The gentle sound of his flute drifted through the room, the melody low, a little bit sad and full of emotion. A little boy with long, golden blonde hair in a tight braid sat by the window, watching the clouds pass by while the rain added its own rhythm to the music. After a little while a higher, more cheerful sound of a second flute danced around that slow, dark melody. A young girl with strawberry blonde hair entered the room, trying to cheer the boy up with her own music.

After a few seconds the toddler gave in and started a fun little dancing tune, similar to what a shepherd would play when they were happy. It was improvised and energetic, lightening the young child's mood.

The two sounds mixed and mingled as the children played.

Finally the music grew heavy and sad again.

"What's wrong?" The question broke the atmosphere, harshly grating on the boy's ears after the music.

"I'm intelligent and talented, my mother says. Next month I will start learning basic education from a tutor...and music, etiquette and dancing." The childish voice, squeaky and high like most young children's voices, carried an emotion that didn't fit the words he said. He should have been proud or excited, but he wasn't. "We won't be able to play together much any longer."

The girl froze. "But you're only a few months old! You shouldn't need to do that...not before you turn at least five..."

"Ah...mother wants the best for me." The boy argued without much conviction. "I'm also taking lessons in bardic magic. When we meet maybe I can teach you something interesting." The truth was though...he wouldn't have much free time anymore.

The first day of his new school life he, still nameless, was carried by the old worker strough a labyrinth of halls. Sometimes she flew up, sometimes they wandered around hallways with what seemed like hundreds of six sided rooms with open sides all around them and in the end they walked through high halls lined by thousands of such six sided chambers, a worker busy with something he couldn't see in each. It was the first time he had ever been outside his own room and he had no chance of satisfying his curiosity. No, they went straight to the ministry of education's lecturing halls without stopping or speaking to anyone.

He saw people, many of them, all with different shades of blonde hair and golden skin, their eyes a liquid black. Just like him.

They all wore dresses in a similar style, but quality and length greatly differed. All of them had wings, all of them had antennae, all of them seemed very busy. There were no children playing in the parts he saw either, or goods being sold. Either way, everything had six sides, the walls all slightly rounded upwards. it was, without a shadow of a doubt, a bee hive.

When they arrived at a closed off space, which, after all of the open rooms facing the hallways and large halls, appeared strange to him, he saw other children aside from the girl for the first time in his life. The old woman set him down on the incredibly soft carpet that resembled the one in his room so much he almost wondered if all places with children were like this. With no chairs or tables, just a blackboard on one side of the room, he just sat where he was, looking at the other children with curiosity.

All of them were older than he was, appearing around five or six, their dresses fine silk in different colors. With their childish faces and long hair, not to mention the same kind of dress everybody wore it was hard to tell their gender. Were they boys, like him? So far he had only ever seen women, even on their way to this place.

Regardless, one question he'd had for a while was answered. Those five year olds all had dark nubs on their backs, though one child's nubs were obviously breaking open and on the left side a bit of fragile wing was sticking out.  The child kept fidgeting and rubbing on those nubs, similar to what a child on earth would have done if a tooth was almost falling out.

After watching for a bit he struggled to his feet and traipsed over to the older children, hoping to find friends and playmates.

As soon as he got closer one of the children noticed him and froze for a second, though he couldn't really tell why. Then the older child pulled on one of the other's dress and hissed: "It's a boy!"

Immediately all attention was on him. He had no idea why, or how they realized he was male. Sure, male bee people were essentially meant as husbands for queens of other kingdoms - and, unlike bees on earth, shared their life expectancy - but judging by these childrens' clothes they couldn't be of low station either.

In confusion he tilted his head.

Which led to a squeak from the girl - he was fairly certain she was a girl now, boys didn't squeak like that - before he was surrounded by the other children, who stared at him with so much intent he blushed and looked down.

"Ne, why is there a boy here?" One of the girls asked.

"Dunno~ Nobody told me anything...which queen is he from? Or is he..." That voice was interrupted by a sharp gasp for some reason.

Then there was a small hand on his chin that forced him to look up into a cute little face. "Hello little one. What are you doing here? Are you here with your mother?"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He shook his head nervously before he answered. Though these were merely small children he felt like something wasn't quite right with this question. "No...my mother, the minor Queen Lysanne, thought it appropriate to start my schooling early." His answer was spoken in the most polite tone and he intentionally pointed out the identity of his mother. Somehow he had the feeling that making sure these girls knew his mother's identity was incredibly important.

"Oh, that one! So you're not..." Once again, the girl gasped in pain when another girl elbowed her with a bit too much force behind it. Much to the girl's dismay. "What was that for!"

The nice girl who had asked him who he was glared at the rude girl. "That's vulgar! You can't just accuse a boy of something like that for no reason!"

"My foster mother had a boy, too!" Another girl chimbed in, much to his confusion.

"Yeah, but she's a minister! She's allowed to do that!"

"What's a minister?" He asked curiously, mostly because he didn't really get what exactly the girls had been arguing about.

That, it turned out, was a question the young girls couldn't really answer. They were certain that a minister was almost as important as a queen though. Probably. One of the girls said that the ministers were the ones who really ruled the kingdom , but that opinion was vetoed immediately.  In the end he was more confused than before, not less, but at least the girls had calmed down about him being a boy.

Once there was an awkward silence, with the minister's foster daughter pouting about her opinion being shot down, he asked the other question that was bothering him.

"How did you know I was a boy?"

The answers, it turned out, varied.

"The smell!"

"Your eyes are huge!"

"Because girls only get tested when they turn five!"

Were the answers.

Leaving the first two, rather confusing, answers aside the third one made sense. He knew that children were tested for aptitude at the age of five and depending on those results were adopted by workers - or, like the girl who always played the flute for him, taken in by various organizations to be trained as guards or mages or other things, sometimes even both at once - but hadn't really thought about what that could mean. If these girls had been taken in by ministers - regardless of what exactly that was in this kingdom - and other high ranking worker bee people, then they had to be talented elites. Thus a child as young as him coming to join them...it could only be either a young queen or a boy and queens were much larger from the beginning.

While they were still chattering the door opened and a woman entered. She had blonde hair, just like everybody else, but the tight bun and strict expression on her face sent shivers down his back.

"Settle down children. As you have already noticed there is a new student today. As a letigimate prince I will have high standards from now on!"

Her sharp gaze made him stand up straighter and answer with "Yes, Miss!" Which didn't seem to satisfy her at all.

"Sit, relax, be soft spoken and repeat that!" She commanded - much to his confusion.

Over the course of an hour he found out that being a male bee was pretty much the same as being a girl in his old world in many ways. So the former female human her quickly showed through, which apparently satisfied this lady more or less for the first day. Overall the gender roles in a bee kingdom were very strange to him.

The workers acted more like men and were expected to be strong and show few emotions. Workers, apparently, shouldn't cry or play with dolls once they turned five. How queens were supposed to act he still didn't know, but a male bee person shared quite a lot of traits with what a great japanese lady was supposed to be like.

All in all, it was a lesson that turned pretty much everything he thought he knew on its head. For a second he was afraid he'd end up in one of those stupid emperor's harem stories, but that apparently wasn't the case either. No, male bees were expected to be just as capable as a worker bee who had become a minister and the etiquette teacher kept saying things like 'when you're judging a conflict between great houses would you slump like that! I said relaxed, not sloppy!' so he, apparently, would have real duties of his own. Human concepts of government - or families - just didn't work in this society and neither did what he knew of bees on earth.

Honestly, he was glad when that lesson was finally over for the day.

Next was dancing.

And, again, he found that human dancing had very little to do with these dances. Instead of, well, dancing, an old worker stood in front of them, gave them books they were supposed to study and showed poses fom that book to explain the meanings behind every single thing, from the angle of the fingers to the distance between his feet and the way he held his wings. Despite the droning voice he tried to remember it all. If he did then maybe he'd actually be allowed to dance instead of listening to the sleep inducing voice for two hours. Or at least that was what he hoped would happen.