07. left my soul on the coast

ー

illumi, himself,
new year, an island.

&

Like pins and needles.

That was the eerie feeling Illumi got on this island. Prickling, piercing, cold. Hard steel that makes your skin bristle from the mere touch of it alone. But unlike most, Illumi feels more than just that cutting sensation — these pins and needles, cold as they were, gave him a sort of belonging — a sensation, a comfort.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that he felt like he belonged here, in an uninhabited island where he landed while everybody else gets to celebrate the opening of another year. Here, stranded; no signal, no sign of life, dark and bleary.

It makes much more sense if he said that he felt a sort of.. relief, being here.

The relief felt like the current waves crashing against pearl white sand as it splashes, dampening Illumi’s bare feet by little. The relief is small, is fleeting, but it’s there. Illumi can feel it, sensitive to a lot of things as he was taught to be.

(Illumi remembered Silva’s voice cutting through the silence: “Be alert, cautious, vigilant. Be cold, sharp, numb. Be a shrouded mystery. Be no one, but at the same time, be someone. Be a Zoldyck, first and foremost — be a part of this family.”)

‘Be a Zoldyck’, his father had told him.

And he did. He became one. He is one. He will always be one — for the love he has for his family, convoluted as it was — remained true.

Illumi was a son, secondly, always on both his father’s and mother’s beck and call. He was an older brother, thirdly, always looking out for his younger brothers, even resorting to measures others found disconcerting, unnatural, and, at some point, manipulative.

But that was Illumi, fourthly; a person.

So perhaps, this was why the salty taste of the air, the sudden dew of his feet, the cutting sensation of this cold, cold island felt like relief — because right here he was nothing.

He didn’t have to be a Zoldyck here (pleasing his parents, supervising his siblings, protecting them from that monster Killua desperately and insistently calls his sister. It doesn’t even deserve Killua’s love when it has done nothing to earn it while Illumi has been trying for all his damn life—) even though he knew he will always be one. He’s a proud member of this family, and he loves it. He loves the thought of being one and he doesn’t — won’t — ever not want to be one. It’s like any other thing will be an absolute crime.

He was born to be an assassin, he knows that perfectly well, and he accepts it wholeheartedly.

It’s complicated; conflicting and mind-splitting to understand how exactly he could be relieved about not being a Zoldyck when he had no qualms of being one.

Illumi’s here, on this island, that is cold and cutting and deep — like his family, celebrating the start of another year, but strangely enough he doesn’t feel like he has to welcome the next part of his life being himself for someone else.

Illumi does not know how much time has passed, and perhaps midnight has already passed, because as he peered up the sky it seemed like it was glowing. Bright, vivid, explosive fireworks lit up the night sky, and though the lights were far away, Illumi could still see them, though feeble.

And even from here, the fireworks felt hot — blazing. Illumi has his lips parted from trying to feel the heat, trying to at least get a little bit of what he never had.

Cold and cutting.

But searing and fickle.

That’s all Illumi felt, right now.

He’s away— so, so far from the family he claimed and knew he loved and cherished in his own, twisted, schismatic way, but right now he felt so near to himself, and he allowed that one thing right here, in this one particular start of another year of a charade of falsity.

And as a reminder, Illumi stabbed a needle into the sand.

It’s his own, it’s him.

Like his pins and needles, this island was his.

ー

[s.] a small mercy for a boy.