Finding a hotel without making a reservation first is hard. Especially at 9 PM. It wasn't even a hotel. 

 As a last resort, we opened Google and went to a website to look for places we could stay the night. It didn't have to be fancy, just a place to stay with proper beds (Mia stubbornly kept reminding Philip of that requirement as he scrolled through the site) and a sense of security. In the end we rented a whole house for a little under 6,000 pesos.

Beatrice got out of the van once we got to the house and handed the money to the owner, Elize tagging along in case translations were needed. The owner had his hair hastily combed and he looked like he was speaking sluggishly, as if he had to rush out of bed for his business with us.

I twisted my torso, stretching my back. It was like I could feel every groove of my clothes dig into my skin. I had been sitting in the van for too long. Right as I was about to curl up and try to close my eyes again, the doors opened and Elize and Beatrice sat back down. 

Millard pulled into the driveway, the bumps as he reversed into the sloped platform making us all sway. The house was on a dark and quiet street, tightly packed houses painted in fading colors. Every once in a while a tricycle or pedestrian would pass by and the street lamp would be just enough to light the way for it. We were in the quieter part of the town, and I was grateful for that. I needed a change of scenery.

I was on autopilot and barely thought of anything as I got my backpack from the van and dragged my feet into the house. As soon as I saw a sofa I wanted to lay down and sleep for several hours, but Beatrice dumped two duffel bags onto the dining table and told us all to sit.

"Injuries, children. Check yourselves, it'll be quick." 

Elize and nimble Mia got to go upstairs first. Arden, though mostly unscathed, insisted on waiting for me. Philip talked with Millard in the empty kitchen.

Aerron, Philip, and I were the ones that needed attention. Beatrice cleaned my forehead properly and then sprinkled some weird powder on it. I felt...tingly. It was weird because right after she finished, I felt much more tired. I didn't even know I could get more exhausted than I already was. I felt myself nodding off when Beatrice told me to wash my hands before going to sleep.

With Arden supporting me, I forced myself to walk up the stairs. I saw the lights in the first floor illuminating Philip's frown. Aerron helped Beatrice with fixing RenRen up. With his back turned to us, I could see a nasty gash at the back of his head. I stubbornly sat down on the staircase behind him. They had already washed the dried blood off, now it was just a bloody bruised smudge.

"I'll be fine, I'm so tired, Beatrice, please." RenRen rubbed his eyes. His shoes were kicked off into a pile where the rest of ours were.

"Give it a moment, Laurence. This'll make it better." Beatrice handed Aerron a cloth. In her other hand I could see some of that dust she put on me.

RenRen had started to whine, but Aerron elbowed him. "Yuko." Aerron pressed the cloth to his nape. RenRen hissed and shakily grabbed fistfuls of his hair, propping up his elbows on his knees. I awkwardly rubbed his shoulder. 

"Ow, ow, ow ow ow ow..."

Millard noticed me still lingering and told me to go upstairs. I murmured a goodnight to RenRen and waved to Philip and Millard.

The upstairs floor was just a big room and a small bathroom. No door leading to the main room. Just 4 bunk beds and a stack of extra mattresses. I went to the nearest one and found that its bedsheet was dusty. Mia tossed me a pillow still wrapped in plastic. I couldn't fight the sleepiness anymore and settled on my bed, not even bothering to take off my socks or untie my hair.

I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Despite my eyelids feeling crazily heavy, I opened them involuntarily anyway when I woke up. My watch read 10:18. Woah. Almost 12 hours of sleep. The boys had followed up to the room. Arden and Mia were still asleep, Mia looking as comfortable as ever in her nest of blankets and pillows. I knew Arden slept above me. Philip was on his side, his precious tattered notebook open beside him. Aerron in the bunk above him had wrapped himself in a sort of cocoon with his blanket. His glasses lay beside the notebook. Beatrice, Elize, and Millard were nowhere to be found. RenRen was in the bunk next to mine, and he was awake. 

"Morning," I said. He blinked and sat up. "Hello."

"You feeling better?" I pointed to my nape. He nodded. "Where's Millard?"

RenRen sighed. "I think he went to buy food? But I also heard them talking about going on a walk."

I frowned. "A what for what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know." He curled himself up and closed his eyes again.

I sat up, still frowning. There was built up tension in my body and I didn't like it. I wanted to do something, go somewhere, but I didn't know what. I felt a bit lost. I was probably overreacting, since our guardians were just out for a walk, but then I realized that I was acting like a child. And then I remembered I was a child. 

Every once in a while I'd stop and think about what I'm doing (surprising, I know) and then I'd just tell myself, oh, this is crazy. And that was true, this was batshit cuckoo crazy. I was going on some sort of demented field-trip-retreat with people who were previously book characters to me. In addition to that, they tricked my parents into letting me go!

I wondered how my life would have been if I walked away and completely ignored the dogs that day. If I had ran to an adult for help instead of letting them chase me and RenRen through our neighborhood. Did I regret it? Did I regret ending up on this adventure? Not one bit. But sometimes I felt scared. I couldn't navigate the peculiar world fighting off new peculiar threats without my peculiar guardians, and I have prior knowledge. I wondered how my friends who know nothing about the books felt. It must have been harder on them.

I was about to brush off my fear as a delayed sickly feeling from the horse-creature last night that came to me instead of a nightmare, but then my stomach growled. I was just hungry. God, I had to stop with the existential crises regarding this road trip.

"Hoy." I looked up to see Aerron poking his head out from his cocoon, no glasses on. He looked weird.

"What?" 

"Kamusta pagmu-moony-moony mo diyan?" (How's your pondering going on over there?)

"Fuck off." I got out of bed and looked for a pair of shorts I could change into. Once I washed my face and changed, I went downstairs.

"Good morning," Millard greeted me from the counter, a mug of coffee floating in front of where his voice came from. On the table there were paper plates and plastic bags full of breakfast food. My stomach made a noise in response.

"Morning," I said, combing my fingers through my hair. From the table, Elize beamed seeing me. She had one foot propped up on her chair and she was sipping warm milk from a mug. Then she called for the others, and soon they came down.

"Good morning, Ace." Beatrice dipped her pandesal in her coffee and took a bite as Mia came last. She gave them a lazy nod before sitting down at the table. "This is ingenious. Who would've thought bread-crumb dusted rolls would go so well with coffee?" She passed the brown paper bag of bread to Aerron who was reaching for it.

I took one fried egg, one hotdog, and rice from the assortment of plastic bags and began to eat. I was a little sad that there was no scrambled egg, but the rice being garlic fried rice made up for it. 

As I was about to take a bite of my breakfast, I felt a hand press the top of my head. "Eat well, everyone," Millard said. 

For 15 minutes it was just the sound of chewing and kids enjoying their late breakfast. It seemed like everyone was tired from last night, but they also got enough sleep to make up for it. Mia even looked like she was considering going back to bed. Beatrice happily dipped her bread in her coffee.

"So what happened last night?" RenRen asked after taking a swig of water.

"What about last night?" Millard replied.

"We changed routes twice. What's going on at Devil's Place?"

"Devil's Acre. Would you like the full story of a summarized version?"

A chorus of "full version" rang out from the table. I looked at Beatrice. She had her eyes glued to her coffee as she chewed.

"Well, as you know, we come from Devil's Acre, which is a loop with many other fellow peculiars. After the battle of the Library of Souls, the ymbrynes—"

"Yeah, we get that part," Mia interrupted. I cringed at the rude gesture and waited for Millard to continue.

"Alright. Aside from our headmistress Miss Peregrine there's also Ophelia and Horace, who are helping us with locating Tomaszewski. Horace has prophetic dreams and Ophelia is sort of like a locator. She's working on getting the exact place, don't worry."

"We're just here to actually get the job done," Beatrice said, nodding. 

"Before we left, Horace told us he saw us—all of us—in an open area. And judging by his reported position of the sun, we were in the north. So, that's where we were headed using the nearest highway. Halfway through, Beatrice got a call saying the place was way farther down south from where we were headed. And we trusted that, since Atimonan was close to a beach."

I frowned. "Almost everywhere here is near a beach. We're in an archipelago."

Millard's floating shirt shifted. "Then following the latest attack, we got another update via phone call that we were headed for the wrong place, again. Ophelia and Horace, they're working together along with another ymbryne. It's hard to track Tomaszewski's location in person, and they're the best we have."

Philip raised his eyebrows. "And now?"

"Now, what?"

"Where are we going? What's our plan?"

"Ophelia's unavailable right now, we were told. But she'll contact us in a few hours. Horace has some idea of our next destination, but we need confirmation from both an ymbryne and Ophelia before we make another move. We don't want to waste time nor effort, and that's straight from what Miss Peregrine herself said."

I could feel the atmosphere in the room turn sullen, and someone groaned. Personally, I didn't mind. Even though my body felt good as new from last night, my forehead still ached when I touched it where it was wounded last night, like it had a bruise. And I didn't think I could handle another half day in the van. Not to mention my other friends who had injuries of their own.

I stood up, my chair scraping the floor. "I'll wash the dishes." Beatrice nodded a thanks to me and she and Millard disappeared outside.

The rest of us got up, and went to do our own things. I had my back turned to them, washing the cups and glasses. 

"We're not staying here another night, right?" Philip asked.

Aerron set his empty mug down beside me. "Don't think so."

"Let's keep the spoons and forks," I heard Arden say. A moment later I was washing those bits of plastic too.

Elize threw some things in a trash can near me, then leaned on the counter before tying her hair up in a bun. "Para na 'kong anak nila." She grinned. I recalled how she was with Millard and Bee that morning on their walk. ("I'm kind of like their kid now.")

"Lahat nga tayo, eh." ("All of us are.")

"Lahat tayo mga third wheel." She playfully rolled her eyes. ("We're all third wheeling them.")

"Yuck. Naglambingan sila?" ("Ew. Were they being lovey-dovey?")

"'Di. Wala lang, pero alam mo yung halatang gustong-gusto nila yung isa't isa? Parang naghahalikan na..." she waved in front of her face. "Naghahalikan via mata. Ganun. Sweet," She giggled to herself. ("Nope. It's not much, but do you know when it's obvious two people really like each other? Like they're...like they're kissing through their eyes. It's sweet.")

I nodded, smiling. "So...dito lang muna tayo?" ("We'll be staying here for now?")

"Oo ata." ("I think so.")

"Okay lang naman sakin," I said. "Pero yung iba naman..." ("I'm fine with that, but the others...")

"Oo nga. At kahit di na 'yan dumudugo dapat magpahinga ka pa rin," Elize told me, brushing my hair back to take a look at where my forehead was wounded last night. Then she smirked. "Tsaka reklamo ng reklamo pa si Mister OA dun." I looked to where she was facing and saw RenRen looking out the window minding his business. ("Yeah. And even if this isn't bleeding you should still rest nonetheless. Plus Mister OA there won't stop complaining.")

"Shut up!" He made a face at Elize.

"Does it still hurt?" I asked him, pointing to his neck. 

He shrugged and pursed his lips. "No. And I'm not complaining that much!" He whined to Elize. "I'm sore."

"Suit yourself."

Just then, Philip trudged down the stairs talking on the phone in Korean. He sounded a bit frustrated. Aerron followed, telling us to be quiet and mouthing tatay niya. Philip paused, then more Korean. Mia and Arden then joined us, holding their backpacks. Arden was holding mine, too, and I rushed to get it. (his dad)

"Didn't have to do that," I whispered. "Why do you have your stuff?"

"I don't want to stay upstairs all day. I want to keep my things here instead." She had everything back in her bag except a sketchbook and a pencil case. I could already imagine her leaving her bag in the van and drawing for the rest of the day, curled up on a sofa. 

RenRen seemed to get tired of whatever he found by the window. He sat back down, and stared as Philip paced the living room in front of him. He paused, then spoke again, paused, then spoke again. He didn't seem to notice us. 

RenRen looked at me then sighed. "You guys are all standing on the stairs. Get down."

Aerron was at the bottom, so I was about to poke the back of his head,  but then Philip exclaimed. He smiled awkwardly, then nodded. He spoke again, then ended the call. "Annyeong..." He turned to us, hands at his sides. "I want some cheese sticks."

★ kee speaks hai every1 i missed u :D (talking to audience consisting of 1 person) the scene felt stuck so i had to wrap it up here