"- oh, the Gabriel school."

"Yeah," says Kota. "I can't pronounce it, sorry."

"Keep going that way and it's the one with the big wooden angel sculpture out front on the right."

"Thank you."

Fika re-peats "Gabriel" to herself a bit a few times after that.

Walk walk, just a little bit farther!

There is indeed a building with a big wooden angel sculpture out front on the right!

Kota drags himself to the door and wearily pounds on it a couple times. An old lady opens the door. "Oh!"

"Somebody said..." Kota says, pausing to catch his breath, "that this is where you go, if you don't, have anywhere else, to go."

"- yes. It is. Come on in and I'll get you each a bed." She waves them inside.

"Thank you."

She will hold Kota's hand while they go into this new place, if he'd like.

He is too tired to have an opinion on that either way.

They get beds - in separate rooms, though there are plenty of kids of various ages in each.

Fika is going to stay with her friend Kota actually.

"- are you both girls?" asks the lady.

"Huh?" asks Kota as though this is the stupidest question he has ever heard.

"Don't think so?"

Fika doesn't sound completely sure.

"This is the girls' room. That's the boys' room," says the matron. "It's a condition of staying here that you follow the rules."

"Um."

"I can be a boy then I guess?"

"- are you a boy?"

"Why do you have them in different rooms?" says Kota.

"It's the rule, it cuts down on misbehavior - you're going to wake the others, shh -"

... Fika does not want to cause people to get mad at Kota but also. She is so confused.

"I'm a boy for to-night," she whispers. 

"You can't be a boy for one night if you have always been a girl before." She makes another attempt to shoo them into their respective rooms.

Fika glances at Kota to see how he feels about this. 

Kota looks pretty wiped and will just go collapse in an unoccupied boys' bed without further protest.

Then Fika will go to the girls room herself. She'd known some amaliens who could be a bit focused on gender but this is very silly.

The girls' room has four unoccupied beds of twenty. Some of the girls snore. One of them is sitting up, rocking back and forth.

Does the rocking girl look like she needs a hug?

Depends! Does rocking back and forth in bed, barely visible as a silhouette against the gaslamp-suffused curtains, look like needing a hug?

Fika asks! Very very quietly.

"Rrrg!" says the rocking girl.

"Shut uuuup," says a horizontal girl in the next bed.

That. Was not a yes and was a no maybe? Fika goes to sleep - she can find out if the rocking girl needs hugs in the morning.

The Gabriel School wakes up at dawn. Everyone, at least in the room Fika's in, has to make their beds - the matron from last night is there insisting, though she makes rocking-girl's bed for her - and she gives everyone who spent the night a coin, including Fika. Then apparently they all have to either attend classes or clear out.

This is extremely confusing, like the Amentan city. 

Fika goes looking for Kota.

Kota is rubbing his eyes and slouching out of the boys' room. "Fika? There you are."