Bitter Roots

The magistrate's new clerk had been sent to fetch cough medicine, which was how Ren Xiu found a stranger standing in her drying shed, holding a bundle of bitter root like it might bite him.

"That one's for fevers, not coughs," she said, not looking up from the mortar she was grinding. "You'll want the shed on the left."

"My apologies." He didn't move. "I was told the herbalist here doesn't see many visitors."

"The herbalist here doesn't need many visitors." She finally glanced at him — young for a clerk, better dressed than the road should have allowed. "Left shed. Second shelf."

He went, and came back twice more that week for things he plainly didn't need.

[Placeholder chapter — replace with your own translated content.]