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The door only opens three times a day, the same times every day, so Alluka cannot control a startled reflex when the scraping sound of the latch interrupts her mid-afternoon playtime.
The door never opens during dollhouse hours.
Her armful of pretty dollies tumbles to the ground. She hastily gathers them up, smooths their silky rooted hair, cuddles them to her chest, whispers apologies. Blinks her eyes. Forces them to focus.
Pulling out of her own fantasies is something Alluka finds near-impossible to do, outside of the scheduled moments when her body viscerally responds. When the tray of food is placed down with a definitive thunk on the tiny child-sized tea table. Alluka can, just sometimes, manage to catch Tsubone before the door clicks shut again. Demand a small piece of the outside world; lick the resultant blood and shreds of skin like a young cat not sure what to do with the bird it has just killed.
Independent of these scheduled moments, and after the prize—if managed to be wangled—has been examined, Alluka automatically returns to her cloud of self-constructed reality. Her dolls speak to her. The spirit in the walls speaks to her. She giggles, sometimes; and sometimes she carries on long and serious discourse.
The days—as well as the nights, indistinguishable from the former—should be long, but Alluka is used to them, and has calibrated herself to a life in which time is a useless concept.
The door slides fully open. It isn’t Tsubone. Alluka knits her brows together, concentrates fiercely through the myopia that has developed over years of peering at four walls and smiling, static doll faces. It isn’t the butler, although the figure is certainly tall enough.
Alluka squints, and suddenly, the figure becomes clear. Hands thrust in the pockets of a jacket, it walks toward her with purpose, stopping a mere few feet away from the dollhouse Alluka is kneeling in front of.
Alluka’s breath turns ragged. She ducks her chin, causing the beads in her hair to sway and click.
“Brother,” she mutters.
The figure doesn’t answer, but casually adjusts its posture, one hip cocked. It casts a cool, dark gaze over Alluka. Up and down.
Alluka knows nothing but brothers. Mostly butlers. But also brothers, plus the highly occasional—terrifying—encounter with either of her parents.
She can barely manage the concept of numeration (“the poor thing”), stilted as her development is.
But she can count to four.
Killua is the nicest. Milluki makes her slowish brain stumble with his staccato demands. Kalluto is a mute shadow with vaguely hostile eyes. And then there is Big Brother. Aniki.
Back in the hazy corners of her mind—all of Alluka’s thoughts are wrapped in cotton and down feathers, so she does not necessarily construe these as memories—there is a garden, and a playground with a sandbox, and a heavily wooded forest where she wanders with Milluki, clinging to his hand. Kalluto toddles along on the other side, wordless as always.
There is her Big Brother. Aniki, so tall. Black hair, like almost everyone else in the family, but his is somehow the duskiest. Falling in soft shaggy pieces over his brow. Alluka can never tell if the eyes are happy or sad or angry. They just stare forward, occasionally flicking to land upon her momentarily, as he leans against a tree, watching them pick flowers and weeds.
He is scary, almost as scary as Father, but Alluka knows she is going to marry him one day. He is beautiful. Mother says it all the time: Lovely boy. He is only so stern because he is thinking serious thoughts. Thoughts, Alluka surmises, about making money.
He is 17, after all. Grown-up. He needs to make money if he’s going to get married, and of course he will marry Alluka. Milluki is too old and Killua hates him and Kalluto is a baby. So Aniki will marry Alluka, and Alluka is glad of this inevitability, even if he frightens her just a tiny bit.
She tells this to Milluki, plucking a mushroom from the forest floor and shredding it in her tiny fingers. Kalluto’s violet eyes grow wide at the declaration, then narrow in a disapproving fashion, giving him an unattractively sour visage.
“Don’t look like that, Kalluto,” states Alluka. “I know I am going to.”
Kalluto, instantly, neutralizes his expression, but a hard glitter flickers. The effect serves to continue the ugly maturation on his 3-year-old face.
Milluki laughs. “You’re a boy.”
“So what?” It comes out shriller than Alluka intended. The taste of chalk, of lemons, disappointment, fills her mouth. Defiantly, she licks her fingers, which are stained with dirt and bits of the fungus she’d just crushed to bits. “So what?”
Big Brother, still leaning against the tree, apparently overhearing the outburst, turns to look. Impassive as always. Bending one knee without effort, he plants a sneakered foot against the trunk.
Alluka bursts into tears.
“Why are you crying?” Milluki’s tone drips disgust. Kalluto continues to stare mutely. “You’re a boy. Illumi needs to marry a girl. Like Father married Mother.”
Alluka cannot stem her sobs. Big Brother, eyebrows raised, puts his foot to the ground and begins to walk toward them.
“You can’t marry your brother, either,” hisses Milluki.
“What are you doing?” Big Brother states the query in his usual detached manner. Alluka, relieved by this cold familiarity, chokes on her haste to control herself. “What’s going on over here?”
Alluka faces her oldest brother, whose hip is still cocked. Gaze still void. Present and past meld without effort, like the Zoldyck ability to drift between the common Padokean language used with butlers and the regional Dentoran dialect addressing family.
Illumi removes his hands from his pockets and crosses his arms over his chest. Alluka, who almost never is alone with him—almost never sees him, not anymore—stares at him with wonder and just a touch of that chalky regret that filled her palate seven years ago.
“Brother.” It comes out, this time, a little stronger.
Illumi does not answer this, not even with an affirmative nod. The black, opaque eyes remain unreadable.
You can’t marry your brother. Milluki’s advisement drifts through Alluka’s clouds of thoughts and synapses and unclear routes of consciousness.
A young woman, out of nowhere, materializes next to Illumi’s side. Alluka, frantically, squints her eyes. Try as she might, she cannot place this face. Does not know this person.
Illumi needs to marry a girl. Like Father married Mother.
Bile rises in Alluka’s throat. The mysterious girl lowers her chin slightly, allowing a fall of brown hair to half-cover her pretty face. Her figure is delicate in the Zoldyck uniform of stark black jacket and pants.
Alluka grabs, helplessly, at the band of her own skirt.
You’re a boy. Milluki’s mocking pronouncement.
The vision of Kalluto’s eyes, narrowed and soured, hang like violet jewels in the air.
Illumi, finally, opens his mouth and speaks.
“Kasuga.” The foreign-sounding name is rolled out, in Big Brother’s practical, unemotional cadence.
The girl nods.
Alluka digs her fingers through the cloth of the garment. Feels her nails painfully cutting into her palms.
“This is Alluka. You are to acquiesce to any request that Alluka makes. Whatever the request is.”
Illumi, without any particular flair, places his hands back in his pockets.
“That is the deal that we have made.”
Alluka unclenches her fists.
When Illumi has left the room, she turns to interact with the stranger.
Reaching her hands out, she offers up her favorite doll.
A deliberately disingenuous grin spreads across her face.