The Apothecary Diaries

I don't remember about attendant, maybe you are mistaken her with Lihuas cousin/chief maid from later story.

As for Lakan, if my memory serves me right, it was not war, he was sent to a distant garrison as a commander and later that year famine started so he had to deal with its results which took a few years.

CMIIW isn't the lady who insist giving poison powder to make Lihua beautiful (and get slapped by Maomao) is kicked out of the job from the rear palace? Even there's author note in Qn A.

It's unfair the eunuch who failed to retrieve the powder get whipped while she just get solitary confinement for awhile then goes back attending Lihua in the anime.

So it's not war. But definitely not just 'studying' in the LN.

Edited by readrunners on Mar 16th 2024 at 3:07:24 AM

I wonder if perhaps they wanted to elide the reference to famine given how it's technically a reference to arcs upcoming later on, but that seems a bit silly.

Maybe. Or maybe they just decided to go with the explanation that is simpler due to time constraints.

I'm confused. Why did the women who attacked Lakan with the broom when he showed up say Maomao's mom was gone? I thought the whole curse thing she did with the fingers was to prevent being bought out and we know that she's still around (Thought obviously not in a good state of mind.) even during the events of the show. Can someone explain?

Edited by Chariot on Mar 16th 2024 at 11:16:45 AM

As far as I recall, the Verdigris House employees don't know Lakan's circumstances and don't want him around anyway. To their knowledge he abandoned her.

They didn't know the real circumstances. To them, he was just another guy who tricked the girl and then abandoned her, like with the case where a girl poisoned a customer when Maomao return home the first time in the series.

The tone changes drastically though. If he was just studying abroad it is possible to come back at any time or having means of communication. It's his fault being too dense.

If he is at front lines as military officer there's sense of urgency he probably can't communicate freely and too busy with other things to realize what's happening.

Weird changes over all

Dropping in to have something clarified: if I understand it correctly, wasn't it ultimately Verdigris House that made Fengxian (might have gotten the name wrong) attend to the riffraff so she can earn her keep?

It's all but stated that his father (the clan head) just wanted him the fuck out of town, so I feel like it still works with him not being able to come back.

Yes, because life in the red light district isn't easy despite pulling that kind of money. The Verdigris House is one of the better places around but in the end it's still a brothel, and the social situation in Li is still such that "voluntarily became a courtesan" only means because most of the time, the alternative is starving to death. It's true that the House could support a non-working courtesan (and in fact, they have been ever since Fengxian got sick), but if they were going to tell Fengxian not to work because it's dangerous, the same applies to basically everyone else there.

That's what I figured. Thank you for explaining. I kinda have to side-eye the granny for hitting Lakan, even considering the context. Ah well.

The famine also affect the Verdigris House like everyone else. It was a miracle that the place withstood the famine and raise back. Fengxian's scandal already hit the place reputation hard and the famine just made it worse to do business since people are less likely to spend a lot of money during time of hardship.

I'm not sure if this is explicitly confirmed later on or is just inferred, but part of it is that the Madam is Fengxian's mother, and by the time he had gotten back, Fengxian was already unstable and had hurt Maomao too. It's a bad situation for everyone and she had a lot to work through.

Ah I must have missed the tidbit about the famine and Granny being Maomao's actual granny

The famine is detailed more in the book and not actually mentioned in the anime, and the bit about the Madam hasn't really been officially stated in English yet, if it's stated directly at all. It might only be implied.

Yes, the thing about Madam is just that readers speculate based on somer hints. May be just a red herring.

It also looks to me like Lakan's father deliberately didn't send along his son's mail from Fengxing and vice versa, so caused the belief that Lakan didn't care.

It's pretty believable. Lakan was an unfavorable son who was in a scandal by association. The last thing the dad want is another scandal about having a bastard with a courtesan.

Also, remember that the incident Lakan was sent away after was the death of the Imperial Heir that Luomen was essentially scapegoated for. Given how thorough the palace purge was after the honey incident that Maomao was around for, it was probably the smart thing to do to get most of the La clan out of Dodge while the heat died down.

For what it's worth, the French subs used an expression for which the literal meaning is "going to war for the first time" for what Lakan was sent to do for three years, so the "studying" bit from the English version is news to me.

Also liked getting a glimpse of what faces looked like to Lakan before he started replacing them with game pieces, as I understand this to be closer to what the real-life condition feels like (I personally actually see faces fine, but my memory registers much less detailed versions of them, so I'm never 100% sure if I'm seeing a person I've met before or someone with just the right number of similarities).

Edited by Nazetrime on Mar 18th 2024 at 5:21:54 PM

Time to do some comparative reading, it sounds like.

It seems like changing 遊説 (which my dictionary of choice defines as someone traveling around various areas to speak or share opinions, like a politician going on a campaign tour) to 遊学 (studying abroad) was an anime-original choice. Either way, I think it should clearly be understood to mean "make yourself scarce and don't come back until I say you can," especially since Lakan's father was also his commanding officer. The actual function of what Lakan was doing while he was away was secondary to the fact that he was getting swept under the rug as collateral damage from Luomen's scapegoating.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 18th 2024 at 5:23:25 PM

Interesting how based on your translation the original light novel has things in 1st person but the official traslation decided to have Lakan's stuff being in 3rd person. I wonder why that change was made.

It's really just a flavor thing, I would say. I'd have to do a closer reading but there are no grammatical indicators that it is first or third person in the section I checked through; I translated it that way because the anime presents it as Lakan's narration.

Given that the rest of the book is written in third person, I imagine it was done for consistency of prose, too.

Heads up, season two got announced.

Now that's great news after a great ending. I'm just glad that Lakan finally got to Fengxian.