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After putting the twins to bed in his spare room at 9pm (Jaakko said their bedtime is 8pm, but he wouldn’t be Cool Uncle Ilmo if he didn’t let the kids stay up late), Ilmo returns to the living room in his trailer and settles down to watch TV until his own bedtime. But instead of watching that new drama, he instead puts it on and then immediately falls asleep.
When Ilmo wakes up an hour later, having completely missed the plot of the show, he yawns and rubs his eyes. And then notices noises coming from the spare room. The place where his niece and nephew are sleeping. At first, fear grips Ilmo, paranoid that they might be in danger, but as he hurries toward the room, he soon realises the sounds are nothing but Charlie and Charline bickering and laughing and jumping around the room.
Opening the door, Ilmo finds the twins in the middle of a pillow fight, giggling as they lob pillows at each other and dive out of the way of each other’s attacks.
“Take that!” Charlie cries, but his sister avoids the pillow flying toward her.
And the pillow lands right at Ilmo’s feet. As she rushes over to grab it, Charline notices him standing there.
“Oh, Uncle Ilmo…” she says, and both the kids immediately do their best to pretend they weren’t messing around. The behaviour reminds Ilmo so much of himself and Jaakko when they were kids, and he laughs.
“Are you having fun without me?” Ilmo says, offering them an exaggerated pout. Pretending they hurt his feelings, he says, “Why wasn’t I invited to join in?”
“You were asleep,” Charlie says.
“Just like you two were meant to be,” Ilmo says, smirking.
“I think he’s got us there, Charlie,” Charline says, grinning sheepishly.
“I’m not mad, you know,” Ilmo says. “If you’re this hyper, you never would’ve slept anyway. Just… maybe keep it down next time you want to mess around after you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
And before the twins can really process that they just got given advice for how to disobey grownups more successfully (that’s what makes him Cool Uncle Ilmo), Ilmo gets an idea. Grinning, he picks up the pillow that landed by his feet and throws it straight at Charlie.
“No fair!” Charlie cries, but he giggles.
And that is how Ilmo Koskela ends up having a pillow fight with his brother’s kids. Not to brag, but he’s probably the best uncle ever.