Ink Stained

56: the reason why*

理由

The Royal Palace was exactly as its name intended it to be.

It was an incredibly large and sprawling Japanese-style castle set dead in the middle of the village – which was more of a large than a village. Everything was to built to accommodate nature, rather than the other way round. Stone and wood mixed together, weaving around and into each other. Trees hung over the wide paths that people walked on, branches and leaves dangling over their heads. There were no roads, or cars, just people walking on foot or dragging along carts behind them.

Everything about the village made Pai feel as if she had taken a step back into Edo period Japan. It wasn't a bad feeling, really. It was nice to be out of the orderly, chaotic hubbub of the city for a little while.

Jarring and different, but nice.

The Palace was made from stone columns and walls, floor from a sturdy wood that could hold heavy weights. Tiled roofs were layered overhead, with chigi horns sticking out from the pointed corners at each end. It had at least six to eight floors, she guessed, from the height when still on the outside.

While walking through the halls she had looked up and seen beautiful bridges with elaborately designed arches towering over her head, stairways with railings carved into images of people with wings and flying dragons with long beards.

When she saw those images, in her mind's eye the green dragons on the wall merged together with the heart-wrenching sight of a pure white serpent screaming to the heavens amidst a raging sea of black all around it. When she blinked, the image disappeared as soon as it came. Pai was left to wonder if the white dragon was part of Kuniumi's memories, or dreams.

Right in the middle of the high ceiling far above was a skylight, a circular hole with retractable wooden flaps that could be opened and closed according to the weather, allowing sunlight and air to flood the Palace. It gave her a strange sense of openness, freedom, despite being within the many walls of the Royal Palace.

Adorning the walls hung paintings, beautiful landscapes of Japan, breath-taking visages of stories unfolding right before her eyes. Along one long length of wall was the progressive painting of the legend about the famous warrior, Minamoto no Yoshitsune. The colours were so vibrant and melding into each other that walking beside it almost felt like watching the massive work of art coming alive. Some paintings had been done directly on the walls, coalescing in well with the red and gold of the walls.

The floor was a warm brown wood, and statues stood atop podiums at many corners. They were wrought from all kinds of materials she could identify off-head; marble, wood, crystal, jade, obsidian, even gold. She was awestruck at the pure magnificence of the Royal Palace, unable to form a coherent sentence to show just how beautiful she thought it all. Kuniumi wasn't as mystified by the Palace's beauty as she was, as if she'd seen better, though she did admit that it was tasteful.

The Palace and its wonders weren't garish and forced, but rather natural and simply how it was. It looked like it had just sprung up into creation, and fit so well with where it stood that she couldn't possible imagine it anywhere else. She wondered how long it must have taken to build. It looked so well-kept that she couldn't believe it to be older than a few years.

Despite that, Shiori told her that the Royal Palace had been around for as long as there was a Sojobo to sit in it and govern the Tengu – and that was nigh on a thousand years.

The Royal Palace was where Kouta's family lived; the Royal Family, as they were known. That was Kouta himself as the Heir, his mother Misao, and his father, Sojobo Kurama. It was also where the Daitengu were supposed to live together with the Sojobo and Heir.