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The video tape is ostensibly sent anonymously, but there are only a handful of people who know Killua’s current whereabouts, and Kalluto’s handwriting is unmistakable.
The note accompanying the tape is short:
I thought you should know
As is usual with Kalluto, the message is somehow both direct and mysterious, and a queasy apprehension swirls around Killua’s insides as he pops the tape into the VCR player. He doesn’t know what’s recorded on here, but he can’t imagine it’s good.
And as the video begins to play, Killua’s unease only grows. It’s security camera footage, that much is clear, and the location is unmistakably somewhere on Kukuroo Mountain. And while the picture is grainy and distorted by static, Killua can identify the figures on screen: Canary, Leorio, Kurapika, and Gon.
Killua can tell, with one look at Gon, that this was taken shortly after they met. Gon’s small and scrawny, with none of the muscle and height he’d go on to develop. And standing down Canary, armed with nothing but a fishing rod, feet planted too wide and chin tilted too high to compensate for his stature, he looks even smaller.
This must’ve been when Gon came to the estate to rescue him, Killua realizes, with a cold, sick weight plunging into his stomach. Gon had been badly beaten when he and Killua had reunited, but he refused to go into detail about what he had endured. He kept insisting, without wavering for a moment, that Killua’s injuries were the true priority.
But at the first sickening crack of Canary’s staff colliding with Gon’s face, Killua knows he was bluffing. Fine, Gon was always more durable than most, but he didn’t have Nen when this footage was taken. He didn’t have a lick of combat training. All he had was the stubbornness to keep rising again and again, walking right towards Canary, unflinching, at the exact moment she readied each swing.
Killua couldn’t fathom walking straight towards violence, not at that age, not like Gon had here. No, Killua imagines that he learned to flinch before he even learned to speak. But Gon doesn’t shake. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t even go to guard his face. All he does is demand to see Killua, endure the blows, and spit blood onto the dirt as it gathers in his mouth.
He was a child.
The realization comes to Killua so fully and abruptly that it all but knocks the wind out of him. Gon was a child. What child would endure this sort of thing willingly? What child would have the strength to keep getting up, even as he begins to sway on his feet?
“Killua.”
That’s all Gon can say as he’s beaten to the dirt again and again. “Killua,” with all the solemnity and reverence of a prayer.
“I want to see Killua.”
“I have to rescue Killua.”
“I won’t let you keep hurting Killua.”
Killua wants to reach back all those years and grab Gon by the shoulders and shake him for all he’s worth.
“Who cares?” he wants to shout. “I’m no stranger to beatings. They weren’t doing anything to me they hadn’t already done a thousand times over and a thousand times worse. Gon, are you an idiot? It wasn’t worth it! You didn’t have to bear all that for me. If I’d been there, I never would’ve let this continue.”
On screen, Gon rises, stumbles forward, and is knocked to the ground once again.
“Please stop,” Killua whispers to the empty room.
Gon rises again, even unsteadier this time.
“Please,” Killua begs. “You shouldn’t endure this. Not for me.”
Gon bends over, hands braced on his knees, and vomits into the dirt.
And with that, Killua leaps off the hotel bed and turns off the television.
He stands in the eerie silence of the empty room, chest heaving up and down with panicked breaths.
He was determined to spare Killua.
Despite how terribly he suffered, despite how Killua’s name fell from his lips alongside each drop of blood, he wouldn’t so much as mention it.
What else had been left unsaid between them?
And for the first time in six months, for the first time since their separation at the World Tree, Killua fumbles for his phone and calls Gon.