Disclaimer: Not mine.
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I'll cook up ivy, simmer down sweat pea, and sprinkle daisies on your dish.
For fidelity; for shyness; for innocence—these three are what makes a little fish,
Named Tsuna.
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Tsuna sat up on the bed and looked up to Mukuro who was curled around him. He was sleeping, breath shallow like an asthmatic breathing. So he'd finally fallen asleep. Tsuna had worried that the haunting music would keep the doll-maker awake. It was growing fainter, the piano notes. Just another hour, just one more and the night would be over. Tsuna dragged one stump of a hand softly against Mukuro's cheek.
An impossibly large hand caught his in a firm grip. Glassy blue eyes stared at him, blankly. Mukuro tilted his head to the side, also listening to the music. So, it left him another hour then to find the intruder while distracting the doll.
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"Fuu~" Mukuro dangled the long stemmed daisy above Tsuna's batting hands. So much like a cat… He particularly liked how the ragdoll attempted to grasp the white petals by clapping both fingerless hands in the air. He waited a bit more as he swished the flower in Tsuna's face then dropped it into the doll's waiting arms. Tsuna jumped in joy while embracing the daisy. Time for the doll-maker to leave.
He stood up soundlessly and walked towards the door. Promises or no, he would find out who had dropped into his home like a little thief.
Unfortunately, by the time he even touched the doorknob, Tsuna had looked up to find him gone and had scampered as quickly as he could to pull on the hem of Mukuro's pant legs. Quickly getting annoyed, Mukuro swept Tsuna away with his foot. He'd misjudged the force he'd used though and Tsuna hit the side of his dresser with an ominous thump. The doll crumpled into itself.
The tang of cherry flowers hit his nose.
Alarmed, Mukuro stooped down with a shout and cradled the doll in one hand. He looked it over carefully. No holes. Just to make sure though, he said, "Oh, Tsuna. You let such a little thing hurt you?" The doll jerked upright in his hand and smacked his thumb, annoyed. Mukuro laughed at that.
After all, Mukuro was not like the scum on the streets, blood-thirsty and brutal animals…
Morning came and Mukuro was unable to catch the stranger in his home as by then the music had vanished. Still, it didn't stop him from examining room by room for any trace of a break-in. He'd found nothing.
After that, he gathered up other flowers to try and feed to Tsuna. He was curious to see if the doll ate anything else other than cherry petals.
It was rather curious that not once did the thought of his other dolls cross his mind while he entertained his little guest, Tsuna.
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Snip, snip went the scissors over a roll of red cotton cloth. In front of Mukuro, was Tsuna with a large ribbon on his head, covering the empty eye and twining around his neck and so. Deft fingers tied two more ribbons to Tsuna's arms. Then the man grabbed ahold of the ribbon ends and began to sew glass beads onto them. He added a bell, grinning to himself. It would be a good way to keep track of the doll.
Night fell and Mukuro and Tsuna both climbed into bed.
For a while, Mukuro waited. The ragdoll was tranquilly still, ribbons keeping him warm. The doll-maker got up even as midnight struck. And the first few bars of the midnight song echoed in the darkness.
A little bell clinked and Mukuro found Tsuna attached to his sleeping shirt. He sighed even as the doll squashed its face against him. He plucked Tsuna and dropped him on to the top of the bed. The doll tried to stand but the ribbons tangled around him and tripped him up, all the while the bell chimed a frantic beat.
It was a good plan, Mukuro thought to himself smugly. It certainly made an amusing sight. And Mukuro was able to reach his door without hindrance.
The bell was still ringing, a panicky clamor.
Mukuro sighed and went back to unravel Tsuna from his mess.
The following morning Mukuro searched high and low but still found nothing. He did find that Tsuna quite liked sweet pea flowers and ivy leaves. And that Tsuna did not appreciate being forced into sheer silky doll gowns. He supposed it was a pity but the frustrated tremulous movements the doll made in protest were more than enough compensation.
Again, he gave no thought to his unfinished work while he played gracious host to Tsuna.
And then it was evening again. But they'd both been exhausted, exploring the gardens outside the whole day. And they both fell asleep as soon as they hit the covers. This time, Mukuro had no prior schemes to pursuit his other unwanted guest.
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A little bell rang for a few seconds while in the darkness and then was abruptly cut off.
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A smudged note and several cardboard puzzle pieces.
All that was left of Tsuna. The doll-maker bent over, crouched into a fetal position and shook violently on that white bed.
After a few more minutes, Mukuro swept a hand over his face and his cheeks pulled his smile viciously wide and said, "Kufu-fu…So, is that how it is?" .
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Find me and I'll give him back.
The note was unsigned but Mukuro already knew it was his other guest. The musician.
What vile manners, Mukuro had! Why, he hadn't yet introduced himself to this mysterious visitor. He would be sure to come prepared with a number of carving knives at his disposal. Slitting somebody's throat wasn't that hard.
He laid down the puzzle pieces in front of him in a row by size. Lines and numbers and arrows were carved into each piece. It was a diagram, he realized. He found the borders, long straight and thick lines that formed a square. The insides were the problem as he had no prior knowledge of the overall picture. He would have to work inwards, from the outlying frame to the center. Piece by piece, he fitted them in different ways.
Another border inside, this one was with broken lines. Here, several circles hung with some of them colored in. Next to each circle was a number. Then he found the bottom half, a pyramid of stretched boxes. And lastly, the middle was empty and sported only a scratched word: Perspective.
It was another puzzle in a puzzle.
They were playing hide and seek. And the clue left to him was a diagram, most likely of a room. The word perspective and the pyramid probably referred to stairs or the view from the top of the stairs. A room with stairs and circles on the walls… What were circles that needed numbers? He started listing things he knew that needed numbers or were vaguely round: telephones, wiring labels, lamps, bowls, portraits, tiles, pipe names, windows, mirrors—
He remembered something from childhood.
And then he ran towards the main hall of the house.
Panting as he reached the doorway from the winding corridor that connected all the rooms, he scanned the Great Hall. It was a rectangular room, with a paneled glass-roof that lit the white marble floors like snow. At the other end was the sprawling grand staircase that connected this floor to the fourth one. Along the walls were tapestries and wall carvings that spanned the length of the house, from ground to ceiling.
He walked closer to a smiling angel on the wall. He pushed at its cheek and it swiveled around, revealing a mirror on the other side. As a child, he'd found these slide mirrors all over the house. At one side, they were disguised as stone faces on the wall. But if pushed to the other side, one could find a mirror that could be angled in different ways. After three hours, he found all of them in rows and columns along the walls. Another hour was spent fixing and realigning them. Then he climbed the staircase and stood up at the top. Mukuro looked down on the floor and found another smile stretching his face.
Following the angles written on the diagram for the mirrors, he had made a trompe l'oeil on the floor. A few of the mirrors reflected various parts of the colors on the tapestries onto other mirrors and other mirrors until they finally reflected it all onto the floor. The optical illusion produced on the floor was a descending staircase, effectively echoing the grand staircase. It looked as if the floor had dropped out and the stairs had lengthened downwards. It was a very clever trick.
It still did not tell him where Tsuna was. Mukuro frowned.
He strode down the stairs thinking.
It was several minutes before he realized he'd stepped into the trompe l'oeil. Shrugging, he continued down.
He came to an underground room with four round pools, with a diameter of an adult arm across each. They were edged with stained stone tiles with a few straggling weeds poking through from the ground. He walked closer to one. Three lily pads floated on top and almost hid the words etched a few inches down into the bottom.
Four words, one in each pond: Do you see me?
Mukuro wondered at that. See who?
Do you see me?
He didn't see Tsuna anywhere here. Or was that statement the next clue? See—
It was the room of eyes that was next then. It was quite silly of him to not have thought of it.
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The door was wide open.
Inside, Mukuro noted that every single pair of eyes had been moved to a different position on their perches. They all pointed to a single direction. As he followed along their gaze, he came to a stop in front of a box holding only one single eye.
It was a brown button, the same eerie hue of Tsuna's. Looped through two holes was a string of ragged black yarn.
And all of the doll eyes in that room stood sentry as Mukuro ripped down box after box from their nailed positions on the walls.
It was two hours till the red haze had left Mukuro's mind. He was kneeling on the floor, gasping and sweating. His fingernails were torn, blood and grime streaking his hands. Around him were mounds of doll eyes and broken wood. Even the walls had dents and punctures and holes. Someone had trespassed into his house. Someone had kidnapped Tsuna. That same someone had ripped out Tsuna's only remaining eye. He wondered who had such audacity to actually attack one of his own in his own territory. His face contorted into a sickening leer. There would be a new grave tonight.
There was one sizable gap on the wall where Tsuna's eye had been displayed like a trophy.
Looking through the hole, Mukuro could see another wall made out of coarser wooden slats. Click. The two wooden slats that were visible rolled, spinning on invisible horizontal axes. Click, click, click, click. They stopped and gave one final click. On them was a pictogram of a sun in a box. The sunroom.
"Fu~fu, I know where you are." Humming, he went off to find some bandages and a weapon. "You can't hide from me…"
Having disinfected his hands and wrapped them up in long strips of clean cloth, he'd gone to one of the storage rooms near the back of the house. In an armory, Mukuro had found a trident. He'd given it an experimental twirl on his fingers and had found it as fit as a glove. Like an extension of a hand. He'd approved of it.
There was only one sunroom in this place.
With glass walls framed by wrought iron, it was about twenty-five by forty-three square foot in space. There were five tables with corresponding five chairs around each, all made of glass and corrugated iron. Ivy vines slinked around on the walls and cattails and weeds skulked in clumps through the cracked slate tiles of the floor. Dead leaves in shades of brown and orange made a thin layer on the ground while maidenhair ferns and clovers ransacked the unclaimed space beneath the chairs. And to add insult, there were lurking mushrooms and infestations of moss growing on the few trees in here.
What was new however were the dolls placed around the room. Porcelain dolls he had made in the past. Diminutive male dolls were garbed in black and gray tuxedos and ribbon-like cravats while their elfin female counterparts wore sets of calico dresses and laced scarves. Bonnets, flowered hats and stove-pipe top hats capped coiffures and mops made from cat to sheep to actual human hair. And there were rusted needles and pins stabbed through them.
About the length of a finger, each pinion immobilized various parts of the dolls to their place on the chairs and tables. Faces, hands, torsos and legs…crammed with needles that reminded Mukuro of rotted teeth.
Mukuro noticed that the dolls were arranged into a specific pattern, a tableau. A tea party to be exact. Bone china cups and bowls dominated the surface of the tables. They contained dried flowers and leaves. As his eyes counted and listed the numerous 'pretend food' and their meanings—candytufts for indifference, marigolds for cruelty—the grandfather clock struck with a bronze pitch in the air one, two, three—snapdragons for deception—seven, eight; Mukuro dislodged one of the dolls from its position—oleander for caution, monkshood to beware—eleven, twelve, thirteen times; and the doll spasmed and opened its mouth. "You picked him up from the streets then?"
Mukuro dropped the doll even as the first few measures of that piano recital began.
Another doll replied, one in a gown, "Oh yes. The poor child was an orphan, you know? I had to give him a proper life, as my duty as an Estraneo dictated." Their faces were vacant, empty even while sophisticated words fell from their lips.
Other dolls started chattering, mouths and jaws moving up and down like mechanical clocks while their bodies stayed perfectly still like statues. "Our own little prodigy, he is. Why, he can play the Masters on that piano already from just two months of tutoring!" Mukuro was staring at them, wide-eyed. He was murmuring, "—no, no, it's not happening—"
One other started talking, "A very fitting heir indeed. After all, wasn't your firstborn—a girl? And quite sickly too." And whose fault had it been, Mukuro wanted to scream. Whose fault was it that she'd been so sickly? The notes climbed higher and higher in pacing, tumbling over one another in anxiety. Those painted faces and doll-like eyes…
The hawk-nosed doll, the self-proclaimed Estraneo, cut in, "Ah, what can we do, eh? The wife's—well…very unhealthy. I've had to have her shut in, you know. Doctor's orders." There had been no doctor, no physician, nobody. There had been nobody.
There was a titter of laughter as if mental illness was funny and they continued yammering and chattering like pigs and cattle. Hiding their rot beneath a veneer of make-up and pretty words, they were like puppets dancing to the same tune over and over again.
"Still, it's quite a blessing. After all, the firstborn, Chrome…is a bit incompetent," said a square-jawed doll.
Mukuro felt a frission of anger go through him and he yanked the doll up. "Oya, oya. How ugly. Why don't I skin your face off for you?" He rammed the leister through the doll's useless mouth and the ceramic face collapsed into itself.
The music blurred into a crescendo, rising like a tidal wave.