Cinderella and the Beast

II

Achieving your dreams is a conquest, but to keep living it is even harder... Or something like that.

Seraphine still felt the whiplash from waking up and taking a few seconds to remember this now was her reality. She did it, she reached her dream, and now she had to keep fighting to not lose it or be consumed by this new bright and intoxicating world of music and cameras. Well, Ahri had made it, and so did all the other girls from K/DA. Kai'sa still gave dance classes, Akali still showed to the world her amazing rap skills and Evelynn was a goddess above everyone else. Knowing it gave Seraphine hope, and knowing her friends were just a call away made her heart flutter.

But it was hard to not admit how abrupt all these changes had been, and it made her cringe with how for a time she really thought the most drastic one would be dyeing her hair aqua blue. Sera expected things to go slow, one new achievement at a time, but after receiving her first "I love you please love me back" fan-letter directly in her mail and realizing her address was never officially made public, then moving out from the suburbs had become the next big step in her new life, but not on the same size of leaving her dad and pursuing her dreams in a new city.

It did bring comfort to now live close by to a martial arts enthusiast who seemingly had his own katana collection, and besides Sera did want to become friends with Yasuo too. His work was truly beyond expectations and to this day she still gets chills when hearing her own voice in the More official track. It was her, and yet it felt... Well, as something more.

She knew she'd be safe, after all Akali had picked that apartment by hand and so did Eve when reaching for security, and during the moving process they did feel a bit suffocating with all that worry, but Sera could never complain about their way of showing their love. But it also meant that everyday she had to keep her soul-sisters from committing felonies even if they all knew pretty well how to hide a body, including Kai'sa. She just shared one hate comment she had received and now her friend group had even more of a murderous intent towards unnecessary negativity... Not that they didn't have before, oh no specially Eve, but it was definitely way more difficult to keep under control, to the point Seraphine's "please don't kill anyone" texts were now part of their group chat routine.

... It was fun the way they bonded over received death threats and how ridiculous most of them were, right?

Thanks to her singing Sera had met all these wonderful people, and after countless "no need to worry" she still felt like she owed them a great debt. How could she not? A day before she was just a nobody doing the best she could to scrap by and make music her means of living, and a year later she was still in contact with the world she only saw through the internet and in her dreams. So of course she wouldn't say "no" to Yasuo's request to be part of the Ocean Song event.

Was it nepotism that a famous DJ managed to land to his big brother a first gig in a big festival, after that brother's also famous friend showed off his lyrics and got another recently known singer to also attend? Yeah, definitely, but looking at her own start of career Seraphine had no place to judge even if she had tried to do it. Besides that, Yone's writing was poetic and sublime, of course he had to show it to the whole world! Meeting Nidalee had also been such a lucky strike, since during rehearsals they even managed to talk about organizing a photoshoot after the festival.

Life wasn't perfect, there were days when the impostor syndrome would attack again or someone would be too specific about how they'd gutter her and leave her body in a ditch, and yet, she couldn't just say it had become her "reality" as some mundane day-to-day routine. It still felt like a dream that expanded with each new milestone, and Seraphine wished every night that she would never wake up.