The Apothecary Diaries - Vol. 8 Ch. 38 - Balsam and Wood Sorrel (Part 2)

[SonicWizard]

😭😭😭😭😭😭

 

[That_ylda]

This chapter made me cry like a lil baby

 

[Luke_chase]

🥲

 

[himi-cat]

@Nep she wasn't sleeping around because she wanted to, that was the only option she had to earn any income after getting pregnant.

So, the order things happened in was:

Spoiler

her and Rakan fell in love, they had sex (and I'll also note that Fon Shen definitely wasn't a virgin or anything - the courtesans would all have been on contraception, she would have specifically chosen to stop using it so she could get pregnant), she got pregnant (without Rakan knowing about it), Rakan was kicked out of the capital by his father and wasn't able to return for three years, Fon Shen had her baby and went back to work as a low end prostitute who couldn't choose her partners (possibly/probably working on the street) ,she got syphilis and progressed to the point where she was suffering mental effects, she did the finger thing (probably both as a way of saying she loved Rakan, but also as a way of saying that she had a baby - not being properly rational due to the syphilis it may have seemed like a good idea), Rakan's uncle (Ruomen, Maomao's foster father) finds the message, realises what happened, and goes to take care of Maomao (I don't know how this relates to the timing of him being kicked out of the inner palace). Then Rakan comes back, finds the message and the fingers and realises what happened himself, goes to the brothel, gets his arse kicked by the madam, and at some point I assume comes to the conclusion that Fon Shen is dead, so he gives up on her. But he then finds Maomao with his uncle, and focuses on her, and it's only now that he realises he was wrong when he assumed that Fon Shen was dead.

(wrapped in spoiler tags to hide the wall of text)

I'll just note that I recently read the web novel version of this, which progresses a bit differently on this part of the story, while the manga is following the light novels - I think I've taken the differences into account, but I may have messed up somewhere. The gist is definitely there, though - Fon Shen got pregnant and lost her position as a high class courtesan, had no option but to work the streets and got sick as a result, and her sickness drove her mad (as syphilis does, though it normally takes longer to progress than the timeline here allows for - the living conditions of a street worker in this context might have something to do with the rapid progression).

 

[sylvacoer]

@himi-cat - thank you for the wrap-up! Such a sad story, and you can see why each event happened, not because the people involved were bad, but because their choices in the moment and external events forged the paths.

 

[That_ylda]

😭😭😭

 

[himi-cat]

@sylcacoer I think Rakan's family are the bad ones - they didn't care enough about their son to even forward on a message like that one. If it wasn't for his uncle being a decent human being Maomao might never have had anyone outside the brothel in her life, and would (at best) have ended up being a courtesan herself. The people at the brothel did care for her a lot, and they did their best to look after her, and her foster father obviously did his best (despite being in a pretty bad situation) - everyone was doing the most decent thing they could under the circumstances, they were just very difficult circumstances.

Certainly I can see why Rakan was motivated to rip his family to shreds and take over the name himself - they deserved it, and probably more.

I do wonder what (if anything) Rakan did to support Maomao and his uncle during the intervening years - the WN version didn't say anything about that, so I have no idea. Maybe it's dealt with in more detail in the light novels....

 

[Lightbrand]

@VermillionOcean
Thanks, I'll reread it.

What originally made sense in my head was that Rakan wanted to buy out mommy (whose name is revealed today as Fon Shen) but either he can't afford it or whatever so he tanked her value as a courtesan by getting her pregnant. Afterwards if he had bought her out all according to plan then fine whatever. Still kind of fucked up but it's acceptable in that society/culture, especially if she's happy to be with him as well.

But it didn't happen, so of course it meant he flaked...Right? Which makes him a scumbag degenerate and total villain. Then Mao Mao was born and Shen went insane or died and foster dad and rest of the courtesan had to raise Mao Mao.

Yet today's chapter showed he wanted her no matter what, and had no idea wtf happened yet he knows he has a daughter. So did I miss something or is the mystery still yet to be revealed.

 

[lenovoaxioo]

question, , , ,is she mao's mother? the earlier chapter kinda portray her not in that light if i remember it right

 

[Nep]

@himi-cat

and her sickness drove her mad (as syphilis does, though it normally takes longer to progress than the timeline here allows for - the living conditions of a street worker in this context might have something to do with the rapid progression).

Its this that makes me thing she is already mad before syphillis. Also i don't believe she needed income so desperately and thus considered it as bad judgement out of madness (After all, she doesn't look like she needs money atm and she definitely isn't earning squat)

(Also pretty sure they are virgins because they would be priced higher that way and the society makes that important.)

So my intepretation of the order of things is this

Spoiler

her and Rakan fell in love, *** Rakan was kicked out of the capital by his father and wasn't able to return for three years, Fon Shen had her baby, gone mad, made bad life decisions, did the finger thing, got syphillis around that time or even after. (Syphillis is high contagious in 1st and 2nd stage. Yet Maomao doesn't have it which either means no contact with the infected area or ancient China clothes are adequate protection from all the grabbing. Since the infected area spreads, definitely not the 2nd and 1st stage is only about 3 months max. Also timing is unlikely to be 3rd) syphillis progress, became madder than mad. Uncle was probably around since/soon after birth to "treat" Fonshen and protect Maomao. Then Rakan comes back and everythign else is as you described

@lenovoaxioo Yes, she is Mao Mao's

Spoiler

abusive

mother. Its not portrayed that way because Mao Mao doesn't think of her as a mother, the same way she doesn't think of Rakan as her father. There is no familial love here (on her side at least). The only more dysfunctional fictional blood family I can think of is those morons from Tekken.

 

[himi-cat]

@Lightbrand it's not entirely clear in either version of the story I've read who decides that Fon Shen getting pregnant is a good idea. It's noted in a couple of places that this is a way to drop the cost of redeeming a courtesan, so it's a possibility that someone was thinking about it, but it doesn't make much sense that Rakan was involved in the plan and then didn't at least try to find out whether it had succeeded - he didn't seem to have any idea what was going on when he came back after his three years elsewhere.

I think the most likely scenario is that it was Fon Shen who decided to do it on her own, for reasons that aren't entirely clear - presumably she was hoping that Rakan would redeem her and she'd be able to have the family she wanted, but if she didn't even mention the idea to him it's not clear why she'd go ahead with the whole thing herself. But then, we don't know anything at all about the kind of person she was, so we have no way to say that it was out of character or anything like that. And as it happened, she would have gotten exactly what she wanted out of it if Rakan hadn't been away for so long.

 

[Neko-min]

I'm not even sure Mao is really the daughter of Fon Shen, because it was hinted some chaps earlier that her uncle swapped babies in the palace and that was furiously hinting at Mao being a princess (which would help ML being able to marry her btw).
The mother being mad is conveniently thus incapable of recognizing her own child or not, and then the baby could be born after she got syphilis so from totally another man after Rakan went out...
My head is just such a mess!!!!
I think I'm gonna re-read the whole serie more seriously, but as a lot of things are only suggested I'm not sure I'll be able to clear my doubts properly.
Maybe I should try a written version? Which one of the webnovel or the lightnovel is the clearer about that?

 

[himi-cat]

@Nep you can only be a virgin once, after that you only get to sell sex (or other services, as the high class courtesans did, and Fon Shen was very much a high class courtesan). You also don't get to be a high class courtesan overnight - you have to earn that position, and while you're earning it you need to earn an income however you can.

I think it's unlikely that Fon Shen was mentally unstable, or at least to the point where it would be self destructive. I think she was probably punished or mistreated by the madam after getting pregnant, and that probably pushed her into a bad position quite quickly - she was one of the big earners for the brothel, and after getting pregnant her earning capacity would have plummeted, and it would have affected the standing of the whole business as well, and I think that probably pissed the madam off seriously.

Spoiler

it may also have caused the brothel to suffer serious consequences, which were only recovered from after years of struggle and thanks to the current three high class courtesans, particularly Pairen - I think this is only mentioned in the WN, though, at least so far

I can see the madam kicking her out in a fit of rage, and then later rethinking things after she'd cooled down, but by that point Fon Shen had already contracted syphilis and the whole progression started.

I'm also a little reluctant to hold a story like this to the real world progression of a disease like syphilis - this isn't our world, even though it's obviously closely modelled on it, and I think even without taking narrative requirements into account it's not necessarily going to follow medical reality closely.

 

[Asbolus]

Omg she was alive all this time

 

[Official229]

@Nep @himi-cat I'd just like to add something... While my memory is kinda bad and it's been a while since I read the wn, I do recall there being something about a famine during the entirety of this incident with Rakan and Fon Shen. There was also a scene recently in the manga where you can kinda see the aftermath of it here. Check the state in which the building is in, it's in shambles.

Also to note is the fact that in that in time of famine, if you weren't somebody rich, you were in for a bad time. Combined with the fact that one of the biggest earners recently got pregnant, causing a loss of reputation for the brothel. Well, needless to say, not a good situation for them. I think it wouldn't be too far fetched to think that everyone back then had to result to doing whatever they could to bring in money, because it was either doing that, or the brothel collapsing and everyone ending up on the streets (during a famine no less, so pretty much a set death).

 

[gomennasai90]

damn it... stop cutting onions...

 

[lastKANAshimi]

in a weird way Mao Mao got outplayed by Mei Mei. Mao mao wanted to use this opportunity to buy Mei mei's freedom but didn't foresee Mei Mei knowing the true story about her mom and dad and she used this opportunity to get them back together.

 

[mothaiba]

@Neko-min, here is my take on the situation.

The mother was a highly valued courtesan that is able to earn her keep with her skills, not sex.
She agreed to have sex and have a baby with Rakan. Her value plummeted. But she should not be forced to have sex during this time.
She have our MC. Then she must earn her keep. This is when her plummeted values get real. At the beginning, she might only agree to get on the old same road aka sell skills not sex but no customers would mean no income.
And she was the focal women of this place. Her lost reputation would certainly mean a lost in revenue and customers. This would affect others women in the establishment as well.

Then she has no other choice as Rakan has broken his promise of redeeming her. She has no income, no nothing. I can easily see that she has to agree to sell sex from then on. Remember that Granny patient can only go so long and as a de facto boss of the place, she cannot keep a non-earner after maybe 1 year since she started her pregnancy.

And the guests start to come and you can see it was a slide from the slope from the richer guys, then middle class guys, and downwards. She can only choose so much if no one comes to her. And as we can see from the story, she contracted the disease. And such disease is vicious on a body of a courtesan.

Please think of postpartum depression which she were really likely to have as a stress of having a baby, earning her keep and the realization of a broken promise, then her own pride, earning to feed both herself and her child then the realization that she contracted the disease. That is by no mean an easy feat for any young person. And with the disease got worse so was her mental health deterioration. At one point, probably after recalling her broken promise in a mental break down episode, she cut off the finger as in the story and gave our MC the trauma.

Think of the Granny. She was probably a courtesan once seeing all of those come, go, ascent or perish. She must have had taught rules into her girls and one of the biggest if not the biggest is to never have sex before the buy back. This rule benefits both the women and the master of the place at the same time in case of a broken promise. And no, this is not a strange or rare tale for the likes of broken promise in the Sinospheric countries. Songs, poems, books from those times has records on those instances. And the mother must have known this and taken upon herself an unnecessary risk due to love. She believed Rakan that much that everything was placed on the line just for some words from a dreamy boy with no money, no power, nothing to his name or his own.

She failed her bet. She lost it all. She almost killed her child. Now she was an empty shell of her past. I do not condemn her but feel sadness for such life instead.

The Granny did not throw her out on the street. She kept her even Rakan has not come back. She must have seen people like this mother but what are the options for her to do? She allow this mother to live in a separated place and some basic things for her. No the Granny is not the second coming of Christ but she does display some sympathy towards her former employee. Her beef with Rakan probably also from her personal feelings as well. Rakan was still in the wrong, especially with the mother and he was the main reason for things to go this way. And no, the Granny cannot or should never give too much care for the mother as inhuman as it sounds. Think of all other women to do the same. It would basically bankrupt everyone and ended that establishment. Remember that Granny was probably a courtesan herself in the past? Yeah to rise to the rank and at a senior age, she probably harden her ways up to the tops. A cold, stoic boss who still shows some sympathy and little kindness to her fallen employee/ coworker.

Brothels are never a place to find a paragon of human characteristics but the most wretches ones instead. Granny, in her defence, is a stoic woman who can only act so much with the given situation.

 

[Ripperpebble]

Thx for translating

 

[himi-cat]

@mothaiba I said in an earlier post that it wasn't clear who decided that Fon Shen getting pregnant was a good idea (which would have been necessary - she would have been taking contraceptives and would need to consciously choose to stop), but I think it's highly unlikely that Rakan knew about it. Look at how he reacted when he got back - how desperate he was, how little he cared about anything else. If he thought there was a chance that the woman he'd fallen in love with was pregnant he'd have just ignored his father and not left, regardless of what the outcome might have been. Or he'd have kept in touch with her, and let people know that he was planning to redeem her when he got back (and take the child as well) - the madam would have had no reason to be angry if that was the case, since she'd just have been waiting for him to come back and finish the business. It just doesn't make sense for Rakan to have known, and then behaved the way he did.