opens mouth. closes it. nevermind I think I need to look at the timeline again the ages are confusing me. Lishu is I think 13-14 at the start of the series and Shisui is 17 or nearly seventeen when she debuts (I put her birthday as somewhere in February/March because iirc Maomao was a later months baby though I'll have to recheck and the author has stated that Shisui is the youngest out of Maomao, Suirei and Jinshi. So depending on how the timeline falls she should either be 17 or just turning 17 and I lean towards the latter because of Maomao's age that I'll source later lmao.) Anyway I think its pretty unlikely for Shisui or Hiroe to have met the former emperor either way because around the time Suirei was born, he was already pretty sick and withering and iirc he locked himself away in those years? It's confusing and I'll have to double check lmao.

Great questions all of which are....unfortunately not answered! Shisui's ladies in waiting unfortunately fall into that teensy bit of cracks in an otherwise watertight mystery lmao its a shame really. I think it was both fear of punishment/inability to disobey their masters + some weird kind of loyalty Shisui is capable of inspiring. I think for the ones in the know, its because they've known her since a child and maybe feel pity for something for her? Idk it's up in the air really.

Oh yeah hold on I'll journal PM you if thats okay? It's probably getting too long here lmao xD