WEEK 103

Prompt:

"You will be crowned tomorrow at dawn—"

"Haha... no."

"Your highness?"

"There's no way I'm getting up that early, coronation or not."

"But your highness—"

"Crown me at noon—or better yet, the hour after noon... or maybe in the early evening."

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"One must simply NOT!"

"Let me remind you who's soon to be King here, Hera."

"But the tradition—?"

"I have the last word, don't I?"

"BUT THE TRADITION—"

"I still won't wake that early!"

"Sir, you need to, that's a rule everyone has been following! For centuries!"

"Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. Now leave, and close the curtains on your way out." He sat down on the bed and sighed. Finding a comfortable position, the soon-to-be king fell back into a deep slumber.

However, once reality came back he found himself laying down on the floor. On the floor, he found a piece of golden cake. He got up and approached it, not realizing he had set off a trap. The cake turned into a bumblebee and makes the king do Tiktok dances.

Fortunately, the United States Government was able to ban Tiktok, and it immediately cured the king from performing cringe ever again. Also, the king of the Indian province was safe from such traps because TikTok was still banned there.

The king, after escaping, ran to his butler and started muttering incoherent words—he was still traumatized by the cringey Tiktok dances he was forced into doing. "Don't let me do them!"

Getting back to the coronation at hand, he decided to get ready after all, because all this dancing had woken him up anyway. As he got ready, the Renagade dance echoed through his head. Soon, he forgot what he was doing and started at the wall as memories of her flooded his mind like a tsunami.

The king, who was a die-hard fan of NewJeans, then demanded that an orchestra version of Ditto would be played at his coronation. "I demand an orchestra version of Ditto on my coronation, if you don't have it I won't do it!"

"Now, my grand sire, you-you must listen, that's not a very easy thing to do. The public would regard it most atrocious," said a servant, his voice cracking by the time he reached the end of what he had to say.

"Who cares about the public when I'm the king!" shouted the king.

"I care," the mouse king said. And since the king cared about the mouse king's opinion above everything else, he had fallen into a dilemma.

But in the end, the king decided to follow through with the coronation as planned, except for the condition that he got a candy or chocolate every time somebody said something to him. This was because the king had social anxiety, making him very relatable, and he regarded each word spoken to another as a great accomplishment! It was obviously not because he wanted to prove that he could not get diabetes: even though it was the very thing that ended his father before him, the arrogant King had no fear.

However, what the king did not know or even think of was the possibility of his own subjects poisoning him due to his arrogance. But he realized why his own subjects were turning against him: it was all because he cared more about the mice in the palace, and the human subjects then grew jealous.

The doors to the grand hall busted open, revealing the Pied Piper. Producing his magic pipe, the Pied Piper lulled the mice into a zombie-like state.

"Not the mice!" The king's face turned a ghostly pale as he watched the horror before him, remembering how his mother loved the creatures—especially the mouse king.

But then, a mouse bit the human king and he began to feel a strange sensation, as if... as if he had finally been granted his one true wish, which was to turn into a mouse so his mother would love him. This was because long ago, she too had turned into a mouse, but only her son knew the truth while the whole kingdom believed her dead. He felt special, being responsible for this kind of information.

The king's subjects stilled, no remorse evident on their features, as the orchestra version of Ditto came to an abrupt halt, and the Piper's tune drew the mice—and now non-human king—through the grand hall's door. Suddenly, the non-human king and the king's subjects began to dance merrily when a witch cast a spell on the grand hall's door! Then, the whole kingdom was frozen in time.

"Wow," the butler said, shaking his head in both exasperation and fear.

One by one, everyone in the kingdom also froze in time. A huge forest began to grow over the walls of the forts, effectively preventing anyone from knowing of its existence. Except in the books of history, which were burned during a war and left nothing but ashes that stained the ground.

Meanwhile, in a distant land, a girl woke up. She had a horrible nightmare: something about a frozen kingdom and a voice in a forest calling her name. Something about a choice. Something about death... but she couldn't remember anything else, and she never did.