced to be Teacher Woo’s new apprentice, a student of one of the three greats of the Imperial Court! I even saw you walking to nowhere the other day and sent your brothers back home first! At that time, I thought that was all of your weird shenanigans but truth to be told, you got other things in store! And now, you are here under the guidance of my father…”
“A-about that other time, I…I-” ReZhui frantically tried to clear up her suspicions.
“Regardless, I tried my best to catch up in your footsteps. I tried to accept your changes. Even when you went the other way, I prayed for your good will. But…I find it hard to digest it all. AND I HATE MYSELF FOR IT!”
“...”
“I was jealous that Teacher Woo acknowledged you instead of me. I was jealous that you were given guidance under my father like myself when I am his only daughter. I was jealous at your ceaseless well-intentioned attitude, especially after I showed my obvious resentment towards you back at the operating room. I…”
She breathed in deep.
“I AM SORRY!”
ReZhui watched as she bowed her head. Her long hair touched the shiny marble floors. Tears fell one by one; she started to sob quietly.
The boy gave no response. He went up to her and embraced his close friend. The first friend he made outside his village. The door to his awakening. She helped open his view to the outside world. Without her, he would still be in the village. An immature brat and a naive, kind-hearted child.
“No…It’s myself who should be thanking you instead.” ReZhui whispered softly in her ear as he patted her head, trying his best to calm her down.
“Dummy! You..dummy,” she retorted back, voice muffled with snort and tears.
---
The moment lasted for quite an eternity between the two of them but that all ended as they realized the wound on ShiYan’s finger started to worsen. ReZhui pulled off from the hug and brought an additional bandage. ShiYan, filled with clarity, applied the necessary treatment once again, securing the cut.
“ReZhui?”
“Yes?”
“I know this won’t be the right time for you to tell me everything and I am still recovering from that state of mind. It’s really exhausting, finding our faults.”
“I can relate to that.”
“So, how about the following day? I will treat you to a tofu restaurant down the street.”
“Depends on my schedule later.”
“Anyways, how do you rate my general introduction?”
“A 10.” He spread all his fingers wide open.
“Ha! Don’t patronize me. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“Is there any reason for me to lie?”
“True” ShiYan sighed heavily.
Moments after they relaxed their tone, the sound of a rushing crowd grew loud in the distance. The noise became more and more apparent as they approached the Xu residence. Heavy footsteps were relenting, even in the worsening rain. The duo soon noticed screams and wailing cries. Deep panting came afterwards with a large sea of black silhouettes burst through the entrance doors under the gray thunder clouds. The crowd swarmed into the courtyard, numbering 30 people strong. Among them were numerous women and children, and elderly. The only males in this crowd were teens that aged below 18 years of age. No males were in sight besides the 2 assistants that were sent out before. They carried a makeshift stretcher which had a young boy on it in a pool of his own blood.
“What…What’s going on?” ReZhui said in utter disgust, his pupils constricted and his eyes widened at the horrid sight .
“How…how did he get such a grievous wound?” ShiYan questioned herself, holding her hand on her mouth to prevent herself from throwing up.
Rain continued onwards with its unabated downpour. Thunder cracked loudly in defiance across the backdrop of black clouds. One of the assistants shouted his demands; his hands drenched with bodily fluids.
“BRING MASTER XU, IT’S AN EMERGENCY!!!”