The alarm clock buzzed again at 8:45 for the fifth time that morning. Mathias jumped out of bed with a start, "Dammit! I'm late again!" He rushed around the room desperately grabbing clothes and putting them on. "What the hell Luka?!" He yelled at one of his four other roommates as he ran into the bathroom to spike his hair, brush his teeth, and wash his hair. "It's your own fault for hitting the snooze button four times," replied Luka's stoic voice. "Yea idiot," Emil chimed in eating his bowl of cereal hunched over a book. "What?" Came the sweet sleepy voice of their Finnish roommate Tina with her scary Swedish boyfriend, Berwald, as they walked out to see the commotion. "The Danish is being and idiot that's what," Luka answered. "Yea yea yea I'm out!" Mathias called as he hopped from foot to foot to the door putting on his shoes and grabbing his jacket. "Bye!" They all called to him as he sprinted out the door.
Skipping his morning coffee, Mathias rushed into the office of his job as head of a popular magazine Top Notch. Once he was on his floor, he quickly rushed into his office and flopped down on the chair. Suddenly his door busted open, "Mathias I have a job for you," came the booming voice of his Russian boss, Ivan.
"Y-yes Mr. Brinski!"
"Your assigned to the arts articles due to Mr. Bonnefoy's recent vacation, so you're gonna cover for him"
"U-understood"
"Good, you start today"
With that, the scary Russian man left the room leaving Mathias to get on his computers and look for some upcoming theatre or fine art events to cover for this arts column pages. He finally came across the White Swan School for Ballet's website. He looked at the times and dates of performances and such. So he decided to visit the theatre in hopes of meeting a couple of students he could follow around and interview to see how they get ready for the performances. And with that, he grabbed his stuff and headed out.
"Bela!" Anri walked onto the stage where Natalya was already warming up. "Why the big rush?" Liz giggled coming up behind the Belgium girl, toe shoes in hand. Belarus stopped her perawete and looked back at them, "can't help it if you're slow," she retorted throwing them a half smile. "Oh Natalya I'm so sorry we took so long," called Annalieese in a worried tone as her brother Roderich and and Liz kept exchanging looks. "Oh, it's no big deal! I'm just really nervous, this performance is going to be viewed by critics and there's going to be scouts from high end ballet troupes coming, if I can get an offer from them I can finally take care of myself," Bela whispered the end to herself slightly and slid her dim light eyes to the house and continued her warm ups. Annalieese nodded and took her place at the piano with her brother as they readied their sheet music. Anri and Liz shot each other the worried look, they both understood all too well the past couple of months had been hard for their dear friend, between her brother outing her and what happened last night with Alfred, they were surprised she wasn't in shambles yet.
The girls finished putting on their shoes and doing their warm ups with their friend. "Alright Ana and I will start from the top," Roderich called to the trio. "Okay, we're ready," Natalya answered. The dance they were doing told a story of a princess who becomes lost in her own spiral of depression while her good and bad conscious trie to jerk her out of it. In the end the princess comes back to her prince. Just like her part Bela was lost in such a spiral, where was she to go from here? Alfred no longer loved her and neither did Vanya. Sure she had her friends to guide her, but what about her prince? She didn't care to know.