The Twelve Kingdoms: The Shore in Twilight

"accidents" happening around him, but put them down to echoes from the wrinkle in time that had brought him to this here and now.
    For as long as he could remember, he'd suspected there was something "off" about him. He was conscious as well of the strange feeling--the knowledge, even--that for a strange creature as himself to exist, his environment must be somehow amiss. He felt he was a disappointment to those around him and a bewildering burden. These feelings grew year by year, blossoming into a conviction.
    He really was an alien here, a source of unease to his surrounding. A bad seed. The rift in time and space that at some point had cut him free from this world grew so deep that he could finally no longer turn his eyes from its reality. At a certain point in time, the frantic efforts of his mother to bridge the divide between them no longer proved sufficient.
    He was cast adrift, and he understood the necessity of his isolation. Calamities struck those connected to him. The rumors were about that he was cursed, rumors that became attached to his character. He had no choice but to accept that he was a dangerous creature, a stroke of bad luck upon his environment.
    And he accepted this with an almost uncanny sense of resignation.
    He did wonder now and then where these feelings sprang from. When he was small, always being the odd child out was very painful and disheartening. However, now the fact struck him as neither painful nor disheartening.
    Perhaps because of that comforting presence. At some point he had come to realize that something like spirits tended to him with their warm assurances. Hence, his isolation was isolating in all senses of the word. When it came to associating with others--namely, when it came to avoiding drawing others into danger and considering the distress when such things actually occurred--avoiding such relationships was so many more times preferable.
    But more than that, many orders of magnitude deeper within him, something was breaking down and falling apart.
    I don't belong here.
    The feelings haunted his mind. Except that no particular sense of suffering accompanied these thoughts. At some point in time he had already come to fully accept that realization.
    As a child, nothing weighed on his conscience more than when his mother wept because of him. Even now it stung at his heart. But whenever he grieved for his mother, the impression descended upon him that his life was that much more precious. More than his mother, more than his family, he should be concerned for his own welfare.
    Growing with every passing year, this impression eclipsed the anguish and the inward turning of his thoughts. He was forgetting something of supreme importance. Something of great importance that he positively could not put behind him.
    During this time, living his life with no purpose in mind, he grew into the knowledge that some part of him was missing and lost beyond all repair.
    Why couldn't he remember?
    That lost year. The love and longing for what he'd possessed during that important lost year grew day by day, the growing distance between now and then filled only by a growing despair.
    He had to return.
    But to where?

Part Five
    pon her return from Mt. Hou, Youko found Shoukei waiting for her in the Seishin.
    "Youko, you've got an unusual visitor."
    "A visitor?" Youko queried.
    Shoukei nodded, explaining that shortly after her departure for Mt. Hou, an envoy had come to the capital seeking an audience with the Royal Kei. "Her passport bore the seal of the Royal Han on the reverse, and she asked to meet with you. As you weren't present, she took up lodgings at a manse in Gyouten. She left with us this letter of introduction from the Royal Han."
    Youko took the letter with a puzzled look. Han and Kei had not enjoyed diplomatic relations in the past. This perhaps concerned the matter the Royal En and Enki had been communicating with them about.
    A faint fragrance and the sight of beautiful calligraphy greeted her upon opening the letter. The cool black ink and the light blue paper together imparted a sense of great refinement. But Youko took a deep breath and shifted her stance.
    "Do you want me to read it?" Shoukei softly suggested.
    "No. Let me give it my best shot."
    Youko battled with the prose. According to established form, it began with a seasonal greeting. Then what seemed to be an apology for rudely sending an envoy in place of the Royal Han. Above informing her that the missive from the