MARI slowly creaked open the door to her room as silently as possible, doing her best to remain stealthy as she peeked inside.

There, she could see her little SUNNY busy being engrossed in his GAMEKID as he sat on his bed. His back was faced toward the door, too concentrated on the game to notice she had arrived.

MARI smiled mischievously to herself.

Perfect.

Using the sounds from the game to mask her footsteps, she slowly entered the room and tiptoed all the way to her little brother as quietly as possible.

By the time she reached behind him, she quickly pulled a surprise attack on him!

"Guess who!" MARI cheered, hugging SUNNY from behind.

SUNNY made a cute little yelp as he jolted in her embrace, his fingers instinctively pausing the game as he turned around to see who attacked him.

When he saw that it was only his favorite big sister, SUNNY breathed out in relief before fiercely hugging her back, "MARI!"

"Bingo!" MARI chuckled, holding her little brother's head against her as she set her chin on top of his hair. "Did you miss me, little brother?"

SUNNY chose not to answer verbally, instead hugging her even tighter as he nodded.

Enjoying the hug for a brief moment, the two finally released each other as SUNNY gave her a sad frown.

"You promised you'd be back by six to play with me today… I've been waiting for hours…" SUNNY murmured disappointedly.

MARI gave a guilty smile, "I know, I'm so sorry… I've just been so swamped with work and practice. I completely misjudged when I figured I'd be done. Will you forgive me?"

SUNNY looked away, mumbling, "You're always so busy nowadays… I never get to spend time with you anymore."

"I'm here now, aren't I?" MARI consoled, before smiling encouragingly, "I promise I'll make it up to you. What did you want to play? I'll spend the rest of the day together with you!"

SUNNY looked at the clock in the room before sighing, "Rest of the day doesn't mean much at this point… I'll need to sleep soon to wake up early for school tomorrow. Otherwise, Mom and Dad will get fussy."

"Oh…" MARI muttered, realizing just how late it was when she finally got home.

She really did spend a lot of time focused on her studies, didn't she? Even though she promised she'd make time with her brother today.

Shrugging her arms off of him, SUNNY lamented, "I wanted to go out with you and have another picnic today… It's been so long since we had one together where it's just the two of us. But we never have enough time to do anything together anymore…"

MARI sighed remorsefully, "I… I know. I'm sorry SUNNY, but these things just can't be helped. I need to focus on my grades as much as possible so that I can get into a good college. After that, I want to make sure I master the piano to make our parents proud. There's a recital at the end of September that I really want to make sure goes perfectly. You understand, don't you?"

SUNNY closed his eyes tightly while facing his head down. For a moment, MARI could see her little brother clenching his hands to fists. It was only for a second though, as SUNNY relaxed a moment after and looked back at her with a depressed expression, "Yeah, I do. I know how important it all is to you. It's all so that you could have a successful future."

Despite his words, MARI knew that he was still upset. He always had that habit of keeping his emotions suppressed so that he didn't worry other people.

Even though he was clearly hurting from the lack of time MARI spent with him, he was still doing his best to put on a brave face entirely for her sake.

MARI couldn't help but worry about him… She hoped that all these emotions he kept bottling up won't end up backfiring on him in the future. The fact that she even easily noticed him doing it this time spelled a bad omen.

"I just wish we had more time left…" SUNNY told her, "You're going to college soon, and when that happens, I won't be able to see you again for years. I wanted to spend as much time together with you as possible before you have to go… It's going to be really lonely at home without you…"

"Oh, SUNNY…" MARI whispered pitifully, gently cupping his cheeks, "You won't be alone. You still have all your friends to keep you company!"

"I know that, but I'll still miss you…" SUNNY muttered back while leaning into her hand, "We're not going to be kids forever, MARI… One day when we grow up into adults, we might end up living separate lives from each other. I don't want that to happen… I want us to still be as close as possible…"

MARI couldn't believe that someone so young could somehow think ahead and worry about such mature problems. Instead of thinking about playing games or having fun, all SUNNY could think about is treasuring his time with the people who were closest to him.

"SUNNY…" MARI smiled sadly as she reassured him, "I promise we'll always be together, even after we grow up to become adults. Once I'm done with college, I'm not going to leave you alone for the rest of your life. Okay?"

"You say that now, but… You and I both know we can't make those kinds of promises and keep it so easily…" SUNNY mumbled. "Not for sure."

MARI… she really didn't know how else to respond to that… She wanted to say otherwise, but it wasn't as if he was entirely wrong…

Still, the thought that his worries might end up coming true did form a knot in her stomach… She didn't want to be separated from her little brother either…

"I know it's selfish, but I wish you didn't have to go to college…" SUNNY admitted, sniffling a bit to hold back tears, "I want us to be together forever…"

…

…

…

"Then…" MARI slowly began, "What if I decided I don't want to go to college anymore? What if I said that from now on, I'll spend as much of my time focused on you?"

MARI knew this wasn't what she actually told him that day. But she wished she had…

"I'll quit piano practice! I'll tell our parents that all these cram and college prep classes have been stressing me out!" MARI promised him, "I can even beg them to let me be homeschooled! Then we can be together as much as you want!"

It didn't matter what she said here. It wasn't going to change anything. The future was already set in stone.

"We can have picnics every day, SUNNY!" MARI smiled cheerfully, "I won't ever come home late ever again! You won't ever have to stay up late while waiting for me anymore! I'll always have time to play with you and do whatever you want! Doesn't that sound perfect, little brother?"

If only she could have done all those things instead… Maybe she could have prevented everything from happening in the first place.

If only she could have kept him happy, maybe she would have never set him down this path to begin with. She might have never ruined his life.

If only she took his feelings more seriously.

"We'll be together forever, just like you wanted!"

It wouldn't have come to this.

"I'm sorry, SUNNY…" MARI apologized again, "I promise I'll come home early tomorrow for sure this time. Will that be okay?"

SUNNY looked up at her with a frown.

She could have stopped it all from happening if only she had just cared about him more.

"It's too late, MARI…" SUNNY said tiredly.

MARI eyes widened in shock as her little brother suddenly turned older right before her eyes.

"We're not kids anymore."

The lights from the room faded, and everything became dark.

"You had your chance." SUNNY told her emotionlessly.

Before MARI could even react, SUNNY pushed her down to the floor and began strangling the life out of her.

MARI felt the air in her lungs become stuck as his hands choked her neck, even as she desperately tried to wretch them off.

His grip was too strong for her.

As she was dying, she could only watch terrifyingly as her little brother's right eye split in half into two as blood began to spill on top of her.

His entire body cracked and snapped as it morphed into a monstrous form of himself.

Then, while peering down at her, his mouth formed into a horribly broken smile.

"Heh… Hehehe…" SOMETHING laughed mockingly at her.

MARI felt the grip of her hands weakening as her consciousness began to slip.

She won't be able to get out of this alive.

Maybe she deserved this?

After all...

Everything happened because it was her fault.

"Let's look for a duet that we can play together."

She couldn't breathe.

MARI jolted awake as she sat up from the couch.

Breathing heavily, the first thing she did was check her surroundings as she realized she was sleeping in the living room.

Hesitantly, she pressed a hang around her neck to make sure if she had actually been strangled.

Didn't feel like there were any marks. She felt like she could breathe just fine…

She suddenly remembered.

SUNNY was out spending the day with KEL. He wasn't going to be back until late.

She had been waiting for him in the living room ever since he left, hoping that he'd come back soon.

So it was just a nightmare then.

…

MARI gave a sigh of relief as she relaxed back on the couch.

The nightmares were getting more realistic… She never had a nightmare that was so vivid before. She really thought she was going to die for a second there.

…

It was just a dream. It was just a nightmare. None of it was real.

They don't mean anything.

MARI kept reassuring herself this while she rubbed her face to keep herself awake. She definitely did not want to go back to sleep after experiencing something like that.

After taking a while to calm herself down, she looked up at the clock on the wall to see that it had only been a few hours after SUNNY left her.

He probably won't be back anytime soon… She'll still need to wait for the rest of the day before he'll come back for her.

She was going to be all alone until then.

…

…

…

MARI wanted to spend more time with her little brother.

He had been gone from her life for so long…

She wished she could have taken the opportunity to spend more time with SUNNY back before the incident happened.

She was so focused on school and other stuff when she should have been more considerate of her little brother.

Now here she was, forced to wait for him even though he was finally back after six years.

Was this karma?

Has her little SUNNY always felt like this while he was waiting for her to be done with her studies?

She hated this feeling, She hated it so much.

It was no wonder why SUNNY was always so sad back when he was still a kid.

She probably deserved this. She deserved to feel this bad for subjugating her little brother to this kind of torture.

Knowing that she could come back at any moment, but was always being too busy not to. Waiting endlessly, hoping that she'll finally remember to keep her promise of coming back home early, only to be disappointed to find out that she'll be hours late.

...

MARI felt herself curl into a ball as she covered her face in her knees.

She hoped he'll come back soon.

She really missed him.

Author's Note: Hi there. Just wanted to let you guys know that I'm taking a small break to recover my writing mojo.

While writing 6k words into the next chapter, I began rereading it and found myself incredibly frustrated because I wasn't satisfied with how it was going. It didn't feel like it was going to be as good as I imagined it to be. It felt way too expository and boring, and it was boring to write. I think I might be suffering from burnout after writing 110k total words for this entire story. This is a shame because I really wanted to keep writing the next scene after this. Until I can think of a way to go past this hurdle and creatively write Point B in order to get from Point A to Point C, I'm gonna be giving my brain a small break.

I'll come back in a few short weeks, hopefully. For now, I'm getting fussy over this next chapter like MARI gets fussy with her piano practice after making a mistake. I hope this short chapter will make up for it. Wait for me until then.