What a truly bothersome day it had been. And in a whole multitude of incredibly frustrating ways.
I finally stopped my power walk, allowing my boots to come to a halt on the landing of the stairwell at the very edge of the main academic building.
My lungs were burning slightly. I leaned against the cold metal railing, looking up at the steel door that led to the roof. A massive, industrial-grade padlock secured it tight. The school administration had finally locked the top floor entrance to the rooftop last week after some idiot third-years nearly blew themselves off the edge during an unauthorized dust experiment.
It was an inconvenience for anyone looking for a scenic view, but for me, it was a godsend. It meant this particular stairwell was now a dead end. Nobody came up here anymore. I finally had some genuine, uninterrupted privacy to just rest for once in my miserable life. I closed my eyes and let my head thunk back against the plaster wall.
...Or so I thought.
Less than sixty seconds into my moment of zen, I heard the distinct, click-clack of combat heels going up the steps right beneath me.
Before I could even open my eyes to identify the intruder, a familiar, smooth voice called my name, shattering the silence.
"Jonah..."
I let out a long, slow exhale of pure exhaustion. I turned around to see Coco Adel.
She was just a few steps away, finishing her ascent up the stairs to meet me on the landing. She looked as immaculate as ever—designer clothes, perfect hair, and her signature sunglasses perched securely on her nose, masking her eyes.
"Ah... um..." Coco started, her usually confident voice faltering slightly.
Once she was finally standing right in front of me, close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume, she hesitated. She adjusted her beret nervously.
"I... I had some urgent business to discuss with you regarding our... plans for later," Coco said, keeping her voice low despite the isolated stairwell. "So, I saw you walking this way, and I chased after you to—"
She didn't get to finish her sentence.
With a sudden burst of violent motion, I raised my right leg and kicked her squarely in the center of her stomach.
It wasn't a gentle tap. I drove the toe of my combat boot into her gut hard enough to forcefully expel the air from her lungs.
"Ghua...!" Coco wheezed, her eyes widening behind her sunglasses as the impact hit.
She immediately doubled over. Her knees buckled under the sudden lack of air, and she collapsed onto the landing, hugging her stomach tightly with both arms as she gasped for breath.
I looked down at her with an expression of utter apathy. I didn't even shift my stance.
"I told you very clearly not to approach or talk to me during school hours, you stupid woman," I said, my voice echoing coldly off the stairwell walls.
Now, once again, don't get the wrong idea about what was happening here. I am not a sadist. I am not an abuser who gets off on kicking girls in stairwells. Mind you, again, this physical assault was an extra service provided for her, not for me. I felt absolutely nothing delivering that kick.
In a normal, functional relationship—even a bizarre, contracted one like ours—I would much rather just go through the logistics of this bullshit over a simple text message. A quick "Are we still on for tonight?" would have sufficed perfectly.
But with my paranoid, obsessive twin sister constantly snooping over my phone history and monitoring my digital footprint like an Atlas intelligence agent, standard communication protocols were impossible.
Therefore, these kinds of violence, seemingly abusive interactions were essentially what you'd call a 'tip' for her. A reward for Coco, for spending her valuable time chasing after me through the halls just to make simple scheduling arrangements. She brought the message in person, she took the risk, so she got a kick in the stomach.
"I... I'm... Sor...ry..." Coco managed to gasp out between shallow breaths.
She didn't sound angry. She didn't sound betrayed. If anything, beneath the pain of the impact, she let out a pathetic, high-pitched whine that sounded terrifyingly close to a sound of sheer happiness. Her hands were clutching her stomach, but she was leaning into the pain.
"So?" I asked, ignoring her perverse reaction to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible. "What do you want?"
Coco coughed, a wet, rattling sound, before slowly looking up at me. Her sunglasses had slipped down her nose slightly, revealing eyes dilated with adrenaline and a sick kind of thrill.
"Cough... Ye..s.. um.. About tomorrow's promise..." Coco forced the words out, still kneeling on the dusty floor. "Th.. That's why I followed you... I want to ask you to... to please postpone it..."
..Hm.. Okay, but..
"If that's the case," I said dryly.
Then, I raised my boot and kicked her in the ribs. It wasn't as hard as the stomach kick, but it was enough to knock her off balance and send her sprawling onto her side against the metal railing.
"If it's just useless 'business' about postponing, then you could've just texted me that!" I scolded her, looking down at her collapsed form.
"Ugh..." Coco groaned, clutching her side. But again, that sickening, breathy undercurrent of (happy) was undeniable in her voice. "Yesh... um.... but.. I'm not... allowed.. to text.. you.."
I know that, I thought to myself. I was the one who instituted the 'no texting' rule precisely because of Jeanne. I just wanted an excuse to kick you again.
Correction: (I really don't want to kick you. It's exhausting and utterly pointless.)
That's why I did it, though. (It was just a bonus service for her trouble.)
Coco slowly dragged her pained body upward, leaning against the railing while panting to catch her breath. Despite the physical abuse, and the fact her expensive designer outfit was now coated in the dirt and grime, and she looked utterly ecstatic.
"Th.. Thank you very much, Master.." Coco whispered reverently. She bowed her head, her brown hair falling over her face. "Please... forgive me... please forgive my insolence..."
She lost her composure. She dropped back to her hands and knees and practically crawled toward my boots, her face flushed with masochistic heat. She lowered her head and I could literally see a line of drool slipping past her lips, aiming straight for the scuffed leather of my shoe.
I raised my eyebrows in alarm. If she starts audibly moaning in a school stairwell during lunch hour, this is going to be incredibly troublesome if some random student or professor wanders by and hears.
"Don't you dare just start licking things out in the open, you filthy swine!" I hissed sharply, cutting her off.
I quickly brought my foot back and kicked her away before her tongue could make contact with the leather. This time, the kick was a bit lighter—more of a forceful shove with my sole—aimed at her shoulder.
I calibrated the strike perfectly so she wouldn't tip over the edge and cum, ruining her expensive clothing right here in the middle of the eastern wing. I'd genuinely rather not have to deal with the horrifyingly awkward experience of helping her sneak back to her VIP dorm room to change again because she got too excited while out in public. Once was enough for a lifetime.
"Ghua!" Coco tumbled backward, landing on her ass a few feet away. "...I'm so sorry!" (Delighted).
A few tense minutes later.
Coco was just laying flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and gasping for breath, doing her best to calm her racing heart and settle the intense arousal spiking through her system.
I completely ignored her current state. I simply leaned my back against the wall again and engaged in some light neglect play out of boredom rather than malice.
While she caught her breath, I was holding my scroll in my hand. I had confiscated it from my pocket and was currently going through the laborious process of manually re-adding her private phone number back into my contacts list.
I didn't save it under 'Coco Adel'. I assigned the number to a hidden contact file labeled "Supply Delivery"—strictly reserved for emergencies only. Just in case her schedule suddenly changed, or worse, if a real crisis occurred and I actually needed her minigun rather than her masochism.
I typed the digits in rapidly, saving the contact to the cloud and locking it behind a dual-authentication passcode that Jeanne didn't have access to yet.
I guess it really is inconvenient sometimes for her to physically track me down just to communicate if there's ever a sudden change of plans, I thought, looking down at her still-panting form. Especially in times like this, when a simple cancellation requires me to assault her in a stairwell.
But what other option did I have? I didn't want to make Jeanne mad either. A jealous, angry Jeanne was far, far more dangerous to my overall health and safety than an overly eager Coco Adel.
I slipped the scroll back into my pocket, crossing my arms as I thought about this persistent, inescapable problem while sitting in the quiet stairwell.
Jeanne's strong, almost psychotic restrictions placed upon me... was it just simple, sisterly jealousy?
Of what, exactly? Why was she so worried I would go away?
What was making her do all this for? Did she truly believe she was somehow "protecting" her older brother—protecting me—from the 'vipers' of the world by isolating me? Or was it something darker, something rooted in her possessiveness?
Jeanne, just what the hell are you so afraid of losing? I thought, rubbing the bridge of my nose as the dull ache in my head returned.
Just then, before I could unravel the depths of my twin's madness any further, someone shattered my meager concentration.
"Ooh~ Found you, Jonah!"
A cheerful, aristocratic voice rang out from the bottom of the staircase.
I looked down over the railing. It was Weiss Schnee. She was standing at the base of the stairs, her black parasol casually resting on her shoulder, ignoring the fact that she was supposed to be in the cafeteria.
"Heu~" Weiss called up to me, a bright, expectant smile on her pale face. "Come shopping with me right now!~ Or rather... come carry all my stuff while I shop?"
I looked down at her with an expression of unadulterated annoyance. The headache spiked immediately.
"Eh?" I grunted. "Right now? Like, this very second?"
"Now!" Weiss nodded cheerfully, utterly blind to my exhausted demeanor.
"Eh.. What about the afternoon classes?" I asked, gesturing vaguely toward the rest of the school. "Lunch is almost over. My relationship with Professor Goodwitch is already complicated enough due to my 'attitude'. I'd really rather she doesn't get pissed at me for skipping Combat Training again."
"Huh~?" Weiss tilted her head, looking up at me as if my question was the most absurd thing she had ever heard in her life. "Are you stupid? Just skip them!"
I gripped the metal railing, glaring down at the white-haired heiress.
"No, wait, you're the stupid one!" I yelled back, dropping any pretense of politeness. "Not everyone got admitted into this academy with massive, absurd corporate donations backing them up! The school physically can't expel you without causing a kingdom-wide scandal, you know! I'm here on a standard enrollment. I can't just skip!"
Weiss immediately pouted. She planted a hand on her hip, looking deeply offended by my refusal.
"Eh~ What's with that terrible attitude of yours, huh~?" Weiss complained. She took a few steps up the stairs, closing the distance between us. "A cute, rich girl like me is personally inviting you to go shopping in the city, and your first instinct is to call me stupid? Aren't you being too cocky for a commoner?"
She reached the landing. She looked up at me, and that dangerous, unhinged smile returned to her lips. She parted her mouth just enough, prominently showing off her sharp, white fangs.
"I could make you come with me," Weiss threatened playfully, though the lethal undertone of a vampire denied blood was clear.
But I wasn't intimidated in the slightest. I was just tired.
"No, what's wrong with me?" I countered, matching her glare. "What's wrong with you is the right question to be asking here. You're intensely irritating me. You're interrupting the only five minutes of peace I've had all day."
Weiss stepped closer, her fangs fully exposed, ready to press the issue physically if necessary.
I looked at her, then glanced down at Coco, who was still trying to quietly gasp for air on the floor behind me, ignored by the heiress. Today had been a pretty shit day overall. The morning assault by Jeanne, the newspaper interrogation with Ren, the bathroom fight between the Vampire and the Ninja, and the stairwell beating of the Masochist.
At the very end of the line... I just relented. Fighting Weiss right now was more effort than it was worth. Plus, going shopping on her dime meant she would inevitably have to buy me some expensive food in the city as compensation for my manual labor. I was hungry, and I hated the cafeteria food anyway.
"Ah... Fine. I get it. I yield," I sighed loudly, throwing my hands up in defeat. "I'll go. Let's just go."
"Yay~!" Weiss cheered happily, instantly dropping the predatory aura and clapping her hands together like a spoiled child who just got exactly what they demanded.
She turned around, ready to skip back down the stairs.
Only then, as she pivoted on her heel, did her ice-blue eyes finally catch movement in her peripheral vision. She noticed the upperclassman lying on the floor a few feet away, writhing silently in residual pain and exhaustion.
"Oh? Eh~?" Weiss stopped skipping. She blinked in confusion, pointing her parasol toward the shadowed corner. "Wait a second!? There's a girl up here! Jonah, who is that collapsed on the floor?!"
I just rolled my eyes. Finally noticed, did she? Great observational skills for a Huntress.
I did not want to waste the next twenty minutes standing in a stairwell desperately trying to explain the twisted logic of my transactional sadomasochistic relationship with Coco to a sociopathic vampire.
So, I just reached out, grabbed Weiss firmly by the upper arm, and physically pulled her toward the stairs, forcing her to turn away from the scene.
"What on earth are you saying, Weiss?" I said smoothly, my voice perfectly level and dismissive. "You must be hallucinating from the lack of blood or sunlight or whatever. There's no one there. The stairs are empty."
"What? No, I clearly saw—!"
"Let's just go to the city before the bullhead shuttles get crowded," I interrupted, dragging her down the stairs by her arm, leaving Coco to recover on her own in the dust.
After that incredibly awkward exit, we went on what was, for all intents and purposes, an impromptu, highly dysfunctional shopping date in the high-end commercial districts of Vale.
While I was strictly designated as the glorified, unpaid pack mule tasked with carrying the dozens and dozens of heavy, expensive shopping bags filled with the ridiculous amounts of clothing she spontaneously bought.
She bought dresses, shoes, accessories, and worst of all, she dragged me into three separate luxury boutiques dedicated exclusively to lingerie.
Now, let me perfectly clear on this point. I must firmly dispel the myth circulating among my peers. Buying lingerie with a beautiful girl is not, in any way, shape, or form, a rewarding, titillating, or erotic experience. Despite what other hormone-driven teenage boys might foolishly think, it is in fact, a living hell.
It is boring, it is deeply embarrassing, and it is endlessly tedious.
Both the haughty sales staff working the counters and the other wealthy, judgmental customers browsing the racks gave me the most withering stink eye on more than one occasion as I stood awkwardly near the fitting rooms, buried under a mountain of paper bags emblazoned with Schnee Dust Company logos. They clearly thought I was either a whipped boyfriend or a very poorly compensated servant. Technically, neither assessment was wrong.
At one particularly humiliating point during the excursion, Weiss physically dragged me into the pristine, oversized changing room with her, demanding I help her with a zipper stuck at the back of one of the tightest designer dresses I had ever seen. The sheer mortification of trying to pry the zipper free while staring blankly at the wall to avoid looking at her bare back while the sales lady waited outside the curtain was enough to shave five years off my lifespan.
Literally, the best thing that happened during that entire four-hour shopping ordeal had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed "privilege" of seeing Weiss Schnee play a glorified game of dress-up in front of me.
No, the highlight of the trip occurred when an older, deeply exhausted-looking husband, who was waiting for his own wife outside a particularly miserable boutique, saw my plight. He took one look at my dead eyes, the towering pile of bags in my arms, and the manic white-haired girl demanding I carry more, and he took pity on me.
He didn't say a word. He just nodded solemnly, reached into his own coat pocket, and covertly handed me a cold, sweating can of cheap, off-brand cola. Except, as I cracked it open in the corner, I realized he had spiked the can with a generous, life-saving pour of cheap beer.
I don't know what his name was. I didn't ask. But that middle-aged, balding man in the wrinkled coat was a true hero, a silent comrade-in-arms, and a man worthy of my utmost respect for having such empathy in a warzone. I drank the spiked cola behind a rack of nightgowns and let the mild buzz dull the edges of my suffering.
Alas, thankfully, the entire trip wasn't solely dedicated to watching Weiss play dress-up.
To her very slight credit, Weiss eventually did force me to try out some stuff of my own in a men's boutique, and she actually used her absurdly limitless credit card to buy a few decent shirts and a much-needed new jacket for me, totally dismissing my weak protests about the price tags.
Eventually, after nearly four agonizing hours of non-stop shopping and carrying bags through the sweltering city streets with a vampire, we finally reached the end of the line. I demanded sustenance.
We went and got food at an incredibly nice, outrageously overpriced restaurant overlooking the bay, which Weiss paid for without a second thought. She spent half the meal complaining about her family and the other half complaining about Blake, while I just focused on inhaling a steak that probably cost more than my yearly tuition.
As the sun began to set, casting long, bloody orange shadows across the high-rises of Vale, we finally stepped out onto the cobblestone streets. Weiss hailed a luxury, private taxi off the main thoroughfare.
She ordered the driver to take me, buried beneath her mountain of shopping bags, back to Beacon Academy first, since she was opting to stay the night in a five-star hotel penthouse suite in the city. She casually mentioned she had 'important plans' or something early in the morning and abhorred waking up early to take the school shuttles from campus.
I didn't care. I nodded blankly, slammed the taxi door shut with my foot, and relished the silence.
The forty-minute drive back to the academy grounds was uneventful. I lugged the dozen shopping bags out of the trunk, grunted a quiet thanks to the driver, and began the long trek toward the student dormitories.
By the time I reached the main academic plaza, the sky had turned a dark, bruised purple, the first few stars barely visible through the light pollution of the city. I was mentally exhausted, physically drained, and unprepared for anything else today. I just wanted my bed. I just wanted to sleep, and preferably not wake up to any other bullshit any time soon.
I hauled myself up the stairs of the dormitory building.
However, the second my boots hit the hallway floor, and I arrived directly in front of the door to my team's assigned room... I stopped dead in my tracks. The shopping bags hit the ground with a soft thud.
I could instantly feel, deep in my gut, that something was catastrophically wrong.
The subtle, ever-present, tingling instinct at the base of my skull—my sixth sense, refined and honed over years of surviving these kinds of spectacularly shitty, life-threatening situations involving the psychopathic women around me—was flaring up like a blaring siren. The air in the hallway outside my door felt thick, oppressive even.
My hand hovered over the door handle. It was unlocked. I slowly gripped the metal.
And, unfortunately, the sixth sense was sadly never wrong. It was the only thing keeping me alive.
I took a deep breath, braced myself, and hesitantly twisted the handle. I pushed the door open, expecting disaster. I stepped slightly into the room to see the damage.
My eyes went wide, not quite in surprise—as I was unfortunately correct in my awful assumption—but shocked at exactly how spectacularly, horrifyingly right I was. The sheer, physical magnitude of the destruction was breathtaking.
The room had been utterly demolished.
My bed, pushed against the far corner, was a total, apocalyptic mess. The mattress was ripped practically off the frame. The pillows and sheets I normally slept on had been brutally torn apart with bare hands, cotton stuffing and down feathers violently scattered in small white clouds covering the floorboards like freshly fallen snow. My clean clothes, freshly folded this morning, were thrown everywhere across the debris—some torn, some slashed.
My heart hammered in my chest as I quickly scanned the rest of the room. Thankfully, a massive wave of relative relief washed over me. By some miracle of focus, only my stuff specifically was targeted and ruined. Pyrrha's pristine bed on the other side of the room was perfectly intact. Nora's and Ren's possessions on the opposite wall hadn't been touched by the hurricane. The carnage was hyper-focused solely on my quarter of the living space.
I cautiously stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind me. I stood frozen in the middle of the feathers.
"...Jeanne?" I called out, my voice cracking slightly into the silent room.
A massive, panoramic view of the interior would reveal it was trashed beyond simple ripped sheets. My wooden dresser was tipped over, the drawers spilled across the carpet. A small floor fan was smashed into tiny plastic shards, kicked directly against the wall. Shredded paper, presumably my homework assignments and notes, littered the ground around the destroyed fan.
Sitting perfectly motionless on her knees, situated right dead-center in the eye of the swirling debris field, was Jeanne. She was surrounded by the remnants of my personal belongings.
I hesitantly took a single, slow step closer, feeling the crunch of broken plastic under my boots.
"...Did something happen..." I trailed off, swallowing nervously. The temperature in the room had plummeted. "Jeanne?"
I stood framed as a tall, imposing silhouette in the doorway's light, looking into the shadowed corners of our trashed quarters. Jeanne remained sitting on her knees on the floor, silent amidst the massive destruction. She didn't look up at me. Her face was obscured by her blonde bangs hanging loose over her eyes, hiding whatever terrifying expression she was wearing.
"...Welcome back, Big Bro..." Jeanne finally whispered.
Her voice wasn't angry. It wasn't the high-pitched, screaming panic I was bracing for. It was something far worse. It was hollow. Utterly empty, sounding dead. The calm before the nuclear storm.
"I came back from classes early..." Jeanne continued speaking slowly, monotonous. "...I wanted to surprise you. To cook you dinner... so we could eat together..."
I took off my boots, leaving them near the door, and looked inside the ruins of my life with an exhausted, defeated expression. I ran a hand through my hair. This was far beyond a simple jealousy fit.
"I see..." I muttered tiredly. "Thanks, I guess." I looked down at the slashed clothing scattered near my feet. "...Things seem to be pretty messy in here right now, though..."
Jeanne didn't move an inch. She just sat there on her knees, unblinking.
A sliver of light caught a small, black object held tightly in her hands resting on her lap. It was the communal scroll receiver assigned to our team dorm. Her knuckles were stark white as she gripped the small plastic device. She stared at it.
"Yeah," Jeanne whispered hollowly into the silent room.
She slowly rotated the small scroll receiver in her tight grip.
"And..." Jeanne dragged the word out. "When I was in the room... waiting..."
She slowly raised the scroll device up toward her face. The green notification light for voicemails was blinking in the dim lighting of the destroyed room. She hovered a thumb directly over the small button labeled 'PLAY'.
"I checked the answering machine."
Bip. The electronic sound of the button being pressed like a gunshot.
"There was a call," Jeanne said, her voice dropping into a register colder than absolute zero.
I stood perfectly still, surrounded by the wreckage of my twin sister's psychopathic breakdown, feeling mildly confused by her slow reveal. My heart pounded slightly against my ribs as I tried to quickly mentally review all the horrible possibilities of who could have possibly called the landline dorm scroll. Why would anyone use the landline?
"...A call??" I asked hesitantly, praying for a wrong number or a telemarketer.
The answering machine whirred to life. The speaker on the small device crackled.
Machine Voice: "...Please leave a message after the tone. BEEP."
The machine fell silent for exactly two seconds. Then, a voice practically destroyed my entire world.
Voice: "...Um, hello? It's... this is Coco."
The answering machine continued to play the recorded message into the oppressive silence of my bedroom, blasting the unmistakable, confident, cool tone of Coco straight into my psycho sister's ears. My blood turned to ice.
Coco (Voice): "Hey... I checked for your new number from the main school class roster directories online... Sorry about calling the dorm directly."
I stared at the blinking light on the speaker in disbelief. My eyes widened in pure terror.
Coco (Voice): "Um... Listen. About what we briefly talked about earlier today in the stairwell,"
My face broke out into a freezing cold sweat. A single bead trickled directly down the side of my cheek. I was practically vibrating with terror. She had called the landline. She used the public academy roster to find the room. This was an unmitigated disaster of biblical proportions.
Coco (Voice): "Actually... it turns out, seems like my mission schedule got cleared out. So... I actually don't have any plans for tomorrow afternoon after all..."
Jeanne still hadn't moved an inch from her kneeling position in the center of the trash. The thick blonde hair still obscured her eyes, keeping her face hidden. She simply sat there, staring blankly down at the device playing the recording, her head tilted slightly, unnervingly downward toward the speaker like a predator locked onto a signal.
Coco (Voice): "So, um..." Coco's voice suddenly dipped into a far more intimate, hesitant tone over the phone.
I stood still, staring blankly down at the ruined, annihilated bed I used to sleep in.
Coco (Voice): "I was just wondering if... maybe..."
I glared down at the recording machine clutched tight in Jeanne's hands. My pulse was roaring in my ears. I didn't breathe. I was sweating profusely. My mind screamed a single thought over and over again in the deafening silence of my bedroom.
Coco (Voice): "We could still go through with our 'promise' from yesterday...? To meet up at my dorm...?"
...THAT STUPID WOMAN!!
I wanted to scream. I wanted to turn around, run out the door, track Coco down to her nice dorm room, and break the door down myself. The sheer idiocy of leaving a vague, incriminating, and romantic-sounding message on a communal phone answered by a jealous psychopath.
The message ended. A dial tone sounded sharply before clicking off.
The suffocating silence slammed back down into the room, far more oppressive and far heavier than before.
I stood there in the doorway, my hands shoved desperately deep into my jacket pockets, trying not to shake. Jeanne was sitting among the torn pillows and broken electronics, surrounded by the physical proof of her jealousy.
Jeanne finally, slowly, agonizingly turned her head over her shoulder to look directly back up at me from the floor.
Her eyes were completely empty. There was no light reflecting in the blue irises. Her face was expressionless. She looked right through my soul, reading my guilt.
I immediately, desperately began to stammer, backing up half a step toward the hallway door, my hands still jammed in my pockets.
"...Jeanne. Look," I started rapidly, grasping for any lie, any excuse to defuse the bomb. "That recording just now... that was, uh, about combat tutoring..."
Jeanne cut me off before I could finish the pathetic sentence.
"Brother...," Jeanne whispered. The single word felt heavy, dragging through the quiet air.
She slowly rotated her body slightly more toward my position. She stared right into the center of my eyes, ignoring my lies.
"You got a girlfriend?" Jeanne asked quietly. The unnatural calmness in her voice was genuinely terrifying.
I panicked. I abandoned my usual, cynical attitude. My eyes blew wide in sheer terror at the precipice I was standing on. This was the trigger wire. I was officially staring straight down the loaded barrel of my twin sister's psychopathy.
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" I yelled instantly, shouting over the tension, throwing my hands out from my pockets in denial.
"I SWEAR TO YOU, JEANNE. SHE IS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" I backed up another step, hitting the closed door behind me. "IN FACT, YOU CAN BARELY EVEN CALL THAT IDIOTIC WOMAN AN ACQUAINTANCE..."
Jeanne suddenly lunged towards me. She crossed the room fast and crashed right into my chest, hard.
She aggressively tackled me backward to the hard floor. My back slammed against the floorboards near my shopping bags; the wind immediately knocked straight from my lungs in an explosive gasp.
"NO!!!"
Jeanne pinned my shoulders down flat to the floor beneath her.
The hollow, dead calm mask had instantly vanished.
She was screaming hysterically at the top of her lungs, an ear-piercing shriek of total desperation tearing its way from her throat. Giant, ugly tears practically burst from her wide, crazed eyes as she stared down into my face. Her features were twisted into an unsettling mask of distress and uncontrollable panic.
"NO NO NO NO NO!!" Jeanne shrieked rapidly, pounding her fists against my chest over and over again, her whole body shaking out of control.
"DON'T LOOK AT ANYONE ELSE! DON'T EVER TALK TO ANYONE ELSE IN THIS WORLD! DON'T YOU DARE EVER FALL IN LOVE WITH ANYONE!!"
I felt the damp heat of her face pressing into my collarbone.
"DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T GO AWAY, BIG BROTHER!!!"
She buried her face against me. Jeanne was crying out of control, that thick snot and tears practically flooded out of her, instantly soaking right through the dark fabric of my Beacon academy uniform. I could feel the uncomfortable, sticky warmth spreading against my skin.
"BIG BROTHER IS MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!"
She practically chanted the words like a deranged, desperate prayer, her fingers digging so deep into the material of my jacket that I heard the seams actually begin to rip.
"MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!"
I didn't push her away. I didn't yell back. I didn't try to defend myself against the phantom accusations running rampant through her severely diseased mind. I just lay there on my back, staring blankly at the ceiling of our trashed dorm room. My head was resting uncomfortably against the hard plastic edge of an overturned laundry basket.
I just looked down at Jeanne with a calm, flat expression. The raging hurricane of her panic crashed point-blank against the unyielding brick wall of my sheer apathy. I was just too exhausted by this point.
Slowly, the adrenaline spike of her psychotic break began to burn itself out. The high-pitched, hysterical screaming fractured into jagged, wet sobs. The frantic pounding against my chest lost its rhythm and strength, devolving into her just clutching me like a drowning victim holding onto a piece of driftwood.
With a groan of effort, I managed to push myself up off the floorboards.
I sat upright right in the middle of the catastrophic mess she had created. Jeanne remained firmly attached to me, practically melting against my form. She was now kneeling awkwardly on the hardwood floor, burying her tear-streaked, snot-covered face directly into the fabric of my uniform shirt across my stomach and lap.
She was still clutching onto it tightly with both hands, her knuckles white, her entire body occasionally hitching with a sob.
I just sat there in silence for several long minutes, letting the storm pass. The room smelled like ozone and anxiety. I could hear the faint, muffled sounds of other students talking and laughing in the distant hallways, a cruel reminder of how utterly divorced my reality was from theirs.
She eventually, agonizingly, began to calm down slightly. The hysterical wailing subsided into quiet, wet sniffling muffled against my clothes.
I slowly raised a hand. I brought it down and rested my palm gently on the top of her messy blonde head.
"...You're mine..." Jeanne whispered into my shirt, the words raw and scraped of all her previous madness, a fragile echo of her previous demands.
"Jeanne..." I said quietly. My voice wasn't angry. It wasn't frightened. It was just impossibly tired.
I sat there, my expression an unreadable mask of apathy, simply petting Jeanne's head with a slow, gentle motion.
Little sister, I thought to myself, staring blankly over her hunched form at the destroyed remains of my mattress. Why in the world do you depend on your older brother so damn much? What broke inside you that makes you need to own me like a possession? You're a Huntsman in training. You have a team. Be more independent. Please, for both our sakes, just be independent.
My fingers carded through her hair. I felt her hands, the hands of a trained warrior, gripping the simple cotton fabric of my shirt tightly, as if letting go would send her tumbling off the edge of the world.
Jeanne slowly lifted her head from my lap. She looked up at me.
Her face was a pathetic mess. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen from crying, her cheeks blotchy, her hair matted to her forehead with sweat and tears. She looked vulnerable, stripped of all her bossy, controlling bravado.
She looked at me pleadingly. She searched my face for any sign of the betrayal her paranoia had concocted.
"Jeanne," I said softly, meeting her desperate gaze without flinching.
I looked down at her calmly and continued to gently stroke her hair, smoothing out the tangles. Jeanne let out a shaky breath and rested her head against my legs, seeking the physical reassurance of my presence.
"Where exactly do you think I'm going to go?" I asked her, my tone perfectly even and grounded.
She didn't answer. She just sniffled loudly.
"I am right here," I told her, enforcing the truth into her fractured mind. "I'll always be your brother, Jeanne. That's not something anyone can take away."
"...Yeah," Jeanne whispered back, the word catching in her throat.
She squeezed my shirt tighter.
"...Really?" Jeanne asked. Her voice was small, reverting back to that of a frightened child rather than the possessive tyrant she usually played.
Sniffle—
"Yeah," I confirmed softly.
"Really, really?" Jeanne pressed, needing the undeniable confirmation. Her blue eyes, mirror images of my own, shone with tears.
I stopped petting her hair for a second. I met her gaze fully, letting her see the lack of deception in my eyes.
"Really, really," I repeated her words back to her, sealing the promise that temporarily held her madness at bay.
The tension finally, fully left her body. The psychotic episode had concluded. She slumped against me, exhausted by her own manic energy. I just sat there in the ruins of my personal space, holding my weeping twin sister, the architect of my isolation, unable to feel anything but a deep weariness.
The next afternoon, after Professor Port's mind-numbing lecture concluded.
I met with Coco Adel for our schedule "playdate".
I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I just wordlessly delivered a sharp, fast roundhouse kick directly to her ribs, following it up with a backhand slap that sent her designer sunglasses flying across the air.
I beat her up very, very little compared to what I'd normally would have done in our schedule and left her kneeling on the floor to think about what she did wrong.
Hopefully it was enough punishment for her stupidity in calling the dorm landline, and but also unfortunately, still more than enough to make her happy whine echo obnoxiously.