"Another day, another battle," Klein muttered, the words dragging behind a weary sigh.
His stomach still throbbed from breakfast, heavy and unwelcomed, but there was no time to rest, not when the morning ritual loomed.
Across the room stood Isabella, his sister and self-appointed nemesis, flanked by a fortress of pillows like a queen preparing for war. Her eyes sparkled with mischief, her grin already halfway to victory.
For the past month, she'd made it her mission to test his patience daily, summoning him to their makeshift arena with relentless glee. And though Klein grumbled, though he cursed the absurdity of it all, he couldn't deny the thrill, the satisfaction of landing a well-aimed blow, of watching her stumble, even if just for a moment.
Without warning, the first pillow flew, an airborne blur slicing through the air with a sharp swoosh. The room erupted into chaos. Feathers danced midair as the siblings lunged, dodged, and struck with wild abandon.
Klein twisted, ducked, then retaliated, bang! His pillow connecting squarely with Isabella's cheek. Her gasp was half outrage, half laughter.
Klein smirked, the fire of competition igniting behind his eyes. The war had begun, and he was far from done.
"Take this, you prick!" Isabella roared, hurling a massive pillow with the fury of a storm. It spun through the air like a missile, aimed squarely at Klein's face with unnerving precision.
Fueled by the sting of his earlier strike, she poured every ounce of vengeance into the throw, her eyes gleaming with righteous fire.
She lifted her head, expecting triumph, perhaps a flinch, a stumble, a look of regret. But before her victory could bloom, bang!
Another pillow slammed into her with ruthless accuracy, knocking her clean off the bed. Her body hit the floor with a thud, limbs sprawled like a fallen marionette.
"Owwww!" she cried, voice cracking with pain and disbelief. The impact wasn't just physical, it was theatrical, as if Klein had summoned the spirit of a professional pillow duelist.
Her back ached, her pride stung, and the betrayal of gravity only deepened the insult.
Klein stood above, grinning with wicked delight. Satisfaction didn't quite cover it, he was euphoric. Teasing Isabella was a guilty pleasure, a ritual of sibling warfare he relished far more than he admitted.
"Hey, as long as she doesn't need to go to the hospital," he chuckled, voice laced with smug amusement.
"Stop yelling," he snapped, feigning indifference. "Next time, don't start a pillow fight if you're so weak to pain." But beneath the bravado, his ears strained for footsteps, parental ones. The last thing he needed was a lecture on violence and breakfast etiquette. One battle at a time.
His family had always been very fortunate and affluent. Both his parents were engineers, and they were engaged in other businesses. They owned several lands and also owned shares in well known companies.
Both his sister and himself never needed to worry about getting a job, they never even took school seriously, after all, why work like a slave when you were born in a goldmine? Even his own room had two beds, something he regretted for obvious reasons.
Still, a factor he never once reflected on in a bad light, his richness! In fact, most of his classmates considered him overbearing and arrogant. "Oh, you don't have the PS6 that came out a week ago? Poor!
What do you mean you never spend money, let me guess, you're one of those people that consider themselves 'free-to-play'? Pfft, a poor man's attempt to scrape honor from a wasteland."
His behavior left many with envy and jealousy, some even had hatred. Having money was one thing, but constantly flaunting one's wealth would only spill trouble for oneself.
No one liked arrogance, as long as it didn't benefit them. After all, no matter what background you came from, everyone had a certain pride that led them.
Due to this, it was no surprise to his very thin line, utter joke of a friend group. He didn't have many friends, maybe 2 or 3 rich associates of the same age he would sometimes tag along with.
Yet, he wasn't fazed. He would rather be harsh and overbearing. Why appease people when you can get anything you ever wanted, regardless of their feelings, paid by your weekly allowance?
Isabella had never tolerated Klein's warped sense of logic. It wasn't just his arrogance, it was the way he carried it like a badge, dragging the families' name through the mud without a second thought.
That's why she fought him, why she stirred chaos each morning. She wasn't just retaliating; she was trying to reshape him, even if her methods were crude and laced with spite. Siblings were reflections, after all, what one did rippled through the other, whether they admitted it or not.
"I wouldn't be fighting you if you stopped being an asshole," she snapped, voice sharp as shattered glass.
"Tch, whatever," Klein muttered, waving her off like a fly. "Get out of my room now, or I'll tell Dad how you've been bullying your poor brother for the past month."
Isabella's eyes narrowed, her grin curling with defiance. "If you don't fix that rotten attitude, I'll keep this up all year. Let's see how long your tyrannical reign survives."
Then, footsteps. Slow, deliberate, unmistakable. The hallway creaked under weight, and both siblings froze. Their eyes met, wide and wordless. The implications were clear: if their parents caught wind of this chaos, grounding was inevitable.
Grounded. At nineteen.
It was absurd. They were old enough to vote, to move out, to raise children, yet here they were, paralyzed by the threat of parental punishment like guilty twelve-year-olds.
Truth be told, they hadn't earned their freedom. Both had flunked their GPA requirements, forced to repeat senior year. Complacency had been their downfall. Why chase grades when they believed fortune would find them regardless? Why struggle when they could dream of luxury without lifting a finger?
Yet, here they were, two almost-adults, locked in a pillow war, fearing footsteps like fugitives in their own home.
They lived a life that could be explained through Deci & Ryan's self-determination theory; a complete lack of obstacles.
Maybe it was due to this, that they both didn't want to get in further trouble, after all, no matter how rich they could claim to be. It would take one word from their parents to make them as poor as a starving dog.
Though they knew their parents weren't that cruel, they sure didn't want to test their parents' temperaments.
Soon every step drew nearer, with every footsteps cracking like distant thunder. The movement was quiet, deliberately so, with each step gently sounding against the hardwood as if testing for its weakness.
A heel tapped, stopped and started again. There was no pattern, just this uneasy broken rhythm, like a baby's first walk.
Inside the room, both Isabella and Klein were drawing their breaths. Their hearts didn't just beat, it crashed against their chest, wild and desperate.
Sweat crawled down their skin, cold as ice, dripping from the peak of their neck all the way below to their abdomens. They felt hopeless, without a solution, they could only wait for the moment to present itself.
Just then, the door burst open with a violent snap, and three masked figures surged into the room like a pack of rabid wolves, stripped of reason and soaked in menace.
Their movements were erratic yet purposeful, deranged choreography driven by bloodlust. The air shifted, thickening with dread as their boots hammered against the floor, each step a declaration of intent.
"Get down or get shot!" one of them barked, his voice raw and jagged, slicing through the room like broken glass. He leveled his rifle at Klein with a cold precision that spoke of habit, not hesitation.
In perfect, terrifying synchronicity, all three raised their weapons, barrels trained on Klein and Isabella with the casual cruelty of men who'd done this before, and didn't care who bled next.
Their posture was relaxed, almost bored, yet every gesture dripped with malicious intent, like wolves toying with cornered prey.
Isabella froze, her mind struggling to catch up with the nightmare unfolding before her. Then, as reality crashed in, she screamed, a piercing, soul-rattling wail that tore through the room like a siren of panic.
It wasn't just fear, it was primal, the sound of a heart shattering under the weight of terror.
Klein felt his world ending, all negative feelings emerged. Anger, hatred, pity, sadness, hopelessness, insignificance… There was nothing he could do.
Then the assumed leader of the masked men hovered quickly to Isabella's corner, and with almost all his might, he lashed out. Striking Isabella's cheek with a brutal, bone-jarring force that echoed across the room like a gunshot.
"Do you want to die bitch? I'll kill you right here if you make another sound." The masked man whispered.
Isabella looked at him and nodded. She thought that if at any moment she made another sound the masked man wouldn't hesitate to turn her brain into a Feastable snack.
Something inside Klein fractured, clean, violent, irreversible. The moment he saw the masked man lay hands on Isabella, something ancient stirred in him.
Rage surged like wildfire through his veins, burning away hesitation, fear, even logic. He wasn't just angry, he was transformed. A brother turned beast. A protector turned weapon.
He lunged.
The masked man, mid-adjustment, caught the motion with trained instinct. His hands found the rifle like second nature, and in one fluid, merciless arc, he raised the barrel and fired.
The bullet struck Klein dead center, his forehead blooming with a small, perfect hole.
His body jerked, then slackened, the pain not immediate but the silence deafening. A subtle pop followed, like the world exhaling its last breath.
But it wasn't the echo of Klein's death.
It was the second shot.
Isabella's scream had barely begun to rise when the bullet found her. She hadn't moved, hadn't run. Her eyes were still locked on Klein's falling figure when the masked man turned, aimed, and fired again.
The sound was quieter than it should have been. A soft crack, like a bone snapping beneath velvet. Her body folded, knees buckling as she collapsed beside her brother, the two of them now motionless, twin tragedies on the floor.
The room fell into a silence so thick it felt like mourning. No cries. No chaos. Just the hum of death lingering in the air, and the masked men standing over the wreckage they'd made.
Isabella and Klein were dead!
~End of Chapter~