"Please tell me he's - not going to work as a judge again. Ever."

She hesitates to go so far as 'please tell me he's dead,' but she... definitely thinks about it.

"I'll tell the right people that he took a bribe to kill somebody."

"Oh, good. Thank you." She bookmarks her page, puts down the book, and hugs her brother. "My brother. People aren't allowed to kill him."

Snort. "Thank you."

"Also, you know. People taking bribes to convict innocent people for murder. Bad."

"Thank you for the clarification. I was confused there."

"Hush." Hug.

Sibling snuggles!

"Would you like to play a board game? Or - um, I don't know, cards or something."

"I don't actually have any board games, but I'm not opposed in principle!"

"I'd be okay with a board game."

Giggle. "Okay. I doubt I could recreate the more complicated strategy ones from memory, but I can describe a simpler one for Sekar to make?"

"Sure."

She thinks for a little while, then describes a relatively simple game involving a board with holes in it, different colored pegs for each player, and getting those pegs from one side of the board to the other as quickly as possible by either moving a single hole, or by hopping over other pegs. First one to manage to get all of their pieces from one side of the board to the other wins.

Both she and her brother have some practice at it.

Naturally, Zeothe patiently waits until his sister is almost done building a peg infrastructure for getting across the board. Then, he ruthlessly and mercilessly sabotages her main method of using it, and promptly commandeers the whole thing for himself.

"You're an asshole and I hate you," declares Eselle, firmly.

"If you don't want me to steal your nice things then you shouldn't make them for me!"

"Also a terrible person. You are a terrible, terrible person. Just so you know."

He's also a giggling person.

"Sekar, sweetie? Do you perhaps want to team up for the express purpose of destroying my brother?"

"I'm not actually all that good at this game!"

"That's okay! I'll take any ally against the brotherly menace! I can even help you with strategy. Look at him, and his smug face, he definitely needs to be destroyed."

Zeothe's face is more 'amused' than 'smug,' but yeah okay, close enough.

Sekar giggles helplessly.