SOUR CANDY | killua z. ✔

37 | turn

KOTARO LOVED his siblings, but not when they woke him up at five AM on his birthday. Then they were dead meat.

"Get up," Sen's knobby knee jabbed into his side. "We have cake."

"Happy seventeenth," said Mai, sitting square on his back. "You're old now."

"I don't think he can breathe," Kalluto pointed out. They, at least, were perched at the end of the bed. But they were still complicit.

Kotaro was tempted to go back to sleep, but his sisters would poke his face until he got up.

"There's no room in the mini-fridge for the cake," Sen announced. "It's a tres leches. We have to eat it soon so it doesn't spoil, now get up. We went to the bakery right when it opened to make sure we got a ready-made cake, and all the chocolate stuff made it hard to breathe. There was also this mean lady who wanted our cake, and she said we shouldn't be there without our parents. And then—"

It was dizzying, how she could go from admonitory to light-hearted rambling in the span of a few seconds.

As Sen recounted their morning, Kalluto used a sharpened nail to cut the string around the cake box. Mai got out cheap napkins and plastic spoons they nicked from a fast food joint.

The cake looked like it belonged on a food magazine cover; slathered with perfectly whipped frosting, an array of fresh fruit slices on top, milk syrup sloshing at the bottom of the box.

"Oh my god," Mai complained. "Oneechan, you can't take all the fruit off the cake!"

"Why not?" Sen put a peach slice in her mouth. "I like fruit but not cake, and you guys like cake but not fruit. Win-win."

"No, not win-win! You're supposed to eat the cake with the fruit on it!"

"But I don't like cake."

Mai slid a bobby pin from her hair. 

Sen screeched, diving behind a pile of pillows.

Kotaro, wishing for a pair of earplugs, cut two extra-large slices of cake for himself and Kalluto as compensation.

The cake was good. Rich and sweet in a way that was foreign to him, but everything was well-made.

"Mother never lets me eat things like this," Kalluto admitted. "She says it's too fattening."

"Good thing I'm not your mother," Kotaro said.

Kalluto stared down at their full plate as if the cake were a precious gem.

Kotaro didn't believe in fate, but he did believe in luck. About five months ago, the gods did something that blew little Kalluto Zoldyck into the Inoues' arms. Changed the wind currents. Shifted the moon. Something.

He didn't plan on having a sixth sibling (gods, the look on his face years back when he found out the triplets were coming), but he couldn't plan everything. 

Kotaro just wasn't sure what Kalluto's plans were. 

With another dramatic cry, Sen shot up off the bed, swiped a strawberry slice from the cake, and escaped into the bathroom. She wasn't quick enough to shut the door. Mai barged in after her, yelling something about propriety and fruit-stealing.

"I'm sorry," Kalluto said, so soft that Kotaro almost didn't hear it.

"Hm?" He raised an eyebrow. "For what? The girls are always that."

They smiled feebly at the joke.

"No, it's just... I..." Kalluto looked away. "... I didn't have anywhere else to go."