Chapter 15: Chapter 15: How to spot a fake friend.

The next week Min Li didn’t have any spare time. Min Li hadn’t the time to see Lily, Tom or Rose. She didn‘t have the time to eat one meal comfortably.   

She was sure that if she possessed the ability to clearly remember her nightmares, she would have recorded a complete change in the content of the nightmares. Her nightmares would no longer be of the pain of being strapped to a cold metal table and a burning birthmark, but rather the pain of incessant nagging from a motherly woman.   

 It was like the Eastern palace head maid and Betti the head maid were trying to punish her for spending her time doing other things and not working.   

It was evil if Min Li was asked about it.  

“Why should a man or even better yet a woman with honour and valour work to the bone knowing all the while that they are going to stay stagnant?   

There was no suitable way to progress in the palace. Lots of the servants around Min Li had been in their positions for countless years, and the only thing that they had gained from it was the word ‘head’ in front of their servant title.   

Min Li had mentioned this to Betti when the woman was nagging her about how she needed to take pride in the littlest details of her work.  

The result. A shoe flew in Min Li’s direction.  

But as shoes come in pairs, that was not all. Min Li was chased around with the other one. Betti was a real woman with a plan. She had a backup plan whenever she needed it, especially when it came time to discipline Min Li.   

Min Li didn’t know how the woman had done it with the size of her waist, but Betti had caught up to Min Li in no time. The saying goes, ‘where there is a will, there is a way’, and Betti always had will when it came time to discipline Min Li. 

Min Li, a working woman with honour and valour, decided that the best course of action was for her to forsake her ‘honour and valour’ and act innocent and like a victim of the crimes of Betti.   

So, when Betti had reached Min Li with shoe in hand, Min Li had sniffled, looked up with big eyes and like a virtuous, wholesome child asked the woman ‘why are you treating me this way?’  

Min Li had forgotten that Betti had played a part in raising her. The woman knew all Min Li’s tricks like the back of her hand. The saying goes, ‘act like a child, get treated like a child’. According to Betti children needed discipline and Betti always had will when it came time to disciplining Min Li.   

So, Min Li had not escaped getting hit with a shoe. 

She had also worked that whole week; pruning trees, picking up leaves, and plucking weeds. And she did it all whilst sniffling softly to herself making sure to remember the honour and valour of a woman.   

Min Li also set the regard straight in her that Betti wasn’t a motherly woman. Scratch that, there was nearly nothing motherly about the woman.   

...  

Since Min Li hadn’t been able to confirm the presence of injury on the crown prince, she moved on to taking action in a more direct manner.   

Whilst Betti had been working hard teaching a careless Min Li, the prince had been working hard teaching careless troops on the field that whole week. 

Thus, Min Li knew there was good chance that he had some sort of injury or his body was fatigued. With this information in mind, she planned to approach the crown prince and tell him she was going to help make him healthy.   

From there she was nearly certain about what was going to go on. She was sure that after a little pulling and pushing and acting as if he didn‘t want her to help him, he would drop to his knees, hold her hands in his, weep at her feet and thank her for just being a genuinely lovely person.  

It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly from its place in the sky signalling to Min Li an auspicious day ahead. 

Min Li was sure that the crown prince would be in a good mood after lunch.   

She had bribed the kitchen staff to make all of the prince’s favourite food. Steamed stuff buns of mutton, hot and sour noodles, bean curd, glutinous rice balls, and beggar’s chicken, the latter was mainly for Min Li’s own sake, were all on the menu.   

Min Li had gone the extra mile for her good deed and batted her eyelashes at Joe. The crown prince had worked out with his best friend Joe all afternoon so she knew that he would be too tired to shout at her too much in case something went wrong.   

Min Li knocked on the prince’s door and entered before the man had a chance to reject her advances.  

She had chosen to approach the man in his chambers so that he would not succumb to feeling self-conscious that she was helping him in front of his servants and friends. See, Min Li even thought about ways to help the man’s ego.   

With everything going her way, Min Li believed that she had covered all bases and the crown prince would never deny her.   

“I already have a doctor.”  

Unfortunately, though she had covered all bases, she quite clearly hadn’t covered enough to deal with Fenhua.  

Fenhua looked at Min Li like she was stupid.  

“Never mind a doctor, I can heal you from the inside out.”  

Min Li didn’t even know what she herself was saying but she had to convince the crown prince in any way possible.   

The crown prince looked curious.   

Then he frowned and said, “I have a doctor, I don’t need you.”  

Min Li knew that it would have been too easy for the man to have let her help him the first time of asking she had prepared for this.   

Min Li reminded herself of another saying, ‘persistence pays off’.   

“Your doctor cannot help you with everything. Me on the other hand, I might just be able to. I might be able to help you with,” Min Li tapped the nape of her neck and tilted her head trying to show that she knew about his neck injury. 

The crown prince looked at her in confusion. He didn’t look at her in confusion as to what she may have been trying to show him. He looked at her like he was confused as to how stupid she could get.   

It’s fine. It’s fine. He wants to act coy, that is his prerogative. I knew this was going to happen. The man is stubborn, Min Li told herself.   

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“Even if I wanted you to help me, which believe me I don’t, you couldn’t help me if you wanted to. You know why?” The crown prince stopped and looked at Min Li, but Min Li knew a rhetorical question when she saw one. “Because you my dear friend,” that’s sweet he’s calling me friend now, “no nothing about medicine.”   

The crown prince seemed to be enjoying his monologue. Min Li let him enjoy it in peace.   

“You are not a doctor. You're not a student of medicine. You are also not a child wanting to pretend to be a doctor. Yo-”  

She forged ahead despite what the crown prince was saying drowning it out as background noise.   

Min Li proceeded with her plan, taking out all the various tools that she had brought to help heal the crown prince.   

Min Li wasn’t a doctor, by now this was common news. But she had remembered something that she was and had decided to use it to the best of her ability to heal the crown prince. She had remembered that she was an amateur gardener.   

The crown prince’s sentence trailed off and he looked at her stupefied in a little bit in bemusement and a little bit in fear. The crown prince looked at her like she had brought a shovel, a fork and a garden pick. Fenhua suddenly sat up and closed his legs.   

Keyword like, Min Li used the same concepts that she had learnt whilst gardening but she hadn’t brought such tools she wasn’t silly.  

Instead, Min Li had brought a hoe that she could press on and add some pressure to an injury while it provided relief by being a much lower temperature than his skin working like a cold compress.   

At first Min Li was going to bring a paste full of certain tea leaves that she could rub on his wound to help him. But she wasn’t a doctor, she didn’t know what herbs would help.   

Someone had advised her to talk to her plants and when she had tried it, it seemed to work. So instead of creating a tea leaf paste, she thought they would just drink the herbs in tea, and she would help calm him down and treat his injuries psychologically instead. So, she placed a pot and two cups on the table.   

Min Li had also brought along garden shears. Why? That one was a joke. She thought it would be funny and that it had the ability to make the crown prince laugh.   

She had thought it through perfectly.   

The man scoffed. There was no laughing.  

There was also no pulling and pushing. And there was clearly not going to be any dropping at her feet, holding of her hands, weeping at her feet or pumping of her ego.   

The crown prince got up and so Min Li’s hopes went up again. She smiled at him enthusiastically not realising she was being ushered out.  

When the prince had escorted her out the door in a charming manner, it was his turn to close the door in her face. Min Li could have sworn that she had heard something awfully like clapping from behind the door.   

Min Li had waited by the door in case the man had changed his mind. Feng had come by, so had Jess and even a couple of eunuchs, but the crown prince didn’t leave his abode.   

It turned out that the crown prince had been a complete tattle tale and had called Feng to call the head maid of the Eastern palace to call Betti the head maid to take, his words, the meaningless distraction away from his door.  

With the baton ending in Betti’s hands, Min Li already knew that she was in trouble. The woman who Min Li had decided wasn’t the motherly type, couldn’t tell that Min Li was just trying to help Fenhua using the nurturing trait that all, no, most women were born with.  

Betti had more than tripled Min Li’s workload. Just because Min Li had tried to be a good citizen. Betti had subjected Min Li to things so bad that Min Li wondered if anyone was ever going to approach the king about unfair labour laws and complain about the woman.   

Min Li had to pluck fruit from the highest of trees for the kitchen servants without any help. Absurd.  

Min Li had to help a midwife deliver a baby that was being born to a servant in the palace. Traumatic.   

And worst of all, Min Li had to file the bottom of the sole of Betti’s thick feet. Unthinkable.  

That was injustice at its core. She reckoned that a servant at a palace shouldn’t have to cater to any fellow servant in such a manner, especially if they weren’t getting paid for it. That was just ridiculous. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.   

My nails are breaking so frequently these days.  My hands are raw from being overworked. My hair is falling out in clumps. My will to live... let’s not even talk about that.   

When she had a chance, Min Li finally complained to her heart’s content to a seated Lily, Rose and Tom in front of her.   

They had all heard that she had been bothering the crown prince, but they hadn’t heard the troubles she had gone through because she had helped him.  

How did they know that she had been ‘bothering’ the crown prince?   

Apparently when the crown prince had told Feng, who told the head maid of the Eastern palace, who told Betti the head maid. The head maid had complained about Min Li to Tom, because he was the teacher’s pet, who told Rose who told Lily.  

When Min Li had told the band of three every detail of the horrors she had faced as a result of her generous, kind personality, they didn’t give her the sympathetic response or the little bit of affirmation that she had wanted.   

One of them cackled like a witch. Not mentioning who.   

Another nearly fell asleep in their chair, only stopped by the crazy cackling going on next to them.   

The last nodded enthusiastically like a perfect friend and made Min Li really very happy. But it turned out that that friend was slyer and more conniving than the lot of them.   

That friend had listened intently all because they couldn’t wait for Min Li to finish speaking. Instead of complaining along with Min Li when Min Li finished her rant, or weeping with Min Li upset at her troubles, they themselves got up.  

They skipped past Min Li’s stories and started talking about how sleeping in a room with over a dozen people was hard. The complained about mere issues like people snoring, people having bad flatulence and people waking them up in the morning by opening a drape and letting light shine on their face.  

Like there weren’t real problems around. Where was the support for real pressing issues? Like Rose wasn’t the main culprit of facinorous flatulence. Preposterous.   

She looked at the other two vying to help the problem of their other friend. With a curl of her lips, she thought that one saying was proven right, ‘misery loved company’. The coming together of two of the friends to sympathise with the third friend was pathetic really.  

You don’t' need your every struggle to be affirmed by everyone else around you, Min Li simply shook her head and walked away.   

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