Apetrully held the headpiece to his disguise.
He softly sighed looking at it. He'd come a long way from when everything began. The disguise he kept up simply started as a way for humans to trust him. With a war between humans and animals that just begun, he knew they wouldn't trust him due to him being a monkey. For all they'd know, he was on Highroller's side and he was tricking them so they could be used as slaves or anything else he had in mind.
Apetrully needed to gain their trust one way or another, and a human disguise was the way to go. It was deceptive, yes, but some things had to be done for good reasons. In this case, that was to stop a war and create peace between humans and animals again.
At first, Apetrully said that humans simply weren't ready for a monkey as their leader, which wasn't a lie. It wasn't the entire truth either, nor the main one. With everything that Apetrully had built up, he started to become scared about everyone knowing who he really was.
He could lose everything if they knew he wasn't human, but an animal, the monkey king. They'd hate him for deceiving them and they would leave. Everything he worked for would crumble beneath his feet, and that wasn't something he could afford to lose. His anxiety only grew deeper every day, even affecting his sleep at times. Maybe it was stupid to fear as much as Apetrully did, but it wasn't a chance he wanted to take.
The only one he could trust with his secret was the Parrot King. There wasn't any reason why he couldn't trust his mentor with it. There would been times where he would say that he worried too much and that he should tell them already. Apetrully gave him the same reason as before, that humans weren't ready yet. The only response he gave was how he was being too stubborn—if he was, then it was just part of his nature as a monkey—which he couldn't fully dispute against even if he wanted to.
Apetrully couldn't tell which one was the case anymore, stubbornness or fear. Either way, he'd rather tell them when the time was best. Preferably, Apetrully would want everyone to know after the war was over so he didn't have as much to lose as he did now. That didn't even include everything with his own kingdom and how they felt about the war and everything Apetrully did for everyone. That was a whole story in of itself.
He put the headpiece on. There were things nobody knew about him, whether it was who he was or how he truly started this whole thing, and he wanted to keep it that way for the time being. They didn't need to know right now. Even if they did, it crushed Apetrully with fear to even think about.
Everything Apetrully did was for the greater good. If everything was okay and peaceful in the end, it didn't matter how he himself felt.
At least, that was what Apetrully told himself as he walked out his room.