The Crown Prince Thinks I'm a Guy

Masquerade

People, dressed in the most exaggerated colors and clothes, stood and sat around the smaller-sized hall, heads turned almost grotesquely towards me, faces hidden behind a messy assortment of masks and broad-brimmed hats.

I gasped, and then music blared from invisible instruments.

Now this. This is a masquerade.

I found it so surprising, and so otherworldly, that I removed my mask, wanting to see it without any cloth filming the scene away. However, the music was just as glaring and the colors were just as shocking.

It would have been fine, perhaps, if it simply ended at that. However, the masked people --- mannequins, strange-moving supposedly-inanimate creatures --- twitched and danced soundlessly towards me, while the blaring music edged into the background, the violin scratching painfully in a loop of extremely high notes. Even my trained mind could not take the sudden frightening scene, like a childish nightmare come straight into reality. They were twitching, flinching, and making their steady way towards me. My feet stepped back, and I bumped into something.

I realized I had collided into the butler, and I looked way up at him, my eyes pleading for help, however...

"Hurgh!" I shouted out in surprise and jumped away from the tall man, promptly dropping the mask from my hand.

I don't know when it had happened, but his face now bore a silver mask, a face drawn on it so crudely in the portrayal of pure ecstasy. I scrambled away from them all, but they approached me with two steps for every single step I backed away. My breaths, I realized, have become shallow and irregular. My heart drummed so hard that I could feel it echoing in my ears.

My retreat was soon cut short when my back hit the cold, corridor wall. I cursed shakily. They have now perfectly surrounded me.

And then... I calmed down.

'Notes,' my muzzled mind manage to think, and so I gathered it around me. Perhaps I've never encountered such creepy creatures before, but I can surely defend and attack. As frightening the prospects might be, I simply couldn't die because of terror. And so, I mustered my will to form a ball of magic --- fire, water, or whatever --- but then I heard something unnerving.

One of the masked mannequins started shaking, an eerie laughter coming from inside it.

I held my breath, waiting for it to do something, or explode, or anything! However, an unexpected voice came from my other side. Another masked person-thing broke out from its unnaturally bent position and simply stood up straight. Then, it sighed irritably and spoke, "Collin, you idiot! You broke the act!"

Then, the previously laughing one replied, "It was still fine! I just couldn't hold it in! I mean, he seemed so ridiculous!"

I blinked, finding the normal humanly exchange unfamiliar amidst the surreal sights surrounding me. And then, one by one, the masked people started to stand up straight, rubbing at their joints and murmuring complaints. Some of them went on and blamed the one named Collin. The others blamed the other one. Others simply groaned and sighed.

In the sudden, anticlimactic result, however, I realized one thing: they were simple humans, and I was duped.

I glared at them, my fear disappearing to be exchanged by anger.

"What... is this supposed to be?" I asked, my voice coming out small, yet my aura must've been enough for them to all quit talking.

The second person to speak, the one who chided Collin, coughed a little at my anger, and slowly took his mask and broad hat away. There stood in front of me was the most peculiar human being I've ever seen. Hair as white as snow, eyes as clear as water, and a smile befitting the gods themselves.