Part 1: Once Upon A Maid

Candy is like a dream.

A savory fantasy of living out one’s greatest desires.

But those kind of dreams never show their dark side, until the sugar-coated mask is lifted.

And yet… There is always something so frightening about the coziness that our minds experience while lost in its surreal surroundings.

My name is Cherry Brooks. As you may already know, I’ve always had a weird life. After a strange encounter with the game known as Candiere’s Cafe, I found a world that took the lives of those who dared to enter.

Before this however, it all started with a secret.

At six-years old, I knew only a handful of what was being kept from me. The ones who I called my parents at first? I never really got to know them. I only ever saw them in passing or in portrait paintings within the rooms of The Halbert Mansion.

From the inside looking out though, I would always see these mysterious maids using boats to travel across Domacles Lakes so they could do work in our garden every 45 days from New Year’s Eve.

I ended up noticing that my fake parents were absent across the same pattern of days. This seemed to keep happening whenever it was a foggy day too. I found the dreariness of the atmosphere to be unusual, but there was a grounded sense of peace to it too.

Then they told me that I was originally born in Japan with my father who seemed to be the only one taking care of me at that time. All they knew of him was that he used to wear a fedora hat. Whatever caused his death left me in the hands of an adoption center.

Between that and being told I got sedated, kidnapped, and sent to Canada, I was beyond shocked.

The Halberts had been lying to me for years.

I asked the maids why they didn’t do anything about it. In their response, it was because they were already dead.

From that moment on I figured I had the ability to see ghosts.

But as you all know, it went much deeper than that.

When I first arrived in Animearth, the super stella cherries I took from UVOCA’s laboratory became the focus of my efforts to research and figure out what they planned on doing with it. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first either.

As time kept ticking away however, what I found was horrifying.

45, that one rumored number which many thought to be random had a connective meaning to it.

In my culture, the number had a name.

Shigo.

“Shi” usually meant 4 and “Go” meant 5. Formed together it created an unlucky number as well as the translated words, “After Death”.

There were many other conspiracies tied to it as well.

Most of which made me more concerned about the Earth I lived on in comparison to having been in Animearth for some time now…

Those maids I mentioned, they looked eerily similar to the ones presented in the Candiere’s Cafe show that aired back in the 80s.

To be more specific, it ran from October 27th, 1983 to October 4th, 1997. A total of 44 finished episodes came out of it before the show got completely shoved from all TV networks due to behind-the-scenes controversy. The inappropriate nature of its 45th episode alongside all other sorts of drama shut down SourSplash Entertainment in its entirety.

This show featured a different storyline that was more centered around its titular characters.

Princess Candiere Creamcake, the magical heart of Tartropolatte’s flavorful wonderland had a tendency to over-perform and exaggerate everything. This included personally greeting her audience in a ladylike manner within the first few minutes of an episode. It consisted of recaps at times, but her energy was on par with the games.

Joining in on the cast was Prince Cinnamint, her secret stepbrother who always ended up going outside the cafe walls to explore the other lands. In most cases, this was in search of new ingredients that the cafe could use to keep their business bustling.

Peppie, also known as Candiere’s co-assistant bunny, helps as both an ambassador and employer of the cafe. She never tolerates slacking but sometimes can get into trouble if curiosity gets the best of her.

Added with those three which operated as a main set, standout side characters usually consisted of Mister Lollipop, Tangerina, Jitterjam, Bopberry, Gumdrop, and of course Princess Candiere’s rival:

Cookieta Custardcone.

These two would always compete to showcase which had the better cafe.

Of course, they always did this from afar. Never ever meeting each other face-to-face. However, across the many heated hijinks that followed, a monster was created that drenched their world into an unforeseen darkness.

No one can say for sure if they would ever mend what caused it in the first place.

It being fictional to those that watched the show didn’t really cause a need for concern. Especially since, as the story goes, they say everything got rebooted and turned back to normal.

But that couldn’t be farther from the reality of my situation.

After the traumatic sugar-induced insanity that I experienced with the death of Ararima…

I was done with letting that lie live on.