KHR Week Day 4, Option B: Character Who Grew On You - Bianchi
Three little-known facts about Bianchi:
1. At the age of 5, her poison cooking burned through the plastic pots and pans of her toy kitchenette.
2. She plays piano. She always has.
3. She's really fucking good at hide-and-seek.
Her pots and pans are made of plastic, and her only heat source is an Easy Bake Oven, but Bianchi's still the happiest five-year-old anyone's ever seen. The Deluxe Masterchef Junior Kitchenette is the best Christmas present she's ever received, and she immediately sets to work cooking up a masterpiece.
Of course, the brightly colored plastic food the toy kitchenette comes with don't satisfy her high standards, so she swipes some real food from the kitchen and works with that instead. Every day is a new vegetable to try, a new combination of cooking techniques to learn, and the servants have to admit she has the makings of a chef.
No one's really sure how she manages to make Poison Cooking.
It just happens one day, and the rest, as they say, is history. Literally, because with a handful of garbage scraps and a whisk she dissolves the entire kitchenette into an unappealing glob of melted plastic, colors blending into one another until they become a nauseating shade of brown.
The metal pans don't last much longer.
-
The day after Hayato runs away, Bianchi breaks into her father's study and steals the key to the Room.
Stuffed into the pocket of her dress, the cast iron ornament feels heavy and important, though the beginnings of rust reveal it has long since passed its prime. Its counterpart lock is equally decrepit, since her father had forbidden anyone from entering this wing of the house after Lavina's death. Maids avoided the hallway when they could, whispering stories of vengeful ghosts and an eerie piano that would only play dirges, cursing all who heard the dance of its keys to eternal damnation.
Bianchi is one of the few to know the Room's true story, as a second home to Lavina and her beloved music. She had noticed her father always disappeared on Wednesday afternoons, and one day, she couldn't help but secretly follow him. He had acted like a madman, peeking into hallways to make sure nobody was there, going through the library, the cellar, and the servant's staircase when there was a path straight through the foyer. He had walked in circles for what seemed like hours (in actuality it was around 15 minutes) before reaching a part of the house she had never been in, hadn't even known existed.
She runs a finger over the edge of the piano. Sure enough, there's a decade's worth of dust on her hand. She wipes it on her dress and sits down. The cover creaks wearily when she opens it, like it had become accustomed to the dimensions of rest and didn't take kindly to a new mistress. Nevertheless, she adjusts the seat and begins to play.
The keys are out of tune and yellowed, but the melody she coaxes from them is lovely and pure. Of course she plays piano; she always has. She was just never a prodigy like her brother, and so she left the recitals and compositions to him.
She still played every now and again, in the opulent parlor where her mother liked to entertain their guests. The Steinway proudly occupying the center of the room is ebony black and an antique, a gift from one of her father's most powerful allies. It's the piano that's as grand and elegant as you would expect from a mafia famiglia. It's the piano that little girls who are going to grow up to be princesses and married off to form political alliances play on.
It's not the piano Hayato's mother was allowed to play on.
Without realizing it, Bianchi switches to her favorite piece, the first one she taught her only son to play. Alone in a room full of dust, shimmering with memories she was never a part of, the piece feels melancholy. Raw. A tragedy that should only be found in the safety of literature.
And in that tragedy, Bianchi would be the villain.
-
"Ready or not, here I come!"
I-pin's high voice rings through the house, the light pitter-patter of footsteps accompanying her meticulous search of the premises.
"My my I-pin-chan, you're good at this aren't you?" She hears Nana chuckle a few minutes later. "Lambo-chan usually takes twice as long to find me."
Bianchi misses I-pin's response because she wedges herself further into the back corner of the pantry, behind a sack of white rice and a collection of snack chips. The dust tickles her nose and irritates her eyes, but she resists the urge to dab at it and risk making noise. You never knew who might be listening. She learned that the hard way during her missions.
With Nana's help, I-pin quickly uncovers Lambo (also in the pantry, trying to reach the grape candies on the top shelf), Fuuta (behind the curtains), and Tsuna (under his bed). The latter two accept defeat good-naturedly and come downstairs for a snack, while Lambo won't stop declaring that I-pin cheated and that's the only reason she found him, like he hadn't left the door wide open and his tail hanging in plain sight.
Now Bianchi's the only one still in the game, since Reborn revealed himself to kick Tsuna in the head for picking such an obvious hiding spot. He insists that they continue searching for Bianchi after a quick break, saying it's the least Tsuna can do to redeem himself after such a pathetic performance. Tsuna groans, but agrees. Lambo and I-pin are already tugging at his pants, and he lets them lead him upstairs to look for her. Nana sends them off with a cheerful "Good luck!" before heading to the kitchen.
Nana opens the door multiple times while she prepares dinner, but she never spots the shadowy figure of Bianchi curled behind the rice, or the gleaming green eyes watching her every movement. She probably assumes that Bianchi can't be in there, since they would've seen her when they found Lambo, and everyone always underestimates how small Bianchi can make herself be.
When you grow up in a mansion where children should be seen and not heard, you get good at ducking into corners and crevices. Nooks and crannies are the most fun places to be, after all, out of the strict eyes of a slew of governesses and servants. For as long as she can remember, Bianchi's been good at finding those safe havens. Unnaturally good, sniffed her mother, who rather preferred her only daughter sitting pretty on a chair while the adults discussed "grown-up things".
Bianchi wasn't made to be a porcelain doll.
She was made of fire and steel, forged in an inferno that carved scars into her skin like paint on a canvas. Her wings were untimely ripped from her back, but she found out she didn't need wings to fly.
And she's not sure Heaven's her style, anyways.
(She stayed in the pantry for another two hours before Tsuna and the kids finally gave up.)
A/N: okay so I was originally pretty neutral to Bianchi, but then came the future arc AND SHE WAS SUCH A GOOD BIG SISTER TO THE GIRLS AND I WAS LIKE ! so that is the story behind this fic
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Thanks for reading!
~Tressa
