𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐄 | ʰˣʰ

chapter xii.

hint!
slight manga spoilers
check out the Mighty Sweepin' Power Cleaners wiki page, or manga chapter 395!

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FEBRUARY 3, 1999 - Gochica
United States of Saherta

FOR ALL the people Illumi has killed in his time, he's never quite made a hobby of sitting with the corpses.

Erdem, however, has.

A sticky sweet smell hangs in the air, pungent and invasive. Embalming fluid, he learned in his first visit, but he also learned not to ask after the first time.

The answer was vague, in the way that words are when touched by condescension, like a non-academic such as himself couldn't possibly understand any more detail than a kindergartner. That kind of response holds little value to him.

He's unsure whether to be thankful or disappointed that the room he sits in during today's appointment is emptier than last time.

Nothing hangs on the walls for him to consider and grow the feeling of displacement in his stomach, but that also leaves nothing to pick apart for any sort of information.

Last week, the staff had directed him to a room where scattered vials littered one corner of a table and papers lay scattered across another surface, a room of science that ought to be organized but only looked left in abandon. Several assortments of random trinkets lined the shelves, suspended in jars that shone wrong.

Molenen glass, Erdem had said when he'd given it one more glance than would be normal. She didn't elaborate.

For this, she didn't need to. Illumi has been familiar with the name Erdem Vincett for several years now.

The titles pile up: Young prodigy, nen specialist decades ahead of his time, the faded-eye doctor that every nen user is indebted to— And most recently, inventor of the first glass-like material capable of containing and preserving disembodied nen.

The rates he charges for both appointments and prescriptions are beyond ridiculous, but if nothing else, he is proven credible.

Erdem walks into this week's sparse room right when the clock on the far wall clicks to 3pm. A whisper in the back of Illumi's head clicks in response: Not greedy, but petty.

The thought refers not to the bodies in the next room, but the navy shirt that Erdem sports under his white doctor coat, browned ever so slightly in one spot or another, the color of bloodstains that refuse to wash out.

The shirt belonged to Letta, the Examiner who stole Erdem's research and re-presented it during the Exam.

Did she make the hit herself, or get someone to do it for him?

"You could have hired me," Illumi says, shifting his weight ever so slightly on the examination table to free the hair he'd been sitting on. Hiring him surely would have been easier.

"Your grandfather is easier to negotiate with," Erdem responds easily, meandering to a white-lined counter. In one quick flourish, he flicks open a drawer, withdraws a tube of ointment, and slides it closed. "Hold out your arm."

From the EViin logo printed on the tube, Illumi guesses it is a medicine of her own invention. Erdem stated last week that he himself is the sole supplier of such medicines, so why they are branded, Illumi can only guess at.

He spares it a total of about thirty seconds of thought and comes up with nothing before moving on to topics worth his time.

Regardless, the treatment worked last week. It's the only reason he bothered to return, so he obeys, wordless.