The Zoldyck mansion was built on top of a dormant volcano. Talk about living life on the edge. A stone wall collared the base of the mountain. It was here that our tour group stopped, gazing past the heavy front doors at the acres of untamed forests and, possibly, evil spirits beyond; from, you know, the assassinations.
Every once in a while I have the privilege of watching testosterone-induced mania land some unsuspecting dude in a sticky situation; totally suspecting to anyone watching on. This was because each summer, I like to get a summer job in town waiting tables and serving drinks. It was in the bars that I witnessed the most spectacular of clobberings. There was a certain something about the combination of alcohol and testosterone that made men loose with their secrets and testy (ha-ha, get it?) with their pride. Now, Gon, Kurapika, Leorio and I watched the two muscly guys, obviously bounty hunters, from our bus harass a helpless old gatekeeper and steal his key. The muscle heads swaggered through the wooden gate. Two blood curdling shrieks ripped through the air. The gate opened and two skeletons were handed back to us by a monstrous paw – stripped of flesh; bones picked clean. Need I say more?
The gatekeeper grumbled about 'Mike eating between meals'. I scrunched my nose. Mike sounds like he forgot to bring his protractor to maths class, not a bloody-thirsty guard dog. The gatekeeper swept their remains into a garbage can in the corner of the sparsely furnished gatehouse. The four of us stood around his desk, the rest of the tour party having run away, like normal people. The gatekeeper made us tea, which may have been the oddest thing so far.
All through the journey here - on the airship, on the rattling train, on the tour bus – I turned that phone call over and over in my head. I was like a rat caged next to a block of stinky cheese; I couldn't let it go. I mulled over the way Delphi's voice had been urgent, brisk to deal with me. I thought about how Nicky's and Delphi's schedules rarely matched up because she was usually out during the day and he worked nights in town. No matter how much I frowned and wondered, I couldn't understand why Nicky hadn't answered his phone. But now wasn't the time; the gatekeeper was talking.
'I shouldn't say this since I work here but it gets pretty lonely. Well, a family of assassins is rather unusual, I guess that's the price they have to pay. We do get a lot of those, though.' The gatekeeper jerked a thumb at the garbage can. His voice was low and cheerful. 'Anyway, I'm glad you're here. Thank you.' He bowed his head down, which made us all a bit flustered. With this guy on our side, it should be fairly easy to reach Killua – was what I thought.
'However, I can't let you inside.' His smile was hard. Seeing our expressions, he continued. 'Did you see the arm of that creature? His name is Mike. It serves as the Zoldyck family's watchdog. It only obeys family and will attack anyone else. That beast still follows the order its master gave it ten years ago: kill all intruders.'
Then, the gatekeeper's expression changed to that of an adoring father. He rubbed the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. 'But technically he isn't following that order because he keeps eating them!' He laughed dotingly.
I didn't know what to feel.
'Anyway, I can't let you inside.' The gatekeeper smiled as he took a sip of his tea. 'I wouldn't want to reduce young Killua's friends to a pile of skeletons.'
It was quiet while we mulled over this barrier. I saw Kurapika frowning. 'Sir how is it that you're safe?' he asked. 'You must go inside. If you never needed to enter, you wouldn't have a key.'
The gatekeeper's grandfatherly gaze held a glint of steeliness. 'Quite perceptive of you,' he said. 'But you're only half right; I require no key to enter.' He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and showed us the key the bounty hunters had shaken out of him earlier. 'This key is for intruders.'
'A key for intruders?' Leorio repeated.
'For some reason, eighty to ninety percent of intruders try to use the front gate,' the gatekeeper continued. 'If I don't open the gate for them, they'll try to break it down. Such troublemakers!' His voice was grandfatherly again, as if he were talking about puppies peeing on the floor. 'So, we added a locked door to one side.'
I stared at him hard. Bald topped, mayonnaise coloured, harmless looking old man in his unassuming grey suit. He was shrewder than he seemed. I pursed my lips. 'Are you saying,' I said slowly, 'that there's an unlocked door?'
'…and the actual gate isn't locked?' said Kurapika, having his own lightbulb moment.
'Exactly.'
The gatekeeper led us back out to the unlocked door. With insight, I could see that it was composed of seven doors, one set into another. Each door was solid stone and inscribed with a number. The first door alone doubled me in height. Leorio grunted and grinded, and wheezed and hissed, and pushed and pulled and yet the gate did not budge.
'This is absurd!' he whined.
'You're just not strong enough,' the gatekeeper replied. He started taking off his jacket and shirt and I thought he looked like a big muscly dollop of mayonnaise, standing there in his little singlet top. 'This is officially called the Testing Gate. Anyone who cannot open this gate is unqualified to enter.' With that, he uncrossed his arms with resolve, and I thought he seemed to glow. He applied pressure to the gates and with one push forced them open.
They swung shut as soon as he stepped back.
'As you can see, the door closes automatically so you'll want to run in the moment it opens. You won't have to worry about Mike, he has orders to not attack anyone entering from the Testing Gate.'
We stood there like stunned mullets.
'I should mention that each gate weights two tonnes,' he said as an afterthought.
'TWO TONNES?' Leorio yelled.
'And when you go up a gate, the weight doubles.'
'DOUBLES?' Leorio yelled again, just for symmetry.
The gatekeeper told us Killua popped open gates one through three when he came back a couple of days ago. I choked on thin air when I heard that and Leorio had to pound my back.
'That would be twelve tonnes!' Gon exclaimed, astonished.
'Fourteen tonnes, Gon,' Kurapika corrected him. Gon chuckled, embarrassed.
What happened next was anyone's guess. Gon wouldn't take the restrictions lying down because he was here to see Killua, not to be tested. He politely demanded the key to the death-door and when the gatekeeper refused on a good conscience, the boy tried to scale the wall with his fishing line. He had his right arm in a sling, which was just plain ridiculous.
'He's not going to listen to us,' Kurapika said, sounding a bit impressed.
'Stubborn as a mule,' Leorio grunted.
The gatekeeper offered to call the house for Gon, probably feeling bad, so we all trooped back into the guardhouse. He sounded very polite, apologised about bothering whoever was on the other end, then apologised again. The result was anyone's guess from his defeated expression.
'Let me try,' Gon said, reaching for the phone. He dialled the numbers on the old-fashioned rotary phone and held the receiver up to his ear. 'Good evening, I would like to speak to Killua, please,' he said. We all watched him for a moment. His shoulders tensed imperceptibly and his knuckles whitened. Then, he held the phone away from his ear, looked at it, and dialled again. Poor boy, I guess he got hung up on.
'LET ME SEE KILLUA,' he shouted. We all reeled in shock. I suppressed a laugh. I could only assume the person on the other end hung up again when Gon slammed the phone down with enough steam to power a train.
In the end, the gatekeeper invited us to stay in the three-storeyed French-style house that was the servants quarters. The windows glowed warmly from within and when he opened the door, I thought I smelt biscuits. What surprised me most was the sound the front door made when the gatekeeper pushed it open, like it weighed fifty tonnes. Later, we would find out that observations were spot on.
'Hey, I'm home,' the gatekeeper hollered.
The lobby was wide and spacious, with beautiful wooden floors and a staircase from which descended a scowling man smoking a cigarette, like a fallen angel. He was introduced as Seaquant.
'Make yourselves at home, though it won't be easy,' he said ominously.
~oOo~
Moonlight shone into our bedroom and pooled on the floorboards beneath the window. All the others were snoring away, completely exhausted after a day of travelling and a night of wearing weighted vests, drinking from teacups that weighed as much as a sack full of potatoes and flexing all the muscles in our bodies just to open the bathroom door. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'do you even lift?' Yes, yes I do.
I flipped open my phone absentmindedly. The rat was scrabbling at its cage for cheese again. Delphi said that Nicky would call me back but that was nearly two days ago. I dialled the only number stored on the phone. My brother picked up on the fourth ring, his voice groggy with sleep.
'What,' he growled.
'Nick, it's me,' I whisper. I slipped out of bed and padded to the window, leaning on the windowsill. Outside, the grounds were as still and serene as a Japanese garden, without a shadow of murder. I heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor as my brother rose. 'Where are you?' I asked. 'Aren't you in bed?'
'Rissy, I'm at the hospital,' he replied, sounding weary.
'What? Did you hurt yourself?' I demanded, an edge seeping into my voice that I didn't want to show. 'Did you think too hard again?'
A sigh rattled down the line. I could picture him rubbing the bridge of his nose. 'Rissy, Mum has pneumonia.'
I stilled. Suddenly the night felt much colder.
'She's been sick lately, we thought it was just a cold,' Nicky said, with a note of desperation. Ah, he feels guilty. I wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault. Pneumonia is an illness that sneaks up on you, I knew that much. But another thought was niggling at me.
'Why haven't you call me back?' I asked quietly.
'You called?' Nicky asked back.
'Two days ago. Del picked up.' I tried not to whine. Or sound like I was accusing him of forgetting about me.'
'Delphi never said you called,' Nicky said. 'It's been such a mess… one minute she was walking; next minute she was on the floor. We were so worried.' His voice shook. I wanted to reach out to him like when we were kids. I'd never felt farther from home.
I swallowed hard. 'How is she doing?'
'Much better now. It was scary at the start, but she seems to have stabilised and we've managed to hold down the fort. Roger is coming tomorrow with a change of clothes for us.'
We hung up soon after. Thoughts whirled in my head as if being churned in a mixer. I bit my lip, pushing myself up and away from the window. In all that commotion, I forgot to tell him about Hisoka's photograph. I didn't even get to tell him I passed the exam. I slipped back into bed. All the warmth had already disappeared.
Somehow, the thing that bothered me the most was that nobody thought to tell me that our mother – my mother no matter who birthed me – was sick.
~oOo~
The next day, we trained. The day after that, we trained again. Training began with a session of pushing the smallest gate to check if we're anywhere close. Not by miles, we were not. It was like trying to move an elephant with the round back of a spoon. Then, it was onto strength training. Everything in the deceptively pretty French-style house could be used as a weight; even the fridge magnets smashed into the floor when I pried them off innocently. I spent a good half hour swinging a door open and close to boost up my chest and triceps. Kurapika learned to juggle the weighted teacups without breaking both his wrists and Leorio spent a lot of time doing lunges with biscuit tins balanced on his arms. When Gon tried to join in on any of the exercises supervised by Zebro, all four of us shut him down. He accepted this with little protest, which should have been the first giveaway. His empty bed was the second one.
By the third evening, I still had not managed to put the phone call incident to rest. I trained until my mind went blank and all that was left was my breath fighting for evenness. I went to bed exhausted and yet my first thought each morning was: why didn't they tell me Mum was in hospital?
The answer came to me that night, like someone had thrown a bucket of icy water over my head. It dripped down my spine and collected in my shoes: the feeling of hurt.
I stood in the middle of our shared bedroom, at the crossroads of the four beds, as if I had been struck by lightning. I walked to my sleeping place, lifted the sheets, climbed inside and pulled them up to my chin. I focused on each action as if it would save me. I fell apart anyway.
Despite the eight years I spent growing up with them, the eight years they shared with Sumi were more important. I could understand that. That little girl was their real sister; I was a replacement. I was temporary. When did I start taking so much for granted? I pressed my hands to my mouth and held my breath to still my shuddering shoulders as the boys came in one by one and fell asleep. Long after their breathing became even I stayed awake, curled up with my back to the room as if that alone could protect me. In their moment of vulnerability, I hated that they didn't need my shoulder to lean on.
Much later, I blurrily heard someone stir. By the light footsteps, I guessed that Gon had gone to the bathroom.
I felt heartbroken. The sister that I adored and admired and cherished, the brother that shared my secrets, the little brother who looked up to me. My siblings felt that family problems were their own. Without my place in that family, who would I be? My name was stolen. My purpose was borrowed. Without them, who was I?
'Risumi,' Kurapika whispered behind me. I stayed still, hoping he would think that I was asleep and give up on whatever he wanted.
'Gon's disappeared,' he said. 'Do you have any idea where he could be?'
I pressed my lips together. When Leorio shook my shoulder, I almost thought I had pierced them.
'Risumi, wake up, we have to find him,' said Leorio. I stirred then, surreptitiously wiping dried tear tracks from my face with the back of my hand. I rose with my back to them and nodded, not trusting myself to speak, hoping they would not look at my face on the way downstairs.
We found the missing boy in a clearing a little way away from the house. He was doing one-handed handstands with his good arm, fully dressed. Leorio and Kurapika stood over him ominously and cleared their throats while I hung back. Gon wobbled with a yelp and crashed to the ground, laughing sheepishly up at us. The guys dragged him back to the room and stood over him sternly while he climbed into bed. I was about to do the same when Kurapika grabbed my arm and hauled me back out into the hallway.
He bent down to my eyelevel and asked, 'Are you okay?'
I stared at the ground. 'Fine,' I denied. My voice was stiff; my throat felt raw. He put his hands on my shoulders.
'We're worried about you,' he said gently. I could feel his grey cat-like eyes on me and I bent under the weight of his kindness. I hiccupped and started blubbering again. How embarrassing. But I was too hurt to care. I choked on my own tears as Kurapika awkwardly patted my back. He led me back into the room and sat me down on my bed. I obeyed like a lost dog.
'Risumi?' Gon's voice was swollen with concern. 'I'm sorry, please don't cry. I'll never sneak out again!'
I shook my head. A smile weighed at the corners of my mouth. He was too sweet. 'You're fine, Gon. You didn't make me cry, okay?'
'Time of the month?' I heard Leorio whisper to Kurapika, who whacked him upside the head. Leorio looked like he was gearing up to fight, but seemed to think better of it. He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. 'You feelin' better?'
I nodded. 'I'm just feeling lost.' I told them about my phone call with Nicky and our mother being hospitalised. 'I guess in the end, I just want them to need me as much as I need them.'
Kurapika patted the top of my head. 'There, there.'
'I reckon they do need you Risumi,' Gon said. 'Just in a different way. Maybe by not telling you they were trying to protect you while you were taking such a dangerous exam. It's the sort of thing my Aunt Mito would have done.'
~oOo~
On the fifth day, the door opened. It needed the combined efforts of Kurapika pushing on the left, Leorio pushing on the right, my pushing in the centre, Seaquant's grouchy advice that we had to time our pushes, and Gon's one handed addition by my side after several long minute of grunting like pigs. Zebro and Seaquant didn't come with us.
We followed a path of packed dirt through a forest. It was a pretty place, the Zoldyck estate. But despite the sunlight-speckled greenery, there were few living creatures. The bushes were silent and the canopy which should have been busy with birds was still and brooding. We marched determinedly towards the top of the hill.
Suddenly the trees cleared out a little belt in front of us. In its place was a fence climbed with poison ivy and broken in the middle by two stone columns. Between the columns was a slender black girl with her hair in bunches. She wore a butler's uniform and held a staff, bulbous on one end and pointed on the other.
'Leave. You are trespassing on private property,' she ordered. Her voice had the quality of pillow-soft cookies, not at all what you would expect of a watchdog, which was what she was.
'What do we need to do to get permission to enter?' Gon asked, angrily. 'I said I was Killua's friend but the butlers wouldn't put him on!'
Her voice was even. 'I wouldn't know because no one has ever received permission.'
'Then we'll just have to trespass,' Gon said stubbornly.
'Fine,' the girl said. 'If you take one step beyond this line, I will have to remove you be force.' She drew a line in the dirt between the two stone columns with the pointed end of her staff.
We all geared up to fight, but Gon put his hand out to stop us. This was his battle.
And thus, began the beating. We entered the gate barely hours after daybreak, and we were held back until the sky was smeared with apricot. By this time, Gon was a mess. The dirt path was a scramble of trenches where Gon was thrown back, scrabbling for hold. She socked Gon over and over as he approached again and again. His broken arm was broken once more, one eye was swollen shut, shins and nose bruised to bleeding.
Kurapika, Leorio and I were stretched to breaking point from holding ourselves back. With every whack, I was reminded of another twelve-year-old boy, who was not as strong or as single-minded or as determined as Gon, who winced at every strike from his sparring partner and was driven into a ball in a corner every day with his own disapproving father looking on. I remembered how much I wanted to leap in between his body and his opponent's, but stiffened under the warning glance of our father. The three of us were like that now. Only Gon's own determination kept us back. We had stopped flinching a long time ago. When the crows began to roost, even the guard had had enough.
'Why aren't you doing anything? You're his friends, aren't you?' She shouted. She flinched when she saw our expressions.
'Why do I have to go through all this,' Gon yelled, 'just to see my friend!' With a frustrated and desperate burst of energy, he smashed through one of the stone pillars with his fist, and went flying over the line.
This time, the girl did not beat him back.
'Please save Killua,' she whispered. Then she was shot in the head.
Panicked, I dived over the line, sliding my legs under her body before she hit the ground. Leorio and Kurapika were hot on my heels. The doctor whipped open his briefcase and began checking her vitals.
'Concussed,' he concluded. 'Must have been an air gun.'
'The nerve of the hired help to take such liberties!'
Killua's mother was a strange sight. She appeared on a hill far behind the line, wearing an insanely frilly Victorian-style dress with a large hat shaped like a fried egg. Her face was bandaged and an electronic reader with a blinking red dot replaced her eyes. I knew at once who she was. It was as if her protectiveness radiated from her person in waves. A little boy in a kimono was with her. 'Killua asked me to pass on a message, quote: Thanks for coming to see me. However, I am presently indisposed. Sorry.'
Now wasn't that a load of bullshit.
Kurapika was much more likely to speak like that; quoted, my ass.
Killua's mother gave us a long lecture, presumably about Killua, because I wasn't listening. I passed Leorio gauze when he held his hand out and applied pressure to the girl's wound when he told me to. I couldn't find it in me to have much respect for Killua's mother.
To make a very long story short, we did get Killua back.
After Killua's mother dashed off in a fit of hysterics, from my guess, someone released him from inside the house and he met us in the butler's lounge which was separate from the main house. Canary had taken us there, and we were basically held hostage for the time it took Killua to get to us, or until we lost that coin game that the head butler, a severe man called Gotoh, threatened us with.
Night was deep in session by the time the five of us marched back down the estate. All up, it was a pretty hairy adventure. Ah, the things we do for our friends. And the brat wasn't even nice to me afterwards.
'Are you telling me that even Risumi helped push open Testing Gate?' he exclaimed to Gon.
'You're such a rude little midget,' I grumbled.
'The training was good for you, you wouldn't survive in the world otherwise,' Killua snickered, covering his mouth with a hand in mock politeness.
'Why you…' I gritted as I lunged for his neck. Killua dodged and I crab-chased down the road.
'It's times like these that I feel Risumi is similar to Leorio.' I overheard Gon saying to Kurapika, who nodded.
What was the point of having friends?
~oOo~
This arc was so difficult to write! I had a big problem trying to 'make it mine' because it doesn't do much for me and so falls into the trap of retelling; but I also didn't want to omit it entirely. It's finally over! Did you have a good summer? Most of you are from the northern hemisphere. Today was the first day of spring in Australia. I'm super excited for warmer weather.
The next update will take a little time coming. I'm very excited about the next part so I want to take my time and get it right.
The gang is entering the second part of the Hunter Exam. Are you curious to find out what Nen type Risumi is?
