Chapter 4:the brutal

Julian sat alone on the cracked steps behind the school, watching the other kids push past each other with careless eyes. He noticed the way they repeated the same mistakes over and over — rushing into fights, spreading gossip, giving up at the first sign of trouble. Each misstep burned into him like a warning: people never learned unless it hit them hard.

He thought about himself and his parents, the way they argued endlessly, yelling about bills and homework. He saw the patterns he had tried to ignore for years. His father’s anger, his mother’s avoidance, his siblings’ constant mocking — all the same cycle repeated every day, every week. And Julian realized: if he didn’t figure it out, he would be stuck repeating it too.

He pulled his notebook from his bag and began to write. Not stories this time, but lists of observations. “People blame instead of fixing,” he wrote. “People expect results without effort. People lie to themselves to avoid pain.” Every word stung because it applied to him as much as anyone else.

The next day, in class, Caleb Dunn shoved a kid into the lockers and laughed. Julian didn’t flinch. He predicted the next move: Caleb would brag to his friends, then trip over his own pride. Sure enough, the bully slipped on a spilled drink seconds later, falling flat in front of everyone. Julian wrote it down, not out of joy, but understanding. Patterns were everywhere.

At lunch, Julian saw his classmates whispering, excluding a shy girl named Leah Ramirez. He watched them repeat the same cruel behaviors he had experienced. He felt anger rise, but he didn’t lash out. He noticed the triggers, the small mistakes they were making — their arrogance, their assumption that no one noticed. Julian realized that knowing these mistakes gave him power over how he reacted.

When he went home, he faced his parents’ argument again. Victor yelled, Marina ignored, Eli taunted. Julian stopped letting it break him. He predicted how the argument would escalate, prepared himself, and found calm in the middle of chaos. For the first time, he felt a small sense of control in a house that had never offered him any.

That night, he wrote more in his notebook: “I can’t control them, but I can control me. I can’t change the world, but I can survive it. I can’t stop cruelty, but I can see it coming.” The words felt heavy but true, like a lifeline thrown across the darkness.

Julian noticed something else too: the mistakes he observed weren’t random. They followed patterns, small choices repeated over and over. People didn’t mean to fail; they just didn’t notice what they were doing wrong. Julian began to see a way to survive — and maybe even grow stronger — by noticing, predicting, and avoiding these same mistakes himself.

In the quiet of his room, Julian tested it. He imagined situations at school, at home, with friends and enemies, and predicted the outcomes. When reality matched his predictions, he gained confidence. When it didn’t, he learned. Every failure became data, every observation a tool. He was no longer a helpless boy; he was a student of human error, a quiet strategist learning the rules of survival.

By the end of the week, Julian felt something shift inside. The bullying didn’t stop, the arguments didn’t end, but he wasn’t broken anymore. He could see the world clearly, predict the mistakes, and adjust. And for the first time in his life, he realized that the brutal mirror of life wasn’t just cruelty — it was a guide. And if he could read it right, he might just survive — and maybe even thrive.