The block tower before her was already towering.
Even on her tiptoes, the girl couldn't reach the summit to place the final piece. She tipped her head back, stretching her arm as high as it would go in a perfect picture of earnest struggle.
She knew she couldn't reach the top. She'd known from the very beginning.
She had deliberately built the tower to this exact height. The placement of every single block, the precise shift in the center of gravity, the structural integrity—she had calculated it all.
And she wasn't actually helpless. She knew that simply grabbing a stool would solve her problem. She knew there were countless tools at her disposal—so many that she had no business being stuck in this "predicament" in the first place.
Yet she remained standing there, holding the block aloft, playing the part of a frustrated toddler.
It was quiet around her.
Sunlight streamed through the window, spilling onto the rug and casting long shadows behind the blocks. The adults were gone—off to the kitchen, out on the balcony taking a call, busying themselves with trivialities she could see the absolute end of with a single glance.
No one was watching her, and she didn't need them to.
She just stood there, block raised, waiting. It wasn't until footsteps echoed from the hallway that her frozen posture animated again, her "frustration" suddenly becoming much more vivid and expressive.
The footsteps approached from behind, but the girl didn't even entertain the thought of turning around.
She would never mistake those footsteps. It was him, without a doubt!
"Hm?"
That soft murmur was the first genuine sound to ring out in this completely silent world.
And in that precise moment, the black-and-white silent film world Kiana had been watching suddenly collapsed. The ash-gray loneliness shattered into pieces. The pale, monochrome veil proved as fragile as brittle parchment, quietly disintegrating before the hand that reached out from behind the girl.
Color dripped into the world, blooming softly around her.
The hand gently took the block from hers. She immediately let go, obediently allowing the figure to step past her and stand beside the tower.
It was a young boy... no older than five or six.
He possessed the exact same eyes as the girl—eyes that seemed to devour any starlight that fell into them. He hesitated before the towering structure for a couple of seconds, his hand hovering in midair. He sensed something was off. He was trying to calculate the perfect angle to place the block so that the girl's hard work wouldn't come crashing down.
But there was no chance.
As established, the girl already knew the load-bearing limits and critical threshold of every single piece. She was absolutely certain the tower couldn't support another layer.
The boy didn't hesitate for long, but his move was definitely the result of careful deliberation. He reached out, carefully and gently resting the block at the very summit, offering it as his most confident answer.
CLATTER!
A miscalculation on his part.
No miracles occurred. The trap the girl had set for him sprang shut exactly as she had predicted. The skyscraper of blocks began to list. The boy noticed it instantly and scrambled to stabilize his sister's masterpiece, but the momentum was unstoppable. The tower collapsed.
Colorful blocks cascaded across the floor, dragging the boy down into the mess with them.
It's ruined! he panicked.
Perfect, she thought.
The girl's expression didn't change in the slightest. She didn't even blink as the tower crashed. She stared at the miserable boy sitting in the pile of plastic rubble, feeling zero guilt as she forcefully suppressed the corners of her mouth from twitching upward.
She couldn't laugh right now.
She needed to cry.
She forced her face into a mask of pure grievance. She narrowed her large eyes slightly, pursed her lips, and puffed out her cheeks just a little. She looked like she was on the verge of tears, yet stubbornly trying to hold them back.
She was confident she looked absolutely adorable right now.
For a genius, playing the innocent little victim was a talent carved into her very bones. Plus, she had the ultimate high ground: her age. Armed with the foolproof shield of toddler ignorance, who could possibly accuse her of doing this on purpose?
Heh. Just according to plan.
Sure enough, the boy scrambled out of the rubble and hurried over to the supposedly tearful girl. A barrage of apologies spilled from his lips, treating the incident as if he were a heinous villain who had just committed an unforgivable crime.
For the first time, a ripple disturbed the mirror-like surface of the girl's mind. The reflection on that pristine lake settled onto the boy's the-sky-is-falling expression.
A child's world is very small... so it's incredibly easy for them to catastrophize a tiny problem or an inconsequential mistake. But their catastrophizing is usually simple to trace: their parents and elders are their entire world. It's only natural to panic when a mistake might invoke their wrath...
But the block tower in front of them wouldn't draw scolding from their parents or criticism from their elders. Even the most fragile child wouldn't make a face like that over a simple ruined game.
So... was he afraid of her crying?
That made sense. If she actually cried, it would inevitably summon Mom and Dad, acting as a swift form of punishment. That was a perfectly logical analysis.
Yet when the girl looked into the boy's eyes—swimming with genuine pleading—her flawless deductions ground to a halt.
What she saw was indeed fear.
Was he afraid she would hate him?
Hm? Well... that wasn't entirely incomprehensible. As long as she increased the variable weight of "his desire for her affection" in her logical framework, his reaction wasn't that surprising.
No... there was a deeper meaning in his gaze.
He was afraid... that because of him... she would end up hating building blocks?
What?
He was worried that seeing her hard work destroyed in an instant would cause her to lose interest in playing with blocks?
Ugh... That was a bit of a stretch, though still technically within the realm of logic... But why?
Was her interest in building blocks really that heavily weighted a variable? In his mind, was it even more important than getting in trouble with their parents?
The girl looked closer.
The boy was thinking...
She's so amazing at building blocks.
...?
So... that was why he was worried she'd lose interest?
Why? It wasn't strange for him to think that—anyone who saw her masterpiece would agree. She had already analyzed the logic behind his fear. Her only remaining question was how to stitch these two conditions together.
It wasn't that there was no answer, but the answer she arrived at...
Could it be—she was genuinely important to him?
Or rather—he believed she was important?
That was the girl's final conclusion.
Wait, but why? Just because she was his little sister? Because she was naturally adorable? Or because she was different from everyone else?
It couldn't possibly be because he was just naturally this kind to everyone, right?
People were so hard to figure out...
...
"Do you even have to ask? Shu, that idiot..." Kiana answered aloud. "He's just like that with everybody!"