As the night progressed, as I feared, there were some girls who tried to talk to me, but I somehow managed to avoid them all and direct some of them to Julian.

Many noble boys, who noticed the interest in Julian, also came to us and tried to chat with me, inevitably I met a lot of new people. I would probably never meet these guys again.

But apart from that, the most important event here was the scary creature standing in front of me. When the dragon, whose snow-white wings were bigger than the palace, whose huge skin did not show even the slightest wound, and whose eyes were as white and frightening as its body, landed next to the palace, everyone realised that the imperial family had come. Before, I wondered how such a huge empire could stand without war and rebellion, but now I know. If there were more than one of these things, I didn't know who, besides the dwarves, could fight it.

After the dragon landed in the huge empty space next to the palace, first, the empress with jet-black short hair and violet eyes, whose figure could not be concealed by the dark purple and black dress she was wearing, then the emperor with white hair and bright yellow eyes, like the dragon, holding the hand of his long-haired daughter that has the same colors with him, descended into the palace. She looked a little older than me, and the whole family had a confident and radiant smile on their faces.

I didn't get a chance to meet the imperial family, but I saw my parents having a little chat with them in the crowd, and after that not much happened, about 10 more dragons landed in the palace garden, not as big as the dragon the emperor came with. Most of them looked like young, and the emperor fed them for fun by throwing lambs at them in front of the people. Yes, he grabbed a couple of lambs, lifted them up and threw them at the dragons, and the dragons caught the lambs in mid-air and ate them in one bite. It was fun to watch.

“I'm wondering,” the words escaped my mouth and Julian looked at me.

“The conquests of the empire have been mainly with the help of dragons, and the empire still has dragons. Why don't they conquer the countries across the sea ?”

“Because dragons are sworn to protect the realm, not to be soldiers. There are only 2 emperors in the empire who could use dragons for war, firstly Rose, secondly his son Alp Vatinius. You know what they have in common ?”

I shook my head, looking at Julian, and he replied, “They both slayed a dragon.

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Actually, Empress Rose killed a lot of dragons, but you get the point.”

“Oh, alright.”

As the night progressed, of course, one of the most important events finally came: dancing. Normally I wouldn't mind, but since my mother came up to me and told me that she will take my alchemy set if I didn't dance with someone, I had to choose one of the dozens of girls looking at me, I was about to walk towards Rea, she didn't seem to have a partner, but I had to stop when my mother grabbed my shoulder in a delicate place and squeezed it so hard that it hurt.

I looked around, Julian had found himself a cute blonde girl and was already dancing with her, and most of the girls who were looking at me had accepted the invitations and started dancing. I guess I should have picked one of them and danced, it didn't seem to be a big deal as long as I didn't make a big deal out of it, maybe I was just too concerned about this subject.

When I looked around a bit, I saw someone, a chubby girl with blue hair, who looked about my age, sitting in a chair watching the others dancing. To cut a long story short, she reminded me of myself at my middle school graduation, when everyone was dancing with the pretty girls at school and I was sitting in the corner making excuses to myself to cover up my pathetic self, it was one of the worst days of my life.

If I went to her now, I would be dancing with that girl just because I felt sorry for her and that was incredibly wrong, but if she accepted my proposal, I would be making her happy. I also realized that if a beautiful girl came and danced with me that night, it would be a good memory and not one of the worst days of my life, so I stopped thinking too much and went up to her. I held out my hand to her as she looked at me in amazement, and as her eyes, as blue as her hair, grew wide, she held out her hand to me without saying anything.

I saw Julian and a lot of the kids who had just been hanging out with us looking at me in confusion, but I ignored them. I kept eye contact with the girl, and as we continued to dance through the crowd, I noticed that she took a deep breath.

“My mom said there are boys who like girls like me.”

“You mean, fat? No.” I didn't hesitate to say it.

The girl averted her eyes and tilted her head, “Why did you ask me to dance then, because you pitied me?”

“You looked like you wanted to dance.” I kept looking at her, even though she was averting her eyes, and when she finally made eye contact with me I smiled.

When she looked at me for the last time, she didn't break eye contact and we continued dancing, her eyes got bigger, she was obviously happy. Pity or not, it was actually like I was giving a gift to my old self. Ever since I came into this world, and even before that, I was aware of something, it was more about what I really wanted to do than how things looked from the outside. I danced with the girl to the end, I had fun, and most importantly I stopped my mother from taking my alchemy set.

And even though the night felt like it had gone too far, in reality it had only gone too far for the kids. The adults' night was just beginning, and we kids were directed to the carriages prepared by our parents to go home.