Case 23: Undesirable timing.

Case 23: Undesirable timing.

The residential area that we're currently staying in is not at all far from the palace, it's only around 300 meters from here, and I could easily walk there in a few minutes, or seconds if I decided to fly. We'll go by car though.

So we don't really have to worry about the time of our appointment, really.

That is, if these goofballs of an imperial family didn't decide to meet us at 8 in the morning. The hell were they thinking, waking up early when your eyes just refuse to open is the worst thing ever.

Fortunately, my tactic yesterday did succeed, I offered my body to my girlfriends right after dinner so I didn't get ravaged all night, which helped us to get a pretty nice sleep.

There's about 2 hours left before the time, so now we're all getting dressed up by the attendants here. They're assassins, but also maids at the same time, how scary.

We spent quite a long time on skincare stuff, though the makeup itself didn't last very long, as our bare faces are already beautiful enough to surpass every noble lady out there, just a few touches would suffice.

Despite yesterday, I forbade any attempt on sucking or biting my neck, the marks left when we were doing it in the car are still there, so I was embarrassed when the maids had to use makeup to hide them.

For our hair, we decided to not do anything special, for my hair I just let them flow down to my butt, Emy's a bobbed cut anyway, and Liana's just long twin-tails.

Now onto the dresses, despite the fact that I'm very tempted to let my intrusive thoughts win and just wear shorts and a T-shirt to meet the imperials, we still need proper dresses.

Apparently, our dressmakers back in the kingdom sent quite a lot of dresses here, there's like, a lot of them. Enough to fit a whole room. We each need to choose two, one for the audience in the morning, and one for the ball in the evening.

For the first dresses, we decided to choose something matching, so we all went for an academy-uniform-looking style, all white with a few black touches. With white stockings as well. Can't go wrong with black and white.

For the ball, I decided to go with a dark blue, short ball gown with a lot of white and silver stars on it, really beautiful, maybe with white stockings, that should be good.

Again, we wanted to match, so we got the same design, but Emy's color is black, and the stars are yellow. Liana's one is green, with yellow stars as well. I'm glad they made the dresses to match our eye colors and such.

Wearing our matching academy dresses, we're now ready for the audience.

Of course, we're not going alone, there's dude Julius, Justia, Adam, and three people from the S.D squad as well. Except for Julius, the rest will be our bodyguards.

The sight is pretty bizarre, all of them are wearing black suits, looking very professional. And then there's us, goofy-looking high school girls. Well, can't do anything about that.

So we get into our cars and head to the palace. What was the name again? Crimson, yes, Crimson Palace.

A whole 2 minutes later, we're at the gate, there are two guards with muskets blocking us, again.

After checking our appearances a bit, they let us in.

Getting out of the car with my companions, I can now see that the palace is insanely big, as expected from the world's biggest country. It is mainly white and red, with quite a lot of large buildings connected with each other, each around 4 stories tall, and then there's a super tall one in the middle with a pointy roof as well.e, esteemed guests, we have been expecting you.'' An old dude greets us at the main entrance to the very tall building. ''Please go this way.''

We follow him inside, with me, my girlfriends, and Julius at the front, the others trailing behind us.

The interior is also luxurious, I can literally see money oozing out of this place. I wonder what would the food here be like. At this point, I'm just curious about the food.

The old dude leads us into a spacious room on the 5th floor, with shelves of teas, books, wines, and such, and a big table at the center, surrounded by 3 long couches, positioned like a U letter. I'm assuming this is the guest room.

Oh, hey, there's a balcony too, the view here should be good.

''Please sit at the table and wait for a moment, His Majesty and the Imperial Highnesses will be here shortly.'' The old man bows and exits the room.

The two stand up and begin their introduction.

''It's an honor to meet you, I am Raeliana Seymour of House Seymour.'' Raeliana bows lightly, putting her right hand on her flat chest, the other hand raising her dress a bit.

''It is delightful to see you again, Your Majesty, ah, for your Highnesses, I am Julius Nixon, Everwood kingdom's Minister of foreign affairs.'' Julius calmly bows and says.

''I see, nice to meet you too, lady Seymour, and good to see you again, Count Nixon.'' The emperor nods. ''Though, I heard the Crown Princess is coming too, where is she?''

''Ah, about that, she is now outside on the balcony, please excuse me, I'm going to call her in.'' Raeliana replies and walks towards the balcony.

*****

As I and Emy are on the verge of making out on the balcony, a voice interrupts us.

''Hey, what are you guys doing?'' Liana's here.

We break out of our hug, and I nervously reply back:

''Ah, hey Liana, did the Emperor arrive?''

Liana lets out a sigh, fortunately, she's not mad because we were doing it without her or anything.

''Yes, he's inside right now, so stop making out and get in.''

''Alright.''

Going inside the room, I see four redheads all looking at me with their eyes open wide. What, what's wrong? Why are you guys like this?

Whatever, let's just greet them and sit down, my legs are tired.

''It's an honor to meet you, I am the crown princess of Everwood - Sylvia Everwood.'' I bow very lightly with one hand on my chest, another lifting my skirt.

Emy does the same. ''Emilia Campbell of house Campbell.''

...They're still looking, what the heck, actually, are they looking at my chest? What, never seen a busty elf before? I mean, the girl over there has pretty big ones too, not as big as me though, is it that unexpected?

Fine, whatever, just sit.

''Now, should we sit down first?'' I give them a capitalist smile.

''Ah, sure, let's do that. Edward, can you prepare us some tea and refreshments?'' The Emperor snaps out.

''Understood, Your Majesty.''

''Ah, wait.'' I stop him. ''Edward, right? Can you help me with some simple dishes as well? We haven't had the chance to eat anything today, so we might be a little bit hungry.''

''...Understood, I will have them prepared.'' The old man then leaves.

Call me shameless all you want, because I am. It's their fault for having a meeting this early, I'm not starving in here, never.

So we all sit down on the couches. On one side are me, Emy, Liana, and Julius. On the other side are the four redheads. Both our bodyguards are standing behind us.

It's negotiation time, baby. I'm not doing any of that, though, when will the food arrive?