"You guys went a bit too far this time."
Roy sat up from the ground, his head still throbbing. He looked at his older brother's face, then at his sister-in-law's smile, and in a fraction of a second, he made the optimal strategy he had learned from his many lessons.
The person who speaks first will be treated leniently, while the person who speaks later will take all the blame.
"It was all Mila's idea!" He pointed at Mila.
Mila turned her head sharply, her lips opening and closing, looking at Roy's profile with the look of someone who had been stabbed in the lower back and was now looking back to see who had stabbed them.
Before the impact of their fall from the ventilation duct had fully dissipated, Roy had already skipped all the intermediate stages and gone straight into "betraying his teammates" mode.
Roy didn't dare turn to look at her; his finger was still pointing in Mila's direction, but his eyes were fixed on Damian.
Damian looked at Roy, then took a step forward, made a fist with his right hand, and tapped Roy on the head with the knuckle of his middle finger sticking out.
This blow was slightly harder than the one that hit Roy on the head that afternoon, but it wasn't really enough to teach him a lesson. The sound was crisp, and Roy's head swayed slightly from the impact.
"Don't you have any sense of responsibility as an older brother?"
Roy covered his head and peeked at Mila through his fingers.
Mila's expression had evolved from "incredulity" to "serves them right," but that didn't change the fact that the two of them were now in the same boat.
Damian withdrew his hand and took a step back.
He glanced at Roy clutching his head, then at Mila's shirt sleeve, torn by the pipe, and the complex expression on her face—a mixture of embarrassment and resentment.
This wasn't the first time these two had done it. Last time they were caught spying, he thought it was because the kids were immature, but they're not kids anymore.
They are feared figures outside, but at home they still climb the ceiling.
Is he spoiling them too much?
From their old home on White Wax Island to the Uchiha Ancestral Grounds, from childhood to adulthood, he was always the one who cleaned up the messes whenever they got into trouble.
He never truly made them pay any price for their actions, and never used any harsher punishments.
Perhaps it is precisely because he has never been truly strict that they feel they can always overstep boundaries in front of their elder brother and always commit the same offense again.
But today is different.
Today, they didn't just "peep" into the bedroom; they stepped into the master bedroom, Gwen's room, the only private space between him and Gwen that no outsiders ever set foot in.
If he can cross this line so easily, will his words still carry any weight with his younger siblings?
His gaze swept back and forth between Roy and Mila twice, and then he made a decision.
"Since that's what you're thinking, then stay here tonight."
His tone was so flat that it was impossible to tell whether he was joking or serious.
Roy covered his head, looked up at Damian, and opened his mouth. "... Huh?"
Damian did not repeat.
He bent down, grabbed Roy by the back of his collar with one hand and Mila's arm with the other, and lifted them off the ground like two bags of cargo just unloaded from the dock.
Mila instinctively tried to break free, flipping her wrist in an attempt to dislocate the joint, but Damian's grip on her hand simply changed angle, without diminishing its strength.
Roy made no attempt to struggle; he had already given up.
The walk-in closet in the master bedroom is located at the innermost part of the master suite, serving as a transitional space between the master bedroom and the master bathroom.
Although it's called a walk-in closet, it's actually much larger than a typical bedroom walk-in closet. There are floor-to-ceiling White Wax Wood wardrobes on both sides, with a two-person-wide passageway in the middle, and a small soft seat at the end.
Strictly speaking, that "sofa" was a two-seater soft chair with a seat less than a meter wide. Two people could barely squeeze in side by side, but lying down was a completely different story.
When Mila was dragged inside, she kicked her feet twice in the air, but found she couldn't reach anything. She managed to squeeze out a few incoherent syllables.
Roy's collar was gripped tightly, his chin pressed against his collarbone; he had resigned himself to his fate.
Damian put the two people down in front of the soft chairs, took two steps back, and blocked the doorway to the dressing room with his body.
"You're all punished by having to sleep here tonight."
He was speaking to two people, but as he spoke, he glanced at the pitifully small armchair in the walk-in closet, then turned and walked out, closing the closet door behind him.
The door wasn't completely sealed; Gwen thought the ventilation was poor, so he changed it into a louvered sliding door with even gaps between the panels, allowing both light and air to pass through.
In the walk-in closet.
The White Wax Wood of the wardrobe reflected the warm light seeping into the master bedroom, and the air was filled with the scent of camphor wood insect repellent mixed with Gwen's light perfume.
That armchair looks even smaller.
Roy and Mila looked at each other.
Roy moved first, stepping to the soft chair, sitting down, and leaning back against the chair, taking up most of the chair surface.
His logic was simple: first come, first served; once you sit down, it's yours.
Mila watched him take up the entire chair, her lips twitched slightly, and then she sat down on Roy.
He leaned his back against Roy's chest, resting his elbows on Roy's stomach, treating him like a warm, fleshy sofa.
"You..." Roy almost fainted.
Mila leaned against him, her voice regaining its usual calm, "Just make do."
"You can sit over there."
Where is there a place?
Then don't nudge me with your elbow.
"Then don't put your hand on my waist."
"I have nowhere to put it..."
"Put it on your lap."
You're on my lap.
The argument bounced back and forth in the dressing room. Clearly, both of them knew the correct solution to this situation was to "shut up and go to sleep," but neither wanted to be the one to shut up first.
Shutting up means admitting defeat. Roy thought he had admitted defeat more than once, but not today. Tonight was Mila's idea. She was the one who pointed out the ventilation duct and the one who made the cat meow. Now she was using him as a sofa cushion and complaining that it wasn't comfortable.
Mila believes Roy betrayed his teammates first, then grabbed the soft chair, and now he has the nerve to complain that she elbowed him? He's thick-skinned, what's wrong with a little nudge?
While they were arguing, the master bedroom light went out, plunging the room into complete darkness. Only moonlight filtered through the gaps in the curtains, casting faint silver lines on the floor at the foot of the bed.
The two people arguing in the dressing room fell silent at the same time.
Because after the lights went out, other noises came from the master bedroom.
The noise was hard to describe.
The louvered doors of the walk-in closet block out light but not sound. The gaps in the door panels allow sound to seep in as thin strips, each syllable clear but the volume thinned out, like listening to someone talking quietly in the next room through several layers of blankets.
The rustling of fabric against each other, the subtle squeezing of the bed frame, and the occasional softer, more drawn-out human voice mixed in.
The sounds themselves weren't loud, but in the darkened room, each syllable seemed amplified by the silence.
You can't quite hear the specifics of what's happening, but it's just enough to let you know what's going on.
This is already Roy and Mila's biggest miscalculation tonight.
Instead of frightening Damian and Gwen, they locked themselves in the main house, in the spot closest to the master bedroom bed.
The metal microphones in the ventilation ducts have been replaced with microphones through the gaps in the louvered door panels. Essentially, there is no difference; the only difference is that they now have nowhere to hide.
Roy's Adam's apple bobbed in the darkness. He was thankful there were no lights, Mila couldn't see his neck beginning to flush red from his collarbone upwards.
In the darkness Mila's breathing also changed rhythm. What used to be the rapid breathing during an argument had now become a deliberate, controlled, steady breathing pattern, limited to a fixed number of breaths per minute.
She pretended to be calm. She slightly adjusted her position on him, trying to move further away from the door, but the soft chair was too small, and the adjustment only made her sink deeper.
Neither of them revealed what they had overheard, and the argument stopped simultaneously at a certain point.
The walk-in closet remained quiet for a long time, so long that every lingering sound that had seeped through the gaps in the louvered doors had dissipated, so long that the moonlight had moved a small, perceptible distance on the floor.
Once they were sure the master bedroom had quieted down again, they both spoke at the same time.
"It's all your fault," Mila said in a low voice.
Why are you blaming me again?
"If you hadn't dawdled, would we have been stuck in the pipes for so long?"
"You climbed up first, and you were the one who came up with the idea of the cat meowing. I told you meowing wasn't allowed..."
"Then think of something better."
"What's the point of thinking about something better now that we're locked up here?"
Mila didn't respond; Roy was right for once, which was rare for him.
She adjusted her position on him, moving her elbows off him and crossing them in front of her chest.
Roy pulled his hand away from her waist and placed it next to his stomach. The two of them found the most comfortable position they ever used to sleep in on a narrow piece of furniture.
She pressed down on top of him, and he nestled beneath her; their breathing gradually synchronized, and their body heat mingled through their clothes.
This was probably the umpteenth time they'd slept like this.
Perhaps it was the tacit understanding they developed from childhood, or perhaps it was the connection between their blood that allowed them to fall asleep as long as they were together.
The circular sofa in the underground space of Water 7 is large enough to seat the whole family, but when they really can't hold on any longer and are about to fall over, they always just pile on top of each other.
Mila's head nestled into Roy's collarbone, Roy's chin rested on the top of Mila's head, his eyes were closed, his breathing was even and steady, and his legs were crossed.
The sea outside and the underground power receded the moment the wardrobe door closed; they slept soundly.