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"Where is Killua?"
"I don't know." Alluka's answer is high-pitched; drips with a sing-songy brightness that would reek disingenuous if pronounced by anyone else in Kalluto's immediate circle. "He said he would be back soon."
No. 4--economic with words--returns to silence, watching his sibling drape over the safety railing that squares off the rooftop of the dilapidated city building. The air is autumn-damp in Yorknew. Kalluto has exchanged his kimono for a thick black coat, borrowed (just temporarily) from No. 2's neatly folded heap of belongings. He runs his eyes over Alluka's inadequate garments: Pink frills; a skirt that offers no block against the nippy breeze.
Alluka does not shiver, though, and the blue-eyed gaze appears unfocused. "Why are you here?"
The question is obtuse. Could be replied to in a dozen different ways, if Kalluto were the type to be verbose or clever. Milluki or Killua would make a humorous or sarcastic response. Kalluto--bookend to the responsible oldest, a miniature Illumi--responds in clipped, pragmatic truth.
"I live here now. I'm part of the Phantom Troupe."
The eyes widen. Again, Kalluto marvels at Alluka's almost theatrical guilelessness. Of course, his fourth brother would be artless: Locked up in a room away from humanity, entertained solely by television screens, allowed to wear any manner of cross-dressing nonsense. Kalluto doesn't begrudge the fantasies Alluka drifts about in; God knows anything is better than the truth.
Kalluto, over the course of his 10 years, has reluctantly come to an admittance: He not only does not harbor any resentment toward Alluka, he feels considerable jealousy for this nascent identity. Alluka is held at arms' length by their father, cooed over remotely and without expectation of obedience or reciprocal devotion by their mother. Milluki's dripping scorn is easily assuaged with materialized trinkets. Killua is slavishly adoring. Illumi is Illumi--no piercing the armor--but Alluka, nevertheless, even managed to best the eldest and win his (undemonstrated, of course) admiration.
Kalluto has none of this pleasant detachment in his arsenal. His truth is, actually, starker. Far lonelier than even solitary confinement with only projected images for warmth.
The youngest child in a large family tends to distinguish his or herself by one of two cliched methods: Boisterous rebellion--the colorful kind, meant purposefully to annoy and divide--or silent detachment. The latter filling up sketchpads and notebooks with observations that, later, would somehow surprise the people meant to be closest to the creator.
Kalluto had settled on a compromise. He'd followed his natural inclination towards peace and order by drifting ghostlike, doing all that was asked of him without resistance. Then, when the time came right, he engineered the most egregious rebellion of all.
"You left without telling anyone." Alluka, suddenly, offers this. The chilly wind displaces the ruffled skirt, exposing white skin and goosebumps.
Kalluto sucks on his teeth, wanting to snap something sarcastic. His short tenure with the Troupe has caused the tightly drawn sheets of his persona to flare and flutter. Feitan's slitted gaze; Phinks' uproarious laughter and terrible jokes. Danchou himself, an amused quirk of the mouth. So different from Kukuroo Mountain and its brigade of hired help. The too-close, too warm, lack of boundaries between himself and his brothers; between the mother who plays with his precisely cut hair and calls his name constantly in a shrill voice; the father who leaves bruises.
Indeed, leaving all this without fanfare--be it a brandished knife drawing family blood or merely an announcement. How dare he slip off into the ether? Off the diving board of rarifed existence and out of the insularity that, now he is part of another group, Kalluto realizes is something others would consider disturbing. At best.
"I did," he finally replies. "You didn't question Killua, did you? When he made his initial--" Kalluto thinks for a minute, searching for the correct term. He still isn't entirely comfortable with verbal articulation. "Statement."
The beads in Alluka's hair click and clink in the stiff wind. "I knew he would come back." Again, the irritating childlike simplicity, which sets a muscle in Kalluto's jaw to working. "My big brother always does. He's the only one who..." The voice trails off, then grows resolute. "Ever gave a damn about me."
The unexpected curse word startles Kalluto, but being a perfectly trained Zoldyck--as well as a youthful master of diminished affect--he does not show his surprise. "He came back for you," he states. "The rest of us, well...not so much. He doesn't give a damn about anyone else in the family."
"He came back." Alluka puts a slight emphasis on the final word. "He addressed Father; told him his intentions, even if he wasn't polite about it. You left without a word. You don't know how that affected Aniki. You were always his baby."
Kalluto swallows. An alien bubble of lava is rising in his chest. "I'm the youngest, but I'm not a baby. And nothing affects Illumi," is all he manages to respond. "Don't be daft."
"I know things you do not know." Alluka's skirt rises again with a gust of icy air. Kalluto, unable to tolerate the sight of goosepimpled skin--his own precise shade of pale, Zoldyck-brother white--strips off No. 2's coat and drapes it around his sibling's shoulders. Thinks of misty mornings when two young brothers raced each other through the cold mountain climate, only to be plunked unceremoniously and shivering in the same bathtub by hired hands. Hot water turning their cheeks pink; the same shade as the skirt now rustling around Alluka's thighs.
"Illumi vowed to follow you to Yorknew." Alluka, instinctively huddling into the soft black cloth, looks out over the cityscape. "Father didn't say yes or no to this, and Aniki made it clear it was his own decision." Fumbling in one pocket, a folded piece of paper is drawn out.
Kalluto reaches for it. Illumi's handwriting: I will get my brother back. The phrase is repeated in bold black strokes, inked in chilly precision.
The hot coal moves into Kalluto's throat. "He meant Killua. Killua is his favorite." Unbidden, a vision of his oldest brother dances behind his eyes. The lanky teenager with long legs and a face swallowed up by eyes and cheekbones. The large hand, resting softly on his own shiny black bob.
Huge blue eyes turn to look into violet. Seemingly ignoring what has just been said, Alluka continues: "Milluki just said his usual: You'd make a mess of everything with your games. That it's high time you grew out of this kiddie shit; that you'd been spoiled rotten. And I--"
Kalluto looks at his arms, covered only by the cheap noragi he's taken to wearing since relocating to the city. Controlling a shudder, he thinks--just momentarily--of his luxuriously heavy silks. His mother, dressing him like a doll, with exclamations of delight. "And you?"
Alluka resumes gazing into the distance. The hem of No. 2's coat falls short; a Portor's unimpressive height no match for the sprouting growth of a Zoldyck son. The inadequate length bares charming and elaborately buckled footwear. Cross-dressing nonsense. Kalluto's memories overtake him once again, and the image of a scruffy little boy in unassuming pants and sweater--a wide, open smile--plays on the planes of his mind.
"Did you care that I left?"
To his horror, Kalluto feels the heat in his throat seep into his eyes, and tears begin to flow in hot rivulets down his cheeks, cooled instantly by the brisk climate. I am No. 4 now, he repeats to himself. No. 4. Not the fifth, not anymore, it doesn't matter...
"Did you?" The question bursts out, anyway. Once again.
Alluka pauses. Just for a moment.
The little black-haired boy in the sweater turns his back, runs into the forest. Kalluto's mind's eye goes blurry, then sharp, then fuzzy one more time.
"Sister?" It is offered hesitantly.
The tears are soaked up by the too-short coat. Alluka's arms, wrapped in a spider's thievery, are around Kalluto. Her voice, a blur of gentle Dentoran dialect. The language of bruised children at play on Kukuroo Mountain. She smells of flowers; something exotic, a fragrance that their patrician mother would decant into an antique rose-colored bottle and wear for their father on important nights.
When Kalluto finally raises his head with a ragged sigh, Alluka smiles.
Takes his hand. Leads him, with a grin, down the fire escape.
****
"Where are we going?" Kalluto knows his way around the city fairly well by now, but Alluka's confounding twists and turns through alleys have turned his sense of direction completely upside down.
Alluka is muttering to herself, counting her steps. "I know the place. By the 100th step, we will be there."
Kalluto, familiar with Alluka's myopia--the result of staring too long at screens and walls--chooses not to question this, although he wonders why she does not simply give him the name of the establishment and allow him to take over the navigation. Shaking his head, he realizes: I am the fifth, after all.
"Here we are. One hundred." The ornamental boots stop abruptly, planted in front of an unassuming doorway. "This is the place."
"I--" begins Kalluto, but Alluka waves this aside. The door is opened, and a rush of warm air pours invitingly out.
Wonderingly, Kalluto follows his sister. The passageway is dark; smells enticingly of some rich cuisine. Alluka's smile cannot be seen in the low light, but Kalluto feels her satisfaction. Feels the hand that, years ago, held his across tatami mats as they writhed in discomfort from arsenic tea.
The passage opens into a slightly more illuminated room. A figure, fair-haired, is sitting at a table, absorbed in a bowl of something steaming.
"He's here," says Alluka, sweetly. The figure looks up, chopsticks poised gracefully in one hand.
"I brought him back, Killua. I have brought our baby back."