Chapter Text
june 10, 2018
“Is it Kaleb?”
Kaleb, because Ki was adamant and unruly, his stare a cunning knife that was ready to strike if necessary. Yet somehow, despite his arduous disposition, he was always subtly nice with Gon, as if he was trying to slip by undetected. He’d smack his head upright and then affectionately adjust his crooked shirt collar not even a minute after. He was mean yet kind, like a Kaleb, Gon thought.
“Nope, try again.”
“Is it Yuki?”
Yuki, because “yuki” meant snow and everything about Ki’s features were snow-white. Ki looked like snow, glistening gently under early dayspring glow. Ki said he had always disliked his skin, how it always looked so sickly pale and weak — but Gon adored it wholeheartedly. He was a full, luminous moon, hidden behind curtains of dark clouds and storm. Perhaps one hopeful day, he’d be given a chance to hold the moon.
“Wrong again. Wow, you’re bad at this.”
“Is it ‘pretty boy?’”
A blow to Gon’s head, coaxing a yelp and a pained whine from the tanned boy. The tension was really getting to him — it had already been one full week and he had no clue of what Ki’s real name was. But he had to keep trying. Anything for this new, pretty friend.
“Idiot, of course not! Stop being so embarrassing, weirdo!” Ki yelled, keeping his fist planted on Gon’s head for a few moments.
“Eh?! Can’t you give me a hint?”
“That’d destroy the point of the game!”
“I made the game, I choose what I can do!”
“BOYS!!!”
They flinched as they veered towards the entrance of the room through the sheets of their makeshift blanket fort. They could faintly make out the figure of a person, a very short one. Probably a nurse.
It was tradition, one they gave rise to a few days after Gon’s arrival and the beginning of their friendship. They’d drag chairs meant for visitors, spare blankets from the nearby supply closet and IV poles from the corner of the room and drape their hospital blankets over, constructing a decently sized tent over their beds, lit up by stolen flashlights. It was meant for them and only them, the curtain hung between them shoved aside and long forgotten. Since Gon couldn’t walk without utilizing his wheelchair tucked by his bedside (he found out the hard way that walking with a broken arm and ankle was very uncomfortable), Killua had to do all the work every night while Gon instructed where to put what. They made a good team, and both of them knew it.
The blanket fort was where they could truly feel safe, truly feel alone together. The secrets they shared under the sheets couldn’t drift out into the open air because the dome of blankets protected them. Nobody could ever learn their inside jokes because they’d be kept safe between Ki and Gon in their blanket fort.
Gon learned most of what he knew about Ki (for now) when they were under their blanket dome. He learned Ki had a younger sister named Alluka, and that his family was incredibly wealthy. He urged for more, but Ki didn’t budge. So he didn’t either. After all, he learned some things about Ki by himself. He knew he had a sweet tooth once he witnessed his catlike eyes sparkle when a nurse brought in cake the other day. He knew he liked stars when he started going on about a constellation’s origin story one night (to which, Gon eagerly listened — not because of what he was explaining, but because of how passionate he sounded). He knew he got easily flustered, something Gon could easily make him do. It made him happy, knowing so many things about Ki. The only thing he still needed to know was his name.
They ducked their heads under the coverings, looking at the nurse who looked on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion in the doorway. Her eye bags were heavy and thick with black, as if they’d drop to the floor any second.
“It is... 12 AM. Please go to bed, please,” she exhaled and the two teenagers almost felt pity for the miserable lady.
“Right, sorry ma’am,” Gon bowed his head as a way of showing appreciation for her efforts at such a dead time in the night, Ki following suit. They watched as she reached out a shaky arm to lazily pull the door shut, listening as her footsteps receded down the hallway.
It hadn’t taken long before Gon and Ki evolved into good friends with each other, almost appearing as best friends within less than a month’s days. With every day that drifted past, they’d play all sorts of silly games, like tic-tac-toe on the walls with meandering crayons they found under their beds, or their incessant tournament of rock-paper-scissors. Soon enough, their unusual friendship became less about Gon guessing Ki’s real name and more about purely having fun.
It became their thing; when nurses and doctors heard loud shouting from the eighth floor in the middle of the deceased evenings, they’d immediately realize it spawned from the light-hearted quarrels of Gon and Ki’s voluntary contests. It ticked them off to no end — like a fly you can’t swat away from your face — but their heavy hearts were raised aloft by their childlike laughter that echoed through the halls. It was soothing, to say the least; the hospital was an unfortunate locale, to hear two friends having fun every day did take their mind off things.
Nonetheless, their consistent repartee over irrational things was still annoying. Nurses barging in to remind them it was hours past midnight were periodic, much like the moon that rose to the top of the sky for them every night they shared. Like tonight. The waning crescent moon was high above the clouds.
“Well, you heard her. Let’s go to bed.” Ki sighed, tucking himself under their fort again.
Gon gave him a tender smile from outside the blanket barrier. He silently giggled and dived in, following Ki.
They settled into their respective mattresses, lying side by side on their backs as they stared up at their blankets, hanging above them as if protecting them. After a few minutes of pleasant silence between the two, Ki let out a long yawn.
“Man, I’m tired. Looks like you’re nowhere near guessing my n—“ Ki’s words were interrupted by a string of violent coughs, ones that sounded equal to nails on a chalkboard.
Gon frowned as he sat back up, leaning over to see if his friend was okay. He had noticed after a while how fairly often Ki had these brutal coughing fits, how he inhaled rough breaths as if his lungs were coated with thick layers of unsettling pain.
“That’s the seventh fit you’ve had today, Ki,” said Gon, reaching out to rub his shoulder with his free hand. His touch was warm and full, pressing comfortingly against Ki’s arm. “You count my coughing fits—?” Ki snickered, looking at Gon’s eyes through his long, white bangs and for a moment he almost caught dandelions sprinkled across Gon’s irises.
Yes, I do.” Gon softly squeezed at his muscles. “Because I’m your friend, and I care about you. That’s what friends do, right?”
Ki turned his head away in an effort to conceal the warmth growing on his face by the second, yet he could feel it crawling up his ears.
“What is it, anyway? It must be the reason why you’re in this hospital, right?” Gon assumed and instant regret filled his entire upper half. Gon ripped away his hand to slap it over his defiant mouth, mentally kicking himself for sounding so insensitive. “I didn’t mean to be rude like that, I’m so sorry, Ki—”
He looked at Ki. He had turned back to Gon. He was smiling.
“That’s... the first time someone said they were my friend,” Ki uttered, bashful and out of hazy disbelief. He wore a gentle smile, his lips slightly pink, matching his cheeks.
Ki sighed, and it was one of the first healthy breaths of air Gon had heard him take. “If you really want to know, yeah, these coughing fits are the reason why I’m here.” Ki chafed a gently charming look in the stunning sapphire gems he had for eyes, smiling as if he wasn’t talking about his chronic disease. Gon felt a sharp, bitter pang in his heart; he was unable to decipher whether it was out of pity or out of his pure adoration for him.
“What is it called..?” Hesitance pranced atop Gon’s words; he didn’t want to make the same thoughtless mistake a second time.
“I will not tell you that,” Ki fondly asserted as he crossed his legs and allowed his slim fingers to rest in his lap. His chest squeezed when he took a short glimpse at Gon’s hopeless expression, as if something he had worked on for weeks, for months, for years on end disintegrated into dust right in front of him. Ki reckoned that Gon would someday be the death of him (Haha, funny joke, Ki said to himself in his brain). “You could guess it, like with what you’re doing with my real name.”
“This is different! That’s your name, this is a literal illness you’ve been diagnosed with!” Gon stubbornly huffed as he scrunched up his nose, similar to how a rabbit would.
“I could, give—“ Ki hacked up another cough once more, scratchy and hard on the ears. “I could give you my wishlist,”
“Wishlist?”
“A wishlist. A wishlist of things I want to do before I leave this world.”
‘Before I leave this world.’ The words and their individual letters echoed between the walls of Gon’s head.
“Can I see it?”
He and Ki shared a look. It was long, yet short. It felt indefinable. “Yeah, sure. Here,” Ki tugged an unevenly folded square of paper out from the pocket of his loose pants. Surprisingly enough, it was decently neat; only a few furrows and dirt bruises were scrubbed across the paper’s surface, almost unnoticeable. He transferred it to Gon, their hands brushing across each other for a singular, delicate millisecond, feather-light and faint.
Gon unfolded the paper and stared. There were only five items on the entire pad of paper, written in small, neat scribbles with letters that gently leaned to the left. “Wishlist” was written with slightly bigger handwriting across the top of the page. It was boring, simple and minimalistic if you wanted to be generous. It didn’t seem like Killua wanted to do much.
1. eat an entire cake
A childish want, but Gon didn’t expect any less.
2. dump out all my medications into the ocean
Huh. That took a quick turn. Gon tried not to dwell on such a vague, sombre wish, trying even harder to not look at the container of medicine sitting on Ki’s bedside table.
3. take alluka shopping
Gon felt like tearing up. Ki was so cute.
4. stay up and see the sunrise with someone
A simple desire, so simple he considered it utterly adorable. But it was so easy to check off, how come it was still here? Gon pondered on the words, but not for long. He needed to know more, learn more, earn more about Ki so he could guess his name within a month. Hell, it had already been ten days, and the best things Gon came up with were Kaleb and Yuki. Gon thought Yuki fit Ki better.
5. have first kiss
Oh. That took a quick turn. Gon never took Ki to be the romantic type; Ki was complicatedly cold and callous; he’d probably gag if he witnessed a romance scene in a movie. But Ki wished for a kiss. It made Gon's heart pulse, pulse deeply, pulse in such a prudent way.
“The last one isn’t one I really want that much, to be honest,” Gon looked up at Ki, who was looking at the moon’s gleam through the loose hospital sheets shrouding them from the outside world, from anything that wasn’t them. “Kissing is weird.”
Gon sighed to himself. At least he was right about him being uninterested in romances.
“But I think it would be a good experience, y’know? Not everyone gets to kiss someone. So I guess that’s why I put that there.” Ki closed his eyes, lifting his eyelids once he faced Gon. “I want to do things that are new to me. Things that I’ll be satisfied with when I leave.”
God, that hurt. When Ki would leave the earth, floating up to heaven to join his ancestors. But he decided not to linger on it.
“Eating an entire cake is new to you? Are you serious?” Gon teased.
Ki chuckled, nearly noiseless. “Yes, Gon. But I’ve come really close in the past, hehe.” The way Ki said his name sent pleasant shivers whisking across the top of his shoulders, climbing up his neck and stroking the bottom of his ears.
“You know, I could, uh, help you,” Gon leaned over himself to stare at his feet. “With your wishlist. I want to help you.”
Ki raised his eyebrows enchantingly, the way he always did. Despite spending a week with him, Gon still couldn’t determine what the curve in them meant most of the time. Ki remained undecipherable, broad and a blurred silhouette in the distance beyond a wall of fog. Gon barely skimmed the fog; he was only able to slip in one or two of his digits. He wished so deeply to at least, stick his hand in, and then another, and then half of his body, and finally his entire being.
He wanted to be closer to Ki. It was so simple yet so laborious. He yearned to understand him.
But he still needed to know his name.
“I don’t think I’d mind...” Ki mumbled, quiet but loud enough for Gon to grasp onto his words. “...if you helped. I think it’d be fun.”
Gon grinned. It was blinding; Ki felt as if he could go blind from a single glance at his smile.
“Great! So, where should we start?” Gon smoothed out the blanket on the space beside him, gesturing a sign at Ki to come sit. Hesitant and calmly apprehensive, Ki edged off his bed and gently fixed himself on Gon’s bed. Gon pressed their shoulders together, leaning towards Ki as he moved the page in front of both of them. Ki’s heart squirmed a little too excitedly. This contact... was odd. Different. But Gon was also odd, also different. So maybe it was okay.
Ki felt warm, but the fervour withered away with the steady breath of the midnight sky beyond their window.
“I...” Ki looked at Gon as he sighed. “We should start with something simple.”
“Eating a whole cake sounds simple!”
“Sure, but obtaining the cake at a hospital wouldn’t be simple, would it?”
“We could ask a nurse to order one for us!”
“Pfft, yeah, as if they’d actually do that. They have to follow a guideline for our food, an entire cake wouldn’t fit it.”
They silently quarrelled, playful and foolish, warm within their dome and softly flushed to each other. Moonlight stroked their faces, faint through the surface of the sheets. This was so simple, Ki thought. But still so odd. Yet somehow... it felt right — being sown to Gon’s side like patchwork over a rip in someone’s shirt. (Maybe he was a patch to Gon’s ripped shirt. But that was a dumb thought. What would he be fixing? Was there a rip to begin with?)
“Well... the easiest one on this list in the sunset one...” Gon trailed off as he tried to squint his sight past their blankets. He lifted a sheet, looking up at something before ducking back in. “It’s currently 1 AM. Judging by the season, sunrise will come at about 5:30 AM.”
“Wow, aren’t you smart,” Gon stuck out his tongue at Ki. Ki veered his eyes away for no certain reason.
“Are we actually going to do this?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You sure?” Ki turned back to Gon.
“Well, it’s something on the wishlist, so it’s something you want to do, right? That’s more than enough reason to do it.”
“Yeah, but... it’s dumb. And why are you doing this with me?”
“You said you wanted to see it with someone, right? What better person is there to do it with other than a friend?”
At this point, Ki had accepted his downfall — he’d never come to discern who or what Gon was. All his life, Ki had prided himself in being able to unravel someone’s profound nature, morals and motives with one glimpse at them; their movements, the way they spoke, the way the feature on their face shifted in varying angles, the way their eyes glinted in a particular light — all of it could reveal everything about a person. Ki was painfully vigilant and usually, the talent was beneficial for telling him how to act, how to fit himself into the puzzle of his circumstances.
The hospital was no different. He could tell which doctors hated him, which ones thought he was hideous and the ones that truly didn’t mind him.
But not here. Anywhere but here, beside Gon. He could tell he was true to himself, recklessly trusting Ki on a whim. Then he came up with that bizarre game to guess his real name, but for what? To be friends with him? To feel some sort of satisfaction or sense of accomplishment? Because he was bored? His eyes were calm, chocolate brown, like syrup being stirred, and they felt so unknown to Ki. Ki didn’t know what to make of them. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do. In this place, at this time, with this person. With Gon.
“While we wait, what do you think we should do?” Gon leaned back, a palm laid flat on the space of bed behind him. “We have plenty of time before sunrise. You up for rock-paper-scissors?”
“Why... what are you?” Ki whispered before he could think.
“Did you say something?”
“...No. Nothing.”
“Oh, okay. Then, let’s play rock-paper-scissors.”
“No, not that.” Ki shifted in his spot. “Let’s talk. Talk about something.”
“Talk? Talk about what?”
“Anything. We need to kill time in any way possible.”
“Okay. Um,” Gon shifted so that they were facing each other, only slightly. He dug, searching high and low in his brain for something, anything, and then finally, he brought something up to the surface. “Oh! Have you heard of the Greek soulmate theory?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s a really old story Aunt Mito told me about once when I had trouble sleeping.” Gon’s brown eyes had copper glitter mixed into them, Ki saw. At least, that’s what he thought he saw.
“It’s a Greek mythology story where humans originally had two heads, four arms, basically double everything. It was considered one single being. But then, the god Zeus became scared of their power and decided to split all of them in half and separate them. He ordered them to look for their other half for the rest of their lives. The other half would be your soulmate.”
“Sounds tragic.” Ki tried to hold in a cough.
“Isn’t it interesting, though?” Gon looked up at seemingly nothing. “There’s another half to you somewhere in the world, trying to find you, waiting for you to find them. Your soulmate, the person that’ll complete you.”
“But it’s a little weird.”
“How so?”
“It’s suggesting that,” Ki paused, thinking on his next words, hard and firm. “You’re an incomplete being. That you need to be with that one person to be complete, to be an actual being. Why would you want to be dependent on someone else’s existence to feel whole?” Ki stretched his fingers in his lap, pulling lightly as if enough force could rip them off their joints.
“I guess you’re right.” Gon said. “But, think of it this way: your soulmate is the person who will bring colour to your life.”
“Huh? Are you saying we’re all colourblind before we meet our soulmate?”
“No! I was thinking that before you meet your soulmate, everything is dull and boring. Colours don’t stand out and everything is grey and monotone. But when you finally meet your soulmate, things start to gain colour. Everything becomes brighter. Your soulmate could be your blue, your yellow, all the colours of the rainbow and more!”
Ki gazed in amazement, peeking at the quick glint in Gon’s eyes before looking away once more. “That’s... actually not a bad idea...” Gon’s eyes sparkled passionately, overwhelmingly brown like dirt that had soaked in rainwater and was being coated with the thick afterglow of the sun.
“Really?!”
“Yeah. I’m surprised your brain could come up with something as deep as that.” Gon glared, lacking malice as he lightly shoved Ki away with a laugh.
“Ki. Do you want to meet your soulmate?”
“Hm. Probably not.” He shifted in his spot.
“Why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t have a lot of time to spend with them if I really did meet them.”
Silence. The silence after his words was painful and heavy, pressing on Gon’s shoulders like blocks of hard metal, sinking, sinking, sinking down on him. Ki knew he would die. He knew, knew it well, knew it like the back of his hand.
“What if,” Gon swallowed down his distress. “you did have time?”
“Still wouldn’t want to meet them.”
“But why?” Gon asked, almost sounding desperate.
Ki didn’t talk for a long moment, leaving Gon to shiver, but it wasn’t because it was cold. Then, he spoke, “Because they wouldn’t love me.”
“But they’re your soulmate.”
“That doesn’t mean they’ll like me just because of that.”
“But what if they do like you?”
“They wouldn’t. There isn’t that much to like about me.” Ki stated, honest and thorough. He wasn’t fishing for compliments, for a sliver of reassurance — he truly believed this. Gon cringed as he felt his stomach lurch.
“But... there’s a lot to like about you,” Gon began, looking deep into Ki’s saltwater eyes. Ki chuckled under his breath.
“You don’t know what you’re saying—”
Gon, in a swift movement, grasped onto Ki’s hand with his free one, taking his cold fingers and tangling them with his own warm ones. Soon enough, he could feel as his face became a little warm.
“What are you doing, Gon?!” Ki yelped, trying to remain quiet as he blinked wildly at their joined hands. He looked up and Gon was there, staring at him like he was the most interesting thing in the world, the center of the universe.
“There’s! A lot to like about you!” Gon blurted, squeezing his hand.
“Pfft! Like what?”
“So many things!”
Ki’s eyes widened. Gon kept talking.
“You’re pretty, so pretty! You like sweets and I think that’s cute! You care a lot about your sister! You’re really smart! You’re a good friend, no, an amazing friend to me! Even though it’s only been a week since we met! You roll me in my wheelchair when I need to go somewhere! You play games with me! And you’re super pretty! And I like you! For all of those things! I mean it, really!”
Ki was still, so still he could feel his heart pulsing in his ears, the tremors deep in his head. Everything was loud, so loud. He was breathing fast, most likely from the shock combined with his overly flustered state. He could feel strawberry red clouding his face, fogging it up like a mirror after a hot bath. No matter what he did, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Gon’s. It was deep, vigorous and almost charming. His eyes were so big, so brown. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t allow himself to do it. With the strength of this moment, their position, their eyes colliding like this, he found it impossible.
In the corner of his eye, he could see daybreak twinkle in the sky, dark blue melting into pale yellow. Just beyond the window’s curtains, the sun steadily rose beside them.
Sunrise had come. He was with Gon.