bry

so if u are too tired to speak, sit next to me bc i too am fluent in silence

[8gyus]

ln vol 5

"three hundred silver would be cheap at the price of this girl"

can i just talk about this specific arc in volume 5 of the apothecary diaries T—T

so this is the part where they’re investigating the village of the quack doctor and i just want to HIGHLIGHT how insane it is how quickly jinshi picks up on whatever maomao is thinking.

to be loved is to be known.

he doesn’t need the full explanation. he doesn’t ask questions. he sees her in action, understands the direction she’s taking, and silently backs her up.

i fully believe jinshi is constantly amazed by maomao’s mind. he’s in AWE of her. her intelligence? her skills? her way of thinking? he watches her work and his eyes practically sparkle. he is the poster boy of “supportive malewife who lets the girlboss thrive.” and the best part?? he’s never once felt threatened by it.

never once has he been insecure about how smart she is. never once did he try to downplay her. never once been dismissive. never once been competitive. in fact, he actually tries to learn from her. remember when maomao was kidnapped and jinshi tried to think like her, to figure out where she might be and how she’d act? THAT’S HIM APPLYING WHAT HE’S LEARNED. that’s him treating her intelligence as something worth listening to, learning from, protecting. this man said “wow she’s incredible, i’m gonna start doing that too.” 😭

also can we talk about how at this point, jinshi is literally jus there to make sure maomao can do whatever she wants 😭😭 he is using his position to create space for maomao to move freely. ane he does it silently, without demanding recognition or credit. like. she has the freedom to act, investigate, speak out—because jinshi has the status and he uses that power so SHE can keep doing what she loves.

he’s not the type to put her in a cage and call it love—he’s the type to open the door wider.

maomao’s a low-born woman in a rigid society, and yet she’s moving through rooms she shouldn’t be allowed in, questioning people way above her rank, throwing herself into danger—and she gets away with it. because jinshi is behind her.

and the beauty of it is he never rubs that in her face. he never says “you can only do this because of me.”

NO. he simply uses his status to create space for her—a safe space where she can be brilliant, reckless, clever, infuriatingly blunt, and still be protected.

we love a supportive malewife who’s just out here empowering his genius goblin girlfriend 😭

he’s not just in love—he respects her.

SEE WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT 😭😭 he just lets her do stuff.

LET PEOPLE ENJOY THEIR INTERESTS!!!!!!! even if it’s borderline unhinged, even if it involves starting a drinking bet with 5 men and other maomao-coded behavior.

jinshi has so much faith in her. he doesn’t hover. he doesn’t interrupt. he just trusts that she knows what she’s doing—even when literally no one else does.

and GOD. may this love find me.

the kind of love that doesn’t try to change you or dim you down.

just watches you go feral in your weird little field of expertise and thinks, “yeah. that’s them. that’s the person I trust.”

jinshi NEVER holds her back. (okay, MAYBE sometimes he takes away her mushrooms and poison samples but THATS BECAUSE SHES INSANE. that’s not control, that’s just him trying to keep her from dying LMAO 😭)

but even then, he never tells her to stop being herself. he just wants her alive long enough to keep being brilliant. like… imagine someone believing in you that much. not just tolerating your interests. not romanticizing them either. but respecting them, supporting them, helping make sure you get the space to keep doing what you love.

and now as the scene progresses, all that “trust her” energy?? YEAH. it’s still there. but he’s also 1000% ready to step in the moment she crosses the line.

because like… let’s be real. maomao?? out of her mind sometimes LMAO 😭 she’ll do unhinged things without flinching. she’ll walk headfirst into danger with zero self-preservation and just go “yeah it’s fine <3” GIRL. STOP.

and jinshi??? he knows this. he respects her intellect, he trusts her judgment— but he also knows she needs someone to pull her back when she goes too far.

so the moment it gets tense? the moment the landlord starts getting pissed?

he stands.

his chair SCRAPES BACK.

everyone else is still sitting there stunned, but jinshi’s already up—because if anything happens to her, he’s already decided he won’t just watch.

this is what I love about them so much.

they balance each other perfectly. she pulls him out of his perfect palace persona. he pulls her back from the edge of self-destruction she’s the chaotic gremlin genius with zero self-preservation. he’s the calm, composed, high-ranking disaster with a soft spot the size of the moon, and together they function like one complete human being 😭😭😭

they are the definition of equal and opposite.

not trying to change each other—just naturally falling into place like two puzzle pieces.

they just fit.

he is her stability. she is his clarity. and neither of them asks the other to change.

okay but can we TALK about how maomao literally just accepts pain?? like. “yeah i’m probably gonna get punched but whatever, i need that info.” GIRL. what do you MEAN "its fine" 😭😭 this woman treats her own life like a tool. like a thing she can offer up to science or logic or knowledge or whatever cause she’s chasing at the moment. she was READY to get beat up if it meant getting closer to an answer. and this isn’t even the first time!!!

this girl has literally:

tested poisons on herself

walked around with reopened stitches like it’s no big deal

been punched in the face and brushed it off

was ABOUT TO CUT OFF HER PINKY

AND SHE THOUGHT THAT WAS FINE. she didn’t flinch. no hesitation. because that’s how little she thinks her body matters. to her, pain is just another step in the process. if she has to bleed for the answer, then so be it.

but Jinshi? Jinshi sees that. and it kills him.

he's the only one who stops her. he’s the one who sees her sacrificing herself over and over and goes “no. not like this.” the way he literally won’t let her hurt herself, even when she’s convinced it’s necessary.

like that one last scene in season 2— she’s about to CUT OFF HER OWN PINKY to test a medicine (she hasn’t seen jinshi in a while, she’s not in the rear palace anymore, she’s fully gone goblin mode with no one to stop her)

and then??? jinshi walks in. and she STOPS.

she doesn’t even argue. she just stops. because he’s there again. and he’s always been the one to keep her grounded.

girlie’s ready to bleed for her answers and this man is out here being like “no you are NOT cutting off your damn pinky, are you INSANE—”

jinshi is the reason maomao doesn’t self-destruct completely.

he takes care of her like she’s breakable—not because he thinks she’s weak, but because he loves her that much.

he treats her like she’s fragile. like she’s precious. like she’s someone who deserves to be protected—even from herself.

he’s the only one who reminds her she’s not disposable. he’s the one keeping her grounded. keeping her alive. she pushes herself too far and he pulls her back every. single. time.

they balance each other in the most painfully beautiful way.

maomao brings out his true self—the silly, unfiltered, messy version of him that no one else gets to see. and jinshi brings out the part of maomao that still wants to be human. to be cared for. to be held.

when he’s stuck being the perfect, composed, unreachable official, she’s the only one who treats him like a human being.

she calls him out. makes him sulk. brings out his bratty, petty, real self.

she gives him space to breathe.

they balance each other in every way.

they are each other's anchors and i am LOSING IT

"three hundred silver would be cheap at the price of this girl" that’s it. that’s the whole thesis. that’s the line.

you can write entire essays about their dynamic but THIS. RIGHT. HERE. is the mic drop.

maomao, who would willingly slice her own finger off in the name of science, who shrugs off bruises and reopened stitches like they’re part of the process, who thinks her value is in what she can do, not who she is.

and then there’s jinshi, saying with his whole chest that even 300 silver would be a bargain. even that wouldn't be enough. like he’s not just protecting her anymore, he’s putting worth on her in front of a whole room of people. redefining her value out loud.

and the way he says it so casually, brushing away the hand of the man holding her, like “don’t touch her. she’s not for you. she’s not for harm.”

that level of possessive protection??? ARE YOU KIDDING???

she risks herself like she doesn’t matter.

he guards her like she’s everything.

HE VALUES HER MORE THAN SHE VALUES HERSELF.

[8gyus]

"who was that man anyway, i’m sure you’re not a dancer"

— me: drops phone, opens front door, walks into the ocean

i will film myself when this line drops. i need proof of my downfall.

i felt the passive aggression. i heard the gritted teeth through the page. please 🙏🏻 WHEN THIS LINE GETS ANIMATED I WILL BE UNWELL. i’m talking full-body reaction, hand over mouth, dramatic gasp, rolling on the floor.

[8gyus]

avoidant attachment final boss

this exchange literally shows a push-pull dynamic. maomao responds in a guarded, deflective way. she doesn’t engage emotionally!!!!! instead uses logic or defensiveness

“love is an illness to a woman with goals” — tell me this doesn’t have maomao written all over it.

of course she has a distorted perception of love. how could she, when she was raised in a brothel where love was something you sold? where “affection” was currency, and feelings were a performance? it was never about connection—it was about survival, manipulation, or profit. she didn’t grow up associating love with safety or comfort—she associated it with consequences. obsession. regret. loss.

her entire worldview is built on observation and detachment. she’s the girl who watches everyone else’s feelings, taking notes like, “hmm. fascinating. they’re ruining their lives.” and you know she thinks falling in love is the emotional equivalent of losing a game you didn’t want to play in the first place.

and then there’s jinshi.

beautiful, sparkling, infuriating jinshi.

she’s so emotionally repressed that the second someone gets a little too close, she spirals into denial like it’s a full-time job.

he walks into her life all mysterious and full of secrets and somehow sees her for who she is. and that’s terrifying for someone like maomao. because once you let yourself believe that someone genuinely cares— not for what you can give them, not for what you represent, but you— then the walls start cracking.

she tries so hard to justify her way out of it by hyperfixating on his background— classic avoidant behavior: if you label it, if you intellectualize it, it can't hurt you, right?

wrong.

because feelings don’t care.

she’s so used to rationalizing every emotion into dust. but love isn’t rational. and that’s the curse, right? the illness. because even the most logical girl in the world is still human. still capable of falling.

“you’ll never find some fine prince whose heart will never change.” “what does trust ever get you?” do you SEE???

maomao isn’t cold—she’s armored. because when you’re taught from the start that love is fleeting and dangerous, you don’t dream of being loved.

you dream of being untouchable.

and that’s what makes her eventual unraveling so devastating. because underneath all that detachment is someone who wants to believe. she just doesn’t know if she’s allowed to.

“this was a man who’d had everything in life, and yet sometimes he seemed to hunger for something that he struggled to satisfy.”

the worst kind of yearning is the one you can’t name. jinshi has power, beauty, status—literally everything—and yet none of it scratches the itch of being seen and understood. not admired. not desired. just… understood.

“why can’t he pick someone else?”

you feel it? this is not just rhetorical. this is genuine confusion. it’s someone who doesn’t believe they’re worthy of being chosen, let alone by someone like him. this is peak avoidant attachment monologue—“why are you trying to love me when i’m not even open to being loved?”

“why did he need to go out of his way to pick a creature who lacked precisely that desire”

oh maomao. she is downplaying her own desirability, and more importantly, her capacity for emotional connection. this is her deep-rooted belief that she is inherently unlovable in that way. that she is wired wrong. that she lacks the softness, the openness, the desire that makes love possible. this shows her low sense of self-worth. she doesn’t just question why him—she questions why her. because everything in her upbringing told her that love is dangerous, fragile, and ultimately doomed. and jinshi’s attention? it threatens the emotional equilibrium she’s spent her whole life maintaining.

i think all this scene shows is how much maomao thinks she's not enough for jinshi.

maomao is not really afraid of love. she’s afraid of failing at it.

she grew up teaching herself how to survive, not how to feel. she closed herself off from everything: affection, anger, grief, even joy. emotions were messy, unpredictable, dangerous. no one ever showed her how to hold them, let alone return them.

she tells herself—“he’s too important. his status, his position... i can’t get involved. it’s political. it’s dangerous.”

and sure, it is complicated. but i believe that’s not really why she’s pulling away. not deep down.

i feel like that excuse is like an armor. a shield made of logic and detachment. because it’s easier to say “it’s impossible” than to admit: “i’m scared.”

maomao doesn’t reject love because she’s cold. she rejects it because love is chaos. and chaos is something she’s spent her whole life trying to control.

“once you know it, it’s hell.” “to know it was exactly why they went there.”

of course that’s what the courtesans say. because they’re the ones who see what love does to people—the way it consumes, obsesses, betrays. they don’t get fairy tale endings. they get men who fall in love and then leave. men who promise and then forget. they know what it means to be wanted and still be treated like you're disposable. for them, love might bring emotional entanglement, pain, or complications that outweigh any joy.

but the men? they want to know it. they chase it. romanticize it. destroy themselves for it. they actively sought this experience. for them, the pursuit of love or deep emotional connection was the goal, even if it ended in pain.

“that word, that simple four-letter word...”

this passage explores the paradox of love.

how it ruins people yet keeps them alive. how it’s a curse and a longing all at once.

it brings pain

and yet its also something many people long for and cannot live without it

all of this which she realized when jinshi’s eyes watched her intently. she literally looks into his eyes and think about love. IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN CLEARER ????

she KNEW. that’s why she panics and proceeds to yap about lishu being a safe choice as his bride. and that’s exactly why in first place, she pushes the idea, the possibility, and the feelings away. because!!!! emotions are things she can’t calculate. they can’t be dissected or controlled. that’s why she pushes it away.

BUT the fact that she wishes for her relationship with jinshi to remain professional only proves that’s she’s already attached. she doesn’t want to lose him, and keeping this as they are feels safer.

“was it selfish of her to wish he would just act normal, not let the events of the previous night CHANGE how he TREATED her?”

she’s scared that the relationship she built with jinshi— this professional, distant, safe relationship— won’t survive if their feelings enter the equation.

“she wanted her relationship with him to be professional... that was what would be best for maomao at this moment.”

that’s the coping mechanism. maomao chooses the safety of professional distance over exploring intimacy. avoidant ppl often feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness and instead emphasize independence or rational justifications to maintain distance. that’s her trying to grip tightly to what they have, because any deviation— toward love, desire, real vulnerability— could ruin it all. and keeping things in that transactional space is the only way she knows how to protect both him and herself.

overall, its not that she doesn’t like him.

she does.

that’s the whole problem.

maomao just doesn’t want to get involved. not because she’s cold. but because involvement means vulnerability, consequences, mess. and worse—it might make things harder for jinshi. because she knows what jinshi’s position means. she knows the weight he carries. she doesn’t want to be the reason he stumbles.

what we need to pay attention to her is her actions rather than her thoughts. she cares for him, she worries about his well-being, she notices when he's tense, nervous, when he's overworking himself. she likes when he's himself, so she relaxes around him, too. she feels safe with him and compares him to loumen, the only other person she really cares about.

maomao may not say the words, but she’s already chosen him. she just doesn’t know how to live with that choice yet.

ANYWAAAYY she rlly radiates such strongly avoidant attachment behavior. she values control, logic, and emotional distance. not because she doesn’t feel, but because feeling is dangerous. vulnerability is chaos. and maomao? she’s survived her whole life by avoiding chaos.

“love is an illness to a woman with goals.” NO. unless, not in her case.

love doesn’t ruin maomao’s ambitions because jinshi never asks her to dim herself.

and love doesn’t ruin her ambitions because it just makes her question what her life is for beyond survival.

“i want you just as you are, even if that means you’ll walk away from me someday.” i feel like this is something jinshi would be saying :)

[8gyus]

special talk about: the hair stick.

imma talk about that time when jinshi gave maomao a silver hair stick early in the story. in court culture that’s like saying:

“you’re under my protection.”

“you’re mine now.”

“i like you” or “i’m interested in you”

(maomao eventually gave the hair stick to shisui though)

fast forward and jinshi gives her another hair stick, this one absolutely loaded with symbolism.

the hair stick had moon and poppy motifs—moon prince and drugs—jinshi and maomao. it was his way of signaling to her, and to everyone at the event, that he favored her. that he had already chosen her.

the only person who didn't get that was maomao, which was why rikuson was giving her shit for it after they danced. (LN 5 spoilers)

maomao walks into a room filled with royalty, with jinshi’s custom moon+poppy hair stick in her hair, and says:

“huh... I wonder where this came from... 🤔”

“everyone’s staring at me for some reason... maybe it’s the dress... anyway :)”

HELLO????!???!?!?!?!?

jinshi had it made before the trip………………. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. (did he had an agreement with someone from the La Clan about bringing her to the banquet where he’s supposed to choose a wife…? ANYWAY, that’s a whole other post.) the point is, he literally designed this hair stick to say “you + me = destiny.”

maomao wdym u thought it was given by lahan???? THE MOMENT U OPENED THE BOX U LITERALLY REMEMBERED THE ONE U ONCE HAD 😭😭😭😭 GIRL…. be serious. the denial is eating you ALIVE. U UNRELIABLE MF! I HAVE PROOF:

“she went ahead and put the stick in her hair, JUST. BECAUSE.”

JUST BECAUSE ????? girl. just because is never just because in a novel. you are a logic-based and a hyper-rational apothecary. you don’t do anything “just because.”

not because it’s beautiful (even though it is)

not because someone told her to wear it

not because she wanted to show it off

not because it was practical

she did it because it felt right.

and it reminded her of someone.

not just anyone.

and here’s where we feel insane:

“strangely, it felt rather fitting, and the way she continued to wear the accessory thereafter was perhaps rather UNLIKE her.”

UNLIKE HER.

UNLIKE. HER.

this is a girl who detaches for survival and avoids attention. and now she’s walking around the palace with a symbol in her hair. one that:

is obviously handmade

obviously expensive

obviously gifted by someone with status

obviously not for casual wear

she wears it. even if she doesn’t fully understand why she wants to.

“just because” is doing so much heavy lifting here. it's maomao choosing something for herself—not out of necessity, not out of logic, but because she wants to.

the hair stick isn’t just pretty. it’s not just a gift. it’s the one thing she chose to wear when she thought no one would notice (how oblivious of her tbh)

and really, WHY would a fine silver hair stick— of all things— be the one thing that helped u calm down in an unfamiliar place where u felt like a stalk of shepherd’s purse in a field of roses and peonies (btw the imagery is killing me)??

it could’ve been:

a calming herb u kept in your sleeve?

a hidden needle?

your literal intellect?

it could’ve been something. anything.

but no. it’s the hair stick.

you wouldn’t find that thing useful if it was actually given by lahan. GIRL we know— even on some subconscious level, that you KNOW who it came from.

no words. that’s the conclusion. maomao, stop acting like you had no clue. BECAUSE before all of this, lahan just literally gave you a whole talk about bearing the moon prince’s child 😭😭😭 so WHY are YOU as a brilliant apothecary turning blind to what is OBVIOUS and STATED. (i love it tho, pls continue)