"Cosette! Come here!"
The scream rumbled powerful inside the Vinsmoke castle, between those walls of a color indecisive between blue and gray, beyond the tapestries with the number 66 writing.
The chef in question shivered.
Three years had passed since the owner of that imperious tone had brutally beaten her, and all for the mere fact of not having cooked a dish to his liking.
A delicate hand landed on her shoulder.
"Don't fear. Nothing bad will happen this time."
It was Marius, the sous-chef.
Swallowing, Cosette came out of the kitchen and walked nervously to the dining room.
Her hands were clenched into fists, her arms stiff and her lips sucked into her mouth, as well as a heartbeat that far exceeded a hundred pulses per minute.
Niji, the third child of the Vinsmokes, was seated at the table and had a glass of scotch filled to the brim.
"Di-Did you want to see me, prince?"
"Sit down."
It was all very strange; Niji and his brothers had never invited anyone from the servants to sit at the table with them, of course not. Cosette's dark eyes quickly scanned the large crystal surface, and collided with a long and thin glass container, filled with water up to more than half and with inside... a stem of hyacinth?
Niji had taken off his glasses and Cosette could notice that his eyes were black.
"I heard you'll get married next month..."
Cosette had to ask the head of Germa, Niji's father, for permission to marry.
Being often on missions, the eccentric blue-haired man had known about it just a week prior.
"Y-Yes, with Marius..."
"The second cook? The one who makes potatoes that dissolve as soon as you touch them?"
Cosette blushed furiously: Niji, of all the Vinsmoke siblings, was the most finicky and she knew well what his despising a meal meant.
"Yes, him…"
"Mh..."
Niji got up and Cosette found herself in front of the twenty-four-year-old's six feet and one inch; he was a threatening shadow, a person who didn't feel emotions and who almost never took off that little smile that indicated "imminent danger".
Yet that time, his expression turned serious, but not angry.
He took the scarlet hyacinth stalk out of the vase and handed it to the girl. Her beats began to go even faster.
"It's yours. Do what you want with it."
What a strange phrase... Said by Niji Vinsmoke, it sounded like a caress out of place, like a snowflake falling below forty degrees in the summer.
The man said nothing else, and left the room abandoning the glass of scotch and a bewildered Cosette grappling with that cluster flower, which enchanted her with the intensity of that passionate dark pink.
What could a gesture like that, by her tormentor, have ever meant?
Despite the confusion in her head, Cosette smiled and brought the stem to her chest, which seemed to have the power to heal, at least in part, the emotional wound that the man had inflicted on her.