Currently, it was twelve at midnight. Inside the Reyes' household, Kenneth eagerly studied in his tiny study room; almost sixty inches in each width with a height of twelve and a half meters overall. Except for the middle which had to be the chair and desk, the small room contained English literature, human philosophy, science chemistry, biology theories, world economics, calculus, historical texts, physics, metaphysics, logic, ethics, politics, and poetics, piled in every inch of the room. There stood no shelves, only thick textbooks, a chair, and a desk. On the desk, only a lamp, a computer, and a notebook with some sketchy notes inside had in class. The wall in front of him had organized sticky notes stuck according to their date and time. Even though the room had filled with books and sticky notes, only there were all methodical, neat, and tidy, as Kenneth desired his surroundings to be uncluttered and positioned orderly.
Outside in that slim and boring room, there placed only a small bed, a huge board filled with his gold medals for certain contests, academic trophies on five sizeable shelves, and clothes inside in each of three closets. All pressed against the walls. Aside from all those things, there also had an unwanted sliding window, an unused air conditioner, and plain walls in his room. There was no single art or sport or any music-related in everything he had been doing. Reading, writing, studying, and participating in academic contests were all the things he had done so far in his life just to achieve the only thing he had hoped to reach soon, to become a lawyer and a politician. A student who wanted to be a politician and a lawyer like Kenneth---that was all inside his room knowing his dependence.
Moments later after reading the philosophy of Aristotle book, Kenneth noticed someone was coming into his little stud room. It was his father even without glancing at him. "Did you study for tomorrow's competition?"
Kenneth's father, although living in the same household as him and as his brother, never had been knocked at least once upon looming inside his room. The time his father would speak to him had been always about academics, but never once congratulated him about the things he had achieved related to it. Not only would he appear so unproud of his son, but never once in his life he had remembered smiling at him as well. There were issues why he took no attention to his son. He had never liked him from the very start ever since he knew his passion would become a lawyer or politician someday. He would rather want his son to pursue neurology, anesthesiology, dermatology or surgery, or anything that specializes in medicine rather than those things involving humanities and social sciences or somewhat politics. But despite his father's dispute over what he had desired, Kenneth knew it all that someday, if he would continue this focus of his in politics, his father had to disown him surely. And that was the reason why he included some science-related in his studies, just to avoid being kicked out.
"Yes, dad," Kenneth answered without looking at his father who was standing behind him, crossing his arms and leaning against the entrance of the tiny room, glaring at what he was doing which was reading a philosophy book.
"That's good," his father answered, although he had an idea it wasn't a science book his son was reading. He still let it slide for a moment but deep inside he urged to throw that book somewhere outside their house, or else burn it with the stove on. Yet now, he didn't do it for the reason that there had a contest happening tomorrow. If Kenneth won't meet his expectation about the contest, he had chosen to throw and burn those philosophical books of his son without fretting and hesitating. "Prepare for tomorrow since you have to skip school."
"Right." And his father, still inside Kenneth's room, walked away before he could hear his son's reply and roamed around to see the trophies his son had achieved. Kenneth found it annoying that someone had to remind him of something so simple, even if that someone had to be his father.
Klent Rin Reyes was his father's name. He worked as Specialist Medical Practitioner in a private hospital not far from their address. He graduated from a prestigious college school and was a double degree holder --- a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and a Bachelor of Science. Their bloodlines were all going for medicine, except for his mother who's a real estate agent, but Klent wouldn't mind about his wife's job as long as both his sons had to be into science. Kenneth's grandfather and grandmother, all on Klent's side, graduated from medical school. Kenneth's grandfather ended up becoming a chemist and his grandmother a biologist. His older brother recently graduated and was a newly recruited physician for the government. Among their family's bloodline, only Kenneth was not purely fond of science, and his mother as well who's now in South Korea for the business. That had to be the reason why Klent planned on forcing his son to attend a medical school, not law school because he wanted their generations to be in science.
Long before he got married to his wife and had his two sons, both his parents also forced him to marry a wife who graduated in science or something related to that. He knew it wasn't that easy since he truly loved his wife, Carmella, so much that he won't give her up. In the end, he ended up leaving his parents' home and living together with his soon-to-be wife, Carmella. He had no idea that in all those years he had ever wanted to escape that kind of life his parents had given to him, he also applied it to his own son, Kenneth. But even so, he thought this might be a way to pay back his parents, to have his two sons succeed in science.
Moments later after Klent vanished into his son's tiny study area to look around in the main room, Kenneth felt his phone vibrating in his pocket from notification and grabbed it up to open it. The first thing he saw on his phone screen was from an unknown sender with the name "Sunset" as the username. It was an urgent message since it was labeled as urgent by the sender. While his father was still busy gazing at his rewards as if he were in an exhibit art museum, Kenneth accessed the pin on his phone to read the urgent message from the person nicknamed Sunset.
"Hey, help us, King. I recently heard about you from a friend of mine. You're the famous tactician on this site, right? We are planning to rob a bank tonight. We will give you your reward ourselves. How much do you want?" And that was the message Sunset had sent to Kenneth, which nicknamed King as a codename in that certain dark site.
Before Kenneth had entered as a junior in high school, he considered assisting criminals by giving them precise instructions as long as they would pay him the exact amount he had expected. Now that he's already a senior in high school, he still, had the same hobby as always. He didn't want to help them simply for pleasure; he needed to do it to pay for his college tuition since he was concerned about his father disowning him sooner or later if he would end up disappointing him at some point. When he realized this, he opened his own bank account and arranged all the required data for him to live on his own, just in case, in the future. So far as what he had gathered, he already had millions of currency in his bank account. But for him, that much wouldn't still be enough that's why if he still had the time to work his butt off while studying at the same time, then he had no choice but to do it immediately.
No one in his family was aware of his doings. Kenneth's mother, Carmella, who had been living outside the country for about three years, had never been able to fully emit a single word and connect with Kenneth as they grew physically and mentally distanced from one other as a mother and son. The only families she ever tried conversing with were her elder son (Kenneth's older brother) and Klent (her husband). She had also never spoken to her in-laws as they were so opposed to her and their son's marriage, even though it had been already twenty years since then. Nevertheless, even if they had unfavored their marriage, they might see a ray of hope in Carmella since she had proven to them that she was a strong and diligent person in cooking, job, taking care of the family, home duties, and studies, as well as her intelligence in business and in money-making. She had passed their expectations as a typical woman capable to marry their son. It might be an unlikeable idea Carmella had thought about her in-laws delineating a woman like that because she believed that a woman shouldn't be called a woman based on their talents in domestic chores, taking care of the family, ironing clothing, or cleverness in money-making, but rather a woman should be called a woman because they were born in this world as a woman, not as a person who had to take care of someone or be someone below anybody.
Truthfully speaking, Kenneth had never been so talkative and happy person in their household to the point that his father would sometimes think that he was a visitor just staying in for a vacation. But he never paid attention to it. As long as he already had gathered money, then it would be nice to leave in this household without anyone's notice.
It took longer but Kenneth thought deeply about the amount he had to take. "500,000 cash. Give me the location and the name of the bank. I'll give you the details asap," Kenneth replied to Sunset.
Upon glancing at his phone notifications, he saw a message from fifteen minutes ago that an amount of went million had been transferred to his bank account. "It's true. Travis really sent me the 20 million just as he promised," with a plain and blank face he had, Kenneth thought, "Was he just testing me to see if I will be tempted by the money, or was he just like that kind of person who would waste money over something simple? To think that in exchange for helping him manipulate the class will cost me 20 million. This is several million times my tuition for college." Whether he felt delighted or felt unfortunate about it, the result was still a result. Nothing to be surprised about.
In his main room, Kenneth heard the disappearing footsteps of his father at the room's main entrance. He then knew that his father was about to go back to his business now after checking up on him. Talking about privacy, Klent felt like he owned the science trophies his son had accomplished even if it wasn't really his in the first place, and that had to be the basis why he had to barge in without knocking in his son's room because he felt amazed by these trophies arranged in the shelves and gold medals hanging in the enormous board stuck in the wall by which he proudly thought they were his achievements.
"I'll be out now. Keep studying there," the last words of Klent after clutching the doorknob in preparation to open the door. Without knowing the other side of the door before he obtained to open it completely, there stood his elder son, who was then about to open the door but ended up meeting him instead.
With the tray of bread and juice in his hand, Kent, Kenneth's older brother, smiled at Klent proceeding outside while thoroughly shutting the door close. Kent then grinned, observing his father walking slowly away, "Dad, where are you going?"
Kent Eros Reyes, the older brother of Kenneth who had just recently graduated from college and had found a new job as a physician working for the government. The tray he was carrying all over from their kitchen up to his little brother's room was all for him, his only little brother. He was the only family who showed much care and love to Kenneth even before he was still young. Unlike his father who pushed Kenneth too hard just to focus only on science, Kent was the only person who was proud of his brother pursuing law, and the only person who encouraged Kenneth to do what he wanted even if it was not science. Despite the support he gave to his little brother, he had never felt like it was enough to uplift him. The thing was, all of them had been into science including their grandparents, great-grandparents, and relatives, so they hated Kenneth for studying a specialty that's not science. And so, Kent felt the burden their family had caused Kenneth. He grew distant from them, he wanted to take law so bad that he had decided to choose both law and science even if science won't really do much for him. So as his older brother and the only family his little brother could rely on, Kent wanted to help his little brother in completing law only, not science, since he had found that science would just be a hindrance to his emphasis on law.
Before graduating from college, Kent also had encountered the hurdles their family had put him through; taking exams as early as he could, attending cram schools, making a pie graph just for his schedule, reading books, studying non-stop, performing surgery to gather data, participating in certain contests. Kent had ever wanted to have a science profession just like his father, but he couldn't help sometimes but complain about it. He would love to study hard, but not as hard as his father had thought him. He wanted to take a break sometimes, but he couldn't do so to the point that his nose had to bleed out of stress while still studying at his desk and being glued to his chair the whole day. Seeing himself in Kenneth, he doesn't want his little brother to continue being like him, so Kent had to move and help Kenneth before everything will be out of hand. He doesn't want his brother to commit suicide out of this occurrence since he had heard many teens had executed suicide out of depression, school, anxiety, and stress.
"Oh, I'll buy you some food, son," Klent replied, tapping twice his son's shoulder, "... to celebrate your first salary as a physician."
"Really? Thanks, dad." Kent was grateful, but not enough that he had also considered his brother that might be ignored again. "How about Ken? You won't buy anything for him?"
"Nah... he's busy studying." His father had gone down to stairs to proceed to the living room's sofa, to read some newspapers. "Leave him alone."
Sighing, unfortunately, Kent knocked gently on his little brother's door and sincerely had noticed that he left a tray of bread and juice at the entrance for him to have. He was worried that he had thought about giving his brother some peace of mind by eating his favorite bread and drinking his favorite juice. Without staying much longer, Kent had left and proceeded to his room which was just in front of his little brother's room.
Inside the tiny study room, Kenneth had heard their conversation but didn't pay much attention to it since it was not his business to care. He also heard his older brother's message but didn't really give much engagement to it so he just didn't mind about the bread and juice his brother had talked about before leaving.
Seconds later after the sender, Sunset, had given him the location of the bank account they were about to rob, Kenneth had instantly built a plan in his mind and sketched the important notes and the necessary strategy that had to be executed perfectly. The time, the exact numbers of CCTV cameras, the sensitive lasers, the traps --- all were planned accordingly because of Kenneth's felonious strategy.
"Here's the plan," Kenneth sent the message along with the instructions he had designed.
