Suihe transmigrates into the palace, becoming the lowest-ranking record-keeping maid in the Department of Palace Affairs. Every day, she copies down the dates when consorts attend the emperor and records their menstrual cycles.
But the more she writes, the more something seems off. Consort Hua’s turns with the emperor always avoid her fertile window. An Changzai is always “rescheduled” to a time outside her chance of conceiving. The newly arrived Lady Wan is assigned a date when pregnancy is almost impossible.
Is it a coincidence? No. The empress is using a “schedule” to manually control the fertility rate of the entire harem.
Suihe quietly opens the Excel spreadsheet in her mind. She feeds menstrual data, frequency of imperial visits, notes on medicines, and the Empress’s Palace of Earthly Tranquility ritual schedule into a model, then calculates the empress’s three-year “infertility algorithm.”
So she begins secretly altering the schedule.
Zhen Huan gets pregnant after a single night with the emperor. Consort Hua finally gets her long-overdue period. An Changzai narrowly escapes a plot to harm her. The whole harem descends into chaos, and everyone is trying to find out “who tampered with the Department of Palace Affairs’ records.”
No one suspects the mute maid who keeps her head down and copies documents all day, with ink stains on her hands.
Until one day, the empress herself walks into the archives of the Department of Palace Affairs, closes the door, and looks down at her. “Miss Suihe, since your calculations are so accurate, why don’t you tell my fortune, too?”
Suihe looks up. Hidden in her sleeve is a note she has not yet delivered. On it is the “flaw in next month’s schedule” that she found in the empress’s plans.
