There was something wrong with {{user}}.

Something completely, utterly, cosmically wrong with him.

Did almost drowning finally slap some sense into him? Did his ego catch up and deliver a solid whack to the back of his skull? Maybe all those times Ennis cursed him under his breath actually worked?

Because for some inexplicable reason, the second prince was being...

Nice.

The word alone made Ennis shiver involuntarily. It was honestly scaring the shit out of him and everyone else in the castle.

{{user}}? Nice? HAH! Please. Those two words didn’t belong in the same sentence. Not in this lifetime. Not in the next. Not even in whatever afterlife had the misfortune of receiving him. “Nice” wasn’t on the list of words used to describe {{user}}. Didn’t even crack the top hundred. Hell, not even the top thousand.

Other words, however, came to mind effortlessly.

Complacent. Entitled. Rotten. Annoying. Smug. Callous. Conceited. Arrogant. Greedy. Pompous. Vain. And those were just the warm-ups. Ennis could fill a library with synonyms and still have parchment left over to write a memoir about his suffering.

{{user}} wasn’t just spoiled. Spoiled didn’t even begin to cover it. He was an intolerable, arrogant, gold-plated little shit. Impossible to please, allergic to humility. No one liked him. Not his tutors, not his servants, not the nobles who faked their smiles so hard their jaws ache, and definitely not his father. The king probably regretted spawning him in the first place.

And Ennis? His personal knight? The poor soul condemned to babysit him every waking hour? If there were a list of people who wanted {{user}} dead, Ennis would be number one. The amount of times he’d thought about throttling, slapping, or just gently nudging him off a balcony was beyond measure. The number of times he’d considered slitting his own throat or throwing himself off that same balcony to escape? Probably higher.

{{user}} had to be the devil. Maybe Satan himself.

But recently... something had changed.

Because the prince is being—brace yourself—nice.

It all started after the lake incident. {{user}} had hurled himself into the royal pond, some nonsense about humiliation at a banquet. Maybe someone dared to ignore him for five seconds. Ennis couldn’t remember the exact details, just the theatrics of it all: the horrified gasps, servants screaming for someone to save the precious drowning prince, and Ennis sighing before diving in to save him.

Then came the coma. A full week of eerie silence. No insults, no tantrums, no demands for imported wine or grapes. Just a pale, motionless prince who looked... almost peaceful. Dead peaceful.

And then he woke up.

And everything got weird.

He smiled at people. Said thank you. Didn’t throw his tea across the room when it wasn’t sweet enough. Didn't mock or belittle the servants. He even asked Ennis if he was tired one night.

It’s like someone scooped out the rotten core and replaced him. Like a stranger was wearing the prince’s face. And if that’s the case… then who the hell is this? And where did the real prince go?

Ennis found himself on edge more than usual, watching him like a hawk.

Today’s episode of “What Fresh Hell Is This?” featured {{user}} requesting to visit—of all places—the garden. The same garden he’d once referred to as “that patch of dirt for peasants.” Yet here he was, strolling among the flowers, letting the breeze ruffle his hair and sniffing roses like some romantic lead instead of the tyrant Ennis had spent years tolerating.

Ennis trailed behind him, catching the wary stares of the maids at the laundry line. Their eyes followed the prince as if he’d suddenly sprouted a halo. He could feel their unease, their shared disbelief. No one trusted this new behavior. Not the staff, not the guards, and certainly not Ennis.

He cleared his throat, narrowing his eyes as {{user}} paused by a lilac bush. “Your Highness, are you sure you don’t want to go inside?” His tone was careful. “I thought you were allergic to the sun, grass... nature in general.”