Slowly, steadily Youko loses track of time, at first its easy, a month- then two as she counts the days that she has been the Glory-King of Kei. The way that more and more she stops hear Japanese and starts speaking the language.
Her second year goes by, she talks to Keiki more as she slowly straightens out the court. Shokei sees the state of her wardrobe and her and Gyokuyo ally against her in order to "improve" on it.
Her sixth passes with Keiki incredibly on edge, he settles as they go into her seventh year.
The fields grow greener as time goes by, she sneaks down from the palace when she can in between lessons on ruling that grow spaser as more council meetings replace them and talking and diplomacy and all the small important things that go into running a kingdom.
She visits food stalls and merchants and talks to beggars, the number of them shrinks with every visit, and slowly learns the paths of her city (and all the best ways out of the place).
She stops thinking of Japan, starts thinking of Wa. Not of home, just the other land that she plans for visitors from, the Kaikakyu. She finds the old procedures for them and helps to write new one, Suzu helps with that. With making sure there are places that they can go, to learn the language live.
Time continues to flow, she knows when it is, what she has to do that day and the next what she needs to do in the future. There's no time anymore for her to count the years. She has more important things to do.
One day she slips out using one of her newer routes, the mounts all know her by this point and she steals out quietly, leaving her mount in a wooded quiet area before heading back to the city.
She's sitting at her favorite food stall, quickly shoveling noodles into her mouth (Keiki and Shoukei would lecture her if they saw her doing this) when the stall owner looks at her.
"I swear it's like you haven't aged a day" he says. Youko feels her heart stop, her hair is covered as it always is these days. Her shade of red is rare, and the days where her face was unknown here are long gone, she knows that. He goes back to work, another person has come in and they need to be fed.
The comment stays with her. She has seen signs of change down below, of course she had. Children growing older, just two trips ago (she had needed a break and snuck down. She had been yelled at afterwards but it had been worth it she had needed a reminder of what she was working for) and one of her favorite venders to talk to (they always had the best info on the Sen province, things that she would not have been able to learn otherwise. Had been working with their kid, the same one that she had seen in their arms before).
That night she sees a vision of Wa, there are two people standing before a grave, a man and a women. With a shock she realizes that these were? Are? Her parents. They have buried her and the grave looks old.
It hits her then. She looks at the calendars in the way that she had stopped doing, she took the throne twenty years ago.