Beyond the Grave [ILLUMI X CHROLLO]

[4] Taking Pookie-Bear To The Club 🤗

It was oil that dated back to the 1700s, Rococo, artist unknown. It was the only page tabbed by Sukuna, and the only one in the entire book resembling an uncanny likeness to Illumi.

How...?

He skimmed the description on the page, and then flipped to the title page of the book in hopes of finding a publishing date—anything that might confirm that it was himself he was looking at.

Illumi set the book down, painting open, hand in his mused and tangled hair. He thought back to the rudimentary research he'd done for an English class in grade school investigating his ancestry. There was certainly nothing warranting this.

Rather than call Sukuna back over, Illumi slammed the book shut with a curse and grabbed the next one on his first stack of homework. There were several slips in the pages for Illumi to skip to this time, and it just rendered Illumi completely senseless with astonishment.

Renaissance, the sort of which Illumi always used to envision the Virgin Mary, only, it was applied to his own features. His angular face yet soft cheekbones, his high brow and solid brown eyes. The density of his accidental eye bags were all but airbrushed over.

He looked like he was capable of sleeping.

It made no sense to him.

How could one person reappear so sporadically through time? Even if a past life of his had access to the world of arts to warrant modeling for such people, how had he managed it in every iteration of his life? And how had the artists gone unrecognized?

Unless... he wondered, hands over his cheeks as he stared into the distance.

Gon had said Chrollo's domain was a museum suitable for artwork. He'd never mentioned anything about paintings of Illumi. The kid had a loud mouth, he surely would have mentioned it, and Chrollo had never said anything about making artwork himself.

Chrollo was a collector, not a painter.

Is Sukuna an artist, then? Illumi thought, but promptly shook that ridiculous notion from his head. It was Illumi's only lead.

Whatever the case, Illumi couldn't fathom the possibility that Sukuna's reincarnation story was correct. There had only ever been one Illumi Zoldyck, and that Illumi Zoldyck was dead forever now. Never to return to Earth the way this doppelgänger evidently had.

Nothing—nothing—could explain the hundreds of paintings, statues, and sketches uncovered in the books Sukuna collected for him. It was excessive to the point of outrage, which Illumi was sure to express a day later when Sukuna returned to the library carrying a tray of tea.

Illumi threw a book at his feet. Sukuna side-stepped it, tray raised up on steepled fingers.

"Easy now," Sukuna said.

Illumi, frizzy-haired and mortified by the content he'd endured for the last twenty-four hours, pointed to the open page. He'd cracked the spine on that book, so it fell smoothly open to a nude of himself (eerily accurate, might he add).

"What the fuck is this," Illumi said.

"You, looking your best."

"Be serious."

"Oh, deadly."

Sukuna slid the tray onto the table, his eyes holding Illumi's scandalized affront with ease. His gaze only parted to pour a cup from the pot and hold it at arms length for Illumi to take.