Not So Sweet Candyland

LXIII: Sugar Estates I

The two of them finally reached the gates of the Sugar Estates, the final set of estates before the final stop of their journey.

For now, they were making a stop at the Sugar Estates, one of the parallel estates along with Sweet on the other side of the castle.

"Are you ready?"

"You know I am, Chase. Are you?"

The gates opened right when their fingertips touched the gates. An estate that had a faint pink around them.

"This place seems happier in a way other than the way that the others were."

"You noticed it too? I guess I wasn't the only one."

The estate was all them. They ran in and enjoyed the fresh air that the estate had to offer.

"This estate is known to be extremely quiet because of what happened with Sugar. Here, I'll take you to a library and I'll show you everything."

Berry opened the doors to one of the houses and that's when a few hallways and a few flights of stairs led them to a library full of books and lacking of people.

"Is this estate really dead?"

"Sometimes people come here, but that almost never happens due to personal reasons."

"Why personal reasons?"

Berry picked up a book and started to flip through it.

"Even though it was the prince's fault, Sugar was seen as the bad person after Sweet nearly ended her life. Because they thought that Sugar seduced her lover and then had babies in secret."

"If somebody found that out, I would understand that."

"Sugar wasn't all sugar. She was a little... dramatic. But the fact that she let a prince keep on having babies with her is astronomical."

"But, what did she say?"

"Sugar was the one that created the harem so that Sweet would never know that she was having all of these kids. The story was that Sugar fell in love with a harem man and she was having babies with him when in reality, it was that prince."

"Is there even a name for this prince?"

"His name is not to be spoken of."

"Damn, so he's hated in Candyland."

"Very much, and so is Sugar. That's why when they were murdered by my father, nobody really batted an eye."

"How cold are the people in this world? It seems like everybody in Candyland is a monster."

"Everybody is ice cold here although they may always seem happy. That's not correct. These history books have been rewritten because my father hated what actually happened and wants it to be the way that he wants."

"What about these books?"

"These are the truth. Everybody kept their history books, they just burned my father's edition because it was clearly full of lies. There are only so many things that you can forget, and you cannot forget history. Especially if it happened to you, you can't just erase trauma."

"I see."

Chase sat down on a couch.

"The more I am in this world, the more confused that I am."

"Everybody is confused about this world, there are still so many questions that have to be answered. Like, how did this world even come? Were the owners originally gods? Am I a god as well? What about my great grandparents? So many questions that my head literally spins at the thought of it."

Berry buried herself in the book and screamed.

"You know we're in a library."

"Shut up already!"

She screeched at him.

"You really are confused, aren't you?"

"I've been here longer than you and I don't even know about my home world or hometown or whatever."

"Do you want to know a lot more than you think?"

"I want to get the heck out of here, that's what I want. That's the dream for thousands, to get out of the utopia; because sometimes the utopia is not made for the utopians."

Chase laid on the couch and started looking up at the art on the ceiling and then started to drift asleep.

"You're always sleeping, Aren't you? I'm starting to think that you American humans are so well off that you sleep every night. Is that true?"

"I'm not saying that your pain is worse than mine, but it's not all rainbows. We suffer from something called mental health and it's scary. How it can affect your mood and everything that you do."

"I know what you're talking about. It's just that here, it's a pretty taboo topic."

"I feel like mental health is a topic that is taboo no matter where you go. It's like nobody understands. Nobody ever understood me at all, that's why I felt empty a lot of the time."

"Is that why you're mr no emotion?"

"As you would say."

"Wow, you do seem a little off sometimes, but I never knew about that."

"The thing is that I hate people that use it for attention, I mean yeah I have an ok life, but I do suffer from depression, and it was diagnosed, I was diagnosed when I was a little kid because it runs in my family. So, if I'm not feeling much, I just have a little episode."

Berry went onto the couch and hugged him.

"Ooh! What are you doing?" Chase asked.

"You need a hug. You should have told me that you felt this way."

"No, it's nothing. I thought that when we fi re t met, you wouldn't understand."

"No, it's me. I fully understand everything. This is, in moments like this where we're all in this together. We laugh together, we cry together, and we go through struggles together. Friend or not, I will try to fight with others for peace as long as I agree with them."

"Moments like these, I feel like you want something."

Berry got off of him and then went on the foot of the couch.

"You got me, you're no fun."

She stuck her tongue out at him and then looked away.

"I'm sorry."

She looked back at him and gave him a wink.

"You little...."

She just flashed a smirk.