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When they dreamt, they were dreams in flashes. Their mother’s eager eyes, their father’s calloused hands, Pairo’s shining smile. Flickering images stripped of their context, just as they had been burnt from this world. The memories of a former self, a self they could not remember feeling was truly them. A self they could not choose out of a crowd, or would disbelieve a mirror it appeared within. These were memories that lie dormant in the day, restrained by intense focus on immediate tasks to complete, but shaken awake at night, when nothing but the occasional call of a raven reverberated through the city streets.
On nights when rain fell, pattering the roof above and cobblestones below, they slept soundly. They always made sure the window was open just in case clouds moved in, for the raindrops quieted their unconscious and brought them restful sleep. They knew not why, and no book had ever provided a reason, but it did not matter. They knew when to just appreciate a small mercy.
***
They were grateful for what they had. To wake in a clean bed, in a room with a ceiling and a window. To wash themself with hot water, comb softly through their golden hair with a clean brush, eat a bowl of fresh oatmeal they cooked on the little hot plate. This was a modest place, but safely and securely theirs.
When they walked to the bookstore, they were surrounded by reminders of how they might live. Makeshift tents in alleyways, fabric still soaked by the prior night’s rain. Children wandering the streets after being expelled from the shelter after dawn, their ill-clad feet stumbling around the pooled water in the patchy streets. A woman sitting with hands outstretched, begging to feed herself, tattered rags hanging from her gaunt form. If their luck was different, if they had not been in the right place at the right time, if they lacked what made them useful, their existence would be considerably more difficult.
When they entered, the little bell at the top of the door ringing twice, Geum-ja was gathering dust into a little pile with a broom. Her head faced down, the gray of her braid falling over her shoulder. When she looked up, she smiled. “Good morning, Kurapika,” she greeted them, as she did every day.
“Good morning, ma’am,” they replied, bowing once. They passed rows of wooden shelves along the way to the back room, where they collected today’s delivery bag and the accompanying log from the desk. Hefting it onto their back, they checked over the list. Just a handful of books today. Nothing too difficult.
“I’ll return by noon,” they said as they passed through the door again. The morning sunlight spread through the street, sliced by the buildings that lined the avenue. It felt warm on their skin. Memories of sunlight filtered through treetops, their mother’s laugh, how the fish leapt from the river. They stopped to study the subway map, despite knowing each route by heart now. Grasping for the here and now, the tangible, remembering that St. Julius Square station came after University Center.
The subway cars were always crammed this time of morning. Kurapika squeezed into the third car from the rear, forced entirely too close to a pregnant woman and a funky-smelling man. They reread the delivery log. Dr. Marsalis was their first client, a professor at the university. A regular customer of The Prophet Bird, Kurapika had delivered countless books to his office. Kurapika looked in the sack. Today’s seemed to be The Moral and Ethical Dilemma of Ochiman Immigration to Namcharu Province. Kurapika raised their eyes and watched the blur of the lights that lined the subway tunnel as the train clunked along.
The doctor was a fair client. Kurapika had never met him. His receptionist always accepted the books, placid smile in return. She would thank them, and pass them a little white envelope. The small bills inside accumulated in a special box under their bed, tucked away for some later use.
Their least favorite deliveries were to the mansions that lined the royal boulevard. Books would be delivered here in waves, a single copy of a particular title delivered on Monday would fill their sack by Wednesday. The excess disgusted them. Sometimes they would be beckoned into a front parlor room, met with an amalgam of people who seemed to be friends.
“What stunning hair,” one would say, petting them, letting their fingers trace down their neck. “As shiny as spun gold.”
“Such a lithe figure, so pretty,” another would gush, eyes cast over them, a hawk tracking prey from above. Violent desire to claim, to control.
Sudden hands would startle them from behind, placed firmly on their shoulders. “This beauty is wasted delivering books. Such a shame, but one easily remedied…”
Trembling filled their being, not from fear but an incandescent rage that haunted them from the moment of their birth. In this room, they could not defend themself without condemnation to a life of nothingness, without that sickening glow radiating from their eyes destroying even the little facsimile of normalcy they had constructed. A thin line divided them from depravity, The Prophet Bird, Geum-ja’s generosity, their charm and speed and determination. There was nothing else to rely on.
They swallowed down their anger, let the leering eyes and probing touches wash over them. “Geum-ja is thankful for your business,” they said, bowing formally. “May we meet each other again soon.”
Some nights, when rain did not fall, and the only sound that echoed in their ears was the mechanical rumble of the cars below, they would vomit up their fermented rage with a fury permitted only in solitude. The coolness of the bathroom tile, the small moths that drifted in slamming their little bodies into the single light above over and over. Letting the putrid taste remain in their mouth, remembering this feeling, remembering what exactly they were.
But they were here now, sunlight above. Back in the streets. Transitioned from hollowed object of raptorial gaze to a singular anonymous part of the living, breathing mass of the metropolis, returning to their authorized self.
The last delivery led them to a seamstress near the city center, a small but elegant storefront next to a jeweler. The order was for a guide to the traditional clothing of Nancha Province. Their expression betrayed none of the parasitic dread that filled their core instantly, another glimpse of another life, lived by another self.
Dress forms filled the interior, finery beyond what they had ever seen. The green of one dress, so verdant it called to mind instantly a meadow of wild grass. The gold of another, washed out in the antiseptic fluorescent light. They pictured it shimmering brilliantly in candlelight, glowing super-solar, the way firelight breathed life into the gold trim of dancing bodies in the forest, enraptured by midnight festival revelry.
“It’s a beautiful fabric,” they heard beside them. They flinched, too subtle to be perceived. They hated allowing anyone to pass their guard unnoticed. “I wish I could do justice to it.”
Kurapika turned, bowed, met the eyes of the seamstress. Soft, curious eyes. “Excuse me,” they apologized. “I’ve brought your delivery from The Prophet Bird.” They reached into the sack and pulled out the guide, pausing again, glued to the coincidental topic.
The seamstress accepted the book with a smile. “Thank you,” she said, bowing, long black hair like water over her face. “This was very hard to come by, I understand.”
“Geum-ja will always find a copy of any book requested,” Kurapika replied, with certainty. In all the time they worked for her, they had never witnessed Geum-ja fail to track down a book, no matter the topic, anywhere in the known world. It was her specialty.
The seamstress opened the cover, leafed through a few pages, enthralled by the full-page illustrations and descriptions. “I’ve dreamt of this for so long. Thank you for bringing it to me.”
Kurapika hesitated. The image of clothes hanging on racks in a faraway department store came to mind. “If you do not mind me asking, do you plan to recreate these designs?”
“No, not literally,” she replied. “I’d like to study them. The cut, the motifs, the blend of colors and fabrics. Incorporate them into something new.”
“Have you ever visited Nancha Province?”
The seamstress sighed, placing the book carefully on the counter beside her. “Not yet, unfortunately. I couldn’t leave the shop long enough to travel and spend any meaningful time there. But I grow tired of this city, and its nameless and faceless crowds. A place like Nancha fascinates me.”
Kurapika felt the impulse to confide that they knew Nancha all too well, but thought better of it. One admission would lead to greater confession, greater curiosity, flooding toward resentment. There were no words that could communicate their past, and trying would be worse than preserving the shroud of reservation. “I will leave you, then. I imagine you are busy. Best of luck with your designs,” they said, offering a small, polite smile.
The seamstress returned the smile, then in an instant shook her head and reached into her pockets. “How neglectful of me,” she said quietly, hurriedly. “This is for you,” she said, placing two five-hundred jenny coins in their palm.
Kurapika bowed, placing the coins in their saddle bag at their hip. “Thank you.”
After they left the shop, after they filled Geum-ja’s ledger books and swept the shelves, after they ate their evening meal and watched the sunset across the bay, the image that lingered with them was that revived memory of ecstatic dancing under the canopy of the great oak trees and the infinite darkness. Of torch fire blazing and gold hems glowing, swirling in a phantasmagoria of joyous rapture. How distant was this now, how lost to time, how utterly irreplicable.
***
The walls of The Prophet Bird held all the continents of the world. None whom worked for Geum-ja could be considered natives of this city, which was by design. “The people of this city come to us for knowledge,” she had told them when they started working for her. “I cannot hold up a mirror to them and pass it off as a revelation.”
In time, they realized this wasn’t completely necessary — the books weren’t written in the bookstore, naturally — but they perceived a deeper reason why. One night, they filled in for one of the booksellers who usually staffed the store in the evening. “Has Asghar fallen ill?” they asked Geum-ja as they restocked the shelves.
“No, he’s returned home for a time. Only briefly,” she said, slipping a book into a new home between two others. “He is visiting his family and old friends, and procuring a book or two for us as well.”
Behind the elegant storefront, with its string lights hung above and freshly-brewed coffee and the chatter of all classes of people congregating here on evenings like this, rare book procurement was The Prophet Bird’s beating heart. This was the unique skill Geum-ja possessed, and she created contracts with the city’s bourgeoisie and intellectual elite to find rare books containing even rarer knowledge and contents.
“Where is Asghar from, originally?” Kurapika asked. When they first met him, his accent struck them as unfamiliar, rising from within the throat, often cascading melodically over vowels in the common language. They lacked any frame of reference for him besides this bookstore, and the way he greeted the stray cats who gathered outside the door in the morning, wide smile beaming on his face.
“He is from Ecbalon,” Geum-ja replied, folding a crisp brown sheet of paper around a book, tucking in the corners with precise, practiced care. “His family works for the Ministry of Agriculture there. He returns to visit them a few times a year.”
“Why does he live here, then?” Kurapika asked. “He would have a home there.”
“The same reason anyone lives in this immigrant city. His life and theirs are not congruent.”
Congruent lives. A life shaped by expectations, or in rebellion to them. Or complete disregard. Leaving his language, the food of his ancestors, the embraces of friends, his mother’s gentle hands. All context in which his life had been molded. Did Asghar dream of these things on rainless nights?
The smell of jasmine blossomed from the steam that rose from their cup. Asghar poured the tea with careful hands. The warm afternoon sunlight glowed in his brown eyes. “Jasmine is a favorite of yours, is it not?”
Kurapika smiled. “How did you know?”
“It’s in the fragrance you wear. For some reason, it reminds me of you. Maybe that. Maybe something in your soul.”
Kurapika brought the tea to their lips, hot steam opening the pores of their cheeks. The smell of summer morning intoxicated their mind, an entire garden blossoming at dawn within the porcelain they held. “This is the finest tea I’ve ever tasted,” they remarked.
Asghar smiled. “I hoped you would find it enchanting,” he said, laying a small tray of cookies between them on the table. Kurapika would not eat.
“How was your visit home?” they asked, crossing a leg over the other, perfectly poised.
Asghar sighed, then smiled, sipping his tea. “As any visit goes, I suppose. Stepping into the past is not something I indulge very often.”
“Were you happy to see your family?”
The corner of Asghar’s mouth tensed. “My sister. She is maybe a year or two older than you. I wish for her to come here with me, to experience this city and find her life here. But she cannot see yet the trap into which she was born.”
Kurapika puzzled over this, fixing their gaze on the shifting light in Asghar’s eyes. Warmth betrayed by the edge of past suffering. “Why would she wish to leave her home?” they asked, veiling the question truly intended for Asghar himself.
“Hmm. Why did you leave your home?” Asghar returned the question.
Fingers tensed on their knees. Asghar’s eyes dropped, catching the momentary slip in self-control. They must relax. “Home is not a place that exists for me any longer.”
Asghar tapped their chin in thought. “But you would not’ve left, even if it did?”
“No,” Kurapika snapped, too fast. “No…I was happy there.”
Asghar studied them for a moment, then drank again. “My sister is a bright soul, very passionate. Ecbalon is not a place for the open-minded, certainly not like this city. I wish for her to create her own life in a place like this before someone else writes the story of her life for her.”
“But is that not what you’re doing?”
“How do you mean?”
Kurapika felt a latent meanness rising, an unconscious revenge for Asghar’s probing into their heart, his foolish pretensions of understanding. He did not know them. “You seek for her to come here, but she would have no one besides you. Alone, in a strange, unfamiliar place. What would that bring her besides suffering?”
Asghar studied them again, that incisive gaze hollowing them, cutting out the pulp of their life to examine for some secret revelation. “In Ecbalon, young women are expected to marry quite young. To have children, and create a home. I simply wish to allow her a second option.”
They felt uncomfortable with the tension in the room. They sought connection, not conflict, with this man. “I hope perhaps she will at least come visit. She can decide if it’s right for her.” Kurapika offered, conciliatory.
“That’s all I wish,” Asghar said, smiling. “I just believe everyone should have the choice as to how they live their life. No matter what happens, no matter what those in power might say, everyone was born with the exclusive right to dictate their life.”
Kurapika could see now they would not reach the answer as to why Asghar made the choice he did. Perhaps it did not matter. But it still confounded them.
“I don’t think you would’ve stayed, by the way,” Asghar added.
“The choice was not mine,” Kurapika retorted, half-confession.
“But if it was…you are far too curious and spirited a child to remain stationary. Perhaps it was always your destiny to come here, one way or another. One can be thankful for the past but desire a different future.”
A brief memory of departure replayed in their mind. The final smile they ever witnessed on their mother's face, the final complicated look of pride and concern their father ever shared for them. They could not remember this without remembering those same faces months later, bloodied, battered, contorted into grotesque waxen masks. Their mother's hand still gripped hard around the handle of the wood-splitting axe. Both left rotting in the sun.
"Perhaps," Kurapika replied, not in agreement. "What is always seems that way.”
***
They never opened the chest in the corner. Through every moment that passed, it rested there, undisturbed. Through mornings, when the air filled with the smell of rich, earthy coffee and jasmine from the fragrance they wore. Through days, when the space lingered in silence, stillness, save for the ephemeral shadows of passing birds cast across the floor. Through nights, when they read histories of places they could only identify on a map and imagine in their mind, the low whir of mopeds and cars passing ceaselessly below, water falling slowly from the leaky faucet, drip by drip, down the drain. Unintentionally sacred, locked in some other time, some other place.
There was no rain that night. When they awoke, they drew breath in short snatches, as if their lungs chased air before they closed forever. They forgot where they were. Too much of their mind had lingered in places preserved only in memories, talking to blurry facsimiles of lost souls. The shape just slightly off, impossible to align.
But, like always, they could remember where they were now by the slant of the light that cut through the window, by the cool feeling of the thin sheets that covered their skin, so different from those old, thick blankets. They could not dull the edge their nerves cut on, so they left the bed, padding across the room to the sink. They filled their hands with hot water, let it wash over their face. From the window they watched the red light on the peak of a distant tower blink on and off, heartbeat language.
From the drawer beside the sink they retrieved their keyring, and turned on the lamp. Then they stood in front of that chest. It, and what it contained, was their oldest possession. They loomed over it for a moment, shadow cast across the oak face and lid. They knelt on one knee, holding the small gold key. When they inserted it, they felt time implode under the weight of everything left unacknowledged, ignored for the sake of enduring the demands of each living day.
It hardly felt real that it should still be there. Nothing had undone how neatly their past-self had folded it, its beautiful stitching, the smooth shimmer of the fabric. No moth had invaded the solid wood cut from their homeland forest, no tiny devourings desecrated the robes. It was exactly how it had been before.
And yet they were nothing like how they once had been. What is always seems that way, until the orbits of the material and the ephemeral cycle back to rare alignment. They gently pinched the shoulders in their hands, raising the robes slowly, letting gravity pull away the folds. It looked so small now.
They looked at their lean arms outstretched before them, strength hidden by slenderness. They held the robes against their body, these terribly tiny robes, these robes hand-sewn with the utmost love and care for a child of the Kurtan, robes to elevate and distinguish one whom would grow into a leader of the people.
Robes that would never fit them now.
An earth-shattering ache ruptured within their heart. They did not know why they took for granted that opening this lid would undo the evolution of time, of telomeres splitting and reproducing, lengthening the touch of their hands, what shelf they could reach to retrieve a requested book. They had no record of the traditional Kurtan recipes their mother prepared, no books recording the history of the people, no pressed wildflowers from their forest floor or remembrances of songs sung to beckon rain to come or leave or the woven nets the men used to catch fish in the rivers. The final Kurtan had outlived everything that made them Kurtan.
The control that sustained them gave, and they felt the ache erupt into an overflow of grief. Hot tears poured down their cheeks, silver in the glow of the moonlight. Their body shook with tremendous violence, fabric trembling, beautiful golden hair falling into their eyes, stained brown by the wetness. Their voice squeaked and cracked, their throat burning with such overwhelming mournful intensity. Their grief was a tsunami wave against the shore, a once-in-a-lifetime reminder from the great ocean of her terrible strength and might. In this moment, all repression, all control was gone, and they could not deny what their heart truly felt.
Their voice was torn raw by sorrow. Their eyes and lungs burned. Earthquake aftermath. The anonymity and multiculturalism of the bookstore had been a salve against years of loneliness, of longing for belonging and security. But perhaps also it had blinded them to their responsibilities, to who they truly were and who they needed to be. Rage had sustained them for as long as they remembered. That rage was the ancestral gift of fire in their heart, their resilience, their will to endure. It made them stronger than anyone.
They felt the grief morph into accountability. This city had blinded them to their purpose, lulled them into complacency. They saved almost everything for their future, but failed to actively shape what that would be. A future shaped by the past, what Asghar would tell them to leave behind. But it was all they had.
***
A return to the city center. Today, a gown luminescent as morning snow, trimmed with elegant gold and embroidered with the smallest roses the color of ripe raspberries on the collars and cuffs. They stared in awe of the meticulous stitches, the careful hand that created something of such sublime beauty. They could imagine a bride at the altar, clutching a dozen crimson roses, marrying one of the city’s scions in a union of powerful families growing ever more powerful, consolidating their hold on this or that utility, cornering the market on computer chips or medicine or water or…
“Quite garish, isn’t it?” they heard a familiar voice say behind them. “But the commission will pay three months’ rent, so how can I complain?”
Kurapika kept their gaze upon the dress. “It is marvelous,” they said breathlessly, watching the light dance through the intricate thread that would soon fog the bride’s eyes.
The seamstress sighed. “You are very kind. Would you wear this?”
“Maybe.”
“And after that, when the cake has been eaten and the excess meals have been tossed to the street dogs, would you keep it forever locked in your closet? Hide it away in the recesses of memory only?”
Kurapika turned to the seamstress, but kept their gaze averted. They sensed her dissatisfaction, her dismissal of a gown such as this as below her.
She smiled, rolling the cuff of her dress at her wrist between her fingers. “My apologies. I don’t mean to be rude. Were you here for fabric, young one? I haven’t ordered any books.”
They met her eyes, full of light and life. “You can call me Kurapika. I want to commission you.”
Her eyes widened into full moons. “Oh, oh I see. Yes, if you truly desire it! Well, my name is Isabel. I should’ve told you that before.”
I know, they thought. “I have sketches,” they said, holding their satchel close.
She smiled, her robin hair cascading across her shoulders. “You certainly came prepared.”
The corner of their mouth twitched. “Why are you condescending? My youth does not mean I am frivolous, nor does it mean I am unable to pay,” they said, firmly, matter-of-factly.
Isabel studied them for a moment. “Please forgive me, again. You seem very precocious.”
Kurapika suppressed the urge to wince at her patronizing tone. They had seen more of the truth of this world in a day than this woman would see in a lifetime. But, still, they needed her. “I would like you to help me create a set of robes. I recall you had an interest in the Nancha Province, no?”
And thus began their collaboration, a flourishing of ideas begetting creation. Kurapika had sketched faithful replications of those too-small robes, but Isabel suggested grander designs, something more striking, dramatic. A statement. They worked together, spending long evening hours together at Isabel’s worktable. She taught them to thread the sewing machine, on the art of cutting different materials of fabric, of measuring down to the most precise degree to ensure the most graceful fit.
Her hands were cautious when they wrapped the tape measure around their slender belly, around their narrow shoulders. “I will not shatter,” they had admonished, at first. But they soon realized she did not imply weakness. It was respect, perhaps a recognition of pain. Sensitivity. She did not wish to devour them as so many sought. Whether or not she consumed the idea of them, their culture, was a different question, but for the first time Kurapika could be touched without flinching, without wanting to soak away all lingering remembrances of contact in the scalding heat of an evening bath.
“A blue that looks like the open sky at noon, and gold,” they finally decided. “The same as my mother.”
Isabel smiled softly. “The sort of gold your hair appears when it reflects candlelight.” She gestured toward the mirror so they could capture their own image in it. Unworked fabric wrapped stiffly around them, color matching, the waxen light softening the room, the cloth, their form, melting it beyond space and time…
…and in their mind, a glimpse of a radiant woman in a garden, looking back, bright light of joy blossoming from her face. Pietà, pietà, pietà…Look how wonderfully big these carrots are! And the beets! All this rain…Kurapika, come help me gather them.
The forbidden tears returned, searing their eyes. They tore them away desperately. Mater Dolorosa made manifest with no light of God inside. No more, no more…
***
The scope of Asghar’s library was stunning. On the shelves, books on geography melted into geology, cross-cultural short stories translated into the universal language butted up against studies on Ecbalonian history. A familiar biography on Dino Hunter was the only surprise. Kurapika did not let their eyes linger on it, but it sparked burning in their chest, a strange sort of heartache.
“You have books about everything here,” Kurapika marveled, smiling placidly. A leaf floating delicately on a still pond.
Asghar sighed, straightening a framed photo on one of the shelves. “They’re not just mine, to be fair. I could never afford to live alone in this city.”
“Which books are yours?”
Asghar smiled. “All of them, I guess. But it’s still my roommates’ space, too.”
They sat in the center of the room, side by side on intricately woven mats. Pomegranate motifs, waving palm fronds. Asghar sat in half-lotus, so Kurapika mirrored the same.
“It is lovely to be here,” Kurapika said. But they thought, why did you ask me here?
“This is a place of peace. I like to be here, to center myself when I feel troubled. I thought perhaps it would do you good, also.”
“I apologize, but I am not religious…”
“You misunderstand. Meditation is not about higher power. It is a tool to look within, to seek deeper acquaintance with the self so as to detach from what causes us such great pain.”
Kurapika thought, and thought, and thought. About the lives of normal people. Their great pain was a demanding manager, a late payment, a train running behind schedule. Rational things. Not a gaping wound the size of one hundred and twenty-eight lives.
“Even now, you are lost in thought. I understand more than you know. Just try.”
They sighed, nodding. They could be courteous, at least. “Sure.”
Asghar closed his eyes, holding his hands in a triangle before his lower belly. Kurapika lingered in the silence behind their dark eyelids, thinking back on the day, of the woman on the subway screaming how malicious monsters from the Dark Continent were already here wearing skin suits and how a god (the only God) would forsake those who refused to believe it. How everyone simply ignored her screeching, looking up, looking down, passive gazes. In their thoughts their thoughts were of what to cook for dinner, of needing to arrive at work an hour early the next day, of getting around to winding the clock hands back after the time change. The arbitrary nature of the thoughts one deems acceptable, not acceptable. Imposing rationality on an irrational world.
Kurapika opened their eyes, watching Asghar meditate. He seemed as an ancient, imposing tree might, fixed in place, unchanging for a thousand years. But Asghar was young, his skin glowed in the candlelight, his black hair glossy, curls silky. He seemed almost pathetically small now, and passive. He would not be this way if he saw what I have, they thought. He would burn with rage also.
“I can feel your eyes on me,” Asghar said, without breaking their repose.
“I relax in different ways than you.”
Asghar hummed, unconvinced.
Kurapika felt that familiar raw anger bubble up again inside their chest. Self-control lost, fire spat from their mouth. “Why does everyone insist on condescending to me?”
At this, Asghar opened his eyes. “I promise I am not looking down on you.”
“Yes, you are!” Kurapika said, pulling their legs up to their chest. “You think because you have lived longer you know more than me. It has been like that all my life. I am not an idiot!”
“Your anger is misplaced.”
Kurapika stood, feeling themself shake with rage now. They still possessed enough presence of mind to seek solitude before their eyes turned. Asghar needed to stop trying to fix them, stop thinking he could heal them. They went in for the kill. “I wonder if your sister feels as smothered under your savior complex as I have.”
Kurapika left Asghar in his library, walked out of the apartment into the glow of the streetlights. This was the final time they saw him.
***
The wooden chest would, sooner or later, also need to be discarded, for the sheer weight and bulkiness were incompatible with the demands of transient life. Not that Kurapika saw themself as a transient, more so not married to a place, not settled anywhere, unrooted. Transient was an adjective, not a noun. There was nothing that mattered so much as their mobility, their freedom to migrate within a moment’s notice.
The box was left at home, and those child’s robes were draped over their arm. They walked through the city night, passing bars under neon signs, the public toilets in the park, crackling electricity lines above. Waiting at crosswalks, orange to white, safe passage. Missing persons posters on the poles. The smell of fish and cacophony of seagulls blew in from the harbor. The darkness under the bridge beckoned them, where barrels were already aflame. Men and women in ragged coats warmed their hands over the little fires, adjusted the plastic bags slung over their backs. Accumulated moisture dripped from above, wetting the old concrete. The sloshing of the bay slapped against the barrier wall, an incessant clunk-clunk rattled from above as cars endlessly crossed from north to south, or, less frequently, from south to north.
Kurapika came to an unused barrel. Charred remains of collected newspaper and old cloth blackened the bottom. They looked out toward the void of the bay, toward the ocean just beyond. In this city, the entirety of the world was gathered in symbols, merchandise, longing, a microcosm of everything the Kurta had refuted in favor of isolation and self-sufficiency. They wondered if their mother would have traveled to see them here, if life had been different. If she would have come to congratulate them on how hard they studied, shared a meal with them at their favorite restaurant. If Pairo might’ve been their roommate and constant companion here also, sharing in every joy and struggle with the same love for life in his heart. If there was ever another possibility to this life, and if knowing the answer would matter at all.
Swiftly, impulsively, they tossed those little robes in the barrel. They reached into their pocket, retrieved the little bottle of lighter fluid, poured it onto blue and gold. Their hands shook. They fumbled with the matches, spark refusing to catch. Building frustration…yield, yield now! before my mind changes! Finally, light! flaring up before settling to a constant flame at the end of their pinched fingers.
Inhale, exhale. The match tumbled into the barrel and caught the fabric almost instantly, burning across the fluid-soaked parts before gaining enough ferocious heat to burn into the rest. Nearby, a raven rushed in, landing on a railing by the water, pushing the seagulls back out to sea.
***
Years passed. Boarding the ship in the harbor, feeling nothing as they left this city behind. The ordeals of the exam, the satisfaction of success. Unexpected companions. A dazzling child of terrifying power, a boy-assassin with a beautiful heart, a kind man with dreams of healing. The flame grew no lower, no less all-consuming. It was in the remote forest, with Izunavi, that their true training could finally begin.
That old box had been left behind, a parting gift to Isabel. They traveled light. A bedroll to sleep in, canvas to lie down below it, a few white undershirts and pants. Roughing it in the forest returned an old serenity to their heart. There were none of the swirly trees of their homeland here, none of the great pikos that once ferried them with dutiful swiftness, but the magnificent pines and grand rivers brought them a new glimpse of the natural world. And here, in this sanctuary, they pushed their body and mind to their limits, or what they perceived those limits to be then.
Exhaustion felt deep in their bones. Constant aching in their muscles. They ran through the trees, fought until they could no longer summon the strength to stand, practiced patience and gratitude fishing the Ishkêesh with Izunavi, captivated by the magnificent size of the salmon that teemed in the river’s waters. They had to blink away the apparition of Pairo sharing these experiences with them, how enamored he would be with this wild land. He would’ve loved building the camp fires each night.
They slept deeper now than ever. In those summoned dreams, they crushed the life out of faceless men and women, choked the air from one’s lungs, stuck a metal rod through another’s heart, drowned another in blood. They did this with their own hands, letting the rot and ache and longing and grief at long last morph into physical rage. They would stare into each victim’s eyes as they did it, until the one below them could no longer hold their gaze. Which is why, of course, the results from the Water Divination Test were such a terrible disappointment.
“The water is pink.”
Izunavi nodded. “You’re a conjurer. Not surprising. Why do you look so sad about that?”
Kurapika lowered their head. “I just hoped to be a reinforcer. Conjurers are not very adept at combat.”
“I think your emotions cloud your understanding of nen. There are countless in the world who could best me in a raw physical fight,” their mentor began. “There’s always someone out there stronger than you. But you can outsmart anyone.”
And from there Izunavi taught them centuries of accumulated nen knowledge in the matter of weeks, showing them it was their mind that mattered most. The emotions that tormented them could be channeled into targeted power, ready to burst forth with lightning speed and determination at the right moment. Their true strength rested in being methodical, knowledgeable, analytical, carefully stalking their prey both in the shadows and in plain sight.
The sunset imbued the Ishkêesh with a warm tangerine glow. Every so often, a salmon jumped from the surface, plip-plop. Izunavi watched them with a teacher’s critical eye, and a Hunter’s insatiable curiosity and admiration.
“The dowsing chain, to understand others.” The silver chain dangled from their pointer finger, the ball on the end swinging ever so slightly in time with their breathing. “With this, no one can lie to me, or elude me.” Izunavi nodded. Another chain appeared, this time from their middle finger. “The imprisoning chain, a manifestation of zetsu. No one can escape me.”
Izunavi drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke away. “A sensible beginning to your power. Focus on this. It’s important to observe your enemy with an unclouded gaze, to perceive the lies in their eyes without obfuscating your own with your emotions. Take great care to master these abilities before attempting to conjure others. It is very easy to overestimate your own capability.”
Kurapika bowed. Their teacher’s pedantic tone reminded them of Asghar, but unlike from him, they perceived no condescension. Izunavi was just concerned for their well-being. But, not even to you, Mentor, can I reveal the other chains. Or the blade that will plunge into my heart if I lose control. It will not happen again.
“Your training has been invaluable, Izunavi-san, but it is time for me to return to the protection agency.” Late summer simmered into the opening chapters of autumn soon, and they needed to travel again. “I am ready.”
“You are,” Izunavi agreed. “You will be a great Hunter. Just try to remember it is as much about everything else we’ve explored here, this wondrous world around you, as it is about justice and duty and all those other lofty ideals that consume you.”
That night, as the tangerine rapids were dyed silver in the bright moonlight, Kurapika finally unpacked the bulkiest thing in their travel pack. They laid it out carefully on the canvas mat, admiring every stitch of Isabel’s masterpiece. As they stepped into the robes, pulling their arms through the sleeves, they meditated on what Izunavi told them. “The wondrous world around you…”
…and echoes of their old friend haunted them again. “When you return, I’ll ask you one question: was it fun? So have a trip where you can answer ‘Yes!’ from the bottom of your heart.”
In the rapids of the nearby river, the fleeting image of a Kurtan reborn. The rubies that adorned their ears glittered in the lunar glow. No longer the sorrowful mother, the dead friend, the abandoned orphan. They were a resurrected revenant, an avenging angel.
***
In their office, where Light Nostrade once managed one of the greatest organized crime syndicates in the world, rested a wooden box. Isabel agreed to return it to them. They rewarded her well, of course, but a sum that she would never see otherwise in her life was a meaningless amount to them. Nostrade’s empire meant nothing. It was a means to an end, and now, with all but one pair of eyes returned to them, they had reached the end.
The princes of Kakin knew nothing of the Kurta. They were not there for the calamity. One prince possessed the eyes. Kurapika could not stun him with zetsu, or bind him to hell as they had Uvogin. He was not a powerful nen user like Chrollo, so they could not imprison his aura. This would be a mission of patience, intellect, and determination, all to finish a homecoming.
Which is why those precious robes, their one final link with home, were folded with great care and placed within the box. A black suit was more prudent, more practical. The ability to blend in was imperative. Working in the shadows was the only path to success on the Black Whale.
The vulnerability of that night in their temporary home did not return, no tears could rise and rush down their cheeks, no pain to fracture their heart and gush out the black bile of grief and resentment. The luxury was gone. There was only so much time left to finish their mission. The robes would remain here, locked away again in another time, waiting for their return.
On board, they met another capable of carefully planned deception, of immaculate self-control and determination. As they stood nearby, contemplating the next nen training, they admired Woble resting so peacefully in her mother’s arms.
“For some reason, your fondness for her is very important to me.”
Kurapika looked down, closed their eyes. “She is very precious.”
“I don’t know what pain you’ve endured, what loss you’ve felt,” Oito began. “I know I could never understand. But I’m thankful it led you here. You have a special heart. No one else would’ve helped me like you have.”
The sentiment, the warmth in her voice, the humble and generous way in which she saw them touched something deep inside them that not even Senritsu could reach. They found themself touching the ruby that adorned their right ear, rolling it between their fingers.
“Your earrings…they mean something important to you.”
Memories of long ago appeared again. Their mother, in the garden. The brilliant sunlight, so full of warmth and love and joy and all those beautiful things drained from their world, refracted through the sharp edges of the dazzling rubies. There was something, some little ember still flickering in their heart, waiting to catch on something real. A future they resisted accepting as possible.
“They remind me of my mother. I miss her. I’ll tell you about her, when we leave this ship behind.”
Oito smiled. “I look forward to that day.”
Through the nearby window, the darkness of night and the limitless great sea. An unexplored continent beyond that belonged to the living.