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The ironic thing about our upbringing: The one overarching aspect of the training we endured--the ability to thwart death--also created ample opportunity to choose death, as well.
Since the age of about 5 or so, or whenever it was that I stopped talking unless absolutely necessary, I would frequent the pond tucked deep in the woods surrounding our manor. Stalking death. Stuffing wild berries in my mouth on my journey down the overgrown path; feeling the sting against my tongue indicating I was ingesting poison. My body trained out of that long ago, so no matter how many handfuls I defiantly swallowed, the worst I would end up with was juice-stained lips.
No matter the season, the pond water always was cold. Icy. Again, nothing for me, no reaction. My brothers and I can take subzero temperatures as easily as a bath in our well-maintained onsen. The weight of my garments constricting me underwater caused no distress, either. I needed to keep clothes on. My pockets, you see, were filled with rocks.
To the bottom I'd go. Not too deep and not necessary to swim all the way out to the middle. Just an elegant sink to the sandy bottom, eyes shut, breath held. Silva had taught us all to hold it for periods of time that we, proudly, could claim to be extreme.
Yeah, I'd wait for it. Because, as I understand--I've never pretended to know what an average person's experience is like--no matter how well-honed the ability, there comes a moment when the body startles in reflexive panic. Struggles to break the surface for air. Could be one minute; could be the 20 or so I counted calmly in my head, waterlogged swaths of silk and rocks weighing me down. Opening my eyes to see, through blurs of brownish green, my toes glowing an eerie blue and curling in the aquatic gravel. Waiting for that moment to come.
It never came, of course. They'd trained the reflexes out of me, too.
My father's abuse, my siblings' fists on my body, my mother's shrill voice, the one and only time I slit my own skin with paper. To jump, to flinch--I left that behind before I could even walk steadily. I stopped talking at 5 because, really, what did I have to add to anything? They'd perfected their methods by the time the electric line crept to me and coiled me up in its torturous embrace. Everything that could be said had already been said.
So I'd go to the pond and wait for the moment that never came, to come.
I loved Illumi. My oldest brother's embraces were the sole indication that I had a spirit inside of me and not just a well-organized mess of wiring and instructions. My brother's love, the instinct of his heartbeat pounding in tandem with my own, machinelike twins, oldest and youngest, more a marker of my humanity than something as base as survival instinct at the bottom of a pond. I could override my will to live, do the near-impossible without strain, but I could not set aside my adoration for my brother. That took time.
I knew I had to forget it, all of it, lose the comfort. At 10, I still trekked to the pond in vain, but also found an alternate avenue of escape: I would read until my head hurt, work my way through the hundreds of the books in our family library. Of course I was drawn to books. Paper under my fingertips, and the earned knowledge that words could come alive and bite. Tear a body to shreds as efficiently as the confetti I'd honed my powers upon.
Quotes that could sprout fangs, the pain--anything--better than an anhedonic void.
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
To my father, I suppose, I represented perfection. A job flawlessly executed; a silent still figure weighted by rocks and silk and water and tradition.
Illumi never questions anything, and to me he represents purity.
There is no presence of grinding opposition in my family. Of any opposition at all. Even Killua, king of snarls and outbursts--even he, if placed at the bottom of a lake, would find it effortless to drown.
At 10, I knew two things were true: I loved my brother, and I could invite death at any moment. By any method. A steady hand, a deft knot, a flick of a fan, a moment too long without air. My body would accept it all, just as gracefully as it could repel it.
It was, finally, that knowledge that caused me to abruptly belch up anger, an emotion that had also been trained out of me years ago.
Fleeing one last time to the pond, I realized that no matter what I tried, I'd never grasp the moment I'd been seeking. They'd taken that away from me, too. The one thing that even the lowest of humanity possesses. The ability to choose one's own agency in any situation.
I knew then I could never call myself a man. Yeah. So I joined a gang instead.