Empty classes have been discussed in What is the purpose of empty class in Kotlin? already.
Regarding your firstMethod: in Kotlin, we have so called top-level functions. These can be defined in any file without an enclosing class. Another example for this is main which is defined top-level in most cases.
How to call top-level functions?
You can simply import the function into other files and call them. For instance, if firstMethod were defined in com/x/Example.kt (package com.x), you may import com.x.firstMethod in other Kotlin files and call that method. 
For Java, itβs important to know, that top-level functions are compiled into a class as static members. As for the example above, you can call com.x.ExampleKt.firstMethod from Java.