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Time spent here is just time killed. How long has it been since Pariston took a break off work, no paperwork to sign, just books to read and boys to annoy? Before Netero, certainly. Before being vice-chairman and all the years that passed by too fast. Before gaining his license and more toys to use. But that’s thinking too far back, and so Pariston switches his thoughts to the future instead.
Taking a break like this isn’t bad at all. His schemes are still ticking along, just waiting for the kettle to boil and the ship to sail. In the meantime, Pariston can lean back in his spot on the couch and watch Ging. The rumours say that Ging Freecss never stays in one place for more than three months. It’s been three weeks so far. Time to study the fellow ex-zodiac, time to learn more about him, time to get under his skin and make him hate Pariston.
Or try to. Ging has remained apathetic.
It has been time spent for Ging to study them as well. One by one, the team have warmed up to him – whether it’s his capability in ancient languages or video games or nen tricks that have won them over. Yet, what do the team know about Ging? Not a hint of his nen abilities have been revealed, not a hint of what he loves or hates.
Pariston spends his time questioning his book knowledge:
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird,” he says to Ging over breakfast. (Tea with two sugars and one milk, two slices of toast with butter and drizzled honey.)
Ging is still wearing the clothes he slept in, pouring sugar into a pitch-black cup of coffee. He doesn’t look up, eyes crusted with sleep. “Crime and Punishment, Part Three, Chapter One.”
“Right again, Ging. I do wonder if there’s anything you’re incapable of knowing.”
“Yes,” Curly is crying into her morning bowl of porridge, “I wonder if you came out of the womb like that! Knowing everything! Were you ever a child?”
“Sure I was a kid,” Ging snorts, chewing on an apple. “Look at all the video games I’ve played.”
Pekotero perks up at that. “Hey, Ging, I was meaning to ask! Didn’t you make a video game yourself?”
“Yeah. Greed Island. Outdated by now, no one plays on Joystations anymore.”
“But I’ve heard it’s the only nen game of it’s kind…!”
Ging looks at him with that flat, unimpressed expression that seems to be his resting face. “Which means someone else can make another one. I’m waiting for someone else to come along and outdo us.”
Pekotero mumbles under his breath, while Usamen asks, “How old were you when you made Greed Island? What, thirty? It must have taken years and years to figure out how to make it. Hell, I could never make a game like that, even now…”
Pariston watches Ging carefully, hands enjoying the warmth of his ceramic tea cup. He doesn’t know much about Ging’s life before he became a Zodiac, other than the rumours, and Ging never speaks about the past in detail. Appreciation for this hideout time rises within him – the Zodiac meetings were always about business and Ging had the worst attendance rate out of all of them.
Ging surprises them all by laughing. He has a short, barky kind of laugh.
“What…?! Nah, I was only nineteen when it was released. A little brat who had no idea what he doing. Then again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” Ging drains the coffee cup. He wipes the liquid off his mouth with the back of his hand. The entire team stares at him.
“Nineteen…?”
“But that would make you –!”
“Thirty-one? Thirty-one? There is no way he is thirty-one!”
“Wait, haven’t you been an active Hunter for twenty years?”
Ging blinks at them. “Oh, come on guys, stop joking.” When there’s only silence, he scowls. “Oh come on! Surely I only look thirty-one? You can’t imagine I was forty.”
“Well…” Pariston muses, playing with his butter knife. He’s amused at how Ging’s angry eyes snap to him. “Maybe if you shaved, took a shower, changed your clothes – ah, make that wear real clothes instead of rags – then you wouldn’t look so… beyond your time.”
He hopes for Ging’s anger to flare up, but instead that flat expression returns. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long moment (the team groan, because this happens all the time) but Ging’s hazel eyes are as unreadable as ever.
Ging breaks eye contact first. “Nah,” he says. “I don’t give as much of a fuck about appearances as you do, Paris.”
“Okay, okay,” Curly leans forward. “Can I speak?”
“Since you’re not Pariston, yeah.”
“But haven’t you been an active Hunter for twenty years? Surely that means you must be at thirty-eight, if you left school at eighteen! Or forty-one, if an undergraduate degree was completed!”
“Ging didn’t go to school, remember?” Pekotero reminds Curly.
Ging picks up another apple, says, “Oh, I passed the Hunter exam at twelve.” He takes a bite. “Maybe eleven? Eleven or twelve. I don’t know, my record will say the date or whatever.”
The temp Hunters are staring in mixed horror, fascination and envy.
Pariston only internally sighs at the fact that he was expected to finish his education. He didn’t enter the Hunter exam until he was twenty-two. What a head start Ging had. Still, the world is so dangerous for a young boy with so much power and potential, just like his – why, his twelve-year-old son.
“Ging?”
“What?”
“Were you nineteen when Gon was born?”
If the revelation that Ging passed the Hunter Exam in his pre-teens had broken the team, now the revelation that Ging was a teenage dad broke them further.
“No… way….”
“Is that why he’s such a terrible father?!”
“Ging, how could you? Surely you should have known better than to bring a child into the world at such a young age!”
Ging scowls at them. “Hey, it’s not like I chose to get knocked up!”
Silence.
Pariston thinks about the fact that someone knocked up an eighteen-year-old Ging Freecss. He almost regrets that it wasn’t him. He thinks about the fact that Ging was apparently reckless enough to be in those types of situations. Or perhaps he was just taken advantage of. Pariston won’t deny that he likes the thought of a mysterious person taking advantage of Ging, but Pariston is fucked up on so, so many different levels.
Ging chews the apple to its core. “If you’re judging me, I don’t care. I don’t have any regrets about any of it. Gon was a wonderful baby. From the way he kicked me in the ribs I knew he would turn out strong.” He spits out the seeds. “And it’s none of your business, anyway. Pariston, stop looking at me with that creepy expression.”
Pariston smiles. “Ging, I don’t know what you mean. I’m just so happy that you’re telling us about your entry into fatherhood.”
“If I had a baby at nineteen…” Curly stirs her porridge. “Oh, my entire life would be so different. What would have become of my academic career? Then again, women should be able to have both a baby and a career… I do have some regrets.”
“Eh. My pregnancy nearly killed me, Curly. Definitely never want to have that experience again.” Ging picks up his plate and cup, and rising from the table, takes them to the sink.
Pariston has a thought, about discussions he’s had with a clown, and then smiles.
He calls after Ging, “Are you sure you don’t want another one? Who knows the people out there who would love to impregnate Ging Freecss?”
Ging ignores him. Pariston will get under his skin eventually, so it’s okay.
Pekotero sits with his hands framing his adorable face. “I wonder who the other father was? Must have been one hell of a person…”
“You know what?” Usamen remarks, staring up at the ceiling, addressing the team and very possibly the entire world. “I used to envy Ging, but I really don’t want that man’s life. Too many things happen to him. Or he happens to too many people.”
In that, the whole team is in agreement.
When Ging passes by the table on the way to go shower (believe it or not, the man does shower), Mascher says to him: “Hey Ging, we ever going to get to see baby pictures of Gon and you?”
Ging rolls his eyes.
Breakfast ends and the team drift into the living room. Pariston takes up his spot on the couch, with a copy of Austen’s Emma in his hands. He’s on the part where Harriet is confessing to Emma about her love for Mr Knightley. To see all these petty schemes collapse and fail is incredibly amusing. He wouldn't make the same mistakes that Emma is making.
Curly sets about her research for the day. Pekotero and Mascher play the Mario racing game against each other, one a green blob and one a pink blob.
Ging emerges, hair damp against his neck, another set of identical clothes on. He hasn’t shaved. His feet bare, he pads across the room and holds out a little card to Mascher. “Here.” Then he flops down on the floor, closing his eyes as if he’s going to nap.
Whatever is on the little card makes Pekotero gasp and Mascher laugh. It gets passed around the room, emitting similar expressions of delight, until finally the little card reaches Pariston.
He takes the little card and holds it carefully.
A printed picture dated eleven years ago, faded with age but the emotions remain. Ging, younger and almost unrecognisable. He’s clean-shaved, even more baby-faced. He’s smiling at the camera, eyes creased and happy. There is a baby on his lap, clapping and laughing. The baby is dark-haired and he has Ging’s eyes. Ging has a hand on the baby’s back, to keep him steady, to protect him.
The present Ging is watching him from the floor, eyes half-open.
“He’s exactly like you,” is all Pariston says, as he hands the picture back.
Surprisingly, he’s rewarded with a grimace. Ging closes his eyes. “Yeah, you say that like it’s a good thing, Paris.”