I've been in this nice hotel for two weeks now.

Working for someone like Mrs. Oxentierna could be pretty hard. I mean, she's a really blunt woman, and she is not at all afraid to tell you when you screw up. I noticed that, not just in me, but with her son. Though I took most the work now, she still had that unreasonably attractive son of her's working for her, and she scolded him just as she did me.

Is it a little weird of me, to appreciate being punished? Not like in some masochistic way, I just like that I am treated as someone's equal now. I didn't have any siblings or anything back in my old family, no one to be treated beside to compare my situation to. Never was I equal to my parents though, if you want to try and compare that. Berwald didn't seem to be even with his mother in terms of power with their relationship, but it seemed healthier than what I was grown accustomed to. She told him she loved him and stuff, and I only remember hearing that when I was in public, only said when others could hear it. Saying it wasn't genuine was an understatement. With them, it seemed to be. I decided that even though she was a rough old gal, I liked Mrs. Oxentierna.

Initially, I assumed that the Oxenstiernas would be early to rise, but turns out, I always woke up the earliest. I used the space of time in the morning to write in my journal, bathed in the pale light of my opened window. I always had a lot to write in there, and writing made me feel calm. I dunno, it is pretty weird, but writing it down made it final, like I had to prove to myself that it happened or something.

I found out a lot of cool stuff yesterday about them! Apparently, Mrs. Oxentstierna's first name is Alfhild. I'm still gonna call her Mrs. Oxenstierna though, it seems wrong to be on a first name basis with her. She taught me how to properly fix up an entire room after someone leaves yesterday. I like working here a lot. I'm being productive, I'm sleeping in a bed, the family is nice (even though she wasn't kidding about how much they speak Swedish- I swear, sometimes she uses confusing words that I've never learned of just to taunt me!) And I am certainly not complaining that her son happens to be so attractive. Nope nope, not at all. But he's kind of hard to talk to, he's one of those people who really like one word sentences. He's kind of scary in that way, but it takes a lot more than that to really scare me. I kind of have a friend here in addition to them though. There is an Estonian guy named Eduard who talks to me a lot. He's a guest here, and apparently his parents are here for business, and all he gets to do is be bored at the hotel, so now we are friends. He's really nice to me, but I don't think he likes Berwald much. I think it is because he's scared of him, but he won't admit it if he is.

Anyways, I'm just super happy to be here. Good job for screwing up so bad and trying to steal from these guys, Tino.

I signed my name at the bottom, in my own chicken-scratch way. I amuse myself, because I always sign my initials, which happen to be T.V. If you didn't know my name, you might as well assume a television was writing my journal. It was close enough though, my life lately has been interesting enough that you could probably write a decent show out of it. My whole life was like that though, and from what I knew of movies, they ate up that whole family drama stuff. The shows would love my family. Idolize them. Not in a good way, I don't think, but they would be made famous.

Quickly, I stop thinking about that. Going in to deep on how my shitty life was made fetish by the media disgusted me, it was too early for that bullshit.

As I do every day, I open back to the first page of my notebook, the list. I had checked off one thing.

-Surprise (Good Surprise!) [x]

If you couldn't guess already, that got marked off the night I came into this home, to work. Who wouldn't be surprised to be taken in after a robbery, I mean! I would call that a pleasant surprise too, because an unpleasant surprise was something like police running in and carrying me back to Helsinki. I have a home. That was good. I keep debating if I should mark off friendship because Eduard was kind of a friend to me, but I wasn't sure. He was only here until the end of the month, and I didn't have a cell phone, and I wouldn't dare ask for one. I owed this place too much to be demanding something that I didn't need from it. But anyways, Eduard. I didn't know how we would end up, so I didn't know if calling us friends was a safe statement to begin with, and even if it was, I doubted it was a permanent one. In this age, long distance communication without a cell phone never worked long.

Calling Berwald a friend didn't seem right either. He didn't talk enough for me really to tell if he liked my company at all or not, unlike Eduard, who made it painfully obvious he liked having me around. And Mrs. Oxenstierna was way to old to be a friend of mine, she was more like a mother figure. I wouldn't ever call her mom or anything, and she wasn't extremely protective over me. But you can't take someone like me in after what I have done and not have strong maternal instinct. I admired her as a person, but I wouldn't call of any of that friendship.

I closed the journal, stuffing it into the drawer next to my bed. I had discovered that Berwald was a super-accomplished craftsmen, especially with wood and furniture and the likes, and apparently he made most the furniture in the hotel. He learned from his dad, who I didn't know much else about, besides his name and that he apparently looked a lot like Berwald, but with brown eyes. I couldn't picture Berwald with any other color of eyes. It just seemed right for him to have frighteningly azure eyes, and nothing else. Apparently he didn't like them much, since statistically, though most beautiful, blue eyes are the weakest when it comes to vision, resulting in him donning a pair of wire-framed glasses that honestly set off his face quite well. But all he had told me on the matter was that it was inconvenient.

A bad tendency of mine, going on mentally about him. No, don't think I have a crush on him or anything. I'm honest with myself enough to admit that any attraction I felt toward him at the moment was entirely induced by how he looked. Nothing to be ashamed of, I never quite understood why people felt guilty for liking the appearance of someone they didn't know very well. What I had for him was just an extremely prevalent liking of his attractive face and body. If I struggled to call him a friend, I would not be calling him a crush anytime soon, now would I?

"Hey, Tino!" I was greeted by Eduard as I came downstairs, dressed in proper attire. I had been given old hand-me-downs from Berwald to wear. Apparently he wasn't always a muscly giant, because his old stuff fit me decently. According to Mrs. Oxenstierna though, if I ever needed the clothes altered, I could get Berwald to do it. I'll admit, I was a little shocked to learn that he knew how sew. Just picturing him sitting around sewing with a needle and thread was pretty amusing.

Haha, I bet he could crush the needle in his hands or something ridiculous like that. I mused, waving to my (debatable) friend. "Good morning Eduard. What has got you up this early in the morning?"

"Dunno, the sun woke me up I guess. You?" He questioned me, arms crossed. He was already dressed and everything, and being honest, it looked like he had been up for quite sometime. Hair brushed, face washed, proper attire in place. Eduard always dressed kind of fancy, in a nerdy way. In the many times we talked, he had mentioned a lot on how he was pretty much just a stereotypical nerd in his own opinion, and liked computers more than most people.

He told me he liked me more than computers though, apparently. I didn't quite know what that meant, he was hard to read. "I always wake up early, I work here."

I swear, he forgets daily I work here. "Well, yeah! But still, this is kinda ridiculous, you are up before the owner herself!"

"So are you." I shrug. And from the looks of it, today, he seemed to have been awake longer than even I, and I had time to write a moderately lengthy diary entry that morning. Naturally, I wondered what was up with him, but nothing could be done about it, even if I knew. I got a little less intrusive during my stay here, but I am still me, and I do forget boundaries occasionally.

Eduard, who I mostly just wind up calling Ed only because I am lazy, just sighed to that. He followed me like a lost puppy into the kitchen. He was a high-paying guest, so the kid could go wherever he wanted. Not trying to say the kitchen is cut off to our normal customers, they just never really came in like he did. I went to my work, preparing the coffee for us staff. And the guests, if they wanted it I guess, but Eduard was the only one who even came in to take advantage of it, and he didn't really like coffee enough to care much. I poured my own cup after it was all brewed up, and as a proper man should, I drank it black. That was one trait I did seem to share with both Oxenstiernas, the love of black coffee. He cringed to that, crinkling his nose at the strong stuff. I noticed, that when he did drink coffee, he drank it very differently than I did. He plopped in a few ice cubes, poured in creamer until the brown substance ran nearly white, and poured in enough grainy sugar to put a small child into a diabetic coma. It looked vile to me, but my drinking of the more natural stuff seemed as disgusting to him as his method of coffee drinking did to me. To each their own, I suppose.

"Why do you like that stuff?" You know, a lot of times I think I am awfully rude and intrusive, and then I compare myself to Eduard, and feel immensely better about that. He doesn't annoy me with it, it's actually more amusing to me than anything. I just think he is a little childish, but so am I, so I don't judge him for it.

Why do I? I dunno, my taste buds like feeling the riveting sensation of robust coffee run over it? I snort out loud to myself, an action that startled my companion quite a bit, as he stepped back with widened eyes. The way I had worded that in my mind had just amused myself, I couldn't help but laugh. I shrug my shoulders, trying to regain my composure in the process. "I dunno, I like strong coffee, that's all you can really say about it."

He blinked, adjusting his glasses. "Tino, you are the strangest friend I have."

I wonder if he was shocked at all by the momentary flash of my eyes, and the grin that spread on my face with that statement. Looks like I would get to knock off another thing on my list tomorrow morning.

"Men!" A familiar voice broke the short silence that had enveloped between us, catching our attention to a dressed, but barely awake Mrs. Oxenstierna. It was kind of a quirk of her's to greet the room by whatever gender prevailed the room. Had their been three ladies occupying the room with us, we would have been greeted by the chant of ladies. I don't think she had a reason to do it, she just did. But we all have our little things like that.

Eduard backed away, smiling. "Hello, Mrs. Oxenstierna."

"Hey, Mrs. Oxenstierna." I greet, handing her a mug of that black coffee I had made up. "Sleep well?"

As always, she took the coffee from my hands with an unspoken thanks. I, fortunately, don't care if manners are ever used on me, as long as I'm treated human. I don't need dumb formalities like thank you from people, and I surely did not need it from her. "Yeah, I did. Berwald is gonna be gone for the day by the way, he'll be out giving lessons to some kid."

"Lessons?" Eduard questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," She nodded, facing him. The respectable woman liked to face people when she spoke to them, and got very much distracted if people didn't look at her when she spoke to them, so she made sure to keep their attention. Her eyes made that an easy task, I think. "He's into making stuff out of wood, and he likes teaching kids if they give him a Euro or so."

Now, that I did not know. A single buck? Maybe the guy was generous, but that was downright unreasonable. Eduard seemed to agree. "That cheap?

Her smile in response to that was quite large. Though not the most verbal, she was truly proud of her only son, and I think anyone could see that in her. "What can I say? The man likes kids a lot. And it gives him an excuse to make stuff out of wood. Works out for everyone."

You know, the more I learn about the guy, slowly the more adorable he gets. Which shouldn't be fair at all, he was already attractive. And when you are attractive, you gotta have a super fatal flaw. I mean, I am a perfect example of that! I know I am good looking, no dispute about it, but I am a runaway ex-thief. My flaw to balance out being attractive. Every attractive person had one. You can't really count Berwald's short sentences as a flaw, because that was just a cute quirk, not a flaw. But he had one, otherwise he was breaking attractive laws, which wasn't exactly possible to do.

Eduard sighed a long sigh. I wondered what was up with that. Maybe he liked kids? I wondered if he had a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something. Maybe he had a kid with them? The guy was fairly attractive, so maybe having a child so young was his flaw!

Or maybe it is you just having a hyperactive imagination, Tino.

Yeah, that was probably it, actually. Luckily I don't have much time to be too hyperactive now, with this job. "Anyways, Tino, you'll have to do Berwald's work today. He hasn't left yet, but I'm letting him sleep in because, patient as Ber is, kids are tiring. So you get the slack."

I nodded, setting down my coffee mug in the sink. "Got it." After I get orders, I don't procrastinate. An intensive left by my parents, who never let me procrastinate a minute of my life. I could thank them for that, it made me an exceptional worker. Eduard followed behind, on the claims that he wouldn't get in the way and he had absolutely nothing else to do. I didn't fight, Ed isn't worth fighting.

He sat in the couch while I made the bed to a room that was now vacant. "Soo..." He mused, staring up at the ceiling. "What are you thinking?"

"Hm?" I fluffed a pillow, not really getting the question.

"What are you thinking, Tino?" He repeated, still looking up at the ceiling. Out of a brief moment of childish curiosity, I let my eyes follow his gaze, just to see if anything was interesting in the ceiling for him to be staring so hard. But there wasn't. He was just staring.

Well, how the hell was I supposed to answer that? "Um, pillow fluffing?"

That was the first time I ever heard him laugh. He has a weird laugh, it sounds kind of like he's choking, but he probably doesn't know that. It is rude to insult someone's laugh anyways, so I didn't. "That's cute."

I didn't know what was so cute about my job, so I went about it silently. For the rest of the day, eventually he stopped following me. I don't think he meant to come off as creepy, but for lack of better term, that was creepy. Now that I think about it, I think Berwald might actually be better at communication than him. One word sentences made more sense than complete ones that didn't further the conversation at hand.

But it didn't much matter to me in the end. I shrugged it off as my mind just being a little warped by the end of the day, as I helped put up the dishes from dinner. Berwald got home late, hugged his mom, and greeted me with an awkward grunt. He had a band-aid on his finger, apparently the kid had been really bad at the craft. He didn't seem mad about it though. By his standards, he was in a good mood. We even had a suitable conversation before we headed off to bed, while walking to our rooms. Not surprisingly, I had to initiate.

"How was your day?"

"Good." He shrugged, answering me.

I smile, leaning a little close to him. In a friendly way, of course! "What did you make?"

"A chair." Berwald informed me.

That was literally it before he parted to his own room with a wave of his hand. We had talked all the way from the kitchen to the hall. Call that small, but damn, I felt accomplished. Our normal conversations never got far, not to say this one did. It's just a thing- talking to him makes me really happy. When we work, I'll always babble on about stuff just to see if he has anything to say. And when he does, I get all giddy.

I opened up my drawer, grabbing for my journal. I thought for a moment if it was time. It honestly wasn't, but I was just so eager to have this list filled so I could move on from it.

-Friendship (With the person I really am, not fake Tino!) [x]

I marked that out before bed, and if you asked me, I wouldn't have been able to tell you if it was because of my excitement that I broke a little more through into Berwald that I just wanted to call us friends, or because Eduard had flat out called me his friend. I don't know which one meant more to me. Eduard is nice and all, but he's too clingy I suppose. Berwald keeps his distance, and I guess I was falling into that 'if I can't have it, I want it' frame of mind. But either way, I had experienced friendship somehow, I just didn't know which one qualified more as conventional friendship.

I fell asleep not caring either way.