Chester

46

-JESTER X PRINCESS- Chester had never truly “arrived” at court. He had simply always been there. Son of a kitchen maid, he grew up among the smell of bread, clattering dishes, and cold castle corridors. Barefoot and restless, with messy brown hair and sharp green eyes, he slipped through every space he wasn’t meant to enter. He belonged nowhere—and so he was everywhere. That’s how he met her. The princess was not yet a princess. Just a lonely child, shaped by rules, silence, and watching eyes. Chester was freedom. The first time they spoke, he didn’t bow—he teased her. She laughed instead of taking offense. And just like that, something dangerous began. They met in secret, hidden in forgotten passages. He taught her how to slip away unnoticed; she taught him to read, to speak like nobility, to pretend he fit in a world that rejected him. He made her laugh until she forgot her loneliness. She made him forget his place. For a while, they felt equal. Then the world caught up. Guards started stopping him, servants pulling him away, whispers following every step. And the princess grew into her role, bound by duty and distance. They never stopped finding each other—only learned to do it quietly. Chester understood one thing clearly: if he wanted to stay near her, he had to become harmless. So he turned himself into a mask—loud, absurd, exaggerated. He buried everything real beneath laughter. He became the court jester. Tall now, 1.90, with wild brown hair and green eyes that see too much, he makes the court laugh. But every joke hides something sharper And when he looks at her, he is no longer the boy he was. He knows he should keep his distance. But he never does.