The Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise

hadn't needed to give any thought about what the next year would bring, let alone his "future." That was the one thing he hadn't needed to worry about.
    "Yeah, En and Kou really are two different worlds." He stroked the throat of the blue bird. "You really are something."
    The bird again opened its beak and that dearly familiar voice again filled the room. The girl who had become Empress of Kei. Even receiving her letters by this means, she lived a world apart from his own. Youko was listed upon the Registry of Gods, and would never age beyond the age she had been when they last parted. As a citizen of the world below, Rakushun would only grow further and further apart.
    Youko had only recently acceded to the throne. She knew nobody in the Imperial Court and could trust only Keiki. The last thing she needed to be worrying about was Rakushun. She had enough troubles of her own. The future of Kei and all its millions of people rested on her shoulders.
    "All I did was pick up something lying at the side of the road."
    Lying there as good as dead. Hardly something he would ever consider worshipping. No normal person could have just walked by on the other side. Taking her home and nursing her back to health was something anybody could have done.
    What he had received in compensation far exceeded what he had done.
    Even if he hadn't met Youko, he would have made his way to En somehow. But wasn't so naive as to believe that a person with no connections could carve out much of a future for himself. Thanks to Youko, he'd gotten those lucky breaks. He could never tell a soul, but that lucky break has come from the Royal En himself.
    The King had smoothed the way, making it possible for Rakushun to take the university entrance exams without first graduating from a provincial college. He'd found him a place to stay in the meantime, given him free access to any book he wished to read, and a tutor to help him prepare for the exams. That's what had made his present existence possible.
    But from this point forward, he would shape his future according to his own efforts. He'd been given what he needed to make it possible. Thinking back to a time when he had utterly lacked the means to do so, he could only conclude he had been blessed beyond measure.
    Ruminating over this, listening to Youko's voice, he said aloud, "And in particular—" and gave the blue bird another grain of silver.
    This silver was also a gift from the Royal En. It was the one thing he had specifically asked for that he never could have otherwise managed. There was no way someone like him was even going to lay his hands on an old silver spoon.
    The bird happily devoured it and trilled. Rakushun reached out and placed the bird atop his head. When the bird was perched thusly, it would remember everything that the person said. Rakushun didn't know whether it had been trained that way, or behaved according to instinct.
    "Hey, Youko. You sound like you're in a good mood."
    Her crimson hair and emerald eyes—those were the only fashion accessories Youko had ever needed. Surely by now, she would be clothed in the finest silk and adorned with expensive jewels. But that wasn't the Youko that Rakushun pictured in his mind's eye.
    "I'm doing okay myself—"

Chapter 4
    T he bird crossed the kingdom in three days. A grain of silver was all it needed to fly that far. Their words flew back and forth between Kankyuu and Gyouten literally on the wing. Due to the distance between the two capitals, a letter delivered by surface mail would take a good two months.
    The bird flew through the skylight high up on Gyouten Mountain and was promptly snagged by a bureaucrat, who caged it and bore it reverentially to Kinpa Palace on the shores of the Sea of Clouds. The bird couldn't fly above the Sea of Clouds under its own power. It set down at the highest point it could manage.
    The cage was passed from an official of the Outer Palace to one of the Inner Palace. After another transfer, it arrived at heart of the Imperial living quarters in the Seishin and was delivered to the Empress's paper-strewn desk just prior to her retiring.
    Youko perched the bird on the bookcase next to her desk and stroked its wings. The bird opened his beak and spoke—the words of her first true friend in this world, his voice.

    I'm doing pretty well myself. I've more or less gotten used to university life. The dorms are pretty comfortable. The homework is tough but I'm managing. Nothing too out of the