Chapter Text
In the forest primeval
A school for good and evil
Two towers like twin heads
One for the pure
One for the wicked
Try to escape and you’ll always fail
The only way out is
Through a fairy tale
~
For many, many, years Whale Island was alone. Sheltered off from a world it’s people didn’t even know existed. Every now and then a fairytale book would mysteriously appear and the old librarian would spend months making copies by hand until there were enough for every child and some adults on the island. That was the most interesting thing that ever happened on the island. No one came and no one left. Until a boy named Ging Freecss was born.
Ging was an odd child. He thought there was more life than just what was on the island. The books had to be coming from somewhere right? He thought, no, he knew, those fairytales were real, and he was going to prove it. Normally when a child went missing on the island they’re found in about a day, if not then they probably fell off the island and drowned. No one on the island knew how to swim, there was no need, where would they swim to? But of course Ging was different. He taught himself. But there was only so far a twelve year old boy can swim. So the island carried on thinking he ended up like all the other children who went missing, lost at the bottom of the ocean, or maybe eaten by a fish on their way down. Years passed when a book appeared on the island with Ging on the cover. Some more time passed before Ging returned to the island, but he didn’t stay for long. The only people who saw him the day he returned were his grandmother and his sister. He had come to drop something off. Someone off. A child, his son. “When the time comes, he will come find me.” That was the last time anyone saw him.
Gon Freecss was the light of Whale Island. He was the embodiment of the sun itself. He was kind and charming and a smile never left his face. And with every passing day he looked more and more like his father. That terrified his Aunt Mito. Mito was still a child when her brother vanished and returned with a child only to disappear again. People on the island shamed her for being a young unmarried woman, raising a child that wasn’t her own. But she didn’t care, she was happy with her life the way it was. That’s why she tried to hide Ging’s fairytale from Gon. She didn’t want to lose him too. But in the end it didn’t work, Gon found it and it became his favorite story. He begged Mito to read it to him every night, and every night he said the same thing: “I’m gonna be just like him one day.” That terrified Mito.
Gon couldn’t sleep that night. That night when the silence was too loud. That night when the waves seemed to hit the island hard despite the water being completely still. That night when the air inside felt suffocating. Gon opened his window for air. He could hear birds but it was too dark to see anything other than the stars. He admired them for a moment before returning to bed.
Wait. Birds? But it’s night time.
Gon leaped out of his bed to look again but instead was met with a large bone claw. Reaching straight for him.