“Waaah! No fair! Big Sis Rin won again!”
“Hmph… Hahahaha!”
Time passed unnoticed beneath the yellowing afternoon sky.
Rin Tsugikuni stood with hands on hips in the middle of the alley clearing, laughing at the group of children who hung their heads in exhaustion after suffering yet another crushing defeat.
The girl squatted on the ground, pinching a handful of wheat grains with her fingers.
With a victorious grin, she stretched out her palm toward the children in front of her, relentlessly demanding their bets.
“Hurry! Hand over all the wheat grains you have!”
“Damn it! Why does Big Sis Rin always win at this game?!”
“This is all your fault! If you hadn’t gotten scared and kept retreating, we could’ve turned the tables earlier!”
“How is that my fault? It’s clearly the compass that’s broken! Why are you blaming me instead?!”
The children grumbled among themselves, venting their frustration in a playful manner.
However, the commotion suddenly died down when several stern men with swords at their waists appeared at the end of the alley.
The children exchanged glances, realizing that playtime was over and the sharp-weaponed guards had come to retrieve their lady.
“Big Sis Rin, do you have to leave now?”
“Will you come play with us again next time?”
Rin looked at those innocent faces clouded with worry.
She gave a thin smile and nodded slowly to reassure them.
“Of course, if there’s another chance.”
Her hand moved to untie the woven coin pouch hanging at her waist and offered it to the boy standing at the front.
“This is for all of you. Thank you for playing with me today. Use some of it to buy snacks, and give the rest to your parents, understand?”
“We understand…”
The children nodded in unison, staring at the coin pouch with sparkling eyes.
Rin didn’t prolong the conversation.
She stood up and turned to leave.
“Big Sis Rin!”
A small cry from behind stopped the girl’s footsteps.
Rin glanced sideways and saw the smallest boy staring at her with hesitant eyes.
The child stepped forward through his friends, stopped a few paces away from Rin, and shyly raised both hands to point at his own cheeks with two index fingers. The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
“Big Sis, you have to always be happy, okay!”
The boy’s eyes looked watery, radiating pure sincerity.
Rin stood frozen for a moment, feeling a faint warmth spread through her chest before she nodded gently.
Rin turned her face away, hiding the ripple of emotion that had flickered in her eyes, then walked steadily toward the guards waiting at the mouth of the alley.
“Lady Rin, you must pay more attention to your current status.”
“Yes, I know.”
On the way back to Tenshu Castle, the guards walked beside Rin while delivering boring, repetitive lectures.
“No matter what, you are currently the head of the family and the rightful heir to the clan’s throne. Wandering around in a slum area without strict escort like this is extremely dangerous.”
“Yes, I know.”
“If someone with ill intentions takes advantage of our carelessness, it won’t only endanger your life but could also trigger major upheaval for our territory’s sovereignty…”
“Yes, I know.”
Seeing Rin’s extremely flat and repetitive responses, the guards finally gave up.
One of them quickly changed the subject.
“By the way, My Lady… We saw a medical practitioner opening a free treatment station in the southern part of the city. Word is, she’s a famous doctor who just arrived from Shikoku. Would you be interested in getting examined?”
“A famous doctor?”
Rin’s footsteps suddenly stopped on the path.
Her brows furrowed slightly.
Her physical condition had indeed felt less than ideal for the past two years.
However, she herself had trouble understanding what was actually happening to her body.
Overall, she felt healthy and capable of normal activity.
It was just that sometimes her left thumb would suddenly go numb for no clear reason, losing all sense of touch for several moments.
At other times, she would be struck by sudden dizziness, making her vision spin and her balance waver as if the ground beneath her feet had collapsed.
Although the symptoms were relatively mild and disappeared as quickly as they came, Rin’s status as clan head made her followers extremely anxious, repeatedly bringing in palace physicians.
Unfortunately, not a single city doctor could detect the anomaly.
They could only check her pulse, shake their heads, and suggest that Rin rest more. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Rin let out a short sigh.
She knew her body was sending danger signals that ordinary medical science couldn’t detect.
*Since when can a normal person keep going numb and dizzy for no reason?*
“Alright, take me there,” Rin finally said, deciding to try her luck.
The guards immediately bowed respectfully and turned to lead the way toward the bustling southern corner of the city.
“Doctor Shinobu…?”
Rin murmured quietly in her heart when her eyes caught sight of the person her guards had mentioned.
Honestly, she never expected that the traveling doctor causing a stir throughout the city would turn out to be a young woman who looked not even twenty years old.
“Alright~ Next patient, please~”
The woman sat behind a simple wooden table by the roadside.
She wore plain, unadorned cotton clothes.
Her eyes narrowed kindly into crescent moons, radiating calmness as her fingers deftly checked the pulse of the city residents lined up before her.
Rin observed from a safe distance.
In this still rigid era, seeing a young woman boldly traveling alone across provinces to practice medicine was an extremely rare sight.
幕府時代 semacam ini, seorang perempuan muda mengembara sendirian demi mengobati orang adalah pemandangan yang tidak biasa.
However, beneath that admiration, a faint doubt crept into Rin’s mind.
She was too young.
At the beginning of her twenties, a medicine maker would usually still be stuck in a storage room as an apprentice grinding herbs, not running her own independent treatment station.
*Is she just a smooth-talking fraud?*
“My, what a beautiful young lady! Are you here for a check-up too?”
Rin’s reverie broke.
The line in front of the station had apparently cleared, and the young doctor was now waving at her with a very bright smile.
Rin didn’t back away.
She stepped forward with her chin raised, then sat down on the wooden chair in front of the table, while her two guards immediately took alert positions with hands on their sword hilts behind her.
The intimidating pressure from the samurai did nothing to erase the smile on the doctor’s face.
She had no intention of interrogating Rin’s background and simply tilted her head with a playful expression.
“Hello, I am a traveling physician from the Shikoku region. You may call me Doctor Shinobu. Is there something wrong with your body?”