A small, very young, pale, white-haired boy sat in a dark room alone on a dark wooden chair. His wrists were chained with metal restraints to the armrests, and on his head he wore a helmet connected to wires. They stretched into a hidden adjacent room, running somewhere under the brick; it was impossible to get in there from here without using force.
The piercing and focused gaze of the six-year-old child clung to the camera lens in the upper right corner. His frighteningly bright, deep blue eyes did not move away from the recording device for a moment. He knew that there, in the observation room, one of the older members of his family was present. His grandfather or father… His mother also liked to watch these daily tortures.
None of the Zoldyck children, except for him, were honored with such treatment. Their training was conducted almost in solitude, nothing like Ryuroku's. Ryuroku, that was his name. Despite the fact that all his other brothers received their names from their mother, he himself had been named by his father. On Kukuroo Mountain, if any of the servants whispered about it, it was certainly not in the main Zoldyck estate, but knowing his mother's character, the child was almost one hundred percent sure that on the day he was born, Kikyo had definitely caused a scandal because of it.
He spent most of his time with his grandfather, Zeno Zoldyck, and his father, Silva Zoldyck. No one stopped his mother from visiting her child, but no one allowed her to do to him what she did to all the other children. Aside from Ryuroku himself, the only one who escaped being regularly dressed in girlish little dresses and tops was his younger twin brother Killua. At least, he assumed so, because he had never once caught the eldest brother, Illumi, in such a situation.
"Young master, prepare yourself. I am switching the lever," came a cold and serious voice of a young woman from the hidden speakers, belonging to yet another maid, one of many.
The boy clenched his teeth and frowned, preparing himself for another portion of hellish torment. Day after day, the same thing, morning and evening. He was never allowed to skip these training sessions, never at all. They were monitored with extreme strictness. Already at six years old, with every meal he consumed such amounts of various deadly toxins that a horse would have died in terrible agony from even a tenth of it.
The speaker had already been turned off, and the control room for the electric chair was soundproofed, so even his superhuman hearing could not pick up anything. Not that it was required. A terrifying crackle of electricity struck his ears as his muscles began to contract convulsively and his body shook. The restraints holding his arms creaked under the pressure of the superhuman force, but the metal did its job properly. After all, it was not some ordinary steel, but a special Zoldyck alloy, the secret of which only they possessed. The chair itself was also not made of ordinary wood…
His skin and many mucous membranes dried out almost instantly; steam rose into the air without stopping. The terrible smell of burning hair spread through the room and seeped through the door leading inside. Despite the parameters of the electric current being several times higher than those used for execution in an electric chair, Ryuroku still remained conscious and looked outwardly unharmed.
Fifteen seconds after the start of the training under the guise of torture, he burst into flames, like a candle wick. The terrible fire instantly took up one eighth of the room. But even some time after the ignition began, no one burst in, because everything was going exactly as planned. Just like yesterday, the day before, and the day before that. Such a situation occurred every day since the beginning of his training.
At the same time, the current did not stop flowing until one of two things happened: either the electrodes failed and melted together with the insulating cables, or the transformer in the control room burned out. This time, exactly one minute after the torture began, the second occurred. The flow of electricity suddenly stopped, and Ryuroku's muscles relaxed almost instantly, no longer reacting to the small discharges still running across his body.
With his head thrown back against the chair, he looked exhaustedly at the ceiling with his dried-out eyes of incredible blue and purity, continuing to burn motionlessly like a match. This lasted until the heavy metal door opened with a tearing creak. A tall, slender teenager entered unhurriedly. He wore a green hoodie, a gray T-shirt underneath, dark jeans and sneakers. His short dark hair, thin lips, smooth straight nose, and the two great pits into the void instead of eyes made him look abyssal. Illumi had inherited more from his mother than from his father; except for the hair length, he was practically her copy.
With one hand, without any visible effort, he carried a hundred-liter steel container overflowing with water. Slowly, with his frozen doll-like face, he looked at his younger brother as he unscrewed the lid with his free hand and came closer, extinguishing the flame. He did not stop until the container was completely emptied, staring at Ryuroku with his bottomless gaze while the water drained into the grate in the floor.
The six-year-old boy almost lazily shifted his gaze to his older brother, snorting and smirking. Then his blue eyes slid lower from the repulsive doll-like face until they ran into something bulging very close to Illumi's right hoodie pocket.
"Since you came here instead of the servants, you'll be the one giving me water too, right?" Ryuroku smiled crookedly as his hands were freed from the cuffs with an automatic click. "Come on already, big brother, don't drag it out, I'm terribly thirsty!"
Illumi narrowed his eyes slightly, but said nothing, continuing his silent observation. He was clearly "punishing" the younger one for his insolent behavior. However, instead of remorse, the white-haired boy pierced his older brother with an angry, very displeased glare.
"I'm not going to beg you, don't count on it," the unnaturally glowing blue eyes sparkled with challenge and wounded pride.
He, the greatest genius of the Zoldyck family in its entire existence, beg this doll-faced creature for anything? Never.
Yet the older one once again didn't even twitch an eyebrow. Didn't want to ask? Fine. He wasn't the one wanting to drink, so he wouldn't suffer. Another form of punishment. Illumi had been using such "educational" measures ever since he learned of the birth of the white-haired younger brothers, trying to take both under control. However, this insolent brat stood out even compared to Killua, making him the priority target.
"Get up and get dressed, Ryu. You have another assignment. This time I'll be going with you," the teenager said dryly.
"Big brother, you're such a pain…" He sighed heavily. "Why not Grandfather or Father?"
"They can't spend every minute on an insolent small fry like you, so this time I will be the one watching your behavior."
Irritated, the child closed his eyelids for a moment, then removed the helmet from his head with a single motion and stood on his bare feet. At the same time Illumi finally took out a one-liter bottle of drinking water from the wide pocket of his hoodie and handed it to his younger brother with his expression frozen.
"Oh!" Ryuroku smiled happily; satisfaction lit up in his eyes, and he reached for it.
The bottle burst a moment before the white-haired boy could take it. He stared emptily at his older brother's hand, which had crushed the bottle in an instant. The drinking water, priceless to the boy in that second, pointlessly flowed into the drain.
"Of course…" The blue-eyed boy stared at his older brother with a murderous gaze, a vein pulsing angrily on his neck.
After watching Ryuroku for a few more seconds, Illumi silently turned around and walked slowly toward the exit of the torture room.
"Hurry up. Don't make me wait, Ryu."
"Sneaky, slimy bastard." the boy thought, spitting out the clotted blood on his tongue and heading after him.