I return home shortly after leaving the mall.

"So? What did you buy?"

Mother catches me on the way to my room. Great, another interrogation is on the way...

"I didn't find Lego which was cheap enough, so I bought this thing called Jenga instead."

"How much did it cost?"

"20$, after a sale."

"That's all you bought?"

"Y-yeah."

There’s no way I'm telling her about the necklace for my sweet daughter. It’d prompt way too many questions for me to deal with.

"Where's Amy?"

She asks after scanning around.

"Probably still in the mall with her friends."

"You didn't return together?"

"No, I just bought what I needed and left."

I shrug in disinterest. She’s not a kid anymore; I don’t need to babysit her.

"You could hang out with your own sister from time to time, you know."

"Why? She has friends of her age."

"But you’re family."

"I think she prefers her friends."

And I prefer to spend my time at home as much as possible.

"Fine."

Mother shrugs and returns to watching TV. I treat this as a sign of being freed from the interrogation, so I return to my room.

I hardly played any video games this week thanks to my time-consuming job. But instead of spending a whole weekend on that, I first unpack the Jenga; it's imperative that I test the game for myself before teaching it to Lily.

The box contains 54 wooden blocks, which are meant to be grouped in trios. I build roughly half of the tower, to see how it stands.

I complete the creation up to 18 levels. The tower has become rather tall, but it properly maintains balance.

I begin pulling out blocks at random, to test the flow of the game. Dexterity has never been my forte, therefore I cause the tower to collapse fairly early on my first attempts.

I keep building and destroying the tower over and over, trying to figure out the game’s strategies. I must have spent hours repeating this routine; it’s a pretty fun challenge.

"So, like, that’s what you bought?"

Amy enters my room and examines the Jenga tower.

The tower is currently in a dangerous situation; I have been playing with this one for a while. It's so shaky that any small shake would make it collapse.

"Why didn't you stick around a little longer? We went to Mcdonalds and stuff."

"Not interested."

I circle around the endangered tower, trying to find a safe block to pull out.

"It's called Jenga or something, right? Like, I played that before at school."

She approaches me and sits down on the green carpet.

She played Jenga before? This game which I play today for the first time? Guess that's the difference between those who had a social childhood and those who didn't.

I press three fingers against my forehead and try to calculate the winning move. There must be a move that can-

"Phooo!"

"Ah!"

A vicious tornado strikes the tower and makes it crumble to shambles.

"Hey! What's the big deal!?"

The generator of the tornado was none other than my devilish younger sister.

"Haha, I just wanted to give it a shot and stuff. Can't believe it really fell, haha."

"Gah..."

She mercilessly laughs at the destruction she rained upon my efforts; she's a heartless monster.

"So why Jenga? Weren't you going to buy some Lego garbage or something?"

"The price was a huge ripoff."

"Huh. How did it go by the way? Like, teaching the robot Lego and stuff?"

"Ugh, it was fine... sort of."

She'll become even more annoying if I admit that my cute daughter is a failure in Lego.

"I feel sorry for the poor robot, being forced to play that sort of garbage and stuff."

Hey, stop badmouthing the almighty Lego!

Thinking of it, what is she doing here anyway?

It's best that I wait for her to leave before I rebuild the tower. If she retained any of her bratty childhood tendencies - I'm in for some hell.

Unplugging my PlayStation, chewing my collectible cards, hiding my toy weapons, breaking the limbs of my action figures - this girl has countless crimes on her record.

There's no telling what disaster awaits me if I play Jenga with this tower she's building right now... huh?

"What are you doing...?"

"Hm? Like, what does it look like?"

She groups blocks in trios and quickly builds up the Jenga tower. Is she trying to repent for her past sins? That'd be a first.

"Done!"

She grins widely as she examines her finished masterpiece: a plain Jenga tower. Surprisingly, she did construct it properly, I'll hand her that.

"Ya!"

She pokes one block from the center and pulls it out.

"Your turn."

She smirks at me while putting the pulled block on top of the tower.

Wait, are we playing? When was that decided? It's my Jenga, you know...

"Hm..."

I go with the flow and pull out a Jenga block as well. Playing this unfamiliar game with another person should be informative for a newbie like me, even if it's with my sister.

For now, I decide to play along with her whims.

After a couple of rounds, it becomes evident that she has much more experience and dexterity than me. She's very proficient at putting me in tricky situations.

Thus far, the score is 0:3 in her favor. Even though I'm constantly losing, playing like this isn't bad once in a while.

I can't even recall the last time we played anything together. Her favorite game has always been “Get in the Way of Brother’s Games”.

BAM

"Haha, in your face!"

"Ugh, again...?"

Amy scores yet another victory, shifting the score to an overwhelming 0:4. I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot in what's essentially a game of strategy.

If it was a straightforward game of mental skill like chess - I'd mop the floor with her irritating smug. But in Jenga, I need to be careful as I push and pull these blocks with my clumsy hands.

"Hmm, it's lacking something..."

She tilts her head and twists her lips while I rebuild the tower.

"Oh, I know!"

She claps in excitement.

"When I played it on a school trip, we had these special blocks with orders and stuff."

"Orders?"

"You know, Truth or Dare kinda stuff. Like, if you pull a block with an order then you gotta follow it."

"Oh, I see."

"Hey, why don't we add orders to these blocks too?"

She grins from ear to ear with glittering eyes. A dangerous glint, there’s no doubt it foretells disaster.

"No. I don’t want to vandalize the Jenga I’ve just bought."

"C'mon! It'd be a blast and stuff!"

"No."

I'm too scared to imagine what’ll happen if I let her write Truth or Dare orders on the Jenga blocks.

"Then, what if the winner can ask Truth or Dare from the loser?"

"Don't wanna."

I'll end up on the receiving end all the time; that'd be horrible.

Truth or Dare has never been a social game I favored. It's a dangerous game with a huge potential of running into embarrassing and uncomfortable situations.

It’s even worse when my sister is involved. I can only shake in fear while thinking what this brat is capable off. Brrr.

... though, playing it with Lily could be a nice idea.

Forcing her to say stuff like “I love papa” could be very entertaining. She’ll no doubt be torn apart between her love for her daddy and her tsuntsun tendencies.

I definitely must try it one of these days.