Page 1
The hardwood floor of the living room was cold against Kael Luccen's cheek. Not the gentle kind of cold that refreshes you on a hot summer morning—the kind that seeps into your bones and reminds you that you're sleeping on actual wood, not a bed like normal human beings. His left arm was numb, his right leg was twisted at an angle that would make a yoga instructor wince, and somewhere in the distance, he could hear the faint sound of cartoon laughter from the TV.
It was 7:47 AM on March 15th, 2026. Kael was twenty-five years old as of yesterday. He'd turned twenty-five on the living room floor, too exhausted to make it upstairs after working a double shift at the warehouse. His birthday cake—a store-bought sheet cake from Walmart that Alex had insisted on getting—was still sitting on the kitchen counter, half-eaten, with a single candle that had never been lit because Kael had fallen asleep before anyone remembered.
This was fine. This was normal. This was his life.
What was not normal, however, was the small eight-year-old boy currently standing over his head, staring down at him with the intensity of a tiny, pajama-wearing general planning a military invasion.
"Kael," Zane said, his voice carrying that particular tone that only little brothers could master—a blend of urgency, boredom, and mischief that suggested nothing good would come from whatever he was about to do.
Kael didn't move. His eyes remained closed. Maybe if he stayed perfectly still, Zane would think he was actually dead and go find something else to do.
"Kael," Zane repeated, slightly louder.
Still nothing.
"KAEL."
The boy's voice had reached that pitch that could probably shatter glass. Kael's eye twitched slightly, but he maintained his commitment to the bit. He was a statue. A very tired, very sore statue that had been sleeping on a hardwood floor for approximately eight hours.
Page 2
Zane stood there for a moment, hands on his hips, his Spider-Man pajamas slightly too big for his frame. He had their mother's dark hair and their father's stubborn chin—a combination that had always made him look like he was perpetually unimpressed with the world. At eight years old, he'd already mastered the art of the disappointed stare.
"You're awake," Zane announced, as if he'd just solved a complex mathematical equation.
"I'm not," Kael mumbled into the floor, his voice muffled by the wood grain and his own complete lack of will to move.
"Your mouth moved. Dead people's mouths don't move."
"Maybe I'm a zombie."
Zane considered this with the seriousness of a child who had watched way too many cartoons. "Zombies eat brains. You don't have any brains. You fell asleep at your own birthday party."
"It wasn't a party. It was a cake."
"Exactly. You fell asleep at your own cake. That's sad, Kael."
Despite everything—the aching back, the numb arm, the existential dread of being a twenty-five-year-old man sleeping on a living room floor—Kael felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Zane had a way of cutting through the nonsense and hitting you with the truth in a way that was somehow both hilarious and devastating.
"I know it's sad, buddy," Kael finally said, opening one eye to look at the boy. "But some of us have to work. Some of us don't get to sleep until noon like certain eight-year-olds I know."
"I'm awake now," Zane said, as if this was a personal achievement worthy of celebration. "And I'm hungry. Alex says we don't have any cereal. We have to eat the healthy stuff. The healthy stuff tastes like cardboard mixed with sadness."
Kael groaned. The healthy stuff was granola that their neighbor, Mrs. Chen, had made for them. It was actually pretty good, but Zane had decided that anything without cartoon characters on the box was basically poison.
Page 3
"What time is it?" Kael asked, still not moving.
"Seven… forty-seven," Zane said, reading from the microwave clock visible from the kitchen. "And two seconds. Now it's three seconds."
"Why are you awake at seven forty-seven in the morning on a Saturday?"
"Because I'm hungry," Zane said, as if this was obvious. "And because Alex is being weird."
Kael finally pushed himself up on his elbows, his body protesting every movement like an old car trying to start in the winter. His hair was sticking up in about seventeen different directions, and he was pretty sure there was a line on his face from where he'd been pressed against the floor. Twenty-five years old and he looked like he'd been through a war.
"What do you mean Alex is being weird?" Kael asked, already knowing that whatever the answer was, it would require him to actually get up and deal with it.
"He's in his room. He won't come out. He says he's 'working on something important' but I think he's just being dramatic because you forgot his birthday."
Kael's stomach dropped. "When is Alex's birthday?"
"Next month. But he's already upset about it."
"How is he upset about something that hasn't happened yet?"
"Because," Zane said, with the kind of logic that only a child could possess, "you forgot your own birthday, so obviously you're going to forget his too. He's just getting a head start on being disappointed."
Page 4
This was the thing about being the oldest brother. This was the thing that nobody really prepared you for when your parents died and suddenly you were responsible for two other human beings. It wasn't just the big stuff—making sure they had food, keeping a roof over their heads, working double shifts at a warehouse that paid just enough to keep them afloat. It was the small stuff. It was remembering birthdays. It was knowing that your fourteen-year-old brother was already spiraling into preemptive disappointment because you'd been too exhausted to stay awake for your own cake.
Kael sat up, his joints cracking in a way that made him sound like a bowl of cereal. He ran a hand through his disaster of a hair and tried to remember what day it was. Saturday. Right. No work today. He could breathe for one day.
"Okay," he said, standing up with the grace of a newborn giraffe. "Let's make a deal. You go get Alex, tell him to come downstairs. I'm going to make pancakes. Real pancakes, not the frozen kind. The kind with chocolate chips."
Zane's eyes lit up like Kael had just offered him the keys to a candy factory. "Really?"
"Really."
"Even though you're tired and sad?"
"Even though I'm tired and sad," Kael confirmed.
Zane nodded solemnly, as if he'd just witnessed a sacred oath being sworn. Then he turned and bolted toward the stairs, his Spider-Man pajamas fluttering behind him like a cape.
"And tell Alex I'm sorry!" Kael called after him.
"He already knows!" Zane shouted back. "But you should tell him yourself! People like it better when you say sorry with your mouth!"
Page 5
Kael made his way to the kitchen, moving like a man twice his age. The apartment was small—a two-bedroom that they'd managed to squeeze into after their parents died. It wasn't much, but it was theirs. The walls were covered with photos: their parents on their wedding day, Kael as a baby, Alex as a toddler, Zane as a newborn. And then, below all of those, newer photos. Kael and Alex at Alex's middle school graduation. Kael and Zane at the park. The three of them at Christmas, all wearing matching sweaters that Kael had found on sale.
The kitchen was a disaster. There were dishes in the sink from last night, a half-eaten cake on the counter, and what appeared to be a science experiment growing in one of the corners. Kael made a mental note to investigate that later. Probably.
He pulled out the mixing bowl and started gathering ingredients. Flour, eggs, milk, baking powder. The routine was familiar by now. He'd made pancakes maybe a thousand times in the past eight years. It was one of the few things he could do that made both his brothers smile without requiring money or energy he didn't have.
As he cracked eggs into a bowl, he could hear Zane's voice from upstairs, muffled but insistent. Then Alex's voice, also muffled, but with that particular tone that suggested he was being dragged out of bed against his will.
Fourteen was a hard age. Kael remembered being fourteen. He remembered thinking that the world was unfair and that nobody understood him and that his older brother was the most annoying person on the planet. He'd had parents then, though. He'd had the luxury of being a moody teenager without having to worry about whether there would be food on the table.
Alex didn't have that luxury. None of them did.
Page 6
The sound of footsteps thundered down the stairs, followed by Zane's voice: "He says he's not hungry and that he hates pancakes and that his life is meaningless."
"That's very dramatic," Kael called back, whisking the batter with perhaps more force than necessary.
Alex appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking every inch the wounded teenager. He was tall—taller than Kael now, which was still weird to process—with the same dark hair as Zane but their father's lighter eyes. He was wearing a hoodie despite it being March in Texas, which meant he was either cold or trying to make a statement. Probably both.
"My life is meaningless," Alex confirmed, leaning against the doorframe with the exhaustion of someone who had already given up on the world at fourteen years old.
"Because I forgot your birthday?" Kael asked, not looking up from the pancake batter.
"Because you forgot your own birthday," Alex said. "And because you're sleeping on the floor like some kind of medieval peasant. And because I'm fourteen and nobody cares."
"I care," Kael said.
"You forgot your own birthday."
"I was tired."
"You're always tired."
This was true, and it stung in a way that Kael didn't quite have the emotional bandwidth to process at seven in the morning. He set down the bowl and turned to look at his brother.
"You're right," Kael said. "I'm always tired. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I forgot my birthday, I'm sorry I'm sleeping on the floor, and I'm sorry that you're fourteen and feeling like nobody cares. But I do care. I care a lot. And I'm going to make you pancakes with chocolate chips, and then we're going to figure out something fun to do today. All three of us. No work, no exhaustion, no floor sleeping. Just us."
Page 7
Alex stared at him for a long moment, his teenage angst warring with the fact that pancakes with chocolate chips were objectively delicious.
"Can we go to the movies?" Zane asked hopefully from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, swinging his legs.
"Movies are expensive," Alex said automatically.
"There's a matinee showing at the dollar theater," Kael said, already doing the mental math. "And we can get popcorn if we sneak in our own candy from the grocery store."
"That's illegal," Alex said.
"It's not illegal, it's just frowned upon," Kael corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there though?" Alex asked, but there was the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Kael turned back to the stove and poured the first pancake onto the griddle. It sizzled satisfyingly, and he felt something in his chest loosen just a little bit. This was his life. This was what he'd signed up for when their parents died and he'd become the oldest, the responsible one, the one who had to figure out how to keep two younger brothers alive and relatively happy on a warehouse worker's salary.
It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't easy. Most days, it felt impossible.
But when Alex smiled, even a little bit, and when Zane swung his legs excitedly at the prospect of the movies, Kael felt like maybe—just maybe—he was doing something right.
"Chocolate chips?" Zane asked hopefully.
"Chocolate chips," Kael confirmed, sprinkling them onto the pancake before it finished cooking.
Page 8
The pancakes came out perfect. Golden brown, fluffy, with the chocolate chips melted just right. Kael flipped them onto a plate and set them in front of Zane, who attacked them with the enthusiasm of a small animal who hadn't eaten in weeks.
"These are good," Zane mumbled through a mouthful of pancake.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," Kael said automatically, already pouring the next batch onto the griddle.
"You talk with your mouth full," Zane pointed out.
"I'm an adult. I'm allowed to have bad habits."
"That's not how rules work," Alex said, appearing at the kitchen table with the kind of teenage certainty that only a fourteen-year-old could possess. He sat down across from Zane and pulled the plate of pancakes toward him, stealing one before Zane could protest.
"Hey!" Zane cried.
"Sharing is caring," Alex said, taking a bite.
"Sharing is when you ask first," Zane said.
"I'm asking now. Can I have this pancake?"
"No."
"Too late, I already have it."
Kael watched this exchange with the kind of fondness that only came from years of practice. This was his brothers. This was his life. This was what he'd been fighting for every single day since their parents died.
He made another batch of pancakes, and then another, until there was a stack of them piled high on a plate in the center of the table. The three of them sat there, eating pancakes and arguing about which movie to see at the dollar theater, and for a moment—just a moment—Kael forgot about the hardwood floor and the double shifts and the constant weight of responsibility.
Page 9
"We should see the action movie," Alex said. "The one with the explosions."
"That's boring," Zane said. "We should see the one with the talking animals."
"You're eight," Alex said. "Everything is interesting to you."
"You're fourteen," Zane countered. "Everything is boring to you."
"That's fair," Alex admitted.
Kael smiled into his coffee. This was what he lived for. Not the big moments—though those mattered too—but these small moments. The arguments about movies. The stolen pancakes. The way Zane's eyes lit up when he talked about the talking animals. The way Alex tried to hide that he actually wanted to see the talking animals too.
"We'll see both," Kael said. "We'll go to the matinee, see whichever one starts first, and then we'll come back for the second showing."
"Can we?" Zane asked, his eyes widening.
"Can we afford that?" Alex asked, the practical one, always thinking about money.
"We can afford it today," Kael said. "Today is a special day."
"Why?" Alex asked.
"Because it's the day after my birthday, and I'm still alive, and you two are still alive, and we're eating pancakes together. That's pretty special if you ask me."
Zane grinned and took another bite of pancake. Alex tried to hide his smile behind his coffee cup, but Kael could see it there, just barely.
Page 10
Later, after the dishes were washed and the apartment was cleaned and Kael had managed to figure out what the science experiment in the corner was (a forgotten sandwich, which he threw away without asking questions), the three of them headed out into the Texas sunshine.
The dollar theater was only a few blocks away, and they walked there with Zane in the middle, holding both of their hands. Alex pretended to be annoyed by this, but Kael could tell he didn't mind. At fourteen, you were supposed to be too cool for your little brother, but Alex had never been very good at pretending.
As they walked, Kael thought about birthdays and responsibilities and the weight of being the oldest brother. He thought about sleeping on hardwood floors and working double shifts and trying to keep two other people happy when you could barely keep yourself together.
But mostly, he thought about the fact that his brothers were here. They were alive. They were happy. And for now, that was enough.
"Kael?" Zane asked as they walked.
"Yeah, buddy?"
"I'm glad you're my brother."
Kael felt something catch in his throat. He squeezed Zane's hand a little tighter.
"I'm glad you're my brother too," he said.
Behind them, Alex was quiet, but when Kael glanced back, he could see the small smile on his face. The kind of smile that said he felt the same way, even if he was too fourteen to say it out loud.
The Texas sun was warm on their faces, and the dollar theater was just ahead. It was a small moment in a small life, but it was theirs.
And that was everything.
END OF CHAPTER 1
Word Count: Approximately 3,500 words (10 pages)
Author's Note
This opening chapter establishes the foundation of Kael Luccen's story: a twenty-five-year-old man raising two younger brothers after their parents' death. The humor balances the weight of his responsibility, showing that even in difficult circumstances, there are moments of lightness and connection. Chapter 2 will deepen the emotional complexity of their situation while continuing to explore the dynamics between the three brothers