"Ada? Ada!"

I wrap my pillow around my ears, trying to drown out the noise.

"Ada! Don't pretend like you don't hear me," someone exclaims, sighing. "Must you be so difficult early in the morning? And what of the episode last night? How come you came back so late?"

I pull my blanket over my head just as hands grab onto it and yank it off of me, leaving me bare and exposed. Through a crack between in my eyelids I peer down at my body, and am relieved to see that I'm wearing a nightgown.

. . .

A nightgown?

I jerk awake, sitting up on my bed.

"Mom?" I say uncertainly.

I hear another sigh. "Stop messing around. You won't be seeing your mother, or any family for that matter, until next month, just like the rest of us."

Slowly, I turn my gaze to the person who speaks to me, and I scowl. It's a girl about my age, her hair fair and her accusing eyes a tinkling brown. In her hands is the scrunched up sheet she has just pulled off of me, which she twists around her hands over and over again, until I realize she's waiting for a response. From me.

"Y-You-You-You. . ." I point a shaky finger in her direction. "How did you break into my apartment? Are you a thief?"

I expect her to deny the accusation, or worse, lunge at me, but what I do not expect her to do is laugh. But that is exactly what she has in mind as she shrieks in laughter, slapping her knee as she goes.

"A thief?" she laughs, throwing the bundle of sheet at me, which I fail to dodge. "You jest. Come on. Get ready, for the princess awaits you. It's already late as is."

I frown. "Princess?"

The girl puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head, as if questioning me. "Ada, are you okay?"

My frown deepens as I look around me as if in a daze, and for the first time I realize that I'm not in my apartment.

All four walls are lined with wood panels, cracked and dented, with scuff marks and dirty splotches here and there. The room is small, and mirroring my bed, against the wall on my right is another bed, neatly made up.

My eyes widen in horror as the mere possibility of me being kidnapped dawns upon me, but when I survey my unshackled wrists, the possibility drifts away before warping into an even more far-fetched horror.

I jump out of bed and run to the nearest mirror, which seems to be hanging on a wall over a cracked porcelain sink against the far wall.

"Are you okay!?" the girl says as a shriek escapes my lips.