Chapter Text
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about crying yourself to sleep: sometimes, after you finish a binge sobbing session and conk out for the rest of the night, you might accidentally wake up in a completely different room to where you woke up.
At least, Cater was pretty damn sure this wasn’t where he fell asleep.
“Your Highness! Are you awake?”
For one, even if he tried to ignore the incessant calls of someone he does not know, thank you very much, even his bleary-eyed early morning vision could tell that the gilded ceiling and spun-gold embroidered canopy above his head were waaaaay above what he could afford, even if he were to make it big big on M*gicam somehow.
But there’s no time for him to be lazing around and trying to puzzle out his surroundings, because when Cater sits up, he realizes that there were a lot more people than he’d first thought. Not one, not two, not three… probably not even four or five, because if he squints a little harder and looks out into the hallway he can see the blurry figures of several more people waiting in the wings.
“Um… good… morning?” Cater said after another second of looking around, plastering on his signature ‘costumer service Cay-Cay mode’ grin and tilting his head curiously at all the servants surrounding him.
“Good morning, your Highness,” one of the men in the room said, bowing lowly as he folded his arm over his chest. “Breakfast is in an hour from now. Shall we help you get ready?
“Uhm… excuse me?” Cater blustered, smiling awkwardly. Excuse me: the words only ever used by the truly confused. (Hey, that rhymed! Sort of. Gotta look on the bright side of things, or whatever.)
It had been only a few minutes since he’d woken up in a completely unfamiliar room, but already, Cater had come up with at least twelve different explanations for why he was here: most of them having to do with his sisters. Because, hey… reality TV shows were still a real hot commodity, and both Cinque and Seis were always going on about increasing their influencer status, so it wasn’t a long shot to think they might’ve gone and contracted someone to spook him for fun and then piggyback off that notoriety. Hashtag not fun.
It’s a bit cynical to be thinking that your sisters paid to have you kidnapped and tossed onto a reality TV show set this early in the morning, but Cater felt like he had the right to be a little skeptical, at least. Right? He was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on, after all.
“I guess you aren’t fully awake yet, your Highness.” A servant spoke up.
His forehead creased with what looked to be a (only slightly) worried expression, but Cater could only focus on the fact that he was probably being recorded live for a prank. “I guess so, yeah…”
“You’re probably still fatigued from the long journey here,” the man concluded, holding his chin thoughtfully. It was a rather funny pose, and Cater decided on the spot there and then that this man was his favourite of the reality TV show actors simply because of his pose. “Would you like a glass of cold water to help wake you up, your Highness?”
“Oh, yeah. Thank you very much,” Cater said automatically with his customer service voice, taking the cup of water and downing it like a shot, only to realize in the next moment that that was possibly the dumbest decision he could have possibly made while being kidnapped.
Seriously, they should’ve taught a class on this in highschool. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so quick to accept possibly poisoned drinks… ah, well. At least if the drink was poisoned then he might get medical insurance payout. You win some, you lose some.
In the end, Cater didn’t get poisoned.
The reason for his being in a grand room surrounded by so many servants he could probably hold a concert just with them in attendance was not, as Cater had first suspected, due to kidnapping or a reality TV prank conducted by his sisters (and honestly, of the two, he'd probably have preferred the kidnapping.)
The actual reason was more… hm. Non-sensical, would probably be the best descriptor. Yeah, that works. Completely and truly nonsensical. Or as his coworker and only real friend Idia might put it, “hacked ass cheat reason for an already stupid mechanic!”
With that said… it was body possession.
The reason why he'd woken up in finery and riches with people treating him like a prince was because he had somehow possessed a prince’s body. And that was literally, not figuratively! And. And not that literally either.
He'd figured it out when he'd made his way to the bathroom, accompanied by way too many servants (look, Cater has had his moments, but he wasn’t so clumsy that he needed seven people waiting outside his door for him to finish doing his business! What would he even slip on here, honestly? Even if he did fall and break his neck, it didn't seem that big a deal when he— the guy he was possessing— was so rich. They could probably put it back together easy peasy lemon squeezy).
In fairness to the servants, though, maybe the sheer amount of them hanging around was a little bit justified once Cater took a look into the mirror and near immediately slipped and fallen into the sink.
But, well, in fairness to him, Cater had not been expecting to see an imperfect replica of himself in the mirror.
The man looking back at him in the mirror had shoulder-length hair compared to his slightly-past-the-chin hair, coloured the same reddish-ginger that his was. There was a mole underneath his right eye in the shape of what looked a little like a diamond, and the man's bright green eyes were about half a shade off from Cater’s actual eyes.
Otherwise… this man… looked like he was an almost 1:1 replica of Cater . If he squinted real hard and backed away from the mirror a bit, Cater could fool himself into thinking that it was in fact himself who he was seeing in the mirror and not some random Prince from Sevens-know-where.
But it wasn’t him. So unless this was a very realistic dream (Cater knows he drank that water, he knows he stepped foot on the cold bathroom tiles, he can very much feel and see and smell every single fucking thing in this place) then the only possible explanation is body possession.
“Excuse us, your Highness.”
Before Cater could even say ‘Hey, look, I get you’re trying to help but this is so #notmystyle,’ two attendants are stepping up to him and starting to change his clothes. The situation was so completely confusing and out of place that he couldn’t even really do much but stand there and look in the mirror awkwardly, feeling a bit like a fish out of water.
“Is there anything uncomfortable, your Highness? The royal tailors made it while referencing the casual wear of Pyroxene’s royal family to make sure it’s the style you’re used to,” the tailor informed him, waiting patiently for Cater’s response.
He blinked as he looked at himself in the full length mirror— yeah, somehow, when he’d spaced out, they’d moved him to another room and placed him in front of a full length mirror to dress him— and took in… ‘himself’ fully.
The outfit he was wearing looked rather simple for a prince, honestly. But maybe because of the simplicity, it looked weirdly classy and stylish.
It was composed of a cream-coloured shirt with long, puffed sleeves and crisp collars. If he squinted, he could see shining golden embroidery on his neck and wrist collars, dotted with small golden pearls. They’d forgone a vest or anything over it, which gave him a sort of ‘classy but I don’t really care’ look to his outfit, and also drew more attention to the long pants they’d dressed him in, larger embroidery patterns sparkling on the dark fabric. And, best of all… Cater realized with a start of joy that there were pockets in the pants (something he was not at all used to because of the fact that he often wore his sisters’ hand-me-downs, and… well, all the jokes about the fashion industry and women’s pants were very much true ), and he smiled without thinking as he turned to face the tailors.
“It fits perfectly. Thank you.” He bowed to the tailors, who looked a little shocked. Surely, a bit of etiquette shouldn’t be so out of place, right? After all, Cater was only copying what they’d done before…
“W-well…” One of the servants looked to each other before they guided him off the heightened platform he was on, “Let’s get you to breakfast then, your Highness.”
Cater gathered his thoughts on the way to breakfast. So, he’d woken up in some strange prince’s body (who looked near exactly like him) and this place, wherever it was, looked like it was some sort of medieval fantasy. Which led him to one conclusion: He’d been isekaied into another reality.
And that was sort of a weird conclusion, now that he thought of it more carefully. After all, normally, isekai protagonists met their fates by way of Truck-kun, right? At least, that's how Idia would put it. But Cater… didn't remember dying.
The last thing he remembered was going to sleep. He didn't feel uncomfortable or too comfortable (because that would also be a bit suspicious, probably) and it was a normal Thursday night that he'd fallen asleep on after sobbing his eyes out over the latest episode of the anime Idia had begged him to watch together.
And now… he was here, seated at the breakfast table and watching with wide eyes as the servants put together a table clad with food way too much fornone single person to consume.
“Would your Highness like something to drink?” A servant asked him politely, bringing out a tray of drinks. There was coffee with milk and cream, which even now made him a little sick to the stomach when he remembered the Starb*cks Incident of 2018, a blend of tea he didn't recognize and plain water.
The safest bet was the water, Cater surmised. There was no chance of the water being sweet or not to his taste, while the coffee made him want to hurl a bit and the tea made him apprehensive. “I'll take the water, please. Thank you.”
To his surprise, the servants once more looked shocked. He could hear Idia’s voice in his head now, Oh, if life was a dating sim I’d definitely be on the way to the Ultimate Bad End and found himself playing with his hands under the table. “Of— of course, your Highness. Here you are, then.”
Still, it was nice to have a breakfast he could enjoy without needing to worry about the stresses of daily life.
Before, in his childhood, he was always up at the crack of dawn to make sure the house was tidy before his sisters or Mother got up, and when he became older it was his job that demanded most of his time.
It was these thoughts that accompanied Cater as he made his way back to his room after breakfast. Alongside other equally pressing thoughts, of course, like how much hedge a hedgehog could hog if it could hog hedge and what in the name of the Seven he was doing in another world.
When he'd settled in, though, intent on making some sort of discovery as to why he was here and not safe and sound under his covers or at work, Cater instead found the answer to a question he did not ask: was he a prisoner?
The answer was yes. Well, sort of. Not according to the servants, anyway.
One of them had accompanied him back to his room. He stood at a rather impressive height (though that could be contested by Tinder frequenters) of almost 6 feet as far as Cater could tell, and he had grass-green hair and a pair of old timey glasses. Chic and classy!
What was not chic or classy was the servant's response when Cater asked if he had a schedule.
Which was nothing. He'd just looked at Cater and– with a sort of playful, sort of apologetic smile that he was doing nothing to hide, simply said, “Nothing as far as I'm aware, your Highness.”
Cater had already figured out by the time that he'd been served breakfast that he was not from whatever country or nation this palace was in. The servants and their chattering about the kindness of the Nation's Emperor and the struggles of their Imperial Prince were enough to clue him into the fact that he wasn't a part of this place's Royal family. Er, Imperial family.
This in turn meant that his presence in this nation, country, empire, whatever— was likely because of diplomatic reasons. But what sort of diplomatic ambassador didn't have anything on their schedule or anyone to meet? Cater wasn't necessarily complaining about the lack of responsibility, but it had him feeling antsy, like there was something fishy about the whole thing.
And in fact, things only got fishier when he asked to go outside.
“Is there any way I could go outside for a breath of fresh air?” Cater asked the servant cautiously, putting on his best don't get mad at me I'm just a little guy face (this was one he'd watched Ortho use before when Idia got fed up with his little brother). “It's alright if that's not possible, but I'm getting a little restless. I think spending some time out would do me good.”
“If that’s what you wish, your Highness… I’ll see what can be done.”
“Right… well, do you know when I’ll be returning home?”
“...” The servant looked away awkwardly.
Well, there was his answer.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll just go to have a walk in the gardens,” Cater sighed. “That’s not too hard a request, right?”
“No, not at all, your Highness. I'll request an outing for you.” The servant bowed, then turned on his heel and left the room, approaching another servant. “Please go and find the Young Master Vanrouge in the Briar Palace, and inform him that Prince Cater requests a walk in the garden. And… do try to keep your voice down, this time? We don’t want Young Master Zigvolt overhearing in case he accidentally shatters another bunch of wine glasses with his yelling.”
Overhearing this made Cater feel like his heart was beating 1000x faster than what it was supposed to go. It wasn’t about the wine glasses that the Young Master Zigvolt had broken, though the part of him that worked in customer service did feel sort of bad for whichever palace staffers had to clean that up, but rather, it was the name that had him feeling off-kilter, like a bunch of frogs were pounding on the inside of his ribcage and screaming to get out.
Because… because he knew that name. He knew a ‘Prince Cater’.
A prince who shared his name.
A prince who was doomed to die on the battlefield, sacrificing his life for the sake of the man he loved and yet doomed to never even receive a glance back.
A prince, about whom, frankly, Cater should not have known nearly as much as he did. A prince who, along with the trash book series he’d came from, had managed to rebridge the destroyed childhood connection between Cater and his sisters and even give him something to bond with Idia over outside of the video games the man played with his dear friend Red Muscle.
Cater inhaled, then exhaled, then stood up, shut his door, closed the lock behind it, and once he made sure no one was around to hear him screaming, immediately threw a paperweight at the wall.
“ Fuck those Sevens-damned book reading sessions, fuck its author, and fuck DITWST !”
Oh, yes. If the reality of his situation hadn’t been bad enough, Cater had just learnt possibly the worst piece of news possible.
He, Cater Cendrillon, had somehow found his way inside the uber-popular webnovel and newly globally published sensation, I Died and Got Isekaied to a Twisted Wonderland as the doomed side male lead, Prince Cater Diamond of the Kingdom of Pyroxene.
Just my luck. #FML.