Consort Jie's condition was worse than she had thought. Although the cereal porridge was remade into a thin rice gruel, she made no indication of slurping from a spoon. Yen had to force her mouth open and slowly pour it in to make her swallow. She couldn't take in food, and that was the biggest issue. Yen had to be patient and insist.
When Yen went to ventilate the room, the clogging fragrance subsided and was replaced by the smell of a sick person. They probably burned incense to hide the scent of body odor. It didn't seem like that the consort had bathed for a couple of days. Yen never liked maid; in fact, you could say she is prejudice against them, believing that they were useless. The discipline seemed to have got through to the maids she chastised. The stock of the face powder had been snuck in. Pitifully, the one who got whipped was the eunuch who had failed to collect the face powder. Their birth also influenced the punishment.
She prepared a pail and a cloth, and together with the maids she summoned, wiped the consort down. Her skin was dry; lips were painfully cracked from the lack of hydration. She coated her lips with some of her homemade lipstick. Afterward, Yen made the consort drink tea at every opportunity. Sometimes, she gave her watered down broth instead of tea. The number of times the consort urinated increased. Though Yen thought she would be aimed with hostility, being the questionable newcomer, the doll-like Consort Jie generally obediently listened to her. It might be that her blank eyes didn't recognize who was who. Yen also understands what it's like to lose a child; she was like Jie for the first thousand years after Daisy died.
She increased the amount of the thin rice gruel from half a bowl to one bowl all at once, and little by little, increased the amount of rice used to make it. So that she could start to swallow on her own without being needed to be held up by the chin, Yen increased the servings of soup steeped with the flavor of meat and grated fruit. Consort Jie's lips suddenly moved when she could go to relieve herself without help.
"Why ca…, let m…." Consort Jie said in a barely audible whisper, and Yen already understood what she said even if she couldn't hear the women.
"You're eating the porridge, means that you don't want to die just yet, right?" she said and held the warmed tea against Consort Jie's mouth. There was an audible swallow; A broken smile escaped her pale face.
The consort took in fiber and hydration to sweat and promote bowel movement. While thinking just about eliminating the poison from her body, two months passed until Consort Jie was able to go out for a walk by herself. From the start, her weakness from the nervous breakdown had been severe. It should be a non-issue if she didn't newly take in poison. It will take time for her to recover her voluptuous body from before, but the color had returned to her cheeks, and she was no longer hovering over the brink of death. The night before she returned to the Jade Palace, Yen went to Consort Jie's place to greet her.
Yen had expected to be slandered as a peasant if the consort's conscience was clear, but it wasn't the case. There was conceit, but there wasn't arrogance. The thing about the crown prince had made her imagine her an unpleasant young lady, but in truth, she had the appropriate personality of an empress.
"Well then, I will be excused tomorrow morning." Yen planned to leave the room after explaining to her about her medical diet from hereon after and various other important points when,
"Hey, can I no longer give birth?" the consort spoke in a flat voice.
"You won't know unless you try," Yen answered.
"Even though I lost the emperor's favor?" What Consort Jie was trying to say was understandable enough. From the start, her being blessed with the crown prince was because she slept with the emperor to obstruct the Favored Consort, Consort Gina. The births of the imperial princess and the crown prince being three months apart were something truly talked makes a mistake.
"I was commanded to come here by the emperor. Consort Jie-sama, surely, if he, the emperor trusted me to treat you personally. Doesn't that mean he still has hope to come back here again."
"Can I win against her, a woman who didn't listen to Consort Gina's words and killed her own child before her very eyes?" Consort Jie asked.
"Is competing really that important? Also, everyone makes mistake in life, but its how you use them that counts."
"I don't have the barbarian princess' jade eyes and pale hair."
"If you have other things, then there's no issue." Yen said "Can you lend me your ears for a bit?" Mumbling so that no one around them could hear, she taught Consort Jie a certain thing. It was a secret art that was "no loss to learn." Among the maids, it became a topic of discussion of for some time, about what Consort Jie, whose face had turned as red as an apple, had heard.
Afterward, at the Jade Palace, the emperor's visits decreased to a record low.
"Fuu, I have been released from my lack of sleep." At those words, laced with cynicism at what Consort Gina had said "Yen, Can I have another one of your massages"