♠️ Exceptis Centrum ♠️ ✔︎

Chapter 4

When he went to bed that night Alfred was actually scared that he’d end up back in that other place with that scary Arthur fellow, however he slept like a baby and nothing happened. He woke up feeling refreshed and had a delicious breakfast, pancakes with bacon and whipped cream, drenched in syrup. He downed it all with a glass of orange juice and even had room to stuff down a bagel.

With his belly full Alfred could not help but smile with glee. The sun was shining and Yao thankfully had nothing major for him to do, so he believed he could relax today. He actually had time to catch up on reading his favourite comics, he spent a decent amount of time in his personal gym, went for a casual stroll around a section of his Kingdom and came back in time for lunch.

So far this day was going fantastic and Alfred could only hope that this afternoon would be the same.

It almost did until Yao had to pull him away from some light work to deal with a little crisis. When one hears the word crisis you’d think that something life threatening would be taking place, but this supposed crisis was something Alfred would never call a crisis.

Apparently the floral arrangements for the dinner party were splitting the stewards apart, half of them wanted the traditional peony bouquet whilst the other half wanted lilies.

“Peony flowers are too common nowadays, the lilies will at least make the table look presentable!”

“The only lilies we can import are white ones, and how can you put white lilies on a table with a white tablecloth?”

“Then we can change the tablecloth to the red one!”

“You can’t use a red tablecloth at this particular dinner party! Red would be an insult to our guests!”

“Then use the fake lilies we have in store.”

“And risk offending the King of Clubs?”

“Well we can’t use peonies, they’ll keep the King of Hearts sneezing all night!”

“And we’re not using lilies!”

“And we’re not using peonies!”

Alfred could not believe he had to deal with an argument about what flowers should be on display on a dinner table. They were just decorative plants to make the table look pretty, who cared what type they were? He looked over at Yao who stared at him with a look of sympathy.

“I thought the planner already dealt with this,” hissed Alfred, grinding his teeth until they squeaked.

“He did but it turns out the orchids we decided on didn’t bloom too well this year, so he went with plan B,” sighed Yao, “and unfortunately this lot don’t agree with plan B.” Yao rubbed his head as the whole thing was giving him an headache. “I tried dealing with it but they want your input, just pick a flower and tell them to go with it.”

Alfred rolled his eyes and decided to just do what Yao said and get it over with. He approached the bickering stewards and cleared his throat. “I appreciate your concerns but we need to choose a flower and focus on other important matters. So...” Alfred decided to randomly choose one of the flowers, “we’ll go with the peonies.”

He hoped that was the end of it, but the other stewards pointed out an important fact. “The King of Hearts is sensitive to the pollen, your majesty, and peonies produce a lot of pollen.”

Alfred sighed. “Ok, lilies then.”

“We can only get white ones in, they’re far too plain for the table lay up we prepared and changing the table layout is not an option.”