"Free balloons."
Finland waved the sad looking balloons animals around.
He had just been taking a nice walk by himself, enjoying the spring breeze when a middle aged couple had approached him. They had apparently hired a clown for their child's birthday and he never showed up.
Finland didn't pay much attention to their story until the couple asked him to be a substitute for the clown. Finland tried to refuse, making up excuses about how he had to feed his fish (he had never owned fish before), but the couple kept insisting and Finland was taken into their house and had clown makeup painted onto their face.
A clown costume was given to them, and at that point it seemed too late to back out, so they accepted their fate and became the clown for some kid's birthday party.
And now they were standing in the middle of a Spiderman themed birthday, with a bunch of obnoxious little kids running around, and not accepting the balloons he had been forced to pass around.
One of the kids ran up and poked them in the leg. "Do a trick!"
Finland almost kicked him away, composing themself after a few seconds before he could get charged with assault.
"Of course I'll do a trick." They split the balloons in half and switched the hand he was holding it in. They held the balloons out and offered one to the kid.
"You're a bad clown!" The kid skipped away and Finland never wanted to harm a child more than in that moment.
"Why am I even here? I'm not getting paid, and nobody even wants any of these stupid balloons!" They muttered, pacing around.
Finland quietly made his way to the gate, opening it slowly and slipping past everyone unnoticed. They broke into a sprint the moment they were out of there. He couldn't take any chances of getting caught and forced to miserably stand in the middle of that party again.
"Hey, come back!" The shrill annoying voice of a child came from behind them.
Finland ran even faster upon hearing it. Tiny footsteps could be heard running after him and they felt sweat run down their neck.
"Clown!" The child's voice cried sadly. Finland kept running until they spotted a small store in the distance. He ran towards it and quickly ran in, slamming the door behind themself.
He still took extra measure and hid behind a large shelf. The door of the shop opened and small squeaky steps could be heard.
Finland looked around the store and saw rows upon rows of books. Strangely, every single one of the books was the same shade of red. They wondered if it was the same book, but realized that couldn't have been it. The books were all different lengths, but the spines were the same shade of red.
Finland stopped caring about the child and got up from behind the shelf. They looked at the large amount of books on the shelves, none of them had writing on the spines and seemingly no description on the back.
Finland ventured further into the store and saw an odd sight. At the checkout stood what appeared to be the typical depiction of a demon. It had bright red skin, long silky black hair tied in a high ponytail, and horns.
The demon spotted him and smiled, which made Finland recoil.
"Good evening, are you ready to checkout?"
Finland stood in shock for a moment before shaking their head.
"That's quite alright. Do you need any help finding anything?" The demon offered.
"Oh, the books aren't labeled." Finland pointed out, still processing the situation.
"My clown!" Finland heard a familiar annoying voice cry.
