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The information came, as most terrible things did, from the Hunter Association's classified archives.
Kurapika had been searching for something useful. Old mission reports, perhaps. Exposed safehouses. Testimonies from survivors of Troupe encounters. Instead, buried in a folder labeled "PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES - PHANTOM TROUPE," he found a transcript.
A transcript of a radio drama.
He almost dismissed it. But the header read: "Recovered promotional material, 1999. Voice actors worked directly with informants who had extended contact with Troupe members. Deemed potentially valuable for behavioral analysis."
Kurapika made himself comfortable. He had nothing but time, these days.
The transcript was banal, at first. Dramatized scenes of the Troupe's daily life aboard their airship. Shalnark complaining about a dead phone battery. Phinks challenging Franklin to arm wrestling. The mundane horror of monsters at rest.
And then:
[Machi] Rather than greedy, he's kind of possessive, isn't he?
That time I accidentally ate his pudding. After that, for two or three days, every time he saw me he said "pudding... my pudding..."
Kurapika read it again.
Then once more.
He closed the file. Opened it. The words had not changed.
Pudding, he thought. My pudding.
He pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars.
"You look unwell," Melody said, when he emerged from his quarters three hours later. "Your heartbeat has been... unusual."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." She tilted her head, studying him with that gentle, implacable concern. "Something's troubling you. More than usual."
Kurapika considered lying. But Melody would hear it, and he was too tired to be artful about deception. He handed her his phone, the transcript still displayed.
She read in silence. Her expression shifted to confusion, then dawning comprehension, then something that looked suspiciously like suppressed amusement.
"Melody."
"Yes?"
"Is this real? Could this be fabricated? Disinformation?"
She pressed her lips together. Her shoulders trembled slightly. "The... the file metadata suggests it's authentic. And the psychological profile notes corroborate."
"There are corroborating notes?"
"Apparently a witness once observed him labeling food in a communal refrigerator." Melody's voice was strained with mirth. "With threatening messages."
Kurapika sat down heavily.
"Kurapika," Melody spoke softly, with the careful tone of someone defusing a bomb, "I think you might be... taking this harder than—"
"He murdered my entire clan." Kurapika's voice was flat. "He orchestrated the massacre of everyone I ever loved. He took their eyes. He sold them. I have spent years preparing to face him. I shortened my own lifespan for the power to kill him. And you're telling me—" His voice cracked. "You're telling me this man throws a tantrum when someone eats his dessert?"
"It does seem..."
"Don't say it."
"...humanizing?"
Kurapika made a sound like a wounded animal.
Day One.
Kurapika did not think about the pudding. He reviewed his notes on Troupe movements. He practiced his chain techniques. He absolutely did not imagine Chrollo Lucilfer, head of the Phantom Troupe, standing in front of an open refrigerator at 2 AM, staring at the empty space where his pudding had been.
He did not imagine the expression on that face.
He failed completely.
Day Two.
"Leorio."
"Kurapika? Holy shit, you never call. What's wrong? Are you hurt? Do you need—"
"If someone killed everyone you loved and took trophies from their corpses, and then you found out that person got upset when people ate his snacks, how would you process that information?"
A long silence.
"Eh, Is this hypothetical?"
"Answer the question."
"I mean..." Leorio audibly struggled. "I guess I'd think, what, this guy contains multitudes? People are complicated? Even monsters have, I don't know, weird little quirks—"
Kurapika hung up before Leorio could finish.
Day Three.
He dreamed of Chrollo.
This was not unusual. His dreams had been haunted by that face for years, calm, beatific, spattered with blood. But this time, Chrollo was not standing among the corpses of the Kurta. He was sitting at a table in some nondescript kitchen, and Machi was across from him, and between them was an empty pudding cup, and Chrollo's expression was—
Wounded. Quietly, childishly devastated.
"My pudding," dream-Chrollo whispered. "Machi. That was my pudding."
Kurapika woke up in a cold sweat and seriously considered therapy.
Day Four.
He found himself in a convenience store, standing in the dessert aisle, staring at rows of pudding cups.
Caramel. Chocolate. Vanilla. Matcha.
Which one, some deranged part of his brain wondered. Which flavor would Chrollo Lucilfer prefer?
He bought one of each.
He didn't know why.
(He ate the caramel one on the train back. It was fine. Just pudding. Nothing special. Nothing worth mourning for three days.)
(He sort of understood, though. It was a good pudding.)
(He hated himself for understanding.)
Day Seven.
Kurapika had reached acceptance.
Not about his clan. Never about that. The rage still burned, banked but eternal, ready to ignite at a moment's notice. Chrollo Lucilfer was still a monster. Still a murderer. Still the architect of Kurapika's unending grief.
But he was also, apparently, a man who got territorial about refrigerator items.
Kurapika could hold both truths simultaneously. He was mature. He was adaptable. He contained multitudes too.
And if someday, somehow, this information proved tactically useful—
Well.
He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
The bridge came six months later, in a crumbling cathedral in Meteor City.
Kurapika hadn't planned the confrontation. These things rarely went according to plan. But here they were, Chrollo at the altar, book in hand, looking unsurprised by Kurapika's arrival. The rest of the Troupe was elsewhere, some intelligence about a diversion that Kurapika suspected, too late, had been a trap.
"The last of the Kurta." Chrollo's voice echoed in the vaulted space. "I wondered when we'd meet properly."
"Skip the pleasantries." Kurapika's chains materialized, gleaming in the dim light. "I'm not here to talk."
"Aren't you?" Chrollo smiled. That serene, infuriating smile. "You've been tracking me for years. Surely you have questions. Things you want to understand before one of us dies."
Kurapika's eyes burned scarlet. His heart pounded. Every instinct screamed to attack, to end this, to finally—
"Why pudding?"
The words left his mouth before he could stop them.
Chrollo's smile flickered.
"Excuse me?"
Abort, Kurapika's brain screamed. Abort, abort, what are you doing???
But his mouth, apparently operating independently, continued, "The incident with Machi. The refrigerator. You sulked for days." He couldn't stop. He was watching himself from outside his body, horrified. "I need to know. Why pudding?"
For the first time since Kurapika had known of his existence, Chrollo Lucilfer looked genuinely caught off guard.
"Where did you—" He stopped. Regrouped. The serene mask slid back into place, but not before Kurapika caught something underneath. Something almost... embarrassed? "I see the Hunter Association's intelligence division has been thorough."
"Answer the question."
"It's not relevant to—"
"I've devoted my life to killing you." Kurapika's voice was rising. "I've sacrificed years. I've given up everything. I deserve to understand who I'm fighting. And I cannot comprehend—" He gestured wildly. "Pudding? Pudding? You? The man who feels nothing, wants nothing, claims to be above mortal attachments, you got sad about a dairy product?"
Silence.
Chrollo stared at him.
Kurapika stared back, breathing hard, chains rattling with the force of his inexplicable emotion.
"It was crème caramel," Chrollo said finally.
"What?"
"Not pudding. Crème caramel. There's a distinction." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "And I wasn't sad. I was making a point about respecting communal boundaries."
"For three days?"
"It was an important point."
They stared at each other across the ruined cathedral, murderer and avenger, caught in the world's most absurd standoff.
Kurapika reached into his jacket.
Chrollo tensed, book rising—
Kurapika produced a pudding cup. Caramel. He'd been carrying it for sometime, waiting for... he didn't know what. This, apparently.
He peeled off the lid.
Maintained eye contact.
And ate it in four slow, deliberate spoonfuls.
Chrollo's expression went through several phases. Confusion. Recognition. A flash of something almost offended. And then, terrifyingly, amusement. A low laugh escaped him, genuine and warm and completely at odds with everything Kurapika knew about this man.
"Oh," Chrollo chuckled softly. "Oh, I like you."
Kurapika threw the empty cup at his head and attacked.
Later, when the dust settled and both of them had retreated to fight another day, Kurapika would find a note tucked into his pocket.
Crème caramel. Not pudding. The brand with the red label is best.
Until next time.
He burned it.
But he remembered the brand.