The Game of Maque Pai and Whispers of Rohlman

“That dead man…”

As Lin Yu walked back towards the logistics area, she muttered under her breath, kicking at loose pebbles. The last vestiges of gratitude she held for him had curdled into pure resentment.

They weren’t even particularly close, and even if they were, snatching a water canteen and drinking from it directly without permission was utterly rude.

How much more so in a society like Diacla’s, steeped in its own unique customs and etiquette?

The man was simply beyond reason! He displayed not an ounce of self-awareness, no sense of personal boundaries whatsoever—

‘I never want to see him again,’ she fumed internally. ‘People like him deserve to die in the trenches! Why won’t fate open its eyes and bestow upon him the same destiny it visits upon the wounded?’

‘Die, die, die…’

Suddenly, her surroundings grew familiar. Glancing around, Lin Yu realized she had already returned to the vicinity of the medical tent.

The large red cross emblazoned on the tent flap brought a measure of calm, prompting her to reflect on whether her earlier thoughts had been too harsh.

As a medic, wishing death upon a frontline soldier would surely earn her a severe reprimand if anyone overheard.

Abandoning her mental litany of curses, Lin Yu instead recalled her encounters with him over the past month. It seemed she had treated him so many times that they were long past owing each other anything.

‘Never mind,’ she decided. ‘I’ll put that annoying fellow out of my mind for now.’

Shaking her head, she retrieved the mess tin from her arms and headed towards her usual spot for fetching water.

A layer of red grease clung to the bottom of the mess tin. The dim light made it hard to discern clearly, yet she knew precisely where it came from and how to remove it.

Locating the semi-solidified soap she used for laundry, she scraped off a small piece and smeared it into the mess tin, beginning the tiresome chore of washing once more.

‘That’s why I detest people like him the most.’

A quarter of an hour later, Lin Yu brought her freshly cleaned iron mess tin back to Commander Yang’s quarters, only to find everyone already gathered. Instead of a pot of red broth, the center of the dining table now held a peculiar, square-shaped object that looked remarkably familiar.

“Oh, Little Lin, you’ve arrived at just the right time. Do you know how to play cards?”

Four senior medics sat around the dining table, while three others stood behind them, discussing strategies and occasionally reaching out to point at the square tiles laid out in a row.

“What kind of cards?” She set her mess tin aside casually, leaning closer to examine the patterns and small characters etched onto the tiles.

“It’s Maque Pai (TL Note: A Chinese tile-based game, known in English as Mahjong), brought over from the foreigners. Do you know how to play?”

The word “Maque” preceding “Pai” (card/tile) immediately sparked a strange thought in Lin Yu’s mind.

Yet, she was more curious as to why they would play such a foreign game, knowing their homeland was at war with foreigners. “We’ve officially declared war on the Lanforsians,” she ventured. “Wouldn’t it sound bad if people heard us playing their board game now?”

She was about to understand why they had said she arrived at just the right moment, and why they dared to play an enemy nation’s game so openly.

“This is Rohlman Maque Pai,” Nangong, ever the knowledgeable one, explained to Lin Yu. “It originated from the Rohlman Empire, not the Lanforsians.” She then instructed Zhao Yanyan, “Quick, play this tile. Your pair might be in someone else’s hand!”

Lin Yu now clearly saw the circular and striped patterns on the square tiles. “Rohlman? Maque Pai?” she echoed, a hint of doubt in her voice.

‘Isn’t this Mahjong? And who is Rohlman? Good heavens, is cultural appropriation this common even in other worlds?’

“That’s right, it’s great fun and quite popular internationally. Say, do you know how to play? If so, we could start another table.” Commander Yang joined the conversation, inviting Lin Yu to complete their four-person game. “We happen to have a spare set.”

“I do know how to play, but I’m not very good, so…”

Her poor card-playing skills were a genuine truth, but she also had another concern: this otherworldly version of Mahjong might have rules she had never encountered.

In her previous life, there had been countless variations, not just between countries, but even between different regions. If the Mahjong of this other world had developed unique rules, unknown to her yet common knowledge here, she feared she would make a terrible fool of herself.

But… it had been so long since she had truly played, from childhood until now, since becoming a medic.

In this life, she had no friends as a child. Her only two pleasures were listening to the village elders tell stories and lying under the night sky, counting stars.

After becoming a medic, her mind was constantly filled with human anatomy and the proper methods for incision and suturing any injury.

‘I really want to play.’

“If I make any mistakes, please bear with me…”

Lin Yu followed Commander Yang to another table, joining the second card game in the small hut.

****

The young woman played Mahjong.

****

Unsurprisingly, she lost repeatedly, ‘firing the cannon’ (TL Note: A Mahjong term for discarding a tile that allows another player to win) in eight out of ten rounds of Maque Pai.

In a normal game, she would undoubtedly have lost over a month’s salary, down to her very undergarments. Had it been the fabled strip Mahjong, she would likely have been a naked figure standing dumbfounded at the table.

“Little Lin Yu, promise me, you absolutely must never go out and play cards with others, alright?”

A senior medic, who had finished their game at the next table and came over to offer advice, pressed a hand on her shoulder, earnestly cautioning, “With your card skills, you’d be bankrupt within three rounds, and then those old gamblers would drag you off and make excessive demands.”

“I won’t, I won’t. I won’t play cards with strangers.”

Lin Yu quickly promised not to do so, for if the conversation continued, Commander Yang would surely catch on—such situations clearly only happened to women, and currently, Lin Yu was still presenting herself as male in front of Commander Yang.

“I’ve tallied it up, and in a normal game, you’d already owe me eleven thousand wen,” Commander Yang remarked, waving the score sheet at her side. “That’s quite a substantial sum.”

As for the other two players, Lieutenant Xia had won four thousand from her, and Nangong had likely won over six thousand.

“You’ve lost so much in just a few hours. So, listen carefully to what Sister Yang says: cherish your military pay and stay away from gambling.”

“I’ll heed your teachings…”

After being lectured by several people in turn, everyone helped put away both sets of Maque Pai tiles. By the time they finished, the wall clock pointed to the number “2,” signaling two o’clock in the morning.

The dining table, previously used for hotpot, had already been cleared, so they could now disperse and go to sleep. Liang Yu, having accumulated the highest score, had won the chance to share a bed with Commander Yang, while the other three seniors agreed to settle their scores the next morning.

Lin Yu and Nangong, not yet members of Commander Yang’s ‘harem,’ bid them farewell and set off with Lieutenant Xia back towards the front. However, he walked so quickly that he soon disappeared into the distance, leaving the two female medics to share a lingering goodbye.

“Goodbye!”

“Come play again next time!”

The earlier struggle at the table, constantly racking her brain to form pairs and sequences, had surprisingly kept her drowsiness at bay. Only as Nangong led her towards the medical tent did she begin to feel the weight of her exhaustion.

Yawning, Lin Yu posed a question to Nangong, much as she had after showering at Commander Yang’s house last time.

“Sister Nangong…”

The tall medic walking ahead responded with a hum. “Hm?”

“That Rohlman Empire… it… do you know what kind of country it is?”

“Of course I do. I studied at a modern school, unlike Commander Yang and the others who know nothing about foreigners.”

Nangong mentioned she had also attended school, an experience not shared by the other senior medics.

“But still, I ask, what good does knowing all this do? Understanding Rohlman history won’t improve your Maque Pai skills.”

Nangong couldn’t fathom why she was so interested in such a distant country, just as Lin Yu couldn’t comprehend why Mahjong from her previous life had become a foreign import in this one.

“It’s not for playing cards, I just genuinely want to know. Like wanting to understand why the world is a sphere, or why an apple doesn’t fall upwards.”

Realizing Nangong wasn’t an expert in temporal theories, she ultimately chose a different analogy: “Like wanting to know why not sterilizing before surgery leads to infection.”

Such a desire is usually called ‘curiosity,’ the most precious possession of a soul capable of independent thought.

“It’s good to be curious,” Nangong said, offering a customary compliment before her critique. “However, knowing too much can sometimes be detrimental.”

Feeling a pat on her head through her hat, Lin Yu blinked, expressing her confusion under the moonlight. “Why?”

“Because we aren’t the decision-makers of this world; we are merely cogs in its societal machine. Decision-makers won’t permit cogs to think independently and rebel… I apologize, I’ve said too much. Would you be so kind as to pretend you didn’t hear that last sentence?”

Nangong abruptly fell silent mid-sentence, leaving only the soft crunch of her boots on the hardened earth.

Sensing the sudden chill in the atmosphere, Lin Yu quickly tried to smooth things over. “Sister Nangong knows so much!”

“You know quite a bit yourself,” Nangong retorted. “This game hasn’t even become popular nationwide, yet you already know the rules.”

She swiftly shifted to introducing Rohlman’s general overview to Lin Yu. “Ahem, I haven’t answered that question yet. If I had to summarize this country in one sentence, I’d say it’s ‘the birthplace of the Magic Revolution.'”

“Rohlman’s rise was a miracle that rulers of all nations racked their brains trying to replicate. Even our Emperor takes that legendary emperor as a role model.”

Such a miracle, that even if that emperor were to start over from scratch, they might not achieve such a perfect outcome.

“However, what people are truly more interested in is that emperor’s legendary love story. Despite the various races having long since departed the Old Continent, he still married a young elf as his empress, and an alchemical automaton also became entangled with him. Rumor has it there’s an unspeakable relationship between the three.”

“…”

‘Why do I suddenly want to hear this kind of story so badly? Has my gossip soul awakened?’

Lin Yu took a deep breath and, speaking as quickly as she could, said, “Please, you absolutely must tell me all about it—”