Donovan stepped aside and directed his hands towards Arthur, who stood there and awkwardly waved.

“Arthur’s here!” A voice resounded from behind him, and he heard a familiar set of footsteps quickly close in on him “You’re the last one to arrive.”

Maria came into Arthur’s vision as she spoke. She was wearing a form-fitting pair of light-grey dress slacks, and a dark-grey plain long sleeve shirt that she had tucked into her pants, creating a casual look that fit the party’s aesthetic pretty well.

“Arthur?” Olivia mumbled out loud as he watched her daughter interact with the boy next to Donovan. She mumbled out a question, to which she received a quick nod from Donovan in response. “Arthur Holmes?”

“What’s wrong mother?” Maria asked, as she noticed tears forming in her mother’s eyes. She watched as her mother practically sprinted towards Arthur, locking him into a warm embrace. She only managed to register what had happened a few moments after the fact. “What the hell are you doing?”

Olivia didn’t respond to her daughter’s questions.. She continued to hold the boy close, almost suffocating him with her bosom. It wasn’t until Donovan cleared his throat that she realised what she was doing. Olivia promptly broke away from the embrace and wiped the tears that were streaming down her face.

“I seem to have lost myself for a moment there, I apologise.” Olivia returned to her usual behaviour in an attempt to regain some level of dignity. “Maria, please entertain Arthur for the moment. Arthur, I would love to speak with you later, but I must attend to some guests.”

“As would I.” Arthur responded in a polite manner. “I’ll make sure to leave some space open later in the day if you would like to speak then.”

“Oh my. Who would have known that adorable child would have grown up to be a man with such manners.” Olivia teased, “I doubted that the grumpy old troll would have taught his children anything of value. Fortunately it seems as though you take after your mother, so you would have been fine regardless.”

She was a rather aggressive slanderer of his father, but Arthur understood her frustrations with the man. Arthur himself had more than a few frustrations of his own. Arthur turned to face a confused looking Maria, and Acai standing a few meters back eating a small cupcake.

Acai was wearing a pair of dark-grey dress pants and a light-blue short sleeved buttoned-up shirt that had too many buttons unfastened, showcasing more skin than necessary, alongside his various necklaces and bead jewellery.

After getting permission to leave on the condition that Arthur promised to spend some time with her later, Arthur briefly said goodbye to her and Dovonan, who looked as though he wanted to talk to her in private. Maria began leading the group through the inside of the house.

“What the hell was that about?” Maria blurted out the second she believed nobody was around to hear her. Her mother acting like that was a strange occurrence, so there was definitely some story here she didn’t yet know. “How do you know my mother?”

“It’s, a bit of a long story actually, I just found out about it on the way here.” Arthur began speaking in a hushed voice. “You’ll find out the rest later, but to put it bluntly, you and I are distant cousins. Long-lost cousins I guess.”

This revelation left Maria somewhat surprised, but after a couple more questions she found out that their two families were estranged. It started making sense in her mind, but she didn’t yet know why they were estranged in the first place, or why her mother reacted the way she did. And unfortunately for her, Arthur just kept telling her that she’d find out about it later until she eventually dropped it while pouting.

“Dude, I’m jealous.” Was the only comment Acai made to Arthur during the walk, and after doing so he squealed in pain as Maria grabbed a portion of his side and began painfully twisting it.

Arthur was confused at first, but Maria was kind enough to explain the context of the situation. It seemed as though Acai began mentioning that Maria’s mother was attractive, and Maria jokingly responded telling him to be careful, as Olivia would gobble up boys like him. What Maria didn’t expect was that after her comment, Acai appeared to be more interested, but she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

Thinking back, Arthur remembered that Acai did have a thing for older women. But at the same time he made a note to not include married women or the mothers of people he knew onto his list of potential partners. So while he may in-fact be physically attracted to Olivia, it was likely that he was just teasing Maria.

The group make their way through the inside of the castle, and as Arthur assumed based on the outside, this place was large, excessively so. After climbing a flight of stairs and walking down a few hallways, the group were now in front of a large set of doors on the east side of the castle.

Maria pushed the doors open, revealing a massive room that rivalled Arthur’s entire floor. This room was absolutely packed with furniture and decorations, and much like what Arthur assumed it would be, it was a large mashup of various shades of pink and white.

Sticking true to her nickname of the lover of all things cute, there was an entire wall dedicated to the storage and display of stuffed plushy toys. Which ended up as more of a large section of the room as several more larger plushies were scattered and stacked along the floor in the same general area.

Arthur’s eyes locked onto the large king sized bed with a canopy, the pillows and blankets were all shades of pinks and whites, but that wasn’t the detail he was concerned about. Rather his eyes locked onto the person who was laying down on Maria’s bed, casually playing with her phone.

Maria ran into the room and leapt onto the bed, causing Holly to be shaken around. Due to the fact she was so focused on her phone, it seemed as though she didn’t notice the group enter, this left her vulnerable to a surprise attack from Maria.

Holly was wearing a simple yet elegant light-blue summer dress, she didn’t accessorise with it, but her glasses were coincidentally also a light blue. She had her wavy brown hair tied up, but her laying down seemed to have ruined it a little.

Arthur and Acai entered the room, closing the door behind them as instructed. Acai helped himself to one of the seats that was placed around a small spherical table. While Arthur walked over to Holly and started talking to her.

“You’re surprisingly comfortable in the princess’ castle.” Arthur teased, remembering a time when she was embarrassed every time she visited Arthur’s house. Holly awkwardly laughed in response, it seemed she was still embarrassed, but Maria’s overly affectionate personality seemed to be beating Holly’s more reserved nature.

Arthur was pretty surprised that the two had bonded with each other as well as they did, especially in such a short period of time. It seemed that both of them were really desperate for a female friend of a similar age, and their personalities just so happened to mesh together well.

Looking around the room, Arthur’s eyes locked on to a fancy ornamental rapier that was hung up on the wall, and surrounding it were a bunch of trophies and medals, they all seemed to be for fencing competitions, and a large majority of them were for winning. Arthur was already convinced that she had been trained in the use of rapiers before entering the game, but this just served as proof that she was much better than he thought.

While the two girls sat around on the bed, Maria brushed Holly’s hair and started restyling it, as the last hairstyle had gotten messy. Arthur grabbed a chair next to Acai as the group continued talking about various topics for several minutes.

“So you guys haven’t been online because you’ve been hanging out together, huh?” Acai was really curious why the two hadn’t been online for the past couple days, and now he finally had his answer. “I guess that makes sense. But we had to play with two randoms in ranked, and I lost my rank up game because of it.”

  After the group laughed at Acai’s expense for a bit, they continued their previous conversations until there was a knock at the door. Someone came in an informed the group that the tea party had properly begun.

Everyone stood up and began making their way out of the room, Arthur’s eyes glanced over at a laundry hamper that was poorly hidden near the entrance, it would have been completely obscured by the door as he walked in, but it was almost in plain sight on their way out. While not meaning to pry, he noticed that there was a familiar looking summer dress hanging from it.

Arthur found the coincidence somewhat funny, although one of the girls was essentially English nobility and the other was the daughter of two famous archaeologists, they had several things in common, and apparently one of them was a similar taste in fashion.

The group was led back towards the front door, where they could now see that the front patio was beginning to fill up, but fortunately there was a table where all four of them could sit together at.

“Oh, Arthur. I heard that one of your hobbies is gardening, would you be interested in seeing our garden later?” Maria asked, “It’s much more impressive than the front garden.”

“That sounds interesting.” Arthur replied as his eyes gazed over to Holly, who just so happened to break eye contact sheepishly. It seemed that the two had some kind of girl talk at some point, and Arthur’s hobbies were included. He didn’t really mind that he was being talked about, but he was curious about the context that caused him to get brought up in the first place.