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“You see,” you say, head held high, hood pulled down over your eyes, “No way you can say my fashion is terrible ever again!”
Gon pouts at you. “I don’t say your fashion taste is terrible. I think you have a good fashion taste, Killua.” He’s shivering, backed into a corner of the overhanging the two of you are hiding from the rain in. His bare legs are slick with water, his coat dyed a dark green. His hair is flattened, green highlights blending in with the black.
You, coat zipper done all the way up to your chin, stare at him through the tiny opening. “I think we both have terrible fashion taste,” you say. “But seriously, you need a hood! What do you usually do when it rains?”
“It doesn’t rain on Whale Island.”
“I thought it rains everywhere sometimes.”
“Nope, never.”
You blink at him and say without thinking, “Sounds like the ideal place to live forever.”
Gon says, without missing a beat, straight-faced, “Then come with live me after I find my dad.”
You choke, and stuff your hands deeper into your pockets in an effort to hide how de-composed he makes you. “Huh! You can’t say just say things like that, Gon!”
All this time Gon had keeping his hands crossed over his chest, tucked under the other forearm, trying to warm them up. Now he touches his lip with one finger and replies, “Oh, yeah! I’ll have to ask Aunt Mito first. Thank you for reminding me, Killua.”
You splutter.
Just like the sky. Finally, the rain is easing up, the pelting water against the ground as if it rages against the earth lessening to a steady thud to a drizzle.
Kukuroo Mountain is enshrined by thick grey clouds that blot out the sun. It rains four days out of seven, providing water to the dense forest. You have grown up with the dimness and smudging of a rain-filled world. You have wondered why they tell you the sky is blue when every time you trust your own eyes the sky is grey.
“Oh!”
The sun breaks out from behind the prison of the clouds, the world shining with light. The puddles on the ground glitter, even the stray raindrops still falling through the air sparkling. The sunshine makes the world brighter and stronger and realer. It makes it a good place to be alive.
Gon beams. He dances out from under the overhanging, lifting his hands towards the sunshine on his skin. “Look Killua, the rain has gone!” He turns to you, laughing.
You stare.
For so long, you were all alone. No friends. Only a family who insisted that you are incapable of love. For so long, you believed that they were right. That you are nothing but a machine set to kill, a robot primed for exploitative labour to maximise the capital of your family’s business. You have never been a child. You have never been a person. You don’t deserve to be happy or sad. That isn’t allowed, for someone like you.
What is this feeling inside you? The warmth in your chest, the bubbles in your stomach, the grin on your mouth? Your heart fit to burst? This tremendous emotion, like you could do anything or be anything, like the entire world is filled with possibility? That as long as you’re by his side, you could never want for more but him?
Gon is laughing, his bare legs glimmering, the sunlight caught on the wet patches of his hair. He is the most beautiful person you have ever seen.
You join him in the fresh air, lowering your hood and lifting your arms to the sky above, yelling at the top of your lungs for the simple sake of it, of being alive and free.
And they are all wrong, every single one of your family, everyone who insists they love you but hurt you intentionally, everyone who insists that they know what is best for you better than you yourself know, because you are alive and young and in love and this is a good place to be so, in the sunshine after the rain has ended.