The Lonely King | Ongoing [New Edition]

01 | Meet the Royals

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"It's time to begin, isn't it?"

MY SPINE FELT as if it was going to shoot right out of my neck. No, I wasn't being tortured or anything, although sitting in this cramped airplane might just be the next closest thing to it. The stranger next to me was a middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair and a penchant for snoring, extremely loudly.

I've never sat on a plane before, and prior to this flight I've always imagined it to be an eye-opening, extraordinary experience. I guess I only got the eye-opening part right, since the woman beside me made sure I was not going to get any sleep for the entire duration of the flight.

Despite my unfortunate seat partner, I was still more than excited for what awaited me when the plane finally lands. Just a week ago, I was just another student from my high school's Art Club, trying to juggle my studies with my social life, and just barely pulling through my end-of-year assessments. Then, I received a spontaneous offer from none other than the most prestigious boarding school in Europe for an all-expenses paid undergraduate scholarship.

Since I was nearing the end of my third year in high school, I hardly expected to get an offer to join a school half-way through. But who was I to complain? It was Meilleur Academy, for god's sake! It was the place that anyone who aspired for success hoped to end up. They had the best art programmes, facilities and professors. The only problem was the location and the price— it was halfway across the world, and the annual tuition fee was probably enough to buy my entire town.

Only the richest talents and geniuses could afford to go to the Academy, which made it all the more prestigious and elite. The last I checked, I was just a small-town girl trying to graduate high school while juggling a crappy part-time job to fund my art supplies. It was an absolute dream come true. When I first received the scholarship letter, I had to call the Administrative office at Meilleur four times to make sure that it wasn't a prank. It was that unbelievable.

I looked down at the navy blue booklet in my hands, the words Meilleur Academy embossed in gold cursive across the cover. I can't recall how many times I've read it already, but every time I flip through it, I still find myself breathless.

It was a good thing, I suppose, to learn more about the place I was going to spend the next year in. The Academy was founded by a wealthy Englishman named Albert Lorraine over a hundred years ago, and since then Meilleur has risen to become one of the best and most well-known elite schools in Western Europe. I still get goose bumps imagining how it'd be like to stand in front of the Academy, to admire its traditional brick architecture and feel the history of the Academy seep up from the cobblestones beneath me.

I let out yet another dreamy sigh, glancing out of the airplane window and at the clouds that surrounded the plane. If I just spent the next few hours dreaming about how amazing Meilleur would be like, maybe this flight won't be so damned after all.

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WHEN I FINALLY stumbled out the airplane and out of the Arrival hall, I was pleasantly surprised to find a member of the faculty waiting for me. We exchanged formalities and he checked my passport to make sure I wasn't some kind of imposter. I quickly learned that he wasn't one to speak very much and awkwardly followed him to the sleek black Bentley in the carpark. He helped to load what little luggage I brought along into the trunk and beckoned me to get into the back of the car. I gulped, feeling a little uncomfortable about how polite he was, and how he was treating me as if I was some kind of rich celebrity. I complied anyway, since I wasn't going to pass up sitting in a Bentley.