Welcome to the Autumn Dorms [409]

Grey walked steadily into the dorm room, following his exuberant sister.  After a week in the initiate dorms, the siblings had finally taken their placement tests and, lo and behold, had somehow found themselves in not only the same dormitory, but the same dorm room, as well.  It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good, either; he'd honestly been looking forward to having a few short hours each day to himself.

Well, whatever, The boy sighed.  I'm sure I'll live... I'm just not sure if Keo will be okay with it; she's still mad at me for the statue thing, after all.

One week had passed since the siblings' arrival, and Keo seemed to be tolerating Grey's presence reasonably well.  She was certainly handling it a lot better than she had been- Grey had only just recently regained the ability to transform, so for the entirety of his stay in the initiate dorms he'd been forced to play the role of a helpless cat who relied endlessly on Keo for everything necessary to survive.  It hadn't been terrible, per se; Keo was usually an excellent cat owner, and she still was.  She'd just, you know, conveniently forgotten to feed him a couple times, that was all.

Now that he was back in human form, however, Keo seemed to be acting as if nothing had happened.  She was treating him in relatively the same way as she always did- laughing, talking, shaking him violently when she got too excited- and it honestly worried Grey.  Whenever she got like this so soon after a fight, it usually meant she was secretly stewing in her own guilt; somehow she'd managed to convince herself that the destruction of the statue had been her fault and now she was trying to find a way to apologize for something that had been out of her control.

Fuck, Grey thought.  How the hell am I supposed to get her to forgive me when she's centering the whole thing around herself like this?

---

Keo paraded around Dorm 409, wasting no time in opening every door and exploring every nook and cranny.  The place was a lot bigger than the initiate dorms, and brighter, too; each bedroom had been lined with tasteful orange trim, and the beds and windows had been properly furnished with bright, fall-colored decor.  In the bathrooms, the shower curtains portrayed a brilliant smattering of reds, yellows, and oranges, and the entire dorm exuded a light, cinnamon fragrance that tickled the nose.  Her favorite bedroom was in the top right corner of the dorm; its window faced north, meaning that it would receive plenty of natural light during the day without getting hot, and the tree positioned just outside would provide her with the perfect escape route should she ever feel the need to sneak out.  The bed was nice, too; all of the furniture was adjustable, of course, but this particular one had already been set about three feet off the ground, giving Keo the perfect alcove underneath in which to draw and study.

Grey's room would be across the hall, in the top left part of the dorm; like his sister, Keo knew Grey liked to sneak out every once in a while, and the same tree that provided an escape route in Keo's room could easily serve a similar purpose in Grey's.  Besides, Grey's room had a shelf just above the writing desk; with the sunlight streaming in from the window, it would be the perfect place for cat- Grey to sit and bask.

Speaking of cat- Grey, Keo felt a little bad about how she'd been treating him for the past week.  Poio hadn't deserved not to be fed; if she had intervened before the fight began, after all, the statue would never have been broken and everybody would still be happy.  She could easily have defended Grey from Connor's insults and that would have solved the problem, but instead she'd been foolish and allowed the boys to fight just so she could sit in the office and draw.  How stupid could she be?  She'd have to find a way to apologize to Grey.

In the trend of initiate testing, empty dorms found tenants for the first time, results coming in bulk and new students piling in to meet their new roommates. Yuni's case was strange, though. She had been at the school for a week, doing nothing but meeting with her language teacher. A steady grasp on English was paired with a steady grasp on American culture. She still looked out windows for faces peering back, still tried to find agents in the Sunday afternoon crowds of students in the Courtyard. But she felt save, and in due time, found the music room. At the admittance to her new room, something that snuck up on her, she pushed through with flurries of "Thenk you, thenk you, sorry, gudbye." Often she just had to point at the flag that adourned her uniform, a small patch of her old country's banner, North Korea. It lay flat on her breast and she felt like a guest, like any moment they were going to renounce her studentship and she would have to return.

She walked quietly up the stairs of the Autumn dorms, backpack over her shoulders and two leather containers in both hands; a small suitcase and a violin container, a stamped chalky message reading: Property of Beata Academy. She heard flavored English muffled by the door in front of her, a door with a plastic gold frame. 409. She sighed at the thick sounds of the language she could not entirely grasp, a week's knowledge under her belt with some spotty education from before her arrival, and standing at the door for a while, put down her suitcase and turned the knob. The old door clicked and screeched, like the sharp caterwaul of a misplayed string, and she stood there, lips firm and ready to expel words she did not know. Frankly, she felt tired; she hadn't been awake in a year. A picture of her last lively moment clung to her breast pocket under the flag embroidery, a picture of her mom and herself, a Chinese flag between them. They sat in the back of a large truck, and took it themselves on an old Polaroid her father had bought in Pyongyang. It was face down against her sweater.

Keo peeked out from within her bedroom as the door to Room 409 creaked slowly open.  A girl, probably a few years younger than Keo herself, stepped hesitantly into the room with a bag and violin case in hand.  She was small, dainty even, and her almond eyes were large and exotic.  Keo brightened, always eager to meet somebody new.

"It's a girl!" The autumn bounded out from behind her door, approaching the younger female with a welcoming smile.  "Are you our new dorm mate?"

And like that, a girl was shouting at her. Yuni seemed taken aback, stepping backward towards the door a step or two, until her back pressed against the wood and she could no longer put space between them. She silently gave a smile, nervous and fragile, lips firmly closed and tight. She pointed at the flag on her breast. "I can't speak very good English," she said in a shaky accent. Hopefully they wouldn't hate her; she wanted nothing more than to make American friends, to see what they knew and if what she'd learned was true. At one point she would have said it was definitely true, that American children were sad and brainwashed, but a year out of the homeland and she was hesitant to give this answer. She wanted a real answer, from a real person, and there was no way to get one.

Wait for me, her eyes said in uncomfortable glances, and she wondered what the best way was to disappear into her room.

It had seemed rather an abrupt stay in the initiate dorms, a momentary positioning for any newcomer that never seemed to last quite long enough for anyone to adjust. New school, new customs, new rules. Beata was a strange world of nuanced surprises and Thaddeus was slowly learning to discover them all. How far away from Ireland everything seemed, and though he'd started to socialise a bit more, the lean youth still hadn't grasped the concept that this was all for his own good - at least according to his parents.

He'd received a package and a letter from them only that morning. Words written in elegant Celtic scroll reminding him to observe and learn - the bluntness tempered only but his mother's words of encouragement. The package had been well received however, for Thaddeus had indeed missed his guitar. He carried it now, along with his bag of clothes and a box which apparently contained "something he might need". The dark haired boy would open it later in his new room. Once he got there of course.

The school was a lot bigger than he had initially though, a twisting maze of paths that he had to decipher, eventually finding his way to the Autumn dorms. Room 409 was his new allocated place of lodging. He could hear voices and, as luck would have it, it wasn't the crazy kind it was coming from a room emblazoned with 409 on the door. He stood in the doorway, taking note of the scene in front of him. There was a strange concoction of energy and nervousness in the air. Perhaps they needed a someone like Thad to keep things steady - well, as much as an impulsive Irishman could anyway.

The tall lad eyed what looked like a violin case but didn't say anything on the subject just yet. Instead he resorted to displaying his best lopsided grin and saying, "So is this where the party is? Glad I was invited." He looked around. His green eyes flickered from the haired girl to another who looked like she was trying to escape of some Asian heritage. Thaddeus had to admit geography was not his strong point. And was that another boy over there? If it was, at least it meant he wouldn't be outnumbered - not that he would have minded of course.

[Ooc: long post is long. But now all of 409 is here x3]

Keo glanced at the flag; her eyes widened in understanding.  "Oh. Oooh."  She murmured.  "You probably can't understand me, do you?"  Thinking for a moment, the girl's face suddenly brightened again.  "That's okay!"  Keo spun on her toes, disappearing into her bedroom almost as quickly as she had emerged.  After a couple seconds of hurried rustling, the teen returned, holding in her hand a strange hand-held device.  She held it out to the Korean girl.

"Iphone 6," Keo explained.  "It's like twenty years outdated, so I got it practically for free off of Ebay; you can have it if you want.  It's got a translator app on it, though I can't say it's very accurate."

Unlocking the phone, the girl quickly navigated to the app in question and opened it, accessing the translator's audio option with a few quick taps.  "My name is Keo," The Autumn enunciated into the device.  "What's your name?"

---

Grey watched, slightly uninterested, from the corner of the living room.  The new guy was a relief, at least- Grey would rather end up sleeping in the wild than in a dorm room surrounded by girls.  He gave a short nod of greeting to his fellow male, wandering over to invite him in.

"Nah," The cat-boy welcomed.  He gestured towards the two girls occupying the right half of the room.  "I doubt you'll find much of a shebang over on that side of the room; left half's where the party's really at."

Yuni watched her retreat, thinking that she had to have been unappealing to her. Or maybe she was getting one of the others? She heard one or two other people in the dorm along with her, and knew they weren't the only two people there. However, she came out with the cellphone, the kind rich people had, though it seemed blockier and strange. When the girl began speaking in English, Yuni blinked helplessly, and kept this expression until the app's monotonous voice droned her message in Korean. She looked down at the screen, at the Korean symbols that popped up slowly, and to the girl holding the phone. "Kun Yu Ni," she said silently. Her eyes were still low and lost, but there was the twinge of a smile on her face. She did not take the phone; she didn't know she was supposed to take it.

She didn't seem to notice Thaddeus at first. English was background noise to her, not meant for her, but her seemed to walk up and to that Yuni stepped sideways slightly, looking at him silently, observing him. She'd never been near so many white people before.