Name
When he had been pushed inside the expensive vehicle, Yoshino had crawled along the backseat until he was curled on the other end, tensely molding his back to the door. The man had not said a word, just climbed inside without even gracing him with his fish-like stare.
Twenty minutes had passed since then. The man's shoulder stopped bleeding at some point; Yoshino's attack had apparently been just as deadly as a paper cut.
He couldn't banish the smell of death from his mind. The air freshener only served to remind him of the carnage he had just left behind.
Hisoka.
He raised his head from where it had been buried— like some downgraded version of a cocoon—in between his knees. He disentangled his arms, leaving his neck exposed to the cold, and swiped at the red ribbons tumbling down from his head.
Yoshino swallowed, stealing a side-glare towards the man's ghostly profile.
"Who are you?" He uttered at last. His throat was sore, it screamed white rage when he spoke, and the question came out with the smoothness of a scratched record. What is it that you want? Why did you kill them all? How did you do it?
Who is…?
"I see you have finally calmed down."
The insensitive resonance echoed across the cramped space.
Yoshino swallowed down a hot wave of something unpleasant. Calmed down, he said. As if this piece of work with the dead eyes hadn't walk inside one of the most important prostitution rings in the city, and not only managed to singlehandedly wipe out everyone without working a sweat, but had also kidnapped him without an ounce of hesitation. As if he hadn't technically stalked him for weeks, months even. As if he was just a whiny, snotty, little brat that was overreacting for no reason at all.
Yoshino wanted to kill him. Paint him red. Red, dripping from that immaculate cascade of hair. Red, covering the elegant fingers on the steering wheel. Slaughter him like a pig, like he slaughtered the—
He shook his head. The screams for murder faded from his sight.
"What do you want from me?" He snapped, annoyance coiling around him like a hungry snake.
"This bothers me," the man sighed, picking an errant strand of hair by the curve of his ear.
He was being ignored.
Again.
The boy continued firing questions at the expense of his simmering anger, not actually expecting any of them to be answered. He just wanted something concrete to hold onto rather than the griping sea of uncertainty he was immersed in.
"Why did you do it? Where are we going? Why am I still alive?"
The words froze at the base of his throat, as black marbles pinned him down through the rearview mirror.
"Eh? Could it be that you would actually prefer death?"
It wasn't said, but the twelve year-old heard that lilting absentmindedness mouth as clear as gunshot: At my hands. I could still do it.
"No," Yoshino hissed, the little hairs on his arms and nape standing high, the same sticky, suffocating feeling from before strapping his nerves tight, "No," he repeated, hating that plain and lightless stare, the heavy atmosphere, the latent helplessness, "I was just wondering why—"
"Why you?" Dry amusement bled from his tone so subtly that, if Yoshino hadn't been tense as a wire, paying attention to every minute action and to the killer's general demeanor, he wouldn't have noticed the small change. "Why the others and not you? What makes you special enough to deserve saving? Why did I choose you?"
Yoshino would have felt an angry blush crawling to his cheeks from having been read so clearly by a stranger. But he just felt numb. His blood was frozen inside saturated veins and it wouldn't budge in any direction— this, he knew.
"What a strange child." The man said, slightly leaning his head to the side, braid following along, "You think you know better than everyone else, you dismiss orders, you abandon your peers to their own fate. Recklessly attack a foe that you can't defeat. Stay still when you ought to be looking for possible escape routes. Interrogate your captor as if you have any form of control over the situation." He showed no wonder or disdain, in spite of the 'strangeness' he seemed to find in Yoshino's behavior. It was just a simple statement of facts.
That was when his brain decided to join the dots.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek, an insidious idea assuming a very clear physical shape in his bleary sight.
Hisoka.
The murderer was like a whisper in the dark: the focus of attention when liberated from its shackles, and as it came out, it turned into a forgotten fixture once the action of the sound was drained from the air. So it wasn't his fault, really, that in the blaze of his discovery he forgot about the calm before the storm.
Deliberately, he said, "My name. It's Yoshino. Not-not what you called me."
The reaction was immediate; the darkness returned with dizzying swiftness, sifting through his pores, paralyzing him where he sat. He thought he saw purple tendrils curling towards him, coming from the front seats, cutting through to tear at him.
In the horror that swept him, he failed to recognize the sound of screeching tires, the car stopping in the empty driveway, the city lights that faded one by one, leaving the agony of his uncertainty sea to drown him.
Perhaps, he should have—
And the human weapon that had paved a path of guts and limbs and gore in order to get to him finally regarded him. He did so slowly— slowly enough to allow Yoshino to burn in his retinas the rotation of that stringy neck, that he had the small window of opportunity to envision the sweet twist of a broken neck, as the muscle shifted beneath skin, wrinkling, stretching. His face was truly a feat of nightmares, only a mind deeply submerged in disturbed deliriums would be able to fabricate the bizarre, big-eyed mask that welcomed Yoshino's muted scrutiny and silenced the world beyond the confines of the car.
The man leaned forward, right hand abandoning the wheel. Yoshino's intake of oxygen solidified in his ribcage.
That slim-boned hand descended swiftly on bare skin, above his left knee. The touch was scalding, it raised nervous shivers as it relocated along the leg, and dreadful phalanges crept on the underside, capturing the tiny mole beneath his knee that even he had not realized he possessed until a few days ago. The man's large fingers rubbed the spot where the mole was, dripping intent, and Hisoka Yoshino felt his legs spreading, sliding across leather, instinct taking over as the familiarity of the setting eased in his consciousness.
The movement stopped. Black eyes darkened further, somehow, overflowing with a tortured blankness as they dropped to the area of contact between his hand and the boy's skinny leg. Yoshino looked at him—at the tight strain of his broad shoulders, at the tenuously unfeeling expression he wore, the rings of fingers that would soon be imprinted on the white of his knee, the teething creeping static pinching him from all sides.
There was a mesmerizing quality to this madness, an itch that wasn't that of anger. He could not explain what it was, not in mere words.
The boy's eyes batted open and closed with the instability of a revolving door, he licked the dry curve of his upper lip, the tension coursing through the extension of his body heightened.
"You know me." He was able to ascertain, even though he couldn't really move, even though he was shaking with something far more complex than fear or rage.
The bite of pressure around the frailty of his leg was a warning. The thin, soothing slips as he talked, a reminder. The bone could snap in splinters, if that was what his captor desired. "Hisoka is Hisoka. Anything else is a fiction."
Breathless, the boy's murmur rang, tingling like touching bells.
"Who are you?"
Endless night bore into flashing amber.
"Illumi Zoldyck."
When the man pulled away his fingers shook, as if struck with the aftershocks of burning sparks. Carrying the beating heat of touch with them, they returned tensely to close around the wheel, knuckles aggressively pushing against their caging. The man's face remained impassive. Illumi.
Illumi Zoldyck.
The vehicle roared back to life.
"Put on your seatbelt." The boy rushed to obey, unconsciously. He imagined the purple cloud still weighing on the atmosphere seeping right where the man had grabbed him, where he had harshly taken a hold of one of his identifying marks.
Yoshino swallowed. A sting of pain, leaking crescents on his thighs. His nails were bloody. So were the hem of his shorts. Somehow he hadn't felt the needle ends of his own hands clinging to the soft meat of his thighs.
Hisoka.
It was scary how right it felt to be called by that name.