Howl Your Appellations

One Room After Another

BOEN OPEOR

So the next room is the infamous Alpha’s room, somehow I feel my chest tightening up. I haven’t even met the Alpha yet but I’m feeling all nervous and curious about it. “Lissana…” I whisper. Something in my mind sparks for a moment, but thinking too hard makes my head throb. Their Alpha must be a very charismatic and trust-worthy leader, I’m probably just intimidated. Yup, it’s not like I have a little crush on the person who saved my life. I wouldn’t feel such cliche feelings, would I?

“Boen? You’re walking a little slower than normal, are you gonna be okay? Do you want to skip Sana’s room?” Reese lowers her head so that she meets my eyes. She sees that my face is a whole mess of red and nervousness. “Oh,hmm?” She gives me a knowing, cat-like smile. For someone who can turn into a wolf at will, she sure acts like the opposite. Now that she sees how I’m feeling I wonder if we should just skip. If I see something I like in her bedroom I might just explode!

“Um, maybe w-we can skip this room. After all, your leader’s not here. She might get mad..or something…hehe..” I try to sound as natural as I can but my awkwardness slipped through. I’m not good with these sorts of things, I can never understand what I truly feel.

“Hmmm, we can skip her room,” Cain suggests. “But are you sure you want to?” Added Reese who is riding my heart like a free horse ride. It’s not like I don’t want to see her room, I really, really do, but what if I see something I like? What if I see something I don’t like? It’s just a person’s room it’s not like I’m gonna be seeing her naked body. AAAgghhhhh!!!!

“So? Your final answer?”

“Sigh, let’s just get this over with, it’s just a room…” I manage to say. The two girls smile at each other as if they’ve ensnared another accomplice in their devious plan. “Alrighty then~! Welcome to Lissana’s room!”

Reese opens the door and…! “It’s a pigsty!” I scream, enraged at the state of the room. “W-wha?! Why would you guys elect a leader with such a messy room ?! There’s even dirt in here, how?! Oh my gosh this was a mistake. I don’t normally blow my top of like this but, we have to clean this place before your alpha comes back!” the room is only lighted by a small nightlight placed near the corner but I can see the mess and the hoards of laundry sprinkled around everything.

Reese and Cain seem shocked at my suggestion. They look at each other as if they’ve never considered the option. “Ah, but I mean if your leader likes it this way then…but that couldn’t be it, right? There’s a clean room under this mess, I’m sure of it!” I try to defend myself and my suggestion.

Cain sighs, “You know Boen, you’re our guest, and we like you but you can’t just suggest things like that without knowing the context. There’s a reason why we haven’t cleaned this place up and we want you to respect that.” she says to me in a slightly annoyed tone. It startles me a little, I’m reminded that there’s such a difference of power between the three of us.

“Oh…if you say so…okay Cain.” I bow my head. I must have really offended them and their leader, but how would they expect me to react? Just say that it’s a messy room and laugh about it? Is that how a normal person would react?

“Man, this tour’s just a little jumble of emotions, isn’t it? We just wanted to show you that our leader is a bit messy and… well since you don’t know her, you don’t know that she’s more than that. Super sorry! I didn’t know this is how you’d react to seeing her room, it’s not even that messy in my opinion!” Reese explains, she seems really sorry about the whole situation though. What would you do if you saw the room of the person you possibly like and end up seeing a completely messed up room with garbage everywhere and underwear hanging from the ceiling?

“Pfft.” I began to laugh, “Sorry! This situation is just really funny to me! Hahahaha what a mess!” Reese chuckles and Cain softens her expression. “Our leader is an i***t we can tell you that! But she is the Alpha. We can trust her when it matters the most!”

“Yeah!” Reese affirms. I can see that they really love their alpha. I don’t think such a beloved leader would keep a messy room for no reason, there must be a valid reason why they kept the room this way, but I can’t think of any at the moment. Cain closes the door and we’re back on our route to the next car. Reese nudges at me, “Did you see her panties? They were huge, right?”

I feel all my blood rush to my cheeks, “Why would you say something like that! You’re a i***t! Come back here!” She runs away from my punches and laughs at my face. “If I had my other leg you’d be dead!” I scream at her.

Eventually, we reached the next car. Cain didn’t need to tell me which room it was because it was pretty obvious from its overall appearance: it’s a dining area. “This is the cafeteria, minus the food!” Reese announces.

“Shut your mouth, Reese. This is the dining area obviously.” Cains corrects. “Dining area sound’s so fancy! We’re not gay ‘ol fancy city folks anymore!” objects the every playful Reese. “Oh, look who’s sitting over there! Kaya!”

In my opinion, Reese is right about calling this place a cafeteria, the long table is much too similar to high school lunch tables. The only saving qualities about it is that, the table is covered by a snow white linen and the chairs are beautiful oak chairs with a sprout looking pattern swirling, similar to an art nouveau painting. There’s one potted plant in the corner of the room and I wonder if it gets enough oxygen, I can see that it bears berry like fruits but it’s triangle-shaped so I’m not gonna give any further comments.The room is wide with six paintings in total and they occupy the sides of the room. The ones in the middle serve as make-shift windows as they’re made to look like real ones overlooking a peaceful scenery, one is painted to look like it’s the morning of your dreams and the other, shows the starry night sky of the heavens. The paintings next to the window ones don’t look like they’re painted by Grey because they’re too abstract and doesn’t fill the whole canvas, leaving a large space for white void.

“Hey, Boen! What are you still doing over there? Come here. Kaya’s going to join us now.” I hurriedly walked towards the end of the table where Kaya and the others are waiting. I didn’t get the chance to look for the signatures of the abstract paintings.

“These paintings are really nice. Did Grey also paint them?” I asked, obviously still curious about the painter’s identity. “The window ones are from Grey. Two of her older works I think but the other four, the abstract ones, they’re from an unknown artist. Imus just came home with these paintings one day. I’m pretty sure they’re not from the inner market but, we’ll never know for sure.” answered Reese.

“Oooh, how intriguing. I wonder where Imus got them.” I playfully speculate.

“They’re from the Bird lady.” Kaya suggests. “Huh? Bird lady?” I look at Cain and Reese for confirmation.

“Imus has a lot of connections. He gets around. And Kaya probably knows other people in the forest that we don’t know about, probably a painter?” Reese looks at Kaya, Kaya stares at her and replies, “I checked the back of the paintings and it was signed by the ‘Bird Lady’.”

“Oh, so you don’t know any painters?” She further inquires. “The hogs like to keep to themselves. But Koto and I have met some extremely interesting people.” replied Kaya cryptically. Reese sighs and decides to stop asking questions.

“Man, you’re no fun. A little story about your life wouldn’t hurt.” She then proceeds to the door that leads to the next car. “Let’s go, gang!” The three of us followed suit and Kaya stares at me before we enter, “Where’s Koto?” She asks. “She said she’ll wait in front of the entrance.”

“Oh, is that so?” She lowers her head and passes through the door. The two sisters really give off a different vibe from the rest of the pack. They’re probably still trying to blend in. It’s not that they’re trying too hard but it feels somewhat lonely to think about how they stumbled into this pack in the first place.

I enter the next car. It’s one of the cars with the chairs still intact. As always there are two rooms that need to be introduced. I feel like I know whose room is the first one. In front of the first room is a fur carpet. “Where do you guys think I keep my keys?” Reese asks, confirming that it is, indeed, her room. The other girls seem to be disinterested about her question so I decided to answer for them, “Um, under the fur carpet?”

“Ding! Ding! Ding! Wrong! It’s inside my poncho~!” She answers in an incredibly annoying carnival voice. “Oh.” I reply as I realized that I fell right into her trap. ‘’Don’t be shocked but my room is probably the most crowded.”

She unlocks the door to her room and turns the light on. Her room does look like it’s crowded, but her furniture and belongings are completely organized. There are two shelves filled with books, neatly arranged; she doesn’t have a closet but she has a large double-decker rack that she can navigate through without disrupting the order of her other clothes. And speaking of her clothes most of it were various ponchos with different colors and designs. She has a few t-shirts, skirts and underwear but the majority of her clothes are just ponchos.

On her writing table are succulents, a dozen cups with a dozen pens and pencils, paper and empty notebooks and a small mirror. She has a cute mushroom lamp that matches the little nightlight she has near her bed; her bed is fluffy and covered with a clean white linen lying below  an argyle-styled blanket. Her pillows look like they’re made of silk, a tiny stuffed toy of a mushroom sits in the center of the bed.

“Just a regular ‘ol room.” She says proudly. She really did mean it when she said she has nothing to hide, her room is perfect! “Okay, now stop staring and let’s go to the next room~!” Reese skips ahead satisfied about how perfect her room is. I didn’t expect anything when it came to her room, maybe I expected it to be a little messy but I guess I misjudged her. What surprised me a bit were the excess of pens and pencils she has, it’s like she forgets to throw out the empty ones and just leaves them there until she remembers again. Honestly? Kind of relatable.

“This next room is Milly’s room~!” now this room I’m curious about. I wonder what his room is like. “Ta~da!” Reese opens the door to a completely regular room. It has a bed, a closet, a bean chair and a desk. No decorations on the wall just a plain room, the ones you find on cheap apartment websites. “He plays the flute too!” Reese adds, noticing the slight disappointment on my face, it’s like whenever I expect things, the opposite is always the truth.

“He considers the kitchen his room, he practically lives there and most of the knives and ladles and s**t are all his. ”

I survey the room again and notice that it does look a bit underused. “Miller must really like cooking, huh?” I ask. “Yeah he does, his cooking isn’t as good as when he cooks with Nikki though. Nikki’s a great cook, they have a really close student-mentor relationship.”

“Ah, Miller’s a struggling young artist, I see, I see.” I concur. I try to empathize with the passion he feels about cooking but he feels as though he’s not as good as he wants to be. It’s interesting how he chose food to be his passion, he’s not such a regular guy after all. “You seem to be pretty chummy with him, do you guys know each other?”

Reese smiles, “It’s a complicated secret.” I roll my eyes but respect her secrets. I take a little break on the little train chair as if they are a checkpoint. “Man…I never got tired this fast before, hmm…”

“That’s because this is your first time actually walking to places. You’ll build your stamina back in no time. We’re almost at the end of the tour anyway~! Do your best.” Reese and Cain gives me little fist pumps and Kaya nods along with them. So we’re almost done, that means there’s at least four more cars. I think I can manage that. They allowed me to rest for a few more minutes before we went on our way again.

The next two rooms were the sisters' room and Beige’s room. The sisters share a room that  has a bunk bed and two tables. Most of the things they owned were all in the shade of black, brown, and red. It seems like a pretty comfortable room when you get used to it. Koto probably sleeps on the top bunk which is stuffed with leaves and other flowers. Kaya gives no comment about it.

Beige’s room looks like a neat little cafe, it reminds me of Isa and Dan’s cafe only with herbs. He has a neat armchair for reading,and a mysterious trunk at the end of his bed. It’s probably the best place in The Train to drink a warm mug of chocolate milk in, as expected from the room of a really cool dude.

And so we move on to the next car without a hitch, I can feel a breeze blowing stronger as we progress, I think we’re going to climb up some stairs at some point since the placement of the cars towards the end feels jumbled, like there’s a sudden slope up. “Ah, would you like me to carry you, Boen? I bet it’s hard adjusting to the sudden incline.There’s gonna be some stairs soon too.” I guess my face shows that I'm struggling. I could refuse her offer, but stairs, and  I really am having a hard time honestly.

“Okay, thanks a bunch.” I reach out my hand and she proceeds to carry me over her shoulder.