I'd never been so aware of my own spine.
Lying in a crib for twenty-three hours a day will do that to you. The padding was nice—some kind of soft, expensive material—but it was still a cage.
A luxury cage. One that occasionally got wheeled into strange rooms full of strangers who didn't blink often enough.
I was maybe two months old now. Give or take. Hard to be exact when no one announces your birthday and time is mostly measured by how often someone sticks a bottle in your face.
But I had a routine now.
Wake up. Stare at the ceiling. Map new cracks in the paint. Attempt to flex toes. Get checked by someone with gloves. Pretend to be dumb. Stare back harder when Killua stares first. Win. Nap.
Once or twice a week, someone new would show up.
They never introduced themselves.
Just more dark suits, strange instruments, and people who muttered things like "baseline aura latency" and "the twin's signature is still irregular."
Twin. Right. That was still weird.
Killua and I looked like identical little clones, sure, but behaviorally? We were different flavors of freak.
I was quiet, still, constantly calculating. He was twitchy, bored, occasionally smiling like he'd discovered a secret way to poison air.
He also kept trying to steal my bottle.
I'd trained for that.
On the third attempt, I let him get close, then smacked his hand with mine.
It made a noise. A small one, but enough to get a nurse to look over. She saw him mid-swipe.
Killua played innocent. Turned his eyes big and round and blinked like he didn't know what fingers were.
Nice try.
Two hours later, my bottle had my name on it in silver embroidery.
Small wins.
Then came the toys.
Not rattles. Not stuffed animals.
No. These people had a different idea of enrichment.
One morning, I woke up to a puzzle cube in my crib.
Not plastic. Heavy. Made of smooth, cold metal with rotating parts and strange symbols etched into every surface.
A guy in glasses watched me from behind one-way glass.
I didn't touch the cube. Not yet.
Instead, I rolled over, curled around it protectively, and stared at the camera like I was a dragon with hoarding instincts and vengeance issues.
That seemed to satisfy them. The guy wrote something down and walked away.
Later, Killua got a puzzle cube too.
He immediately threw his at a nurse's knee.
Fair enough.
The day after that, the cubes were gone.
=========
Zodiac Core System
System Note: Interaction Logged – "Territorial Instinct"
Level: 1 (Exp 40/100)
=========
Still quiet. Still waiting.
But I could feel the pacing pick up. Like the system was watching my moves, waiting for something significant. Some signal. Some test.
The adults definitely were.
I started paying closer attention to their schedule.
Nurse A came in every morning at six-oh-four, on the dot. Changed linens, checked monitors, refreshed bottles.
Nurse B always entered five minutes later. She hummed old jazz standards under her breath and had a weak knee on her left side.
Nurse C only came once every three days. She didn't speak. Her eyes were too wide, and she wore black gloves even when washing her hands.
Then there were the watchers.
I called them the Suits.
They never entered the room. Just stood behind glass or in the corners during medical checks. Always quiet. Always tall.
One had a pocket watch he flipped open every time Killua yawned.
Creepy.
It was obvious we weren't being raised.
We were being evaluated. Studied. Classified.
Which meant: I needed to control what they saw.
So I picked a character.
Quiet. Curious. Sharp but sweet. Just enough reaction to make them think I was processing things on a smart-baby level.
Just enough delay to make them underestimate how much I understood.
Killua picked chaos.
He'd randomly flip during diaper changes and attempt a backflip in protest.
Once, he tried to choke a nurse with her own ID badge string. No joke. Got as far as a one-handed tug before his motor control failed.
I respected it.
---
Eventually, someone new came. Not a nurse. Not a Suit.
A man.
Tall. Wide-shouldered. Pale hair. Eyes like molten silver left out in the snow.
He didn't knock. He didn't smile.
He walked into the room like he owned oxygen, stood between our cribs, and stared down at us with a frown you could measure with a ruler.
Killua froze. So did I.
The man looked at Killua first.
"You bit a guard," he said.
Pause. Killua blinked.
The man nodded like that was acceptable.
Then he looked at me.
"You bit Maha."
Not a question. I met his gaze.
He raised one brow.
Then—he chuckled. It was short. Dry. Almost confused.
"She likes you."
He didn't elaborate. Didn't introduce himself.
Just turned and left.
---
I didn't know it then, but that was Silva Zoldyck.
My father.
I'd apparently passed the first test.
I just didn't know what the test was.
---
Later that night, I replayed the name in my head.
Silva. Zoldyck.
It tickled something.
Old memory. Anime. Wiki rabbit holes. Late nights. Wait—Zoldyck—I froze.
Oh. Oh no.
It hit all at once.
The silver hair.
The name.
The knives.
The suits.
The constant surveillance.
The cage.
I didn't just reincarnate.
I reincarnated into Hunter × Hunter.
And not just into the world.
Into the Zoldyck family.
As Killua's twin.
---
I laid there for a full minute, completely still, as the horror settled in.
This wasn't just some random dark fantasy isekai.
This was the assassin family. The one that trained children as attack dogs.
The one with a butler force strong enough to kill armies.
The one with Illumi.
I let out a sound. Not a cry.
More like a broken sigh through a baby throat.
Of all the anime, of all the families, I had to spawn in this one?
This explained so much.
The tech. The tests. The aura terminology. The dead-eyed nurses. The toddler training cubes.
The fact that Killua looked ready to disassemble a gun with his gums.
---
I let the system screen float in my vision again.
==========
Zodiac Core System
Host: David Zoldyck
Level:1 (Exp 40/100)
Soul Energy (SE): 0
Cores: All Sealed
==========
Still no tutorial. Still no help.
But now I had context.
Zodiac. Nen. System
This may not be a friendly leveling system. But this was made to survive a world like this.
It didn't want me to grind stats. But it logged my actions, my choices.
---
Across the room, Killua was curled up asleep. One hand gripping a blanket like it owed him money.
He looked peaceful, for once. Vulnerable.
Innocent, even. I looked at him. I looked at the screen.
And I promised myself, quietly: 'Whatever this system wanted. Killua stays off the menu.'
I didn't know how long I'd last. I didn't know what the future held.
But I knew this: I was in Hunter × Hunter.
I had a system with god-tier potential and no instructions.
And I had a twin brother who was destined to run away from everything this house tried to turn him into.
I was gonna run with him. Or burn it all down trying.