"Illumi was a monster everything about him was a grey" is a line he knew well.
Illumi was the circle of an empty day, brutal, and at night he tightened around your neck like a noose. Stairs would haemorrhage and paintings drew red—he couldn't remember the last time he felt the cold. Such smothered memories, folding themselves neatly into limbless monsters, began to gnaw away at his heart. And while it's true there is little to differentiate a murderer from a murderer, it could be summed up like this:
"Killua, I hardly know you anymore", "Killua, be home by seven", "Killua, where are you?", "Killua, dad needs to speak with you now", "Killua, where are you going", "Killua, I-" beep.
Heat buzzing off the fluorescent light-bulbs warmed his skin, as Illumi walked the grey length of his mind. Yes, nothing was enough for Killua anymore. Well, it was murder to see them die in red, but he was a murderer and Mother was a murderess and they were all murderers—this is what they do. (Murdererererer-)
Over the Ulleung Basin, he heard the soft and gentle 'plop, plop' of the cars and bodies tipping over the Asa Bridge that connected the island of Dogo with Yukan city, like punches to the chest. The last time Illumi worked with dad was in the summer they went to Osakan, the year they plotted the Kyrokan Massacre. He had learnt about justice from Dad quite early. They used to work together—Dad was bigger and better, so he always walked in front, sometimes breaking into a run or vacuuming into shadows like he never left. They used to find people sometimes; find them and stalk them and thwack thwack killed them dead.
Illumi wanted to know why it had to be Killua who turned out like this—defiant and unruly, a revolution corrupting in its own right. He was the prodigal son of a family of killers, wasn't he? Yet, why did it have to be Killua?
His transmitter beeped. He responded back affirmative. Water boiled at eighty degrees centigrade in Yukan. Illumi always boiled when Killua was the problem.
"I'm done."
"Status?" Static cackled on the other side, and for a moment, Illumi felt everything lurch itself away from him and towards the rims of the world.
"Fine."
"Okay, be home tonight before 12-" Beep.
Illumi breathed and inhaled came the scent of something astringent mingling with the burning of human skin. The erupted bridge behind him bubbled with a finality. He stepped over a whimpering body—spine severed and benumbed with choke-hold death. Outside the MAXCON president's office, lay a haze of stars. Voicelessly, and with one hand over a blood-red gap in his chest, Illumi swung his legs out the window, and dropped down the building like gravity calling the moon.
It was 11PM. The night was dark with something more than night. He passed a college house party with music like a violent scribble in one of the many narrow terraces. Illumi hoped Killua would never want to go to college. He suspected he knew the answer already.
Then, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came, and with it, Illumi felt something inside of him slip away. He crossed into a dark corner of a street, before slumping against the alley wall, twenty-seven shades of kaleidoscope blur obscuring his vision from the half world of his—oh, he forgot to confirm with Milluki. Too late now.
Picture this: it's Yukan city. Exotic vacation central, monsoon season two hundred and forty days a year, and the land of 365 days of 'god damn these mosquitos!' and the beach and the palm trees and that millennial-old jungle killing a total of 3.8 Hunters each year and 14 people. This was a mumble jumble hastily pasted together city of postmodern artists and half-hearted pastiches, stuck perpetually in the 40s, where time only moved as fast as you wanted it to go. Except the Zoldycks never went anywhere for the vacation, weather, or views.
Illumi slammed awake at two AM in the dark morning, on a strange bed, in a stranger house. The last time he had slept so deeply was when he was four and had almost lost his arm. He flooded his En throughout the building as he waited for his eyes to adjust.
Two targets, both with Nen.
How carelessly he slipped back in autopilot, with such pronounced holes in his heart, how hollow he was. This silent house was airy with conspicuous skylights and expansive windows—easy to exit and easy to enter. What a paradox. No respectable Nen user would reside in such plebeian housing. And so, in the glorious pink of the morning, Illumi stalked down the hallway to the drum of his heartbeat. He paused before a bedroom door.
The moment he stepped inside, the figure on the bed bolted upright. He was at their neck in an instant, hand poised like a knife raised high under the sun. Their delayed reaction only confirmed his suspicions.
"Do not scream and do not move. Close your eyes if you understand." Their eyes fluttered close. Illumi could hear the roaring of the blood in their veins. "I'm going to ask you to answer a few questions. If you lie, I'll kill you. If you don't answer, I'll kill you. Open your eyes if you understand."
Ah, it was a woman. Illumi saw the whites of her eyes and reflected back in them was an image of himself.
"Why I am here?"
Her mouth opened and closed. Illumi felt the heat rise on her face. She cleared her throat and tried again, "I found you in this alley on my way home from my-"
"Where were you leaving?"
"-My friend's party, it was just down the-"
"Who else lives here?"
"Oh it's just me-"
"Try again."
Illumi could feel her heart thumping out of her chest. This rise and fall of a human heart captured him for a moment.
"Honestly I live alone—I mean I have a pet fish but-" A capillary burst in her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, they met with Illumi's—a raw and saturated blue, seemingly cut from an inner wedge of the sky. (I have to do this, she thought. Then: and even if I can't, I have to.)
"How do you know Nen?" He pressed on.
She blinked, "Nen?"
Then, a prehistoric fear gripped her mind. Vacuous, dark, and aphotic—she felt an actual chill from just looking at him, yet her heart kept bursting on, like a sparrow half-mad in a cage. Oh god no, she inhaled deeply as one single thought caught her: I will not end here. "I don't know what Nen is," she cautiously pressed, "but I can take it away."
Silence engulfed the room. At this, Illumi felt everything stop. "You can take what away?"
The woman slowly released a breath. "Well… I don't really know how to explain it, but-"
His fingers pressed closer. "Try."
"Your sorrows, your fears, your sins, and your regrets—I can take it all away."
"Oh?" He drawled, twirling a needle in his hand. "Explain."
"I found you because you had this awful aura—do you call it aura? I don't really know to be honest and this might sound totally strange," an awkward laugh bubbled out of her, as blood oozed down her neck. "But I'm always been able to… feel? These kinds of things. Yeah. Like the things you have behind you right now." She narrowed her eyes in scrutiny, staring at him—well, not entirely at him. "I mean, it's not literally behind you, more metaphorically, you know? They're screaming bloody murder or something… oh wow." Her heart plummeted. What a monster he was.
But, she doesn't think he was the worst of them all.
Now Illumi found it was him staring at her. Gyo? No. Nen Hypersensitivity? "Show me," he commanded and something in her visibly evaporated. She asked for his hand with a strange shy smile, closed her eyes when she took it—how fearless, Illumi dimly registered with condescension—then she wiped something away from her eyes, before placing that hand on top of his, gripping it tightly. Illumi's fingers were spider thin and rough, as though the millions of constellation scars that connected over his skin were very real and alive. Oh, tears are the medium, he raised an eyebrow. And unlike Killua's warm and painful tears after the first time his 150 bones out of the 206 were broken for training, he felt nothing at hers.
At once after this thought, a fog heavy with water vapours poured over them and stuffed the room with cold quietude.
Oh. And Illumi suddenly understood everything.
His mouth twisted into a crude thing. This was a Nen exorcist formidable enough to remove dead Nen users' residues. His heart skipped a beat, and while it was long enough for Illumi to apprehend how his heartbeat had stopped briefly, and was now offbeat, it was not long enough for him to understand why. Nonetheless, a thrill engulfed him. This could be very useful.
She opened her eyes again like a subterranean sea creature, eyes still misty, the early morning glow began to seep into the room. She hesitated, her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but she stopped herself. Correct choice, Illumi thought.
He stood up, imposing his dead eyes and dead heart and dead wishes over her. "Fascinating." The deviant hunger tip-toed around the glaring switch in his head. "I'll be back tomorrow." And Illumi vanished in the same moment she dared to rub the moisture from her eyes.
She thought she might have just lost ten years of her life.
Her footsteps could be heard from the other end of the street. Thinking back, Illumi judged it couldn't have been logical to assume she was a Nen user, but she had done well to not attempt to immediately kill herself after their encounter (which had happened to him five times before). He was waiting on the lounge in the dark, silently seeking the dimly lit depths of an aquarium that spanned the entire length of her living room for any sign of life. An aquatic fern swirled in the bubbles of an air pump in the tank. Do people enjoy such hobbies?
The front door slammed shut. The lights flickered on. Grocery bags rustled as the stench of the ocean wafted inside. She walked towards the aquarium, right past him, then stopped and tapped the glass.
Something glinting snapped in the depths of the waters. At once, Illumi tensed.
Amusingly enough, she still has not noticed him, and instead began to murmur coos and gentle lovelove whispers into the water. Cracking open a container of wriggling goldfish, she scooped out a couple with a net.
Antarctic ice lurched out of the water and hurled towards him like a torrential flood.
He blinked. No, that was just an afterimage. So there was something just like him here; he hadn't been wrong. When she turned around towards the tank, Illumi was in front of her.
She shrieked and leaped aside, hands flying over her screaming heart. Illumi idly plucked the flailing goldfish flying out of the net.
"Holy god you scared me oh god- Ah you're back? Oh wow um-"
"Actually I've been here since you left at 9:28 this morning." She stared at him in disbelief. "Your ignorance is… disconcerting, to say the least."
The insult glided off smoothly. Instead, questions like, who are you, what do you want with me, god what are you fizzed and popped on the tip of her tongue. But she swallowed them back. "Would you like something to eat?"
Illumi regarded her with chill distaste.
A self-deprecating smile, quick and laughing, flickered over her face but she dipped her head and it was gone. She turned her back to him (to hide?), and cracked open the lid of goldfish again, scooping the rest of them into a much smaller tank. Occasionally, her croppy hair would fall infuriatingly over her face as Illumi watched her, like a hawk might watch a pigeon. She possessed a charm that could disappear in moments, like a gold light in certain old paintings. Her ramrod straight posture, straight-laced and poised, was paradoxical to this undone, don't care hair and faded denim jeans, with the ratty sweater falling effortlessly from the shoulder. She scooped up the few remaining fish from the container, and dropped it into the large tank.
They plopped into water's surface.
Aura, like late winter ice with glimpses of steam, striked the fish, disabling their ability to breath, before they were engulfed by a large, endless mouth. The seemingly infinite length of a creature twisted, and turned, before at last, their eyes met Illumi's. Then it flicked its tail, the gleam of its scales shining like a knife raised high, and vanished into the depths like a snake. The glass creaked and groaned.
She was gazing at him apprehensively again. Illumi hid his needles. Yes, this must be the other Nen user he sensed.
"That's Gyokudo, he's a five-year-old Giant Snakehead. They're native to this region," she explained gently, with a confronting stare. He hummed in reply with lofty nonchalance.
That creature was certainly smarter than the usual animals inside aquariums, but Illumi was most captivated by the level of understanding present in the gleam of its eyes. He viewed it from outside the tank, so to him, it was as though the fish was contained inside the glass. However, it was the fish who saw the people from outside the glass, so instead appeared as though it was the people who was inside the glass. This brutal reality was reflected in the blue, sun-strained stare of hers. They had the same sort of livid strength in their eyes, a rare sort of self-destructive honesty.
So abruptly, as though she had slowly drawn the conclusion that Illumi no longer had the intention to kill her, the woman opened her mouth and, "My name's Sakamae, what's your name?"
edited: 17/8/17
I'M BACK
Okay, I know, it's been like 10 years and honestly I feel like I'm worse than Togashi when it comes to writing haha because I can't seem to keep stories continuing for longer than two chapters LOL. But I have rewritten the beginning of a week in scraps, simply because I really hated the old one. It wasn't a reflective of my writing capabilities and I think you'll all enjoy this one must better.
HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON (maybe lol don't count on it)
ps. If you have any questions, queries or comments, feel free to drop a review or a pm.