I have to give credit where it’s due here. The Apothecary Diaries heaped pressure on itself by teasing this Lakan storyline on for too long. But when it had to deliver, it really did. I was thoroughly satisfied with the resolution (for now), though I would absolutely want to see more of Lakan and Maomao in the future. They’re both interesting characters, and now that the truth is out we know she has no good reason to reject him the way she does.
I’m also satisfied that I wasn’t fooled by the misdirection where Lakan was concerned. He never felt like a bad guy to me, and certainly not evil. Just a guy too used to interacting with people not as smart as he is, and made arrogant by that. His desire to have a relationship with his daughter was completely genuine, and in truth, he really did nothing to make him undeserving of one. That’s not to say Xiaomao is wrong to feel some resentment towards him, but she’s smart enough to realize that doing so to the extent she apparently does is unjustified.
The only area of this I struggle with is Lakan’s willingness to take the terms of his daughter’s Xiangqi wager. If he really is a complete teetotaller, it seems ill-advised – unless his arrogance is so great that he presumed he wouldn’t lose. But that doesn’t add up, because that very arrogance would make him believe in his daughter’s great intelligence. And he would have known from the beginning that he’d lose at least once on purpose to make sure she wasn’t poisoned. Maybe she fed him some sort of trank too, just to make sure one drink would be enough.
The backstory, however, was an unqualified win for me. I don’t know what the deal is with Lakan’s face thing – it seems to be an actual medical condition (selective Prosopagnosia?) – but he obviously had it from infancy. It was certainly interesting to learn that the uncle who was his only supporter in the family was Loumen. That makes Xiaomao’s oyaji her great uncle, and probably explains why he took her in when he did. Loumen taught Lakan to discriminate people’s identity based on their voices and smell, and to use Xianqi pieces to remember them. The first face that Lakan ever recognized as a face (not even his mother’s) was a courtesan at Verdigris called Fengxian.
F
engxian is played by Kuwashima Houko, an actress who knows a thing or three about a Chinese imperial court setting. Her being an intellectual equal was what caused this to happen, not her physical beauty – though she had that in plenty. Many games of Go and Xiangqi followed, and as Fengxian grew more popular her price went up and up to the point where the comfortable but not fabulously wealthy Lakan could only afford to visit her once every three months. On one of those visits a different sort of game was played, and soon after “clumsy” Loumen’s expulsion from the Inner Palace took place. As a punishment for being too close to him Lakan was sent to “study abroad”. He expected to be gone six months, only for his absence to last three years.
I can certainly see why it looked to the old lady – and probably Maomao later – as if Lakan had abandoned Fengxian after she became pregnant. He didn’t, and is pretty close to blameless in this whole affair apart from not addressing his absence with Fengxian before leaving. In fact, the big question hanging over this situation is whether Fengxian instigated sex with Lakan in the hopes of getting pregnant and lowering her price enough for him to buy her out. On the one hand that would make her even more resentful of him for abandoning her (and of Maomao for existing). And brothels certainly had means of making sure unwanted pregnancies didn’t happen. But on the other, how could she be sure one act of intercourse would get the job done?
Either way, he didn’t know until he returned and saw the stack of letters from her – and the one containing the severed fingers. That’s a bit of a mystery in itself, as I’ve never noticed any irregularities with Maomao’s hands (though Google informs me a severed fingertip can sometimes grow back). But it’s pretty clear Maomao’s game here was to get Lakan to buy Fengxian out from Verdigris – the “withered rose” in question. It’s not fully clear just how much Xiaomao knows about what happened, but I would hope that at some point she at least gives Lakan a full hearing. She’s not doing herself any favors by shutting him out of her life, and he deserves at least that much.
Kim
March 17, 2024 at 9:26 pmI am not really watching the anime since I don’t have much time these days but I did enjoy this storyline in the manga too. And I think my first impression of Lakan was he was a bad guy but I like how that was misleading in the end.
animealex
March 17, 2024 at 10:22 pmIf I understood it correctly, the drink in itself was alcoholic and the poison was pure undiluted alcohol. As such, Maomao’s victory was assured from the start: Maomao has quite the tolerance for alcohol and was sure, it wouldn’t affect her very much. Lakan on the other hand would be pressured to take one or two losses, to confirm, his daughter wouldn’t come to harm. But one spiked drink was enough to send Lakan to the mat. Lakan is a brilliant strategist, but because of his personal feelings in this situation, Maomao was able to outmaneuver him. She is definitely his daughter and a very, very calculating.
It’s fitting, that she seems to have the same blind-spots in her interpersonal relations as her face-blind father.
Simone
March 18, 2024 at 6:54 pmYup, notice how she worded it: “three sips would definitely kill you”. YOU, as in, you, personally, Lakan the teetotaler. Not kill just anyone.
Never go against an apothecary when death is on the line, I guess.
Pandorica
March 18, 2024 at 12:48 amMaomao is seen looking at her hand many times throughout the season, often in connection with Lakan or when people discuss their relationships with children, motherhood, or families. The pinky fingertip is held at a slightly awkward angle. It’s a great detail that is easy to miss (I read the LN so it jumped out at me right away )
Jessica Hardy
March 18, 2024 at 4:59 amI thought maybe Fengxian just wanted her first sexual experience to be with someone she liked, since she was about to be sold.
Nicc
March 19, 2024 at 7:14 amI’m starting the writing this on St. Patrick’s Day and so I hope that y’all had a fun day. There was no pub crawling for me as it was a day for yardwork. The daffodils are looking good and the cherry blossoms are blooming. I found some time later to open a pint of (N/A) Guinness. Sláinte, folks!
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” This is a line from the movie, “Cool Hand Luke”. I was saying that to myself over and over again throughout this episode. It took a while to get there, but we get the background regarding the complicated family dynamics between Loumen, Lakan, Maomao and introducing mom, Fengxian. True, it’s not surprising at all that Lakan would accept all of the terms from Maomao. His darling daughter actually wants something to do with him and so he definitely lowered his guard. Indeed, the whole “poison” thing was dangerous for Lakan, even if it turned out to be alcohol. Some people really can’t hold their drink at all and I also believe it’s likely that she slipped a mickey into the drinks too.
So, it looks like Lakan was born with prosopagnosia and even his own family looked like blobs in his eyes. It was his uncle, Loumen, who taught him how to distinguish other people, including associating them with go or chess pieces. He would see Loumen as the chariot piece. He was shunned by his family, but he eventually found a calling as a military tactician. He found it even more enjoyable to treat the battlefield as a game and using people as the game pieces.
On some evening, he was brought to (Yeah, had somebody had to drag him there first) to the Verdigris House and found himself bested in a game. He has never been beaten before and was rather amused. His opponent was the first human face he recognized, Fengxian. It was her brains that made the impression on him, not the beauty. As he has mused in earlier episodes, she was cold and aloof, but still popular and that started a bidding war for her services. Lakan was still just moving up the ladder at that time and so he could only afford to visit once every three months. It was one of those visits in which a different game was played, as you said. It was not intentional on his part. He even said it himself that he had a two-tracked mind. One was for go and the other was for chess. Indeed, the question is if Fengxian set this up. I get the impression that neither of them actually talked much to each other and so she certainly wouldn’t communicate this to him. I don’t think she told anybody at the Verdigris House, either.
His uncle Loumen is kicked out of the Inner Palace and we already know the reason why. Because of his closeness to his uncle, Lakan is also punished by association and is sent away to study. He was in no position to refuse and off he went. What was supposed to be a few months become three years. The letters addressed to him during this absence were not forwarded and that’s how he got the news. We learned about the rest from earlier episodes. It is indeed clear that Maomao wants Lakan to buy out her mom, though getting the madam to go for it will be a different story. I keep thinking that things could have turned out differently if there was more communication. So, how much does Maomao know? Next week is the season finale, though the next episode preview suggests that it’s going to focus on Maomao and Jinshi and so it’s possible that any words between father and daughter may be pushed into the next cour, whenever it comes around.