Milluki never thought about it; most people never did, not until it was too late, but nothing was free. Not a single thing. Medicine costs money—and skills cost time. A chance at a new life in a fictitious world costs a short life in a hospital. Everything costs.

Milluki's only advantage in this new world was his memories of his past, plain life. But they came with a cost. It was a heavy price because now his mind couldn't blink into existence at 3 or 4. His body couldn't be put through this torture that he wouldn't remember. Milluki had to live through it—all of it.

Every poison and toxin, every prick and prod, he felt and understood all of it. If he had been born without memories, he wouldn't understand the pain he was feeling. His body would feel it, but he would've been a dumb, stupid, poopy baby. All of this would've been forgotten eventually.

He wasn't a baby, though; he was someone who died young, sure, but not infant-level young. He could remember how things worked and felt; right now, all he felt was pain.

"Good job, little Milluki! You're doing great!"

Indescribable pain.

"Ooh, what should we do next? The Sand Vipers or Bull Traps? Oh, but the Pink Hyacinths are so sweet. Oh, so many choices!" Kikyo, Milluki's crazy mother, chartered to herself since she had no idea he could understand her. Meanwhile, Milluki spasmed on the ground like venom or poison; he wasn't sure what it was, to be honest; he was sure his mother had said it at some point, but he always forgot the name of it by the third hour, coursed through his veins.

It hurts...

Milluki wasn't even sure how many times he'd done it. Every lesson seemed to blend into a worse one, and he couldn't get a good sense of time. Sometimes it was some fancy venom, other times it was some shuck poison, it didn't matter. The only constant was that it always hurt and was the most extended experience imaginable. He hated it, but he couldn't stop it.

It hurts!

What would his stupid baby legs do? Run away? That was a great way to die... again.

IT HURTS!

Yeah, who was he kidding? He'd let those stupid plants eat him if he could. He'd already tested their venom. He might as well let them finish their job. But that wasn't an option. He wasn't in the servant's estate anymore. He was in the Zoldyck manor atop a mountain. His days as a free-spirited baby ended as soon as his training started. Now he had to sit, eat, poop, and take it.

So take it he did. With barely heard whimpers and muffled screams, he took every poison and venom imaginable, and each one was worse than the last. It was hell. Truly hell, yet there was a part of him that could look out the window near his crib after hours of his muscles trying to strangle the poison out of his system and think he was glad. Not of the torture, obviously, but that it would lead to something.

There was no leading to something in his old life. He was in a hospital bed for years, waiting his life away. Prodded by needles and put under loud, large, and scary MRIs for hours at a time. That pain, that torture, had been for nothing. He died anyway. It was a waste of time, if anything.

At least this pain would be for something. Even if that something was being an assassin, which was a whole can of worms he was putting off for as long as possible. Killing people wasn't something he was confident in doing since, shocker, he hadn't killed anyone in his past life. His body had killed itself if that counted, but either way, the longer he went without thinking of that possibility, the better.

"Ooh, Milluki. It looks like you've gotten used to the first dose. Good job, I'm so proud of you!"

Milluki guessed that was one good thing about the torture sessions.

"Now, onto the next dose! This one's a Pink Hyacinth! I'm sure you'll like it!"

It was hard to think through the pain.

Milluki lost count of the days, not that he was doing a great job counting them, to begin with, but before he could at least tell when he thought a week had passed and when he assumed a month trickled by. Now, it was impossible. It could've been a week, a month, or a few days. Milluki had no clue. Anything he could conjure up would be a guess because none of it mattered.

Not when every morning marked a new poison and every dusk marked an agonizingly painful sleep. Not when the only thing he thought about for hours was when the pain would end, and the only thing he thought about afterward was when the subsequent lesson would begin. Not when his body was so dog-tired and exhausted that his muscles were still burning even hours after injection, and any thoughts he may have had about keeping track of the day were gone because he would have passed out by the time they surfaced, and when he woke up, he would have been greeted with a needle. Nothing could be counted the usual way, not a single thing.

"Hello, brother. Mother asked me to do today's session."

Except Milluki found a way.

"I'm going to give you some Bulls Trap. It's painful at first, then numb, then mean."

He called them Illumies. After the first session, where Illumi stuck a needle in his arm and told him not to cry, advice he still did his best to abide by, Illumi had come sporadically. Every once in a while, when their mother would get busy or bored, Milluki wasn't sure which, Illumi would be in charge of training. Milluki counted those days. He'd counted. He always counted his Illumies because those days were better than the regular ones.

"That's why it's called Bulls Trap. Pain at first, then it lulls you into a false sense of security, then it burns. Mother said you might vomit. Don't."

Unlike Mother's talks of which poison she'd test next, which one would hurt worse, or which one she was looking forward to shoving into his system, Illumi always talked about the current dose. The upcoming hell, explaining its effects and giving Milluki a heads up on what would come. Half the terror he felt each morning was the uncertainty about exactly what the next poison would do. How it would hurt.

"It's loud and difficult to clean. No assassin would do it. Swallow it if you have to. Or bite your tongue."

There was never that uncertainty with Illumi. His robotic gaze focused solely on the new toxin before preparing the necessary equipment. Milluki would have a better chance of hearing Tsubone than hearing any emotion in Illumi's voice. It was so dull and toneless, yet somehow Milluki found it soothing. More than that, he found it reassuring because it was too blunt to lie.

"The taste of blood will reset your palate."

Milluki counted Five Illumies the day he was given Bulls Trap and bit a hole through his tongue.

It was sometime after the Ninth Illumi that Milluki was surprised by the last person he expected, not during the poison resistance training. Thankfully, it was nighttime now, so he was in his room. That's right, he had a room. The one good news about all this was that he had a room, and it was awesome.

There was a bed he didn't fit in waiting in the back for him, with blue sheets and lavish oak framing. Next to it, there was a nightstand, nothing crazy. The walls had nothing besides lavender wallpaper, but Milluki figured that was just because he was a baby, and typically, babies didn't have any preferences.

Besides that, a bookshelf was off to the side with classic books like Prince and the Possible Ways in which he could be decapitated. Or for fantasy geeks, Lord of the Rings to be sold at an underground auction and can only be removed if the fingers are cut off, one by one—true Literary Classics.

He wasn't in the crib anymore but still in the room. He was resting helplessly on his sleeping mat. His body twitched painfully from the poison he'd been dosed with this morning. He was pretty sure it was some fucked up version of a frog, but his mind was too lazy to recall. It was also challenging to remember when a linebacker of a woman named Tsubone was standing over him with a smile, "Why hello, little master. Glad to see you've been busy."

This bitch...

Milluki huffed, pouted sort of, as he sat on his butt. He might be nine Illumies old, but he didn't know how that translated to actual time passing. If he had to guess, he was probably around a year old, probably a little older, but it was hard to tell. He could walk, and if he could find a step stool to reach the toilet, he'd be potty trained, but for now, he was still in diapers. Probably for the best, too, since his bowels never reacted well to the poisons.

"Now, little master, I have a surprise for you. Consider it a late birthday present."

Or the eerie words Tsubone had just said.

"I'm sure you'll enjoy it." Tsubone smiled in a manner that Milluki was certain was practiced. Not good. Even worse was the fact that she brought out a metal box. It was about arm's length and width and had nothing to indicate what could be inside it. Milluki almost shit himself then and there because not knowing in the box was the worst. His mind was already racing through the various fucked up poisons or toxins it could be, but before he could make his grand escape on two stubby little legs, Tsubone had lifted the case and revealed a terrifying sight.

"Take care of her, little master, Milluki."

It was a terrifyingly cute sight. It was a terrifyingly adorable sight with matted white feathers and a beak that had barely begun to reach for nonexistent food from a forgotten mother. Its eyes were vast and all-encompassing, and the wings had stuck to its side as it met his gaze.

"Her name is Kye."

Milluki had never seen something so fucking cute in his entire life.

Tsubone silently slipped out of the room after watching the little master play with his new pet. Usually, this little present would have waited for a couple of months, but Milluki's training was proceeding slow enough as it was, and while a dove wasn't the most subtle of candidates, it would do. The only actual requirement was to reach maturity quickly, and Doves only took two weeks to fly—only a month to leave the area they were born in. Milluki's fledgling need for companionship would handle the rest.

So Tsubone took her leave, the little master's happy little giggles fading behind her as she walked down the halls. The little master would most likely speak soon. She would have to prepare his lessons for lie detection and different accents. Language training would have to begin almost immediately; there was never a guarantee that a target would speak the same language as an assassin, so it was better to be well-versed in many disciplines early on.

Tsubone languidly thought it would be good if Milluki could handle the more intellectual aspects of his early lessons to make up for his lack of progress on the physical end. While his resistance training was on track, a slow track but a track nonetheless, the recovery periods were alarming. Tsubone could remember Illumi's early tests, and afterward, he could wander around the house without problems. Play catch the knife with his mother and father even, but Milluki's body was so strained after each one that he couldn't move without muscle spasms from the daily doses.

It was unfortunate, especially since Master Silva was already showing signs of dissatisfaction behind closed doors. Tsubone suspected he had wanted a Silver-haired child, as all heads of the Zoldyck household eventually craved, but this one wasn't it. At least with young master Illumi, Master Silva had the consolation that he'd birthed a prodigy. Illumi was born cold-blooded and observant, which was probably enough to satisfy Master Silva for a while.

Then Milluki was born, and besides some fledgling signs of high intellect, it was near impossible to say that Master Silva had birthed another prodigy. It was more apt to say he'd birthed the runt of the littler, barely above the threshold for disposal. It wasn't hard to see why the Master was getting irritated, going as far as never to acknowledge his newborn son's existence apart from some minor grunts of approval or, more often, disapproval whenever Madam Kikyo talked about the little master. Tsubone supposed it was fortunate that Madam Kikyo's body was so strong. It was obvious that Milluki would not be the last child Silva sired, far from it.

I suppose that is for the best... it would be a shame if Master Silva married Madam Kikyo for nothing.

While Tsubone didn't have any love for Madam Kikyo, as her introduction and inclusion in the family left a sour taste in her mouth, she would be remiss to say her benefits to the Zoldyck family weren't astronomical. The Zoldycks were a family that instinctively sought strong partners, and Madam Kikyo was anything but weak. She was able to catch Silva's eye, deranged as she may be; in that regard, Tsubone could at least acknowledge the advantages. As the saying goes, strong parents make strong children, and Madam Kikyo had already proved she could birth an exceptionally strong child. Now, if Madam Kikyo could make one that suited Master Silva's desires, Tsubone could see the family stabilizing in the future—a rebound from the lackluster birth of little Master Milluki after such a bountiful birth in young Master Illumi.

Speaking of the young master...

What a bountiful birth to the Zoldycks Illumi had been. A near-perfect assassin.

I should see if he will be willing to look over the little master's lamb training.

If only he'd been born to Master Silva's standards.