The afternoon began like any other—one of those unthinking days that doesn't promise anything except to pass.
Light filtered through the rich gardens of the Jerry estate in long dusted stripes. In the outer lawn, the laughter of children scattered like pebbles across water. Sovey was there, among her friends, directing their games with her easy arrogance. Her voice carried commands disguised as charm, the same tone she had inherited from her father's manner of ownership.
Then, without warning, her words broke mid‑sentence. She staggered, eyes rolling once, and collapsed onto the ground. Instinct broke the silence before panic did. Guards rushed forward, boots thudding against the grass, the laughter snapping into cries.
The children shrank back, faces blanching. One of them stammered, "We—we didn't do anything! We didn't—!"
The guards ignored them, lifting Sovey's limp body, her hair falling like black glass across her face. The air‑conditioned room upstairs swallowed them as they carried her inside. Blankets, soft pillows, and panic occupied the same air.
Orders followed. "Call Mr. Jerry," one shouted. "Now!"
Below, in the basement filled with the scent of yeast and sweat, Jerry was managing inventory from his beer distillery—the unseen half of his empire, the noise of bottles drowning the quiet above.
When the call reached him, he dropped the clipboard before the voice even finished. "What happened?"
"She collapsed, sir. Breathing's shallow."
His composure slipped. "Bring the car around."
Minutes later, he was in the vehicle. Two guards, one driver, and Sovey lying across the seat, half‑conscious, her eyelids fluttering weakly.
They tore through the city's wide avenues until the hospital rose ahead like a skeletal monument of glass and clinical light.
Inside, doctors separated the group instantly, ushering Sovey into the checkup chamber. Jerry sat in the hallway, the marble bench colder than any cell he'd ever imagined for others. His hands shook over his knees. The clock on the wall clawed its way through seconds too slowly to measure.
Across the island, another scene unfolded beneath the same sky.
Aralan stood on a ridge overlooking the wide stretch of the Jerry estate. The mansion looked impossibly far yet still arrogant under the setting sun—polished windows glinting, roofs tiled in dark red like dried blood.
In his hand, the weapon—still small enough to hide in the fist, light enough to seem harmless if one didn't know. He had found a position distant enough to remain unseen, close enough for the shot to count.
Breath slow. Eyes level.
"Three…" he whispered.
"…Two…"
"…One."
He pulled the trigger.
The air fractured. Light screamed forward, not as flame but as consuming brightness. The bullet struck, and the world answered with a roar so large the earth itself seemed to flinch.
The mansion didn't burn in any ordinary sense—it disintegrated. Wood, marble, flesh—all vaporized into a swiftly thickening cloud of black and red.
The blast spread outward, swallowing the neighboring households in seconds. The underground distillery ignited next, chain‑reacting through vats of ferment, blowing sounds like beasts crying underground. The explosion ate downward through floor, then soil, reaching deeper layers none living had reason to touch.
Heat found everything human in range. Children folded before realizing what had happened. Guards turned to silhouettes in ash. Gardeners, cooks, workers—all gone, all equally erased.
Screams came only from those far enough to survive the first wave. They burst from windows, streets, and alleys in tones beyond language—pure sound made of disbelief. Smoke rose high enough to blot the gold edge of the horizon.
Aralan didn't wait. He turned and ran—lungs cutting dry air, knees burning, mind silent. Behind him, the inferno consumed what had once consumed them.
Far away, one guard, stationed miles from the estate, stared from the hill at the rising pillar of fire clawing up the horizon. For a second he thought the sun was falling. Then the sound reached him—a distant, slow thunder that kept expanding.
Instinct swung his hands to the radio. "Sir! Mr. Jerry!"
Static, then the reply. "What?"
"Your mansion—it's burning! It's all gone!"
There was a pause before the shouted flood of words. "What? How? When? How much is left? Use the water taps! Use the tankers!"
"Sir," the guard stammered, "you don't understand. It's gone. The fire, it—no water can stay close. It's thicker than oil and it burns deeper. In one second—everything's ash."
From the other end, a sound—a sharp gasp. Then silence.
Inside the hospital hallway, Jerry had dropped to his knees, the phone sliding from his hand. His breath hitched; his heartbeat raced toward collapse. For a man whose world was control, the feeling of absolute loss entered his veins like poison.
He began to cry—not from grief, not yet—but from something smaller, older: disbelief made flesh.
An hour passed, vague and painful. The tears stopped, but the trembling remained. He washed his face with tap water, hands shaking too much to cup properly. Then he sat again on the same bench, the same fluorescent light, staring at the door where his daughter underwent treatment.
When the nurse finally approached, her expression carried the rehearsed calm of bad news. "Sir, your daughter has severe autoimmune encephalitis. It's her nervous system—her own immune cells are attacking her brain. She's regained consciousness, but without full treatment she'll slip back into coma. The procedure costs 1.2 million Franz. Should we begin?"
Jerry's lips moved, no words forming at first. Then: "Wait."
He reached for his phone again and dialed his brother.
The line clicked; his voice came out raw. "Brother, please. I need a million Franz. Sovey's dying. Her treatment—she needs it now. Please."
Ashen's father said nothing for a heartbeat, then laughed once—dry, without humor. "No. I already told you—stay out of my life. Goodbye."
The line cut.
At the dinner table, miles away, the sound of utensils clinking made quiet rhythm.
Ashen looked up. "Father, you did right," he said softly, "not helping that mid‑looking girl."
The father smiled faintly. "We owe them nothing."
Back in the hospital, the nurse waited, eyes down. "Sir," she said, "if payment doesn't arrive, we'll have to stop treatment."
"I'll get it," Jerry whispered. "Just wait."
He rose, steadied himself against the wall, and hurried toward the exit.
Inside the room, Sovey had heard it all. Her head throbbed with confusion, memory swimming through half‑formed images. The words replayed—treatment, cost, wait.
Her throat ached. She turned her face toward the guards beside the bed. "Water," she murmured. "Bring me water."
The two men exchanged glances. Something shifted quietly in their posture—authority stripped away, replaced by resignation.
Finally one spoke, voice flat: "Sovey. You and your father are replaceable now. Farewell."
The words pierced sharper than the fever itself. They turned and left.
Minutes later, the nurse entered again, mask detached from sympathy. She leaned over, detaching the oxygen line feeding the girl's fragile breath. The hiss of air faded.
Sovey coughed, voice breaking into panic. "I can't breathe—please."
The nurse's tone did not waver. "I'm sorry. Without funding, we can't justify continued use of hospital oxygen."
The machine went silent.
When she was alone, Sovey sat up, lungs scratching against emptiness. She tore away the remaining cords, pushed her feet onto the cold floor, and gathered what little strength she had left to walk outside.
The sun outside was glaring white, bleaching the world until everything looked unreal. She stepped barefoot onto the street, leaving behind her shoes on the hospital stairs.
There, at the edge of the road, she did what those she'd mocked once did. She lifted her hands toward the passing crowd. "Please," she whispered. "Money… please."
Commuters slowed not in pity but curiosity. Some laughed, found humor in recognition. A few took pictures. The rich found comfort in irony—it's easier to laugh when the world confirms its fairness.
Coins never reached her palm. Only mockery did.
And then memory struck, not as revelation but as a sequence of echoes knotted together by pain.
Her father begging the nurse to wait—
the sound mirrored perfectly by that poor man once begging her father not to kill his son.
Her guards walking away calling her by name, telling her she was replaceable—
and she remembered saying those exact words to them just few days ago.
The suffocating gasp in her throat echoed James choking from asthma, the boy she'd taunted for every labored breath.
The removal of her oxygen mask felt like the laughter she'd thrown at another child, mocking his weakness; equality finally drawn across pain.
She looked down at the dust clinging to her bare feet and thought of the girl she had once pushed aside, the beggar whose utensils she had kicked across the road, her coins scattering like sounds of pity.
Now, the same laughter circled her. Cameras clicked. Faces blurred by heat but clear in cruelty.
Sovey sank slowly to her knees, the sun collapsing onto her back like flame. In the reflection of a passing car window, she caught sight of herself—not the child of an empire, not the princess of a ruined house—but a figure stripped to what she had made others into.
For the first time, she couldn't find anger to hide behind. The air she breathed hurt too much for that.
Somewhere beyond her dimming focus, the world continued—cars, crowds, indifference.
One of the pictures taken of her that day would later circulate the networks, tagged under humor.
No title, no caption. Just a name underneath.
Sovey.
And beneath the picture, a comment typed by someone laughing behind safe glass:
"You get what you give."