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The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

Titel: The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Fuyumi Ono
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thinking about those times."
    "Why?
    Shoukei's eyes widened in amazement. "Why? Don't you know how miserable a life that was? Getting woken up at the crack of dawn, sent off to work before breakfast, coming home covered in mud and dung and straw. Never enough to eat. Going to bed exhausted, not being able to sleep because you're starving and cold. And even with no sleep, getting woken up the next morning and sent off to work all over again. Everybody making fun of you and talking down to you. I don't want to remember any of that life. You get it now?"
    "Sorry, but not at all. Why so bad? Why deem it such a wretched existence? It is the life of all peasants. When you're poor, you go hungry. That shouldn't be news to you. But why can't you bear to be reminded of it? That's what I don't understand."
    Rakushun stopped and glanced to his right. "How about there?"
    It was a small inn that would hardly be high up on anybody's travel itinerary. Several tables were lined up on the dirt floor of the narrow, one-story storefront. Were it not for the sign advertising rooms, it would have struck her as nothing more than a shabby food stall.
    "That? Places like that don't even have beds. In the first place, nobody dressed like me would ever stay at a place like that!"
    "If that's the way you feel, then go buy something else to wear." Rakushun took a few coins from his pocket and pressed them into her hands. "That's where I'm staying. You can buy yourself some more appropriate dress or take the money and run. It's up to you."
    "I--!"
    Rakushun wagged his tail at the speechless Shoukei and walked over to the inn. Shoukei watched dumbfounded as he called out to the proprietor. With this amount of money, she could only afford the meanest quality of clothing, the kind of plain garb she'd worn at the orphanage, not to mention that it'd be secondhand at best. In this winter weather, there wasn't anything she really needed other than a coat or jacket. But she'd have to sell her silk outfits to buy those kinds of clothes. And that meant going back to the way she was before.
    But, Shoukei thought, she had no money of her own. If Rakushun abandoned her here, she'd end up selling her clothes, anyway. And even then, it was hardly likely she'd have enough to take her all the way to En. Eating the cheapest food in the cheapest inns, could she even make it to the border?
    Live with it, she told herself. But when she thought of returning to wretched life of a girl on the lam, she wanted to weep. Continuing on in this state, in the company of a hanjuu, and no suugu to boot, it was simply infuriating.
    She swallowed her pride and went looking for a used apparel shop. She picked out a change of clothes. When the pedestrian outfit was ready to her satisfaction, only her shoes were out of character. She'd sold off everything down to there. The only thing she hadn't purchased was peasant-grade footwear. So now her shoes didn't match. At any rate, the only thing left to do was go behind the screen in the shop and change.
    Pulling on the starchy garments, she wanted to cry. Right now in Kei, a girl is draped in a luxurious silk kimono of the most amazing quality, wearing a brocaded, embroidered fur coat heavy with pearls.
    Biting her lip, she returned to the inn. It was mortifying enough to have to tell the proprietor that she was with the hanjuu, and just as miserable being shown down the moldy old hallway.
    "Here," he said, abruptly.
    When she opened the door, there was the hanjuu, sitting nonchalantly on the floor in front of a brazier. He looked at Shoukei and scratched his ear. "I don't understand girls. What's so embarrassing about going into a rundown inn wearing silk clothes?"
    "You're the one who gave me the money and told me to."
    "Yeah, but I didn't think you'd actually change into them. Well, that's what you should wear from now on. That's about the class of travel we'll be engaged in."
    "It stinks." Shoukei sullenly sat down on the floor.
    Rakushun gazed at the brazier. "No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't change the fact that that's how most people get by. How inconvenient bringing up a princess must be."
    "Inconvenient?"
    "Inconvenient to treat the ordinary as extraordinary. As surely as you get used to luxurious attire, you start to think that that kind of clothing, as you put it, stinks. So you want to wear silk. You're not the only one who thinks that way. Every girl wants to wear beautiful silk clothes and live a dressed-up

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