"Ms. Dora, Mr. Dylan, you're still growing up. You have to eat something at least!" Adeline ran upstairs after the twins, but they slammed the bedroom door shut.
Dora locked the door from the inside and pulled out a bag of chips from under the bed. She handed it to Dylan, saying, "Here. We need to eat so that we have the energy to rise up against them."
Adeline knocked on their door for half an hour, but the twins just wouldn't unlock the door. Thinking that the twins might not be hungry, Adeline decided to leave them be. Skipping breakfast wouldn't cause much harm anyway.
She headed downstairs to prepare lunch. Dora was a glutton and would come running for lunch if she skipped breakfast.
However, even after preparing a table full of the twins' favorite dishes, Dora and Dylan still didn't leave their room. Adeline panicked, but she didn't want to trouble Bernard any further.
Eventually, she resorted to asking Aurora's son, Hugo, for help. He was the one who had interacted with Dora and Dylan the most in the past few days.
Hugo didn't have a playmate, so he enjoyed having the twins around. They were cute, and he could finally shoulder the role of an elder brother to take care of the twins.
However, Adeline told him that Dora and Dylan were Bernard's children and that the twins were Hugo's "aunt" and "uncle".
Hugo found it ridiculous. He, a nine-year-old, having to call two four-year-olds "Aunt" and "Uncle"?
"Dora, Dylan, open the door," said Hugo, knocking on the door. "I'm not going to school today. Let's head outside and have fun!"
Dora heard him although his voice was a little muffled. She was thrilled to know that he was here and so opened the door a crack. After making sure that Hugo was the only person by the door, she slowly opened it to talk to him.
"I want to head outside too, but I have to stop eating so that Mommy and Daddy will come back. We can have fun together once they're back," Dora told him.
"But Granduncle Bernard seldom comes back," said Hugo, disappointed.
In the nine years of his life, Hugo could count the pitiful number of times Bernard came home on two hands.
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