The Anonymous

Chapter 24: Art

Shannon’s POV

We managed to settle everything down after an hour of discussion. We all agreed to sleep in the master suite, and just let the boys use Wyn’s prepared mattresses. I know this is not what we expected to experience during our trip, but it’s not that bad. After all, we just have four days to stay in this country, so we just ignored the negativity and focused on our main goal.

The boys left the hotel area to visit the construction site. We are not yet needed for the construction of the buildings today, but they want to see how the project is going and maybe update Milly and I about the situation.

“I think it would be better to eat outside the hotel. I want to explore this country so bad, Rei,” Milly says.

“Sure, that’s my plan too. I’ll tell Blaze about it.”

We are in our bedroom and ironing our shirts given by the organization. Tomorrow we will be helping with the construction for the whole day, and we need to use similar shirts so that the members can recognize us immediately.

The jobs we will be doing are fairly simple. We are to help with the construction for two days, and another day will be meant for lending a hand with the interior design. We already met the team leader that will supervise us, and we have already talked about our designated roles for tomorrow.

Since we are fifteen students, we decided to divide ourselves into five groups with three members each, per different parts on the site. Blaze and I ended up in the same team, along with another student that I'm not familiar with. He wasn't able to attend the meeting due to jet lag, but I hope we can have a comfortable time together.

“I see, you’ll tell Blaze about— Oops! It’s Zac for me. I forgot that I shouldn’t call him Blaze,” Milly teases.

“Stop it, Milly. I know where this is leading to.”

She walks near me and sits in front of me. Her teasing grin is already hinting that she’s about to tell me about her intuitions and such.

“What? I haven’t even started yet. I was just curious, y'know. Why do you call each other's names like that? Is that a secret endearment?”

I stopped ironing as my mind wandered as to how Blaze and I came up with such a naming thing.

“Well, to make the long story short, he accidentally met my sister, Catherine. You know that my sister is quite friendly, even to strangers, right? She basically told him that Shannon is what our parents call me because I used to hate my second name,” I explained.

“You did? I didn’t know that! Why did you used to hate your name?”

“Because it sounds like a boy's name. I got bullied before because it didn’t sound feminine.” 

“Oh. Then, why did you call him Blaze? Just to be fair?”

“Exactly. But before, it’s just to tease each other, however, we eventually got used to it.”

The story about how Blaze and I came up with our name calling is actually real. However, the backstory on why I used to hate my second name is not. The real reason why I hated to be called Edrei before is because I only want my real parents to call me by that name. And when they died, I think no one deserved to call me that.

But as time went by, I realized how shallow my reason was, so I let others call me Rei. Until now, everyone I know thinks that it’s my only name and I never really clarified it.

After two hours, we can already hear Wyn’s loud laugh while he's talking to Donovan. We don’t even have to check to confirm, since Wyn’s chaotic ass is like an alarm for us.