My Name is Loto [Pokémon Fanfiction]

20| My Happiness

I swore the world was ending when I awoke the next morning. A barrage of sound banged at all of my walls, and it seemed like the walls themselves were shaking. That might've just been the Sleep Powder talking though, because things became a lot calmer when the fog filling my mind began to clear. The mess of noise was likely caused by Ina. And now that I could actually discern the individual sounds, it was just her moving about through the hall outside my door, opening up the other rooms in the process. Sure enough, she was out there when I checked.

"Morning, Loto!" she called as she rushed past, carrying a high stack of towels with a half-filled bucket of water dangling from her wrist. Lili was going wild too, as she was practically drowning the rooms and hall with the scents of a bouquet of flowers. I actually had to cover my nose so I wouldn't smell it, it was so overpowering. I felt bad for Dew since she could smell it better, and she buried her face in my scarf to escape it.

I followed Ina into one of the rooms, utterly confused. "What's going on?" I asked.

She spared me a glance. "Kamal and a couple of his lackeys are coming later today. We're supposed to have this whole place as clean as possible."

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

"Yep! Run these down to Kū." She tossed me a wadded-up bundle of towels. I vaguely recalled him as being the worker who was in charge of all of the clothes washing here. "Also see if we have any more candles. They have to be the green or white ones," Ina added. I didn't hesitate and left.

Similar chaos was happening on the lower floors as I descended, and I was surprised to see a couple people I hadn't seen before. Likely guests, since they had bags with them. None of them looked particularly happy with all the activity.

"Noisy bunch..." a guy grumbled as he went on ahead of me down the stairs. By the time I got to the lobby, he was out the front door, and Abloy was locking it. I guessed that nobody wanted any interruptions or possible unveilings of what was going on here.

After handing off the towels to a disgruntled and rain-soaked Kū, I found both Guella and another staff member in the lobby. They were scrubbing it down, making every surface shine. Guella noticed me come in first, and a horrible sense of awkwardness filled me when our gazes met. She did smile as she said good morning, though it wasn't that wide.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" I asked.

"No thank you, we can handle things," Guella responded. "I just ask that you stay up in your room later today with any lights out unless I call you down, please."

It was like a kid being confined to their room as punishment. My eyes narrowed, but I didn't object.

Breakfast with some kind of bread that bore a sweet taste that wasn't sugar. Apparently it was "banana bread." Bananas were definitely not native to Tranquelum, but I still liked it, and I knew Dew would love it. After telling someone about the candles Ina wanted, I took a couple slices of the bread back to my room, where I sat down at the table and ate in silence.