The thing that no one seems to notice is that a terrible thing happened to him at 9 years-old: his teacher died. It makes no sense. When someone is making breakfast, to sizzle of food in it sounded like "even the frying pan cried." It happened and it was raining slowly, "according to castle-time". Yes, it does not "make sense", buy it makes sense to a little boy.
He is now a young man, and he's trying to make sense out of it.