Status Updates From The Apothecary Diaries (Lig...

wow this book was everything at the end like omg

YAYYY rikuson pov epilogue!!

YESSSS I was hoping rikuson would get to be him like full circle moment 🥲

bruhh ily library but I need to buy my own copy of this book. like I think one of my favs after LN7. ily rikuson you deserves more man 😭

Rikuson went back to his room, where he closed the door and knelt down. He desperately wanted to change his bloodied clothes, but his body wouldn't move.
"I don't understand. It's supposed to be over." Tears began falling from his eyes. Ploop-ploop-ploop. "Am I wrong? Is it only just beginning?"

STOOOP POOR RIKUSON 😭😭 omg he’s become one of my favs but I think he’ll be gone with the wind

Miss Maomao, now, she might start digging out of sheer curiosity. And the other two doctors, they've got their personal quirks."
"I see what you mean. I'll make it my business not to see Maomao again after this." The thought saddened Rikuson, but there was no avoiding it.

AWWW NOOO 🥺🥺🥺🥺

She'd brought Rikuson a change of clothes, while managing to appear thoroughly horrified by the blood all over him.
"Do you think I'm going to meet my end when the physician begins his investigation?" Rikuson asked offhandedly.
"Dr. You is the physician in charge here. He's a very dedicated worker, but a flexible thinker-and more than anything, he wants the western capital to be peaceful—

"Ohh. Was it too obvious?" Chue asked, but she didn't deny it. "How'd you know it was me? I changed my hair color and the size of my eyes!"
"It was the shape of your ears. You have the loveliest ears, Miss Chue."
"Eep! Are you really studying the ears of a married woman that closely?"

duuude if she wasn’t married I’d ship em 😭 like their banter is always top notch and he’d treat her better than baryou

"Aww, how'd you know it was me?" Her face looked completely different, but the voice was that of the cheerful lady-in-waiting.
"He was served up to me on a silver platter. I thought there must have been someone behind it."
Rikuson understood: it had been Gyoku-ou's destiny to die, even if it hadn't been Rikuson who did it.

"We can talk about this later. For now, you had better change," the aide said to him. The lady-in-waiting who had screamed earlier tremblingly held out a handkerchief to Rikuson. She was slim; Rikuson had seen her several times before.
"Are you here for work, Miss Chue?" he whispered in her ear.

LMAOO CHUEE also rikuson why was that kinda 🫣🫣🫪

"You heard the man," Lakan said to those
around them.
"Wh-What do you mean, Grand Commandant Kan?"
"Hrm? He's telling the truth. He killed the rebel who killed the man. Where's the crime in that? If anything, this is all your fault for leaving such scant security."
"Wha?" said the aide, thrown for a loop by this accusation.
"I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

LMAOO AWW LAKAN 🙂‍↕️💗

"He was already murdered when you entered the room. So you killed the rebel-is that not right?"
It was, of all people, Lakan standing there. He looked half asleep and wasn't even wearing his monocle. What was he doing here?
"Master Lakan. What happened to the ceremony?"
"I was sleepy, so I ducked out."
Ah, Rikuson thought, it was all over now.
There was no hiding anything from Lakan.

The current administrative building was within the Yi clan mansion; in fact, for his office, Gyoku-ou had chosen the very room that Riku-son's mother had once used.
He lay stabbed to death in the place where he had committed that outrage seventeen years ago.
It was almost too perfect.

WOW just wow omg 🫢

The Yi clan remained disgraced, but Gyokuen had chosen the flourishing of I-sei Province over honor. As much as it pained Rikuson to admit it, Gyokuen was his foremost model of a man who sought the good of the western capital before all else.

🥺🥺🥺

Item. Gyokuen, not "of the Yi clan" but "for-merly of the Yi clan," would rule the western cap-ital.
Item. I-sei Province would not pay taxes on the coal it mined—as a form of hush money. Unofficially, of course.

Wowww

In the end, the Yi clan was destroyed. Even in the face of a formal protest, the central government didn't acknowledge that the Imperial edict had been mistaken, but they seemed to have reached a compromise.

PIGSS. MISTAKENLY WIPE OUT IS SO RIDICULOUS

In the end, the Yi clan was destroyed. Even in the face of a formal protest, the central government didn't acknowledge that the Imperial edict had been mistaken, but they seemed to have reached a compromise.

PIGSS. MISTAKENLY WIPE OUT IS SO RIDICULOUS

It was the simplest of conversations—he never imagined that a decade later, it would actually come true. By then, the man who had come to be known as the freak strategist had completely forgotten about Rikuson.

Wowwww

"You really can't remember people's faces, can you, Mister? Are you going to be all right?"
"Hrm... I guess it might be a problem when I make it in the world."
"Then when you make your fortune, hire me!
I'll remember everyone's faces for you and never forget. It'll be good for you."
"Hm, yeah, all right."

"I believe we've arrived."
Rikuson climbed out of the carriage to find himself at the port. There he saw a man behaving very strangely.
"No ships! No! You can't make me get on one!" There he was, a full-grown man, clinging to a post and throwing a tantrum like a child.

lakan pls 😭

"At the same time, I flirt with danger. Almost by definition, my life will be shorter than my children's. I fear that, when I am gone, one of them may grow greedy and try something." That seemed like something the man Ou would do, Rikuson thought. In fact, he already had.
"Should that happen, I want you to eliminate that child. And then you must protect the western capital."
"What the hell.."

Wow HE planned this?!

Gyokuen looked at Rikuson. "Ou was under the misimpression that a child of the Yi clan was my true son."
"He looks like a very intelligent boy. Might I take him as my son?l
Rikuson had heard him negotiating with his mother himself. Had that offhanded joke motivated the destruction of his entire clan?
That was why Gyoku-ou had invented the talk about the Imperial bloodline: to wipe out Rikuson.

RIDICULOUS.

“But there was a third."
"How many reasons did he need?"
RIGHT LIKE?!?

"So the whole reason he brought down the Yi clan was because of the Windreaders' misplaced resentment? Aren't you going to punish your
'son? If you're an Yi man, if you're a protector of western capital, then you can at least do that much!"
"Yes, a desire for revenge as a member of the Windreaders was one of his reasons. Destroying the family register was another. But there was a third."

As a merchant, I offered an absolute contract. I guaranteed to provide for them and their children, and in exchange the mothers would furnish me with their skills in a particular field. Moreover, Ou alone was to be my true son, so that no one would get any ideas of taking over the family from him. That part was a secret from my children."

Braaaaaah revelations upon revelations

"A merchant with no offspring could never hold his head up. I sought out widows who were already pregnant-the most intelligent women I could find." Gyokuen looked out the carriage window. Life in the western capital is hard for a mother and child with no husband or father to care for them. But that vulnerability was also an opportunity.

“Gyoku-ou wasn't your real son, but you kept giving him little brothers and sisters! Isn't that why he thought it was worth instigating a rebellion over a stupid family register?!"
"You're right. Yes, you're right. But it's not just Ou. None of my other children are mine by blood."
"What?" Rikuson was set back on his heels.
"I think it may just be that I'm not physically able to produce children.

🫪

"Hey..." A red-haired child called out to him.
She was the one they called You, he thought.
"Yes, what?" Rikuson didn't have time to be sweet and gentle just because she was so young.
"Do you hate Brother Gyoku-ou?"
"I don't even want to hear his name."
"Really? He hates me too. I wonder, will he come after me someday?"
Rikuson paused. "If he does, maybe I’ll help you. If I feel like it.”

😭😭