The Twelve Kingdoms: The Shore in Twilight

Gyousou had divided Asen's forces, perhaps he'd doubted Asen from the start.
    She spent the summer walking through the battlefields and the ruins. And then the summer ended and the snow began to fall. Perhaps because of all the soot, it was a gray snow, a harbinger of worse times to come. The winter that year was particularly harsh. The snow piled up in great drifts. Many of the houses in these parts, though built to withstand the elements, collapsed under the weight.
    At the end of the cold, snowy winter came a dry summer. Rarely had Tai seen such a hot summer. The farmland lay parched beneath the sun. And when winter came again--
    She believed it was the following year when youma began to appear more and more often. For a kingdom without a king, this was hardly out of the ordinary. But they multiplied practically in front of her eyes. The old-timers said that no way would youma appear while the true king reigned. People began saying with greater conviction that Gyousou must be dead.
    Risai stared into the night sky above the courtyard. How were the people faring now? Here she was, while Tai suffered all manner of privations. The summer was drawing to an end. Another terrible winter waited in the wings.
    Please save us. Even now, she could not shed the desire to cry out and cling to her. The more she got to know the Royal Kei, and the more she knew about the people around her, the deeper the grievous nature of the sinful action she demanded seeped into her soul. And yet knowing--
    "But there is no other way."
    Somebody must rise up and bring a halt to Asen's villainy. Lacking a leader with the power to subjugate the youma and bless the land with bounty sufficient to last the winters, Tai could not last many more years longer. This year, or the next, or the year after--it hardly mattered now--when the snows would melt away in the spring to reveal the frozen body of the last citizen of Tai.
    "What in the world are you doing here?" a voice queried behind her.
    Risai glanced over her shoulder. An old man was standing at the gate to the courtyard. "Nothing," she replied.
    The old man was Enho, the Taishi. This was his manor house. It might well be nothing out of the ordinary to him, but since being moved here, he had stopped by to see her on a fairly regular basis. The Empress's entourage was few in number, but they were all good-hearted. Whenever she thought about Youko in these terms, she grew fearful even of herself.
    "Are you all right? Being up and about at this hour?"
    "More or less, I guess."
    Enho slowly approached her and sat down on the steps leading up to the promenade where Risai was seated. "It seems that the Royal En will be lending a hand in the search for the Tai Taiho."
    "Y-yes."
    "And yet you appear quite disheartened."
    You don't say, Risai thought to herself, but couldn't repeat this to Enho
    "Indeed. We are faced not simply with the matter of finding him. And supposing that we do, a mountain of tasks lay ahead of us. Once the Taiho has returned, searching for the Royal Tai becomes that much easier. Yet, it would then become necessary that the Taiho return to Tai, and doing so might very well risk losing the Taiho as well."
    "Yes." Risai nodded.
    "In order to effect a successful search for the Royal Tai, a large contingent would be necessary. However, I heard that assembling such a number of allies would be well-nigh impossible. And if they can somehow be found, while the search for the Royal Tai is underway, the people will continue to bear the unbearable."
    "Winter is coming. Not many months remain until the first snowfall."
    "When you think about it in those terms, Tai is a hard country. You cannot survive the winter in the open air."
    "It's true. Winters in Kei must be quite temperate."
    "Compared to Tai."
    Risai nodded dejectedly. "There are temperate kingdoms and kingdoms that are not. I have to wonder how much better off Tai would be if it shared Kei's climate--if people huddling together and sharing the warmth of their bodies was enough to make it through the winter. Why must there be both warm kingdoms and cold kingdoms in this world?"
    "Why, indeed."
    Risai looked up at the Moon. "Why did Tentei create a kingdom such as Tai? It would be enough if only people could depend on the warm of their own bodies to survive the winter."
    "Asking such questions does not change what is."
    "But--" Risai said, biting her lip. "Didn't Tentei create the world? Then why did Tentei create such a place as Tai?