The Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise

honestly speaking one's mind is to be preferred."
    "Nobody's actually lying. Now, if I went around pretending we were all one big happy family, the bureaucracy and me, that would be a lie."
    "Still—" Gyokuyou started to say, but seemed to reconsider.
    The Empress of Kei lived a life of isolation. The Imperial Court was divided down the middle by competing factions, with various parts of the bureaucratic turf staked out by the ministers. They sucked up shamelessly, and treated her as a piece of ornamentation that came with the throne.
    "They keep their distance and never open up enough to make even possible to pick a fight with them. So I can't say that Rakushun giving me advice like that even matters."
    "But he's your friend, right? We're probably more reticent when it comes to revealing our weaknesses to our friends, but it couldn't hurt being a bit more straightforward."
    "Yeah, I suppose," said Youko, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm not being straight with him. To tell the truth, I've made no friends among the ministers. I'm pretty much a complete outsider. I wouldn't look forward to that. And it's not that I'm against revealing my weaknesses. I'm against coming across as weak and pathetic. Against being despised and ridiculed. Rakushun's the kind of guy who offers advice and counsel before getting around to the ridiculing part."
    "You don't want to cause him unnecessary concern?"
    "There's that too. Becoming a burden. But that's not really it either. I want to stand tall."
    Gyokuyou blinked. "Stand tall? Because he's your friend?"
    "I don't mean for appearance's sake." Youko smiled wryly and picked up the teacup. For several seconds she pursed her mouth, a concerned look on her face. "I don't think everything's coming up roses for Rakushun."
    When Gyokuyou tilted her head to the side, Youko looked up and smiled. "I know he always tries to be the bearer of good news, but I have to wonder, you know? His mom is back in Kou, and the way things are headed there he's got to be more than a little concerned. It's not like he can call her on the phone and see how she's doing. Whether she's in good health. Without knowing that, how can he sit back and enjoy life as a college student?"
    "That definitely would be cause for concern."
    "I can fill him in about what's going on and try to calm his concerns that way. Still, that can't be expected to set his mind at ease. Even bringing his mom from Kou to En wouldn't likely settle things. She'd be another refugee who'd left her kingdom. And with the disposition of his mother settled, he'd surely be troubled by the growing chaos in the kingdom of his birth."
    "I would agree with that assessment as well."
    "It sure seems that way to me. And being in college is tough enough. It seems he can't get enough formal instruction through regular channels and is relying on home study."
    "The En Taiho did report that his grades are very good."
    "Yeah, I suppose. But I'm worried that if he spends the bulk of his time in home study, he won't make the most of his college experience, like forming relationships with classmates and professors. En is a wealthy kingdom and the standards at its universities have got to be pretty demanding. A student only exposed to a district academy in Kou who suddenly finds himself attending an En university has got to feel like a fish out of water."
    "Indeed."
    "It's tough getting by in a kingdom you know nothing about, in a city you know nothing about, in a completely different environment. And on top of everything else, Rakushun in a hanjuu."
    "En is quite different from Kou and Kei."
    "And not just the politics," Youko agreed.
    A hanjuu could attend college in En, could get a job, could even become a minister. Though the first time they had visited Gen'ei Palace, the Minister of Heaven had presented Rakushun with a set of clothes.
    "We may be equal before the law, but the law has no rule over people's hearts. So the Minister of Heaven telling Rakushun to get dressed in 'grown up clothes' may have been his way of saying that he didn't want him walking around the palace like that. It was never clarified whether doing so was against protocol or was simply considered ill-mannered."
    "Such things are bound to happen."
    "And all the more so at college, even at an elite institution that educates the cream of the crop. You graduate and are pretty much guaranteed a job in government, right? The training ground for the future leaders can be divorced from the demands of