Dandelions (1)

The days after she accepted the apprenticeship, Lu Tai Hu had her moved out into his house, or more exactly, a small hut on his backyard. The hut was decently furnished for a doctor in a poor farmer village. It was once used by his former apprentice whom Lu Tai Hu had declared decently capable healer and moved out to open his own business in the nearby town.

But now, it was hers.

"His future is bright. I'd rather not confine him to this village until he had explored the world to his heart content. Anyway, this village still has me to take care of it, so things are fine the way it is." Lu Tai Hu answered when Shu Shu asked why that apprentice didn't work alongside him in the village.

Lu Tai Hu was a hard teacher, but he was fair. Shu Shu memorized the medicinal uses of the local plants, their locations, and the various brews and tinctures that could be made from them. The rest of Lu Tai Hu's lessons, Shu Shu knew. Her hand was steady as she stitched wounds and staunched blood.

To her credit, or perhaps against it, Lu Tai Hu never asked questions. Shu Shu's knowledge and habits were quietly accepted, even when it seemed strange. Her insistence on boiling water and cleaning the tools rigorously was soon followed by Lu Tai Hu himself.

The two fell into an easy rhythm. They rose at dawn, gathered plants, created poultices, helped their fellow villagers, lessons when there was still time, and rest. Rinse and repeat.

Two years into the apprenticeship, Lu Tai Hu implemented a new routine. Instead of lessons, he insisted on meditation. "There's nothing more the books I own could offer you," the old man said, "you can learn more by observing and helping me doing my work at this point."

Thus, their routine of meditating before bed was established.

Shu Shu didn't know why they did the meditation, but she gave Lu Tai Hu the same courtesy by not asking too many questions. After another year, the old man gave the answer to Yui's silent query.

"It warms the soul," said Lu Tai Hu suddenly one day. They had just finished their daily meditation. "It gives peace of mind." His eyes grew bright. "And it lets us use life itself."

"Life?" Shu Shu scrunched her eyebrows. The explanation didn't trigger a memory, so either it was something unique to that time--like many of the herbs and tinctures--or it was no longer practiced in her previous life.

Lu Tai Hu smiled mysteriously. "I prefer to call it life energy as it is the essence of life, but some also know it as internal energy," he lectured. When Lu Tai Hu saw that Shu Shu still didn't understand, he extended a wrinkly hand, "Touch my hand."

Full of skepticism, Shu Shu held Lu Tai Hu's hand.

At first there was nothing out of ordinary. She was about to ask when she felt her palm grew warm. No, it was Lu Tai Hu's hand who grew warmer and warmer.

"...What is that?" she asked in a small voice.

"Life energy," Lu Tai Hu said simply, letting go of his apprentice's hand. "Come, let's head to bed."

That night, it was safe to say that Shu Shu spent the majority of the night tossing and turning instead of sleeping. Her mind still couldn't wrap around the concept of 'life energy'.

Where did it cone from? A human's body obviously, but exactly where?

How do one control it? From Lu Tai Hu's regimen, meditation must be one of the way. But are there others?

What can it do, other than warming one's palm?

Can it be used in medication? If so, how and why?

There were thousands of unanswered questions swirling in her head like a storm. Predictably, she woke up with a headache and puffy eyes in the morning from lack of sleep.

Lu Tai Hu laughed merrily when he saw her, incurring an adorable pout from Shu Shu.

"Teacher," she whined childishly, something she rarely did due to her mature mental age but also something she did unconsciously due to her body's immature age.

"Ahaha, with your curious and young mind, I've predicted it'll turn out like this. But seeing it come true is still funny," Lu Tai Hu chortled even as his hands didn't stop gathering the tools they needed for their daily herb gathering.

"It is not funny," Shu Shu grounded out while snagging her miniaturised basket and walked in front of her teacher.

As Lu Tai Hu's house was near the gate at the front of the village, they passed by some of the farmer whose field was near the mountain too. Greeting them cheerily and getting smiles for her adorableness managed to calm her—playful! She swears!—tantrums, much to the relief of Lu Tai Hu.

Soon enough they reached the mountain and Lu Tai Hu took the lead. They ventured a bit deeper than the usual villagers looking for wood, to the clearing where the herbs grew abundantly.

"Hm? Oh! Could it be…?" Shu Shu's eyes sparkled when her gaze landed on a small plant with yellow daisy-like flower. She walked closer, feet carefully walking only on grass, dirt, or weed, and checked the leaves and stems of the plant.

"Shu Shu? What are you doing there?"

Lu Tai Hu's voice called from where he carefully harvested some common herbs for cold and sore throat.

"I found dandelions!" she reported.

"Oh? Okay, remember to leave enough so it can grow here again," Lu Tai Hu advised before going back to his work.

"Actually, teacher," Shu Shu called out hesitatingly. "I have something in mind I'd like to try..."

Lu Tai Hu turned around with a raised eyebrow. He saw his apprentice looking at him with hopeful eyes. "...what do you have in mind?" he relented.

"I want to experiment a new way to process dandelions!" proposed Shu Shu almost immediately.

"Oh? A new tinctures?"

"Well, more of a drink, but it also has medicinal properties," she said with a soft voice, "probably."

Lu Tai Hu stared at her unblinkingly.

"I thought of it just now, so I don't know for sure if it would even turn out like that," she trailed off, her confidence going down the drain by the minute.

She had thought of this particular drink this morning when she woke up feeling drained. Her mind flashed back to the time where she could get a black liquid that energized her called 'coffee'. Then again, she wasn't sure it was even invented in this time. And she didn't even know how to make coffee aside from using the instant one.

So was ready to give up--as she had to do with many other things she couldn't recreate in that era--when she saw the clusters of dandelions.

Of course, the caffeine-free herbal coffee!

She was eager to try and recreate it, but facing Lu Tai Hu's questions and probes made her lose some of those eagerness.

In the first place, she only knew the basic steps on how to make the product. Even in her previous life, she never actually tried it. She had tasted it a few times, but making it?

"Alright, alright," Lu Tai Hu sighed, he really did spoil this little apprentice of his. If it was his previous apprentice, he would sternly lecture him instead. "Just make sure to dry a portion of the plant to restock our supplies."

Shu Shu's head snapped up in disbelief even as her lips stretched into a wide smile.

"Thank you, teacher!"

Now, how to replicate the dandelion coffee from her previous life?