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The new government officials were all sent to the royal tailor that evening, who found some used, older style ministerial robes that had been abandoned in favor of the new styles that had come into fashion. Good cloth was precious and even worn out clothes were rarely thrown away, but these had hardly been used at all.
"It's the Empress," the head tailor said, not disapprovingly as he measured Rakushun. "She has so many funny ideas about clothes, and when she picked up that kaikyaku tailor and had him join us last year, she charged him with 'modernizing style.' So many of the ministers are switching to these tighter fitting things she calls a 'business suit.'" He said the foreign words in an accent not unlike how Yoko would have said it.
Rakushun had heard of the new style of clothing that had swept through the court from Yoko, but he'd yet to see the funny "suits" that she described. He'd known about the kaikyaku tailor. The poor man had probably been terrified and then directed to see Suzu, who was in charge of "placing" kaikyaku in suitable industries. That would explain the lovely dresses that had they worn the night of his graduation, too.
Four or five of the lost foreigners came to the land of Kei a year from Japan. A few were now employed by Suzu in the palace, as she could understand their language and slowly teach them to speak the language used by the rest of this world. The rest which were unplaceable by Suzu had to be sent to the kaikyaku school in En, to learn the language and the needed live skills to survive. Much sympathy had been given to the young man who had worked on something called "web sites" for a living – Yoko had said in her message to Rakushun about that one that the things he had worked on simply did not exist here, and probably never would. Rakushun had asked her – was a web site a place where someone cleaned out spider webs? Yoko had launched into a complicated explanation of machines which shared textual images across the entire planet by a form of magic she called denki – "lightning power," she had explained. Rakushun had hoped to get a more thorough understanding of that from her one day, but their time together had been precious and rare and he'd never found a good moment to ask.
The cook had been much easier to place, and the architect, as well as the tailor, it seemed.
The architect was slowly revamping some of the slummier parts of the city in the province of Ei with multistory "apartment" buildings. He'd also designed an aqueduct, leading to cold running water for everyone in the capital city. Yoko was a bit of a cleanliness freak, and demanded that everyone in the court bathe daily if possible. Running water and sewage lines, combined with the new housing, had done wonders for the province and had already greatly reduced disease and death from the refugees.
"You're all set," the tailor said, and held up Rakushun's new robes. "Fortunately, I didn't have to alter this one. Your first robes are a gift from the country as welcome, but any repairs or replacements will need to be done out of pocket. Wash with cold water only – hot water could shrink the fabric."
Rakushun nodded and took the robes, taking a moment to stare at them. In his hands was the culmination of a lifetime of hard work – and a few lucky breaks.
"Thank you," he said simply.
The presentation to Yoko, like all the ceremonies in the palace, was longer than it needed to be. Yoko's new tailor had been busy – almost half the court was wearing the business suit. Rakushun liked the look of them. They had only two or three layers with a single silk ornament hanging from the throat. The head was bared when indoors (Yoko's request) but a broad brimmed felt hat could be worn outdoors. An optional overcoat was available for cold weather. The shoes to be worn with it were black, shiny, and practical, with rounded toes and no ornamentation. The colors for men were somber – grays, browns, and blacks. Women's outfits could have a hint of color, such as a deep red or green, and were much more closely tailored to the hips. A few had abandoned the trousers favored by their male colleagues and gone for a scandalously short skirt and silk stockings.
Compared to the new fashionistas, the rest of the court looked hidebound and stuffy. Rakushun looked down in dismay at his robes, which had been perfectly serviceable for their previous owner a year ago but now were far too old fashioned to be any use to him. His classmates were in much the same boat.
Well, the palace tailor would be seeing quite a few of their early paychecks, he suspected.
"Master Rakushun," the herald called out, and the master of ceremonies next to him nodded. The new government works all lined up, then marched toward their Empress, heads bowed. One by one, they kneeled before her, then she signed their papers.
When it was his turn to be presented to her, she signed and stamped the prepared contract of immortality while wearing her "game face" – but she could not completely belie the happiness that shone in her eyes. She had wanted to do this for some time, he knew. She too had been dismayed at the thought of him growing older and leaving him behind. She had offered to do it on the sly, but Rakushun, Keiki, and Shokkei had all been against it. That was the first step down the path of corruption. Immortality was a gift that had to be earned – Shokkei had learned that the hard way. No emperor who had given it away freely had kept the Mandate of Heaven for very long.
So Rakushun had been determined to earn it, and to serve Yoko.
Finally, this day had come.
The contracts would stay in the palace, on file. If it was ever determined that he or another official was unfit to serve, the contracts would be voided and his agelessness lost. He could also still die of any severe physical injury. Only Yoko's most priceless treasure, the Blue Water Monkey Sword, could keep a body alive after an otherwise mortal wound.
"Congratulations," Yoko murmured, her voice warmer than the poker face she wore. She also let her fingers touch his for the briefest second, and the electricity that arced between them was surely visible to anyone in the court. At least, Rakushun felt that it should be. He nearly jumped a foot.
And then it was all over, with one final bow to his empress. He joined the rest of the new officials, and together they drifted off to another building for more paperwork – housing assignments, tax forms, and of course, their first paycheck.
Each of the new workers was assigned to a department, where they would be an apprentice for two years. One of them was given to education, another to the relatively new UN Affairs, and so on.
Rakushun was given to the Archives department, since his knowledge of their ancient characters and the country's history had been the best among the examinees.
Yoko once told him that the ancient characters were still in use "over there" as well. Her country had simplified them into syllables many centuries ago, and in recent times adopted Roman letters which were made for completely different languages. She had shown him examples of all three alternate writing forms. Rakushun's mind had immediately seen the advantages of the simple syllabaries and the more flexible Roman alphabet, but he felt that some of the nuance of their own written language would be lost if they ever considered adopting one of the new writing systems.
That explained why the kaikyaku could communicate a little more easily in writing than they could in spoken word, at first. All the ancient characters still shared similar base meanings with their counterparts in the other world.
To Rakushun, each character represented thousands of years of gradual change. The characters, according to the legends, had been given to them by the gods at the creation of the world. They were first used for communication with the spirits, and to tell fortunes. The words would be carved onto a bone and tossed into the fire. The bone would not burn completely in a normal fire, and the ashes would still contain a few fragments of remaining letters that could be interpreted.
Later, they were used for other important tasks, and they gradually shifted and grew more complicated. The way Yoko drew them was plain and unornamented, but the most skilled calligraphers had their own unique style, with flourishes and embellishments everywhere. Since meeting Yoko, Rakushun had begun to favor the cleaner, simpler style. The beauty was in the crispness and preciseness of the lines.
Yoko's grasp of the Arabic numbers was probably the only thing she had above anyone else, Rakushun thought as he plodded toward the Ministry of Archives to meet his new boss. She had explained that all the children in the other realm she called Japan were taught numbers at an early age. Yoko could perform the same advanced computations used by the astronomers to plot the path of the stars. She insisted on reviewing every page of spending and budgets herself, and had caught many mistakes and one time a small time embezzlement scheme. Since then, none of the workers had intentionally tried to deceive her when it came to hard numbers – or cash.
"Welcome to the office of the Archives," an elderly lady said. She had once been very pretty, Rakushun decided, but she had clearly gotten into the government later in her life. He wondered how old she really was. "My name is Tohara, the Minister of the Archives. You must be Rakushun."
She let him deep into the office, and he was greeted by several other cheerful workers. He inhaled. The smell of ink and parchment permeated the air.
"I believe you will fit right in with us," she said, as she saw him doing so. A few other office workers, their hands stained with ink, stopped to wave at him before returning to their work.
"I believe you are right," he agreed.
"Let me show you to your desk, then I will give you the grand tour of our records vault. All records are done in triplicate, but we store the originals here in Kinpa Palace in addition to two off-site places."
Rakushun settled into a comfortable routine quickly, going to work for most of the day and returning home to his mother's cooking at night. The work was difficult only in that they were always pressed for time – writing three copies of each document took ages.
Rakushun could write in his unornamented style very fast, however, so with his aid the department was able to begin to catch up with their enormous backlog for the first time since Yoko ascended the throne.
Several Months Later…
Rakushun lifted his quill off the paper, staring thoughtfully at the characters he had just written. His clean penmanship had earned him the task of primary calligrapher for the whole department soon after he was hired, with the head Minister of Archives often dictating directly to him. After a satisfying day of work, he was looking forward to returning home, where his mother would have dinner ready for him.
She had taken to life in the palace better than he had, Rakushun mused as he walked along the gravel path inside the palace grounds that would take him to his apartment near the final outer wall. When the kitchen staff had gotten word that the Empress was fond of Kou-style cooking (Rakushun had no idea who'd dropped that particular rumor), they'd invited her to join them as staff too, and given her a contract of immortality. Out of the blue. It had astonished Rakushun, but also greatly relieved him. The thought of staying forever twenty six while his mother grew older and older had nearly broken his heart.
She worked in the palace kitchens daily, but always brought home something tasty for him. It made Rakushun happy to know he and Yoko were eating the same food, even if they weren't in the same place physically.
"I'm home," he said, and carefully hung his scholar's hat and robe on the peg near the door, next to his mother's apron. He morphed back into his rat form – he abided by protocol and worked as a human, but allowed himself to completely relax at home.
"Hello dear," his mother said, coming from the kitchen, and handed him a rolled up tube tied with a ribbon. "This arrived for you a short while ago. It looks like it came from the inner palace."
Rakushun followed her back into the kitchen and sat down at the dinner table, curious.
"It's a summons to the inner palace tomorrow," he said, his voice steady but his whiskers twitching. He hadn't seen Yoko once since he'd started working a month ago. "It seems I will have to ask to be excused from work tomorrow."
"Heh, your girlfriend misses you," his mother teased good naturedly.
Rakushun's mother had liked Yoko even before she turned out to be the Empress of Kei. She always referred to her obliquely as "my son's girlfriend" – although she never explicitly told anyone that Rakushun and the Empress were friends (or more than friends, depending on how Rakushun felt about the future prospects of their relationship.)
Rakushun and Yoko still communicated almost daily via their message bird, but some days he or she were too busy, and other days their comments were brief. This, she had said wryly, was the price of growing up.
"It might not even be Yoko," he said, looking at the paper thoughtfully. "It's a summons to the court, but not to the throne room."
Rakushun wondered who wanted him, and why.
"Eh, the inner palace?" Tohara said, quite surprised. "I didn't know you had clearance for that."
"Ah," he said sheepishly, resisting the urge to rub the back of his neck. He opted for a partial truth. "I once did some work for the government in En, as a courier. I was granted palace access in all the kingdoms."
Rakushun had never told anyone in his office about his relationship with Yoko. It would have only made things awkward.
"Oh," his boss said, sounding delighted. "I was not aware of that. How wonderful." She frowned suddenly. "You're not to be a courier for Her Majesty too, are you? I won't give you up without a fight."
Rakushun shook his head. "I doubt it. Most of the other couriers I met were not university educated." He gave her his trademark half-smile.
"Good. You're not going anywhere for a long time if I have any say."
So it was that Rakushun left his office in the Ministry of Records and traveled to the gateway of the Inner Palace. His name and the letter were checked against a roster of summons at the gate.
"You are to go to the Office of the Royal Scribe," the guard said, and pointed to one of the large buildings the flanked the throne room, almost on the other side of the palace grounds.
Ah, so it was Shokkei!
He trudged across the lawn, still curious as to what she wanted him for. She too was a dear friend, but she would not summon him lightly.
"Rakushun!" The former princess of Hou greeted him warmly at the door of the building, even sneaking him a furtive hug. He would always remember her as a slightly terrified runaway, although she'd grown up tremendously over the years.
"You look well, Shokkei." He meant it. She was stunning, and if he had not loved Yoko he might have fallen for the ex-princess. What man wouldn't?
Her position has a scribe for the royal office was unique; never before had an Empress of Kei been so illiterate. The King of En had used a scribe for the first two hundred years, so Shokkei's position was fairly assured for some time. The young beauty had initially declined to renew her contract of immortality that had been stripped from her; she wanted to earn it this time, she had said. But Yoko had wanted her and Suzu to stay close in age to her, so Shokkei was once again ageless. But she was no longer a guileless ingénue, nor was she a frantic, desperate peasant. She was a matured woman beneath that youthful façade.
"I'm afraid I brought you here under a bit of a ruse," she said, winking. "It was Yoko who wanted to see you. Come this way." She pulled him inside.
Rakushun's heart suddenly began beating faster, and he hoped Shokkei did not see his Adam's apple bob up and down as he gulped.
"Why didn't she summon me directly?"
"She's still trying to protect you," Shokkei said, and escorted him deeper into the building. "She knows that you want to earn any promotions and positions in the palace on your own merit, so is trying to keep your relationship quiet for now."
Shokkei said it so casually, but then again, the scribe was probably the biggest cheering section that Rakushun had in his efforts to break out of the friend zone with Yoko.
They were now in the innermost chambers, where no one of his rank could have ever hoped to set foot uninvited. Yoko was in a library of sorts, dressed down. She rose in greeting when she saw him, perhaps on instinct, even though by all rights he should be throwing himself prostrate on the ground.
But this was simply Yoko. For all intents and purposes, he was her best friend.
Shokkei left them, and there were no servants in the room. Like the Yoko he always knew, she threw herself into his arms freely. She'd always been enthusiastic in her affections.
Having her in his arms in human form was dangerous. As a rat, he could set aside his emotions and view her affection toward him logically. The human form, on the other hand, was all hormones without a lick of logic to control them.
It did not help when she reached up and gave him a firm kiss on the cheek. She blushed.
"That was for the kiss I could not give you at graduation," she said. She hugged him again. "I missed you."
Hesitantly, he hugged her back. She felt wonderful in his arms. Her hair was down, and her soft dusky skin had lost none of its natural glow even though she was locked in a gilded cage almost every day. She smelled nice; she was a clean and neat person by nature, preferring to bathe daily, much to the court's relief. (Apparently some emperors in ages past feared "washing away" their nobility.)
Yoko's governing philosophy was similarly simple and clean. She didn't want to remake the kingdom, or eradicate sin, or make the kingdom pure. She just wanted to follow the Mandate of Heaven as it had been given to her – something she had told him was known in her world as "common sense."
Reluctantly, she broke the hug, and motioned for him to sit at the table across from her.
"How have you been?" he asked her, the words seeming so inadequate for the outpouring of emotions he was feeling at that moment, and also unnecessary since he had heard from her just days before.
"Bored," she said, pursing her lips. "The kingdom doesn't need me. It just needs any old king." She sighed, the words tumbling out of her. "I guess my first goal should be to make the kingdom want me. I'm trying to inspire loyalty, but it's hard when there's just so much corruption built up from last few centuries." She sighed again and rested her chin on her hands. Rakushun followed suit, so that they were looking at each other across the table. "I've been constantly shuffling the folks in the government and the castle staff because I don't want to fire anyone without proof. So I've just been…. Well, not really demoting them, so much as putting them in positions where they are better suited and can do less harm." She drummed her fingers against her cheek. "I think I've gotten everyone out of the top spots who wasn't fiercely loyal only to me."
Rakushun couldn't help himself, as his lips twitched as he said, "No executions then?"
She stuck her tongue out at him like a kid.
"Not since Ganto, no. No need. The Army is completely under my command. Getting them behind me was probably the best first move I could have made. The provincial lords have been pruned and replaced one by one, and I think they're all more or less okay now. Since I haven't screwed up yet, I think people are finally beginning to have faith in a female empress again."
He reached out to touch one of her hands with his. The gesture was unlike him; usually she was the one to initiate any contact. But he felt the sudden need to feel her, any part of her.
"You should give yourself more credit," he said gently. "Who wouldn't want you for an Empress? You're smart, pretty, and have good ideas."
"The minute I stop doubting myself is the minute I lose," she argued. "I must always question myself. Blind self-belief has been the downfall of many emperors."
She did have a point. So Rakushun decided to change the subject.
"Your outfit is nice," he said into the silence. "It's different from the one you wore at my graduation."
"Thanks," she said. She stood up to pose, the squared off sleeves of the garment falling gently to the side. "These kimonoare the most common dress clothes we would wear, Over There. I had a half dozen of them made out of recycled robes that were too old and moth eaten to be worn as they were. They're a lot more comfortable than the heavy state robes in the summer."
Yoko always liked to "recycle" – she wanted nothing in the kingdom to go to waste. Since she had ascended to the throne, the rumor was that she'd asked for nothing personal for herself that wasn't re-used, somehow. The palace bursars were relieved, and although Keiki said nothing about it in public he was also apparently rather pleased about her frugality.
She sighed happily and sat down again. "I didn't call you in here just to talk, by the way. I wish I could be that selfish. I wanted your help on an issue that's been bothering me." She patted the scattered notes on the table. Some of the notes were in Shokkei's neat, perfect script. Others were in Yoko's much more halting script. Practice for them, it seemed.
But others were in the strange squiggly writing of Yoko's world. She explained that she wrote in her native language only to sort out her thoughts, and avoided it when she could since she needed to practice. But she also used that writing when she wanted to write something indecipherable. Secret messages to En were often sent in it, since Enki and Sho could read it.
"How old is Kei, Rakushun?"
Now that was an odd question. "The histories aren't dated in years." He took a blank sheet of parchment, and helped himself to the quill and ink to begin to tally numbers. "But we can estimate by the total length of each of the rulers, and the gaps in between."
She watched him, fascinated, as he began to create a tally of Arabic numbers from memory. He added the columns, thought for a moment, wrote down a few more numbers, and thought some more.
"The histories go back approximately 2300 years," he concluded after adding everything together. "Our first king received the branch from the Tentei, and created the kingdom around then."
Yoko nodded. "As I thought." She took a deep breath. "I believe this world split off from Over There about that time. In China… er, Qin, that is when the first emperor unified the provinces through violence and bloodshed. He was so afraid of death that he was determined to also conquer the afterlife. He had an army of clay soldiers fashioned and buried with him, to that end."
"Impressive," Rakushun said, but he was genuinely fascinated by her story.
"I think the tentei didn't like that. They didn't want their country unified by a ruler afraid of death. So they made this perfect world-"
"Perfect?" he interjected dryly.
She ignored him. "-instead, where a ruler who was good would live forever and would never have to fear death. And a rule who was bad would quickly fall."
"You don't have anything like the tentei over there?"
Yoko shook her head. "Not any more. We certainly didn't have the sages, or contracts of immortality. Such things are the stuff of fantasy there. We did have a lot of countries attacking each other and causing misery. I think that's why the tentei forbid armed invasion." She shoved the papers around the table. "Everyone here takes things like the tentei for granted. The gods abandoned my world long ago."
"I wouldn't say they abandoned you," Rakushun argued in his matter of fact way. "Perhaps they are merely less involved."
"Or not involved at all," she snorted. "We pray to them and no one answers. We have no means of even knowing if they are listening… At least here, we have solid proof they listen to some prayers."
She spoke of the riboku, and she suddenly looked very shy. She blushed and smiled. It was Rakushun who had first shown her the glowing trees of life.
He was once again struck by her beauty.
He wanted her to kiss him again. Or maybe it was that he wanted to kiss her.
He told her so.
She blushed crimson and looked away, then changed her mind, reached across the table, and grabbed him by his robes.
This time it was not a peck on the cheek. This was full on the lips, slow and steady. They both gradually stood up, clutching each other's clothing. He leaned into her, and then dared to reach up to stroke her hair. She hummed against him in pleasure.
"Yoko," he whispered.
And so, they crossed an invisible line that had been between them. Never before had they taken physical intimacy beyond holding hands or hugging. He slid one hand up her back, feeling the bones of her shoulder blades – she was thin, but not delicate at all, and there was a solid layer of muscle and flesh over the bone.
Emboldened, he crept a second hand up her front. Slowly… slowly… and then he cupped her breast.
She broke the kiss in surprise, her face completely crimson. But she did not pull away. He dropped his hand anyway, ashamed by his forwardness.
"Second base," she muttered to herself, then giggled as he gave her a blank look. "Over there, we play a game called baseball. At some point, how far a couple goes was tied into the scoring system. We haven't quite… 'scored' yet… but we have a runner on second – ah, never mind." She gave up when she saw his confused look, then they both dissolved into laughter.
"So if we are on second, what is first?" he asked, a bit more serious, although he was still smiling. He was always interested in learning more about her world.
"The kiss itself." Her blush, which had faded briefly, came back.
"And third base?"
She looked at the wall over his shoulder, her face burning crimson. "Clothes off."
"Oh, well, we reached that years ago when I found you in the woods," he said matter of factly.
"That doesn't count," Yoko said huffily. "You weren't trying to figure out how to get from third base to home plate at the time."
"True enough. I was more concerned with making sure you weren't also injured."
She winced. "There also wasn't much to look at, at the time."
"Oh, you were still very pretty, even half dead."
The tension from before had eased. "Second base" was perhaps still a step too far for them for now. So, they were content to hold hands while they worked on Yoko's timeline for the rest of the afternoon.
As dinner approached, Keiki knocked on the door and entered without much warning. Rakushun was a bit grateful that they were genuinely working and not trying to find "a path from third base to home plate." Keiki's cool, impassive eyes took in the situation, but he said nothing.
"The lord of Ba province will be joining us for dinner," Keiki announced imperiously, then bowed to his empress – the only person he could ever bow before – but he also gave a polite nod of acknowledgement to Rakushun. The debt that the kingdom owed him for rescuing the Empress had more than been repaid with his college education, but Keiki had also been personally rescued due to Rakushun's aid. There was a mutual respect between the two young men, and an acknowledgement that Yoko was the most important person in the world for both of them.
Then Keiki left them again. Rakushun was disappointed; their time had come to a close.
"I was hoping you could join me for dinner too, but it sounds like it's going to be a stuffy state affair," Yoko said with a sigh. "I miss having personal time."
"It's a luxury that not even the king can afford," Rakushun agreed. "I will take my leave of you." Protocol dictated that he should bow, and back away slowly.
A flash of rebellion coursed through him.
Protocol be damned.
He pulled her close for a sweet, lingering kiss instead. She sighed and melted against him. If Keiki was aware, he surely had both eyebrows raised.
"When can I see you again?" he whispered against her mouth.
"As soon as I can think of another reason to steal you," she murmured back.
Later that night, Rakushun slept poorly, which was unusual for him. He was tormented by visions of her; he remembered the full softness of her breast in his hand, the way she clutched his robes, the firmness of her body against his.
It was a long, long night for the young man.