.

Meanwhile, while Jylan and Sebastian were wasting away in the box, something else was happening. 

One day, a commoner named Bob asked,

"Hey, what happened to Prince Sebastian and that carpet-making duo?"

He didn't know they were both the same person, and poor Bob also didn't know that singular comment would cause the biggest civil rebellion in the history of the kingdom. 

Commoners often don't know these sorts of things.

I mean, I wouldn't either. So you can't blame them, really. 

Anyway, Bob's cousin, Mira, was also quite curious about this. Most people were. So after receiving a sizable bet from her superior and a horde of other commoners, she snuck into the palace and asked all the servants if they had seen Prince Sebastian. Of course, you can't see someone who's not there, because that would just be hallucinating, so all of the staff safely said no. Mira came back to report and won the bet - a pretty 10,000 coins - and then, more commoners came in the next day.

This time, the pot was 20,000 - a glorious 2x rate - to find the Carpet Duo. Of course, Mira, who had now had a taste of what it was like to be filthy rich through betting, slurped this offer up like warm ice cream. The first thing she did was find out what the said carpet duo looked like - since she couldn't find them if she couldn't recognize them. 

And then she found out that one of the people in the carpet duo looked exactly like Prince Sebastian had - blonde hair and blue eyes. The shape of their face was exactly the same as well. And, the second person in the carpet duo looked exactly like a butler named Jylan, who had been seen with the prince multiple times. 

Of course, there was another thing as well. Bob's cousin also find out both the carpet duo and the prince were both tied to one person : Princess Lei. 

When she took this back to the hub, one of the people who had bet on the 20,000 coins in the pot was a writer, When she heard this beautiful, juicy gossip, she thought, 

"Oh. I should write about this."

So after slipping another 500 coins into the pot as a tip for Mira, she took the gossip home, slammed it onto a notebook, and lived off of coffee until the book was done. A living alibi that made the advisors seem like monsters out a nightmare and the slowly unfolding romance between Lei, Jylan, and Sebastian. 

Yes. You heard me right. Lei was romantically involved with Sebastian in this book. Uh. We don't talk about that, though…

Anyway, This story was an instant hit - and, somehow, this sleep-deprived, coffee-loving writer had managed to yeet up a significantly heart-wrenching sob story, so now, over 900,000 peasants, armed with pitchforks, knives, and a buncha other scary-looking farming equipment. They demanded justice for Sebastian, who, in the book, had been outright abused by the advisors, so now these 900,000 people outright trampled over the guards and began to ransack the whole palace, shrieking, 

"Justice for Sebastian!"

The writer, who had scooped this up, made official gear for the fans of her book, so while the palace was stormed, it could be seen that they were also wearing shirts that read 'free sebastian' and other stuff. 

Yep. Chaos. Anyway, let's get back to the good stuff. 

Guards were thrown aside like pebbles as every single room was searched. But of course, neither Jylan nor Sebastian were found. Since they were busy chilling in a magical grassy box. 

Of course, the advisors were instantly thrown into the dungeon for blasphemy. Devastated fans sobbed over what they thought were the deaths of the two protagonists of their new favorite slow burn book - since they couldn't find Jylan and Sebastian, nor their bodies, everyone assumed they were dead. Funerals were held all over the empire, the author made a new shirt set called 'Sebastian will always be alive in our hearts even if he's six feet in the ground', and a lot of other stuff. Lei was wondering why she was getting so many letters of condolences from fans, especially since she had seen Jylan and Sebastian just a month ago through letters and was quite sure they were alive. 

Then, Jylan and Sebastian came out of the box, after a week. 

Fans had never been so happy. 

Sebastian was given back his position on the throne, Mira and Bob were hailed as national heroes and written down in history books, and the author who wrote that fanfic about Jylan, Lei, and Sebastian? Oh. She got so filthy rich and famous that she was automatically put into history books.

Yep. 

There were no more obstacles. 

Everything was over. 

Hurrah.