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The first thing Chrollo stole was a book.
It’s one of his earliest memories. He was sitting at the top of a dilapidated refrigerator, watching a caravan of pilgrims weave their way through the ruin of the junkyard city. It was his habit to climb to the highest point he could reach whenever there were visitors. It made him feel safer. Even from a young age he instinctively understood the tactical advantage of higher ground.
He watched the group, clad in white, hooded robes made filthy by the dust that never stopped drifting, as they selected the final resting place of whatever they’d come here to abandon. The progression felt solemn, almost sepulchral. From that far away, it was hard for Chrollo to tell what they had brought, but he didn’t really care—people came to Meteor City to throw away all kinds of things. The full weight and breadth of human experience slept in these ruins. Whatever these pilgrims had to offer, it was nothing new.
They didn’t take long. Chrollo didn’t expect them to—no one lingered long in this wasteland, not unless they had nowhere else to go. As they left, fighting a losing battle with the dirt clinging to their robes, a small object fell out of one party member’s bag. They marched on, so anxious to leave that they didn’t even notice.
Chrollo waited on his perch for a few minutes longer, making sure the pilgrims were long gone before clambering down from the fridge. He slid with practiced ease down the mound of junk that had provided him his vantage point, taking cautious steps towards the pilgrim’s forgotten object, the unintended offering. It was box-shaped, glinting in the hot desert sun, gold tooled detail catching the light. Chrollo knelt down and picked it up, brushing the dust from its surface and hefting it in his small hands. It was heavier than it looked. He wondered what possessed the pilgrim to bring such a relic to this wasteland if they had no intention of abandoning it.
—
“It’s a book,” the elder said, turning the boxed object over in his withered hands. “A rare sight for these tired eyes. People usually burn these if they want to be truly rid of them.”
“Why?” Chrollo asked, huddled near the fire. Darkness and nighttime desert cold loomed around them, their tiny campsite an island in a midnight sea.
“Because there are some things even Meteor City can’t hold,” the elder replied. “Ideas are one. They’re slippery creatures.”
“Ideas?” Chrollo asked. “You called it a book.”
“Yes,” the elder said, splitting the book in two with his hands. It fell open to a stack of thin, rustling sheets, like fabric but crisper, decorated with strings of intricate little patterns—random, yet rhythmic. Chrollo couldn’t make any sense out of them, so he waited patiently for the elder to explain.
“These are words. Like the spoken kind, but more durable,” the old man said, tracing a gnarled finger over a line of the pattern. He cracked a smile. “If used correctly, they can do a lot of damage.”
“How can you tell they’re words?” Chrollo asked.
“You… read them,” the elder said, scratching his brow. “No one has taught you to read yet, have they, child?”
“I’m three.”
“Well, never too early to try,” the man laughed. “Besides, I reckon you’re a bright young thing.”
—
So began a nightly routine of huddling shoulder-to-shoulder with the elder, the book spread before them. The old man started by teaching the sounds of each glyph, matching them with the sounds they made in speech. Next came words—and soon entire worlds took shape on the withering sheets of parchment, lit by the flames of their campfire. The elder was right—Chrollo caught on quickly. It wasn’t long before he was reading the book unaided, curling by the fire with the pages splayed across his small lap. In good time, he read the whole thing cover to cover—and then he read it again.
“Are there more?” Chrollo asked one night.
The old man raised his grizzled head, taking a puff on his pipe. “More what?”
“Books.”
“I’d imagine so,” the elder responded. “But as I told you, it’s rare they find their way to our lovely city. People don’t trust junkyards enough.”
Chrollo glanced at the tome in his lap, turning a page. After the months spent learning and reading from the book, it was looking rather tired. Some of the parchment had started falling out. A few disintegrated when handled too roughly. “Then where can I find more?”
The old man smiled. “I suppose if you watch our city’s visitors close enough, they’re bound to let their guard down.”
Chrollo nodded, understanding.
—
Meteor City was never short of pilgrims. Humankind provided an endless supply of undesirables, and even the wasteland’s harsh climate wasn’t enough of a barrier to deter them. Sometimes there were three or four caravans in a single afternoon. Per the elder’s advice, Chrollo began to watch them very closely.
Sometimes he sat out in the open, perched on an appliance or a rundown car. The pilgrims kept their faces turned away or tucked under their hoods, pretending not to see him. Chrollo supposed it must be uncomfortable when the trash stared back. He reasoned it made them feel bad, guilty. He further supposed that perhaps he should hate them for it, for the homes they had to return to, their families, friends, purposes in the world—but he didn’t. The only emotion he extended to the pilgrims of Meteor City was curiosity—and greed.
He rarely had the same luck as he did with that first caravan—where his mark simply fell from the traveler’s bag, like a gift from god. For his next book, Chrollo had to be creative and patient, waiting for the right moment to reach into the pilgrims’ satchels and rummage for anything stiff and rectangular. Usually that moment came right as they were kneeling down to offer their sacrifice to the wasteland, depositing whatever they’d come to abandon—that’s when they were the most preoccupied, the most distracted. It helped that he was small and quiet. Since he was a baby, he’d learned how to keep as still as possible, barely even crying, as babies who cried didn’t last long here. It helped that the pilgrims wanted to pretend like he didn’t exist besides. He stole by leaning on his nature and exploiting their shame.
It took time, and many false attempts, but eventually, he found another book. The second was quite different than the first. Instead of a hard cover, etched in gold, this book was soft and unadorned. The cover was illustrated with a garish green lizard, breathing fire on an unsuspecting castle.
Chrollo devoured it.
The books seemed to come quicker after that, or maybe it was just Chrollo’s hunger—gathering into a hurricane and eating up the months like minutes. He grew craftier, hitting the caravans preemptively, not even waiting for that perfect moment when they deposited their offerings. Sometimes he recruited other children—they were often eager to rain chaos on the pilgrims. Chrollo may not be bitter or hateful, but many of his companions were, and he didn’t blame them. He was more than happy to provide them an opportunity to vent their anger, because it gave them all what they wanted: he got his books, and his friends got revenge.
In time, he had a whole stack. It was the most random assortment, towered carefully in a corner under the tarp he used as shelter—now a library. He had books on geology, phrenology, Shakespeare, the Pope. He had religious texts, poetry, discarded fliers, bills. He had recipes he could never cook, guides to places he’d never visit—and yet he did all those things, never leaving his tent, thanks to his books. He got to know the world that abandoned him, the world that hid under white hoods and pretended like he didn’t exist. While his friends wondered about their parents, their families, the faces and trades of the people who discarded them like trash, Chrollo thought bigger. He looked at humanity as a whole, a collective being, and puzzled over what compelled it to shed some of its members so thoughtlessly. What forces brought him, Chrollo—a name he’d given himself—to Meteor City, and where did they mean to take him from here? It was the one thing his books couldn’t tell him.
—
The elder who taught Chrollo to read died just weeks after their lessons concluded. Chrollo likened him to a dried up fruit, squeezed and drained of the last of his worth. They buried him in the usual way—letting the birds of the junkyard make off with the carrion, painting bloody trails in the dust until the old man was nothing. It made Chrollo wonder if that’s how he would know it was time for him to die as well—when he reached the end of his usefulness, the exact moment when fate had no more thread left to spool from him.
He cried over the elder’s death, but it didn’t bother him. He mourned the passing of a friend, but he wasn’t disturbed. Death was nothing to fear: it was simply an inevitable conclusion. All books had endings. People, too.
—
Chrollo smiles as he closes Skill Hunter, releasing the conjured book back into the void. He often found himself reminiscing when skimming through the pages of his Nen ability. Reflecting on the collected powers of his victims went hand in hand with reflecting on himself, as if he subconsciously hoped he’d come closer to achieving some sort of understanding with each new skill he stole. Perhaps that would be the moment he died.
He laughs to himself faintly, watching the candle beside him flicker as a breeze sighs through the abandoned church. The elder hadn’t lived long enough to see what Chrollo’s Nen turned out to be, but he surely would’ve drawn some amusement from it. It’s only fitting that the small boy so hungry for books would go on to have a book all his own, a book unlike any other.