Character · The Apothecary Diaries
Jinshi
The most beautiful man in the palace administers the rear palace, and he cannot stop sending puzzles to a servant who never wanted to be noticed.
In Otakana the clue reads: Beautiful official who runs the rear palace
- Type
- Character
- Series
- The Apothecary Diaries
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
Jinshi runs the rear palace, the enclosed quarter of the court where the emperor's consorts live and where no ordinary man may work. He is a eunuch by official record, extravagantly good-looking, and he deploys that fact on people the way other officials deploy paperwork. It works on nearly everyone at court. It does not work at all on Maomao, which he finds fascinating.
When infants in the rear palace begin dying, he needs somebody who can identify a poison without starting a scandal. The apothecary he turns up is a kidnapped servant girl who solves the thing for the pleasure of solving it and then tries to go back to laundry. From there he keeps arranging for interesting problems to land on her, and he is not remotely subtle about enjoying the results.
Natsu Hyuuga wrote The Apothecary Diaries as a web novel before print publication began in 2012, and it has since produced two separate manga adaptations and an anime from Toho Animation and OLM that started in 2023. Jinshi is the engine of the story as much as its romance: nothing about his position quite adds up, and the reader is invited to notice.
Spelling JINSHI
Six letters, JINSHI, and the J locks the row, because almost nothing else in the answer list wants one. Two beats, jin-shi, with the N closing the first and SH opening the second. The second half is the risk: it is SHI, not SHE and not CHI. Worth remembering that this is a title he wears rather than a name he was born with.