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“Life is but a stage, and we are merely actors”, some old Shakespeare play claims. Well, of course it is. You’re aware of that. Your life is one big performance, not only when you’re under the spotlight but when you’re out of it. It’s what you signed up for, after all.
It’s not any trouble. Really, it isn’t. Smile.
I can handle it! Thanks for asking, but I’m fine. Smile.
I’m so glad to have people like you to rely on! Either you smile or you fucking vomit.
You cannot lose your head. Not even when you think you’re alone, because the paparazzi will catch your face wet with tears or flushed with rage, and headlines all over will be crowing about you. Once you slip up, it’s all downhill until you’re out of a career. Washed-up. A has-been.
You won’t allow that. You can’t allow that. This is all you have.
So, you keep this act up. This image that you’ve painstakingly built for yourself. Every stutter in your composure is righted before anyone can notice.
Everybody falls for it.
That’s until the SHSL Gambler bumps into you in a school hallway and whispers, “You’re just as bad as I am.”, into the shell of your ear.
Almost ten whole minutes pass before your head stops spinning.
Following that, you constantly find yourself staring at her from the corner of your eye. You’ll be taking notes in class. Laughing with the group of girls you’ve integrated yourself into. Or sending saccharine smiles to those dense, stupid boys who seethe with adoration for you without even having a single clue who you really are under all the ruffles and glitter.
And she’ll be there, just barely grazing your peripheral vision. The corners of her mouth would be tilted upwards; her eyes would be drilling into you, slyly, like you shared some kind of kinship.
After about a month of this, you’re convinced that she’s driving you insane.
One night, you’re able to catch Celestia by her room. You have her back pressed to the wall, and you hear yourself hissing at her, “Stop looking at me like we’re the same.”
Her fake eyelashes flutter; her fake red irises are wide and unblinking. “But aren’t we?”, she asks you, voice dripping poisoned honey in a way that’s painfully familiar to you. “Go on, Maizono. Explain how you’re so morally superior to me.”
You can’t meet her eyes anymore. Where you have one of her wrists pinned above her head, her long lacy sleeve has rolled down the length of her arm. You find yourself glowering at the white belly of her elbow instead.
God, you wish you could spit her serene smugness back into her face. You want to tell her that she’s wrong but she’s not. You see each other for what you are: a couple of little girls so insecure they'll cling viciously to their talents in hopes it’ll fill some insatiable void. They charm and lie through their teeth and claw their way up to the top, though who knows what they’ll find there. You and the Queen of Liars are one and the same.
Strangely enough, there's a measure of companionship in that. Here before you is someone who, to some extent, knows how you feel.
Your head droops, and a shiny black curtain of hair falls to obscure your face. Pale pink handmarks are left on Celestia’s skin when you let her go. She stands in reverent silence at your moment of weakness.
With barely a hiccup, the mask is on again. Celestia primly dusts herself off, and you two just look at each other. Perfect mirrors of porcelain and artifice.
There is a beat of uncertainty between you, and then you both do what you do best.
Smile.