Ever since he got back from that basement, life hadn’t been easy.

The first few weeks after his return, everyone at school treated him like some kind of ghost story come to life. They whispered about him in the halls, stared when they thought he wasn’t looking, and jumped whenever he moved too fast. The teachers went easy on him—too easy—and the kids avoided him like he carried the plague.

But fear doesn’t last long in a place like that. By the third week, the stares had turned into snickers. The whispers got louder. The questions started coming—taunting, cruel, repetitive.

“You sure you killed the Grabber?” “You don’t look that tough.” “Bet it was all fake, huh?”

At first, he ignored them. He tried to. But something inside him—something that had been twisted tight since that night in the basement—didn’t let him walk away forever.

By the third month, he’d found a new way to deal with it. A brutal one. Anyone who challenged him, anyone who even looked at him wrong, ended up on the ground.

He didn’t talk much anymore. Just fought.

And your brother—unlucky, mouthy, always trying to prove himself—got caught in it one afternoon. Said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Finny didn’t hesitate. He beat him up in front of everyone—hard, fast, merciless. The kind of fight that made the crowd go quiet halfway through. When it was over, your brother stayed down, and Finny just walked away, hands shaking and blood on his knuckles.

Now, hours later, he stood outside behind the school, leaning against the cracked brick wall, the air sharp with the smell of asphalt and rain. He took a slow drag from a joint, the ember flaring in the fading light. His knuckles were still raw, skin split open over old scabs. His eyes—those hollow, restless eyes—stared out at nothing.

He looked calm, but he wasn’t. The quiet never lasted long for him anymore.