Chapter Text
“You have grown fonder of her.”
There was a pause.
Leorio stared at me as if he was expecting me to jump from my place and deny it like a maniac, but it wasn’t a question he expected me to answer. He stated it like he was explaining basic math to a child. I was already two steps ahead of him: with such a rough path ahead of me, there was no space left for unanalyzed variables.
She was, in a way, one. Unexpected, slightly chaotic, with the latent threat of being able to ruin an equation if you don’t treat it carefully.
“It’s not bad, Kurapika. I think that…”
“I know that’s not bad.” I wasn't sentimental. Maybe I had grown fond of her, but the limits were still set, carefully placed to make sure I didn’t enter a place of no return. “It’s just inconvenient.”
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Gon wasn’t even trying to stay still. He turned his head around, roaming the place as if he was gaining information that way. I did it too, of course. But he smiled, and the shine in his eyes made me think the information he was collecting was completely different from the one I was searching for.
Even if it wasn't entirely wise to judge by appearance alone, it was still smart to get the most of it by a simple look.
A man with a snake around him. Rattlesnake? Burrowing snake?
A closer look would help me more, but I didn’t try it. Not the best strategy, relying on an animal.
A guy holding a blowpipe. More smarter, but limited in close-range combat.
He wanted to appear bored, but the grip on his weapon was tight as if he was waiting to be attacked.
And a girl with an axe. One of the few in this place.
Surrounded by a sea of people where most of them tried to appear and a few of them were authentically dangerous, she seemed like an outcast. Not because of her appearance —I spotted a man with pink hair—, or because of what she had chosen as a weapon —not so far away, there was someone with a rifle as if it were their companion—, not even because she looked young —there was another girl who was around her same age, or at least it appeared so.
The reason why she stood out was because she had the saddest expression in the room.
It was like she was a character taken out of a different reality and forced to be here. Dirty, infinite gray, so foreign to the brighter forest and lakes she belonged to.
And then, maybe because my gaze lingered longer than it did with the others, she raised her chin.
Her eyes were automatically fixed on me.
Only to be taken away when a man approached her from behind, leaning on her shoulder to whisper something. His hand slipped to reach her wrist, making her turn to face him. From here, they seemed to be struggling, although she wasn't defending herself. She just let him shake her as if she were a sack of flour.
I searched instinctively for my own wood swords when Leorio snapped:
“What the hell?!” He started walking towards them, with his shoulders moving in a way that showed his pent-up rage, like a bomb that hadn't bothered to count down before exploding. “YOU, UGLY BIG ASS! LEAVE THE GIRL ALONE!”
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“Inconvenient?!” Leorio repeated, gagging the word as if it were a direct offense towards him.
That was the softest expression I could use.
Even if I didn’t owe him some explanation, the way he stared at me —as if I was an insensible, horrendous monster, scum of the earth— forced me to be a little more patient.
So, I sighed.
“Yes, Leorio. Inconvenient. Friendships in general can be inconvenient. Not in an ordinary context, but you know what my goals are.”
“Are you suggesting that I am also inconvenient to you?”
“Don’t take it personally, I’m trying to be as reasonable as possible.”
The flash of pain in his eyes, however, didn’t go away.
Not that I was surprised. That happened when feelings were involved.
Sadly, humans tend to do that. Feel.
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I read to her as much as she wanted.
It was only to pass the time, I kept repeating to myself. After all, we still had around twenty-eight hours left before we could continue the Hunter exam, thanks to Leorio’s fault.
The truth was, she smiled every time I agreed to continue reading. As if it were my own verses, rather than someone else’s. It was tender, sweet. It made me feel melancholic for some reason.
“Have you ever thought about writing your own?”
I took that as a hint that she would not ask for more and closed the book.
“Not really,” I admitted.
She hummed, looking around. I heard Gon snoring, Tonpa chewing something, the whipping of the air when Killua played with the fishing rod, and Leorio’s heavy breaths, but I had no idea what he was doing because I didn’t take my eyes away from her.
“Why not?” And then she lowered her voice, as if it was a secret what was coming next. “I bet you would be good.”
“I bet I would not.”
“You are good with words,” she insisted.
“Why do you think that?”
“Have you ever listened to yourself speak?”
“Of course.”
She smiled in a way today I just learned she could. As if she were about to commit a crime, with a hint of mischief and boldness, so different from the girl who was trying to survive this Exam that I had seen so far.
Something in that made me smile, too.
Against my will.
“I don’t get it.”
She sighed.
“I guess… I guess I like how you express yourself. You never hesitate, and always sound so sure of yourself. It’s… Well, I envy that. Maybe that’s why I like listening to you a lot.”
After that, she looked embarrassed, as if the last part was offered by accident.
I gave her an easy way to escape, ignoring it.
“Poems often talk about feelings. I may be good with words, but not with those.”
Those.
As if it were so foreign to me that I could not even call them by their name.
She pressed her lips, but even if I was almost sure she wanted to argue with me, she didn’t. She just let it go.
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“Friendships are never inconvenient,” Leorio muttered. He let himself fall in my own bed, and I would claim that he was about to mess up the sheet I had just laid out, meticulously, but I simply tried to ignore it. “Okay, you know what? Seek for your revenge, if that’s what you want.”
Not that I needed his approval.
I nodded.
“But don’t push us away!”
“I can’t make such a promise.”
“Can you just say ‘okay’ for once?!”
“You want to hear what you want me to think, or what I really think?”
He rolled his eyes with exasperation and closed them. He needed a long, deep breath before throwing what I only knew then, that it was the reason why he knocked at the door of my room late at night.
“She wants to come with you.”
I waited for him to elaborate, because I felt like I was missing an important part of the information. But Leorio looked at me as if my lack of an answer was stressing him out. Eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed until they turned almost white.
“Where?” I asked, slowly.
“With you,” he repeated. And realizing I was not understanding him at all, he sighed. “To avenge your clan. To… Wherever you are going, she’s gonna ask you to let her come with you.”
Oh.
There was only one possible answer to that.
“No.”
“Yes,” Leorio murmured. “Yes, I’m sure of that. She just told me that…”
“I mean,” I exhaled, feeling suddenly the tiredness of the night collapsing over my shoulders, “I’m not going to agree on that. Regardless of what she wants to do, I’m not letting her come with me.”
Friendships were inconvenient, and I wanted to isolate myself, but I couldn’t. I met Gon and Leorio, and somehow it worked. I could stay with them. And then Killua appeared, and some injustices were meant to be solved. That’s why I didn’t complain about going to Kukuroo Mountain after having witnessed how his brother treated him. But her…
The way she got entangled in the group was almost inevitable.
I never met someone like her.
Strong. Resilient. Brave. Smart.
But completely unaware of those qualities.
Because she didn’t believe in her strength, and she still didn’t back down in the fights.
And she thought of herself as weak, but she stood up every time.
Even if she was trembling with fear, she would jump into a black void if it was necessary.
Calculating everything, perhaps unconsciously, as if he never stopped playing chess.
“Sure?” Leorio asked, slowly.
Even if my words were firm, I didn’t know why she was doubting it.
As if he was seeing something I couldn’t.
“Completely. This is something I am meant to do alone.”
And, yes, that might be an important reason. The main one, for sure.
But there was another one.
I never want to see her covered in red again.
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“Dominik?”
She opened her eyes, exhaling that word as if she was using all her drops of life on that.
She tried to stand up, but her arms didn’t support her.
I pushed her as gently as I could back.
“He’s not here.”
I was supposed to sound collected, steadier. The three words trembled like it was me on a hospital bed instead of her. Her boyfriend’s body had just been taken away. Am I the one who’s gonna tell her?
The President of the Hunter Association could, of course.
But I wasn’t sure if he would treat her gently as he should.
“Kurapika?”
“Yes?”
She murmured something incoherent, and I tried to lean forward to listen to her closely, but the drugs took her away again. And she closed her eyes, like she was just sleeping, and didn’t move.
A nurse had thrown bandages covered in blood, her blood, in the can. And she still had traces of bruises that would take days to fade. Right now, however, she was breathing slowly. Just sleeping.
I took her hand. In the silence, with no one watching us, I felt like an intruder in her space.
But I couldn’t help it.
And I didn’t want to think about why.
So, I caressed her hand with my thumb.
And for some seconds (later, minutes) that’s all I did.
One thought slipped like a plague. Maybe because I was feeling her cold hand, always warm on those few occasions she had taken mine. Maybe because I was still watching her fight in my mind. Maybe because I knew that the moment she woke up, her life would never be the same.
But this is all I need.