The Loved

He’d built the Spider out of it- out of people who would bleed for him, out of blind faith shaped into weapons he would use. He could split a room without raising his voice. He could end an argument by saying nothing at all. He could look at someone and watch their spine straighten as if they’d been tugged by a string. Even now, even with the city gearing up for September first, the world outside moving toward violence with the inevitability of a tide, he still felt that pull in people. That reflex. That surrender.

Until he stood at the edge of your bed and felt all of it go weightless.

Power didn’t mean anything in here. Not the name that made men flinch. Not the reputation that kept strangers obedient. Not the fact that outside this door, people would have killed for a single second of his attention. None of it mattered when the room revolved around a single thing he couldn’t control. Not really.

You.

You were everything. He saw it all. The way you’d hesitate at first, suspicious and sharp, and then when the conversation hit the right thread you’d light up before internally scolding yourself. You’d rant about a passage like you would never be able to talk about it again unless you said it right then. You’d say something witty and then immediately look away, embarrassed that you’d let him see you being yourself. You had a habit of biting the inside of your cheek when you were thinking, and often you’d make a point that forced him to stop and actually consider it, not because you were trying to impress him, but because you couldn’t ever pretend to be less intelligent than you actually were. He saw how you would shy away from your own points and avoid his eyes when he looked too close. 

He loved it all. Your intellect, your sarcasm, your smile, your determination. 

He loved that you made him work for your attention. He loved that you didn’t give it away cheaply.

Chrollo wondered how you could possibly be insecure of yourself, when you were just so… perfectly you. 

But now, you gave nothing at all.

He watched you sleep and tried to find the person he’d met in the bookstore in the small movements you gave- your breathing, the slight twitch at your lashes, the way your brows would furrow occasionally- he would love it if you would tell him what you were so intently dreaming of. But every time your eyes opened lately, it was like looking into a room after the furniture had been dragged out. A dark void. Nothing to hold onto.

Void wasn’t quite the word.

He realized now that there was a darkness that didn’t sit right behind your eyes, pulling him towards it, slow and patient, the way deep water didn’t look dangerous until you stepped in and realized you couldn’t feel the ground anymore.

He’d wanted your fear. Your anger. Even your hatred.

Those at least meant you were still there. 

But this- this quiet, dull nothing- made his chest tighten in a way that was almost unfamiliar, like the first time he’d ever realized something could be taken and never returned. It was suffocating, not because it hurt him, but because it didn’t touch you at all.

And that was his worst fear, wasn’t it?

Not that you’d scream. Not that you’d fight.

That you’d slip away from him.

That you’d stop reaching for anything- water, air, words, even spite- and leave him holding a body that merely survived while the person inside it ran into the light- too far away to follow. 

The pounding in his skull strengthened, and the voice telling him that he had to possess every last bit of you started to scream his name over and over.

He didn’t speak when your lashes fluttered.

Because if you opened your eyes and looked through him again, he wasn’t sure what he would do to keep you from disappearing completely.

—-

Chrollo was already there when you woke up.

He stood at the edge of the bed like a statue, still as the furniture, hands hanging at his sides. You watched his face and caught the way his gaze kept drifting off, landing on your hands, the floor, the edge of the nightstand, anywhere but your eyes. This time he wore a long coat, fur-lined at the collar, and the bandages were gone, his hair falling forward in a way that looked more boyish than you remembered. The overhead light carved soft lines into the fabric, and caught on the cross on his forehead. 

Your eyes lingered on the cross when your index finger twitched.

Surprised, you shifted your focus back onto yourself. It was small, the kind of reflex you’d ignore any other morning, but ever since he had started feeding you the paralyzer every meal you hadn’t been able to feel your body at all. You stared at your arms, and waited for the familiar dead weight.

But instead, your arm obeyed. It didn’t lag behind your intention like it had been doing for days. You flexed your wrist once, twice, and watched the tendons shift under your skin, and the dull thought drifted through you without much emotion: you could move.

You raised your other hand too, turning both palms over like you were checking for something you’d misplaced. There was no numbness. No buzzing. Your limbs felt normal in the plainest sense, like someone had flipped a switch back on and expected you to be grateful.

You didn’t feel grateful.

You didn’t feel much of anything, honestly, just a familiar exhaustion that sat in your bones and made everything look far away

Chrollo didn’t speak. He didn’t move closer. He only stood, and you could tell there was something different with the way he watched you.

You lowered your hands back onto the blanket and turned your head toward him.

“Well?” Your voice came out flat, not even trying to bite. “You haven’t given me my medicine.”

It took a second for the words to land in the room.

You saw it in his face, it looked like a thread had frayed and snapped behind his eyes. They were desperate, swirling with some other emotion you couldn’t pinpoint. He’d stared down men who begged and threatened and cried. None of them had ever made him look like this.

He stepped closer, stopping at the side of the bed, and for a heartbeat he seemed almost… stuck. Like he’d planned for you to wake up frightened, furious, pleading, anything with heat in it. Like he’d planned for every version of you except this one.

You watched him in silence, because you didn’t have the energy to fill it. Your hands rested open on the sheet. Your eyes didn’t sharpen. Your voice didn’t crack. You just waited.

Something in Chrollo’s expression shifted again, deeper this time, the composure thinning in a way that made him look briefly unfamiliar. His gaze dropped to your face, lingered on your eyes, then fell away as if he couldn’t hold it.

And then he sank to the floor.

Not slowly nor dramatically. Just down, clean and quiet, knees meeting the carpet beside your bed like it was the only place he could put himself without falling apart. It was like the time he knelt to clean the broken glass, but this time his hands settled on his thighs. And his head dipped slightly. He didn’t look up.

“[Name], I’m sorry. I won’t put you on the medicine anymore.” 

For a second you didn’t understand what you were looking at.

Chrollo Lucilfer, on his knees, in the room he’d built to contain you, with the same restraint he wore like skin now turned inward, like a knife pressed against his neck. 

You looked at him on his knees and didn’t bother pretending you understood why. You didn’t care enough to name it. You only registered the simplest part: he felt guilty. Guilt sat in him like a hook, and for once it wasn’t aimed at you. It was aimed at himself. 

For the first time since you’d been dragged into this place, something became very clear to you.

If this could pull him down, then it could pull him somewhere else too.

And if he could be moved, then he could be used.

—-

For the first time since you’d gotten here, you were able to think. Like really think. Not in scraps between hunger and fear, or in that slow, hazy way where every idea dissolved before it finished forming, but in full sentences that actually stayed put when you reached for them.

After Chrollo had silently walked out, you allowed yourself to retreat into your mind. The paralyzer was gone, and the fog went with it, being able to hear thoughts in your head again felt almost loud.

The strange way people treated you ever since you got here slid into your mind. 

Gon’s glazed over eyes when he caught you as you were about to fall, Killua’s sharp inhale when he grabbed your wrist, and Chrollo… Chrollo touched you through fabric most of the time, careful in his usual manner, but you’d noticed it anyway. The difference. The shift. How something in him sharpened the second his bare hand found your skin instead of your sleeve.

Your stomach turned, cold and unpleasant, and you forced yourself not to think too hard about the way he had forced medicine into you through a kiss.

It was the same pattern, over and over- people who wouldn’t have spared you a glance, people who were completely out of your league, suddenly orbiting you like they’d been pulled in by something they couldn’t name, fixating on you in this strange, obsessive way. 

You replayed the past days like you were sorting through evidence rather than memories, and the same detail kept surfacing no matter how hard you tried to push it away: touch. It always happened after contact. A brush, or a grip just a second too long. That tiny pause where someone’s body seemed to forget what it had been doing, where their face went blank and then tightened as if they’d had to wrestle themselves back into place.

Touch was the only pattern you had, and it sounded ridiculous even inside your own head.

You’d touched people your whole life without consequences. You’d held your mother’s hand as a kid, warm fingers laced through yours. You’d bumped fingertips with classmates, traded papers, shared pencils, grazed shoulders in crowded hallways. Nothing had ever happened. Nobody had ever flinched like you’d burned them, or stared like you’d done something they couldn’t name.

And yet there was nothing else. No other common denominator.

So you decided to test it.

You sat up slowly, tentatively waiting to see if there would be any side effects from the days you spent paralyzed. So when your arms lifted without dragging behind your thoughts, when your fingers curled and uncurled like normal, you felt something cold and steady settle into your chest. It was just a simple awareness that you had access to your own body again, which meant you could do things instead of only enduring them.

Your gaze drifted to the door.

Phinks was there- you knew his name and a little of his personality when the members would talk as they rotated- and from what you could tell, he seemed like a decent person. Decent enough for a group of criminals, you thought bitterly. 

He was posted by the wall like he’d been nailed into place for his shift, arms crossed, weight on one leg, he looked irritated from boredom. He’d been standing there for at least an hour, occasionally lifting a hand to cover a yawn, then dropping back into that stillness as if he could force you to disappear by refusing to acknowledge you.

He looked terrifying with his slicked blonde hair and green tracksuit. Like some evil gym trainer.

But everyone else was the same kind of scary. Especially that short black haired guy, you thought slowly. Preferably, you would’ve wanted to try this on one of the girls, Machi, or the one with glasses, but they weren’t here and time was running out. You remember feeling the betrayal when Machi had coldly walked in your first day here, not giving you a second glance when she saw you curled up. 

Clearly, you didn’t have time or options to be picky.

You slid your feet to the floor and stood. The carpet felt strange under you, it had been too long since you were able to walk freely, it felt like it wanted to catch and hold you in place. Your knees wobbled once, your stomach tightened, and you let your face stay blank because you couldn’t spare energy on pretending you were fine.

Phinks noticed immediately.

“The hell are you doing?” he said, voice rough with irritation, like your movement was an inconvenience.

You took a step anyway, slow enough that it didn’t look like a challenge, careful enough that it didn’t look like you were about to sprint. You could feel his eyes tracking you, and you forced yourself not to look up at him yet, because you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing fear arrive on your face on time. 

Sweat beaded on your forehead, and you felt your mouth going dry, not from thirst this time, but from the old instinct that still remembered what monsters looked like up close.

You needed him close enough to make contact.

So carefully, you let your foot catch the edge of the rug, just barely, turning your weight wrong so your body pitched forward in a way that looked accidental enough to be believable. The stumble wasn’t dramatic, it didn’t need to be, because the moment you started to tip your hand reached out on reflex, fingers catching his sleeve at the forearm.

Phinks froze.

You snapped your head up to record his reaction- and it wasn’t subtle. His muscles locked so fast it made his whole arm go rigid under your grip, and his breath hitched like he’d swallowed wrong. For a split second his eyes went wide, not with anger, but with something startled and ugly, like his body had reacted before his mind could cover it up. 

Then his ears went red.

The color climbed up the back of them so fast you almost missed it, because he snapped his face back into place immediately, jaw tightening, glare slamming down like a door.

You let go as if you hadn’t noticed anything at all, as if you hadn’t just felt the exact point where his composure cracked.

“Sorry,” you murmured, keeping your voice low and plain, keeping your hand close to your own chest as if you were only steadying yourself.

Phinks stared at you like he was trying to decide whether to yell at you or to run, and the hesitation in him was almost worse than the anger would’ve been. He opened his mouth, shut it, then dragged a hand over his face hard enough to pull his skin, like he could wipe off whatever had happened.

“What the fuck was that,” he muttered, and it came out rough and confused in the same breath.

He stepped back too quickly, as if distance could undo it. His shoulders stayed tight. His eyes flicked to your hand and away again like he didn’t want to give it a second look, like looking too long would make whatever he felt real.

“Don’t touch me again,” he snapped, but it landed late, like he’d only thought to say it after the reaction had already betrayed him. 

And then he left.

The door clicked shut behind him, and the room went quiet in that suffocating way it always did, like the walls were listening.

Your hands started shaking a second too late, once you were alone enough to let it happen, and you wrapped your arms around yourself to keep it from showing if anyone happened to be watching through whatever cracks you hadn’t found. Your heartbeat was loud in your ears, your mind spinning, fear spiking sharp and hot because you’d just poked something dangerous and lived.

But now you knew there was definitely something there. You weren’t going insane. At the thought, a tiny smile, mixed with relief and terror, tugged sharply at your lips. 

Now, you just needed to be sure. 

—-

The next morning dragged in slow, gray increments.

You stayed in bed with a book open in front of you, eyes moving over the same paragraph until the words blurred together. You weren’t really reading. You were listening for his footsteps, for the shift of weight outside the door.

When the lock finally clicked, you didn’t look up right away.

You waited until the new presence settled into the doorway like it belonged there, until you heard the faint scrape of a boot against the floor, the quiet exhale of someone trying too hard to sound like they weren’t thinking about yesterday.

Then you lifted your gaze, knowing who you were about to see.

Phinks was back.

He stood in the same spot as before, shoulders squared, arms crossed, posture loud with effort. He looked at the wall over your head instead of your face, like if he kept his eyes away from you he could pretend nothing had happened yesterday. The tension in his jaw gave him away anyway. So did the red that hadn’t quite left his ears, faint but stubborn, like his body was still pissed it had betrayed him.

You turned a page you hadn’t finished, just for the motion. Your finger trembled for half a second before you forced it still. Then you rolled over, innocently, glancing at him over the cover of your book.

Phinks shifted his weight, a fraction too sharp.

“Don’t start,” he said, voice rough, like he was cutting you off mid-sentence even though you hadn’t spoken.

You blinked at him, slow and mild. “Start what?”

His eyes snapped to you before he could stop them. The look was pure irritation, but it didn’t sit right. It kept slipping, catching on your hand where it rested on the paper, then jerking away like his brain had yanked it back by force.

“You know,” he muttered, and his fingers flexed where they dug into his own forearm. “That… act.”

You tilted your head slightly, not enough to be cute, just enough to make him feel like he was the one being unreasonable. “I really fell yesterday. I’m not acting.”

“Yeah,” he said too fast, then caught himself. His mouth tightened. “Right. You fell.”

Silence stretched between you, thin and tense.

He looked like he wanted to say something else and didn’t trust his own mouth to do it. You watched the fight happen in his face in small tells, the way his brows kept pulling together and releasing, the way he breathed a little too shallow like he was trying not to give himself away again.

You let your gaze drop back to the book. You forced yourself to keep the page steady.

“Come closer,” you said, like it was nothing.

Phinks gave a short, humorless laugh. It didn’t reach his eyes. “No.”

You didn’t argue. You just looked back up at him, patient in that soft way you’d been practicing, and waited.

He held your stare for two seconds before he broke first, scowling as if he hated himself for it.

“What,” he snapped. “What do you want?”

You shrugged, small. “I can’t hear you from there.”

His lips parted like he was about to swear at you. He didn’t. He dragged a hand through his hair instead, rough enough to make it stand up, and then took one step forward like it physically hurt him to do it.

“Better?” he said.

You didn’t answer.

You just watched him, and after a beat his scowl deepened and he stepped closer again, slower this time, as if he’d decided it was better to get it over with than keep standing across the room with your eyes on him.

“Closer,” you repeated, voice still flat.

“Are you fucking-” He cut himself off, jaw grinding. Then he moved again, until he was near the foot of the bed, close enough that you could see his adams apple bobbing in his throat when he swallowed.

You held his gaze. You made sure your face stayed empty.

“Closer.”

Phinks stared at you like he couldn’t believe he was doing this. Then he leaned in, bracing one hand on the edge of the mattress like it was a compromise, like if he kept part of his weight on the bed it meant he wasn’t really giving in.

His face was close now. Too close. You could smell him, surprisingly sweet with soap and something metallic under it, like a coin. You forced your breathing to stay even.

“Say it,” he said, low. “What did you do yesterday?”

You let your eyes flick over his features as if you were considering him the way you might consider a puzzle. His nose. The hard line of his mouth. The way his eyes kept darting between yours and your hands like he couldn’t decide which one scared him more.

“I didn’t do anything,” you said.

“Bullshit.”

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t smile. You just lifted your hand, slow enough that he had time to stop you.

He didn’t.

Maybe he thought you were going to push him away. Maybe he thought you were going to touch his sleeve again where it was safe, where it could be explained away. Maybe he didn’t think at all.

Your palm met his cheek.

Bare skin on bare skin.

It lasted less than a second. Just enough to confirm it wasn’t a fluke, just enough to feel the exact moment his body reacted like it had been struck.

Phinks jerked back so hard the bed frame creaked. His hand flew up to his face, where you had touched, fingers splayed like he could hold the sensation in place or scrub it off, and his eyes went wide again- wide and unsteady.

“What the fuck,” he choked, and his voice cracked on the last word like it wasn’t built for whatever had just hit him.

You pulled your hand back into your lap as if nothing had happened, as if you hadn’t just watched his whole nervous system glitch in real time. You smoothed the blanket once. Pointless, casual.

Phinks took another step back, then another, breathing hard now like he’d run a mile. His ears were bright red, full color this time, and his mouth kept opening and closing like his brain was stalling out between anger and something worse.

“You—” He swallowed, throat bobbing. “You can’t—”

“I’m thirsty, Phinks,” you said, softly, interrupting him the way he’d tried to interrupt you earlier. “Could you get me some water, please?”

Phinks stared at you.

You watched him try to remember how to be dangerous. You watched him search your face for fear and not find it, and the lack of it seemed to make him angrier than if you’d screamed.

“Are you playing with me?” he hissed, “And how do you even know my name?”

You blinked. “I’m not playing anything.”

That was the part that made his expression stutter.

He looked like he wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake an explanation out of you. Instead, he spun on his heel like he couldn’t stand being in the same room as your hands anymore, and yanked the door open.

He paused in the doorway, shoulders tight, as if he was fighting himself about whether to leave at all.

Then he left anyway.

The door shut.

Your breath came out in a shaky exhale you hadn’t felt building and you felt sick, alive, and terrified all at the same time.

You stared at the door where he’d disappeared, felt the thought settle into place with ugly clarity, and you didn’t bother dressing it up as anything kinder than what it was.

You could use this to your advantage.

—- 

When Phinks came back, he didn’t announce himself.

The door clicked, and then the glass appeared on your nightstand with a heavy thud like he’d been trying to be quiet and failed at the last second. He let it go a little too carefully, fingers lingering on the rim before he pulled his hand back as if the thing had bitten him.

“There,” he muttered.

You glanced at it, then up at him. He wasn’t looking at you. His eyes were fixed on a spot above your head like the wall had suddenly become fascinating, his arms folded tight across his chest, posture rigid enough to pass for annoyance if you didn’t catch the faint pink still sitting at the tops of his ears.

“Thanks,” you said, and kept your voice mild. Almost normal.

Phinks flinched anyway, not visibly, not enough for anyone else to call it a flinch, but his shoulders hitched like your tone had brushed him somewhere raw. He cleared his throat, shoved his weight from one foot to the other, then retreated back toward the door like distance might fix whatever was wrong with him.

Silence settled.

You reached over and took a sip of water just to give your hands something to do, then placed the glass back down and picked up your book again. You weren’t really reading. You let your eyes move over the lines so it looked like you were reading. It was easier than looking at him. It was easier than looking at anyone here really.

Phinks stayed in place, still refusing to meet your gaze, but you could feel him watching you in quick, stolen flashes the way people looked at a bruise they were tempted to touch. Every time you shifted, his attention snapped over and then away again, like he was angry at his own reflexes.

You turned a page you hadn’t finished.

A beat later, he spoke, rough and low, like he was doing you a favor by breaking the quiet.

“You always read this much?”

You blinked slowly, as if the question surprised you. “When I’m bored.” 

Phinks huffed a laugh that didn’t go anywhere. “When you’re… bored.”

You shrugged, small. “What else am I supposed to do?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. His jaw tightened, then loosened, like he’d bitten down on something and decided not to chew it.

The room went quiet again, but it wasn’t the same quiet as before. It felt slightly less sharp around the edges, as if he’d accidentally admitted you were a person instead of a problem.

After a while, you spoke without looking up.

“Does it ever get boring for you?”

Phinks paused. You heard the faint scrape of his boot against the floor.

“…No,” he said automatically, then he corrected himself like the truth annoyed him. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

You hummed, thoughtful, and turned another page. You kept your tone light, even. Like you weren’t holding a blade behind your back.

“So what do you do when you’re bored?”

He scoffed and kicked at the floor. “I don’t know. Stuff.”

“Like what?”

Phinks made a sound like he was about to tell you to shut up, but the words didn’t come. Instead he dragged a hand through his hair again, rough and irritated, and let out a breath through his nose. As you peaked at him from the corner of your eye, you thought his actions came off as more embarrassed than irritated honestly. 

“I don’t do storytimes,” he said harshly. Then, after a second, quieter, “I mess with people.”

You let a small pause hang, just long enough for him to feel the space and try to fill it.

“Back in-” he started, then stopped, as if he hated that he was about to say anything personal at all. “There was this idiot who thought he could beat me in cards. Real cocky. Kept flapping his mouth.”

You didn’t smile. You didn’t react too much. You just listened, eyes on the page, like his voice was background noise you happened to tolerate.

Phinks kept going anyway. The story came out choppy at first, then steadier, the details getting sharper as he warmed to the memory: the bet, the crowd, the way the guy’s face changed when he realized he’d lost. Phinks tried to make it sound casual, like it hadn’t mattered, but his mouth kept twitching at the corners every time he got to the part where he’d won.

“So I took his money,” he finished, and then added, like he couldn’t resist, “And his ring.”

You glanced up then, briefly. “You stole it?”

Phinks bristled on instinct. “He bet it.”

“That’s still stealing,” You paused, “cause you cheated.”

“It’s not stealing if he agreed,” he snapped, “And I didn’t cheat.” Then caught himself and leaned back against the wall, scowling like he was annoyed you’d made him defend himself. “Whatever. You asked.”

“I did,” you said quietly, and went back to your book. “It’s fine.”

Phinks went still at that, like the lack of pushback threw him off more than an argument would have.

More minutes passed. Awkwardly, he told another story, then another, each one dumber than the last, like he was deliberately choosing the least meaningful parts of himself to hand over. You let him. You let the silence in between feel safe enough that he didn’t bolt.

At some point, he said a word you’d been circling for days without being able to name.

“…Nen,” Phinks muttered, almost under his breath, like it slipped out before he realized you could hear it.

Your fingers paused on the page.

You made yourself keep breathing. You made your face stay empty.

“Nen?” you repeated, gently, as if it was nothing. As if it was just another strange word in a stranger’s mouth.

Phinks’s whole body tightened. His eyes snapped to you for the first time since he’d walked in, sharp and warning, like a knife turning in its sheath.

“You didn’t hear that,” he said.

You tilted your head slightly. “But I did, you just said it.”

His jaw clenched hard enough you could see the muscle jump. “Doesn’t matter.”

“What is it?” you asked, trying to make yourself feel soft and harmless, “Like… a gang thing?”

Phinks stared at you, and for a second you thought he might actually answer, might actually explain, because his mouth parted like the words had lined up behind his teeth.

Then his expression slammed shut.

“It’s nothing you need to know,” he said, colder now. Not cruel. Just closed. “Drop it.”

You looked back down at your book like you hadn’t cared in the first place.

“Okay.”

The word came out easy. The act slid back into place like it belonged there.

Phinks didn’t relax, but he stopped looking like he might explode. He exhaled through his nose, posture still tense, gaze drifting back to the wall as if he could forget the slip if he stared hard enough.

You turned another page, slow and steady, letting the quiet return.

And underneath it, tucked away where he couldn’t see it, your mind kept working.

Nen.

So it was real.

You realized in a stupid, detached way, that it felt like you were watching someone else’s body fail. But it was you. You were the one that was fading. Drying like a flower in a desert in this room meant to contain you. 

In your delirium, you sometimes caught the flicker of faces at the door- his friends posted there in turns, silhouettes shifting, a glance lingering too long. Mild concern, maybe. Most likely curiosity dressed up as it. You supposed you must have looked terrible enough to warrant it. Sunken eyes. Cracked lips. Skin drawn tight and dry. 

You tried to shift your weight, just an inch, and your body refused like it was no longer interested in cooperating. Your arm twitched, your shoulder barely rolled, and the effort made your vision dim at the edges. You gave up with a soft, shaky exhale that tasted like nothing.

As you drifted between consciousness, you caught how the brain fog made it hard for you to think much at all, but you sometimes- somehow- caught yourself thinking that you would rather be with Gon and Killua. At least… he had the decency to let you outside at times. 

God, this was a new low. You wanted to slap yourself for even thinking those words. 

However, you stayed stuck, staring at the ceiling as your breath came out in shallow rasps, hearing your own heartbeat pound in your ears. Thinking too much made you tired.

Tired. You repeated dizzily. So you simply let your eyes flutter shut, allowing yourself to drift into dreamless sleep. 

—

When you came to, you could feel yourself being moved. 

Not yanked. Not dragged. Just… gathered. Weight shifting beneath you, the mattress dipping, fabric brushing your skin, and then arms sliding under your shoulders and behind your knees as if your body had become something delicate that needed to be carried instead of handled. Your lashes stuck together when you tried to open your eyes, and when they finally peeled apart the light made your vision flare white, harsh and watery, forcing you to shut them once more.

You couldn’t sit up on your own. You couldn’t even pretend to have strength to do so. Your muscles didn’t answer fast enough to lie. So you only drifted with the motion, head lolling forward, chin catching against your chest for a second until a hand steadied you, firm at your jaw, careful at your neck, tilting you back into alignment like you were something that could break if left in the wrong position.

A familiar scent. You could register the distinctive cologne even in your dreamlike state. It was a deep musky one that smelled like an antique bookstore as it poured rain outside. The smell of wet earth. Like the ending of a tragic tale resulting in a lover's death.

“Chro… llo.” 

For a second, you didn’t recognize the voice that had just sounded. It was small, shredded, raw and desperate, nothing like the voice you used to have.

The name rang repeatedly in your mind like a dull bell. Heavy, sinking through you as if you were made of mud. There was no longer any strength left in your body for panic to fully ignite.

“...[Name].”

At the sound of his voice, you forced your lids to open again. For a second your vision played tricks on you. The light in the room stretched, smeared, and the shape that leaned over you looked like a shadow wearing a person’s face. You blinked slowly, lashes heavy, and the world swam. The edges of him doubled, then settled.

You were upright, slumped against something solid… his chest, you realized slowly, the rise and fall of it measured and steady behind you. Your back was braced by his arm. Your weight gingerly rested in his lap, arranged so you wouldn’t slide sideways and crack your head against the bedside table, arranged so you’d have no leverage to pull away even if you suddenly found the strength. You realize murkily, when he is able to shift you around with one arm, that you must’ve lost weight.

He lifted a glass into view.

Water. Clear. Cold-looking. The surface trembled once as it caught the light. Your throat gave a pathetic, aching pull in response and you hated it, because your body wanted it so badly it didn’t care who held it.

“You need to drink,” he said, the tone of his voice leaving no room for argument.

You tried to speak, to tell him not to touch you, to tell him to get away, but your body punished you for the attempt. The sound that came out wasn’t a word. It was a rasp that scraped your tongue raw.

“N—” you managed, and it broke.

You swallowed air. It burned. “No,” you forced out on the second try, and it was barely louder than breath.

Chrollo didn’t answer you. You expected him to snap. To threaten. To wait you out with that patient cruelty he wore so easily.

Instead, he lowered the glass to the bedside table with careful precision, placing it close enough that you could reach it if you weren’t… like this. Then he picked something up.

A capsule.

Small. White. Ordinary. Sitting on the pad of his finger like it belonged there.

Your heart kicked once, hard enough to make you dizzy.

“What…” you rasped. The word splintered. You tried again, throat scraping. “What is… that?”

“A pill,” he said, as if it was nothing.

You tried to swallow and it felt like swallowing sandpaper. “For… what?”

“For you.”

The answer didn’t make sense and your body didn’t care. Your hands loosely clenched as it hung uselessly, more out of habit than strength, and you tried to turn your head, to put distance between you and him-

Your body didn’t move.

Your shoulders shifted a fraction. That was all. The effort made your vision dip, black at the edges, and you had to breathe through your nose like a trapped animal just to keep from passing out.

Chrollo watched you, expression unreadable, and you watched in slow confusion as he put the pill into his own mouth. 

Your pulse spiked.

The world looked as if it were moving in slow motion, the sudden rush of blood causing your mind to no longer be able to keep up with what was happening.

He leaned into your space- closer, closer until there was nowhere left for you to pretend that you didn’t know what he was going to do next. His bare hand reached out, cupping your chin and carefully tilted your head back.

You opened your mouth to tell him not to touch you, to tell him to get away, to tell him you’d bite if he tried-

Chrollo leaned down and kissed you.

A controlled and precise kiss, meant to steal your breath at the exact moment his mouth pressed the pill to yours, and your reflex betrayed you. Your mouth parted on a startled inhale.

The pill slid onto your tongue.

Your eyes flew open, furious, but even that anger felt far away, muffled by heat and thirst and weakness. You tried to spit it out but your mouth didn’t work right. Your tongue was too dry, too slow. The pill melted bitter at the back of your tongue and you gagged, throat jerking on instinct.

Instinctively, your body swallowed.

You hated yourself for it instantly, a hot, helpless rage that had nowhere to go because you couldn’t even lift your arm.

Chrollo didn’t look pleased. He didn’t look smug. He only reached for the glass again and lifted it to your mouth, and when the rim touched your lips your throat pulled so hard it made you dizzy. You tried to turn your head away again, but your neck moved like it was underwater, slow and failing.

“[Name], you’ll choke,” he said simply. 

“I don’t…” you tried, and the words came out shredded. “Care.”

Chrollo’s gaze didn’t move. He held the glass steady, waited without hurrying, and when your breathing stuttered, when your mouth opened without your permission on a painful inhale, he tipped the glass just enough that the water slid in.

Cold.

Your throat seized around it like it had been waiting its whole life.

You swallowed once, then again, then too fast. You coughed, weak and wet, water spilling down your chin and onto the soft pajamas. Your body drank anyway, greedy and shameless. It didn’t matter what you wanted. It only mattered what you needed.

Chrollo didn’t wipe your face.

He didn’t say anything either.

He just kept the glass there until you’d swallowed enough to stop coughing, enough that your tongue stopped feeling like it was splitting, enough that your head cleared a fraction- and that fraction made the second betrayal hit harder.

The pill was working.

You tried to move your legs and nothing answered. Not lagging. Not heavy. Nothing. Your thighs felt distant, as if they’d been cut loose from you. Panic bloomed sharp and immediate despite the fog, and it made your breath hitch painfully in your throat.

You looked up at him, and it took everything you had to get sound out.

“What… did you…” you rasped, the sentence dying in your mouth.

Chrollo’s thumb slid once against your bottom lip, a small, thoughtless motion that made you want to rip your skin off where he had just touched.

“A paralyzing agent,” he said, calm as ever. “So you don’t hurt yourself.”

A laugh tried to come out of you and died halfway. It sounded broken. “I’m… not…” you forced, swallowing air. “Trying, you… fucker.”

Chrollo’s gaze flicked down, not to you, but to the room, as if he could see the memory of glass and broken ceramic and the way your rage destroyed everything in its path. Then it returned to your face with quiet, ruthless understanding.

“Darling, you were though,” he said softly, like it was obvious. Then he paused for a moment, as if considering. “...Perhaps not on purpose, but nonetheless.”

Your eyes stung. Your skin was too hot. Your mouth was still dry even after the water, as if your body didn’t trust it would get more. You lay there, trapped in your own failing muscles, watching him with hatred you couldn’t lift your hands to express.

Chrollo lowered the glass to the table.

For a moment he didn’t move, and neither did you. You could feel your body sinking heavier into itself by the second, the pill already pulling the bottom half of you into a numb distance, your arms dull and useless against your sides. The water sat cold in your stomach like a small, sharp hope for survival.

Chrollo’s gaze stayed on you as if he were memorizing damage. The hollow beneath your eyes. The way your lips clung when you tried to breathe through them. The faint tremor at the corner of your mouth whenever your throat tried to swallow and found nothing left to swallow with. His brows tightened again, the smallest crease forming and holding, and it struck you in a strange, bitter way that this- this fragile, pathetic state- was what finally pulled something like irritation out of him.

He shifted, careful, and the pressure that had held you upright eased. His arm slid from behind your back and you tipped forward a fraction before he caught you again, guiding you down with quiet hands until your shoulders met the pillows and your head was turned just enough that you wouldn’t choke on your own breath if you drifted. It was too practiced. Like he’d done this before, like he’d already mapped out what angle kept you alive. But was that even surprising to you at this point? You were too tired to even care.

All you wanted to do was close your eyes once more to escape the aching of your stomach, to pretend like you weren’t caged within your own body.

Chrollo’s fingers brushed your jaw- it would’ve looked something adjacent to tenderness if you didn’t know better- then he stood.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

The words should have meant nothing. They were plain, unremarkable, the kind of thing people said when they stepped out for a minute.

But your body didn’t hear the words.

It heard the sound of him leaving.

Your mind snagged on the memory of hunger like it was a nail. The days blurring. This stifling room forcing cotton into your body while you dried out inside it. The way your throat had burned every time you tried to swallow. The way your tears had stopped. The way you’d thought, in that foggy, traitorous corner of your brain, that you would rather be with Gon and Killua- because at least you had air and sky.

Chrollo’s hand reached for the door.

The latch clicked.

“No—”

You tried to stop it with whatever pride you had left, but your body betrayed you. The sound came out cracked and thin. Your jaw trembled. Your tongue felt clumsy and dry again already, the water not enough, never enough, and panic poured in where anger used to live.

Chrollo paused.

He didn’t turn around right away. He just stopped in his tracks, still, as if he were listening for something.

Your lips parted again, and you hated yourself for what followed, hated the way your primal instincts dragged you down to survival with no permission asked.

“M’sorry. Don’t…” you rasped. Your eyes stung with what would have been tears- if you had any. “Don’t leave.”

The words scraped out of you like a confession.

Chrollo turned then, slowly, and his gaze landed on your face with that same focus he’d had when he forced the water into you. Not soft or cruel. Just there, inevitable. But you could see it now. The way his body had physically tensed when you said those words. 

“...I’m not leaving,” he said.

Your throat worked around air. The helplessness rose up ugly and hot, and you fought it the way you’d fought everything else: too weak to win, too stubborn to stop.

“Food,” you whispered, and the sound of it shocked you. The word felt obscene in your mouth, like a request you hadn’t wanted to make. You could no longer move your body, but you hoped to make him understand you weren’t doing this to spite him anymore. You weren’t trying to be difficult.

You were trying not to hurt any longer.

“...Please,” you forced out, and the word cracked at the end. You hated yourself the instant it left you. It tasted like surrender. “Please, Chrollo.”

For a heartbeat, Chrollo didn’t move.

Then something shifted in his face, not a smile, not satisfaction. Just a tightening at the corners of his mouth, as if his expression had to hold itself in place by force. His eyes stayed on you, dark and unreadable, and you couldn’t imagine what you’d done to him with that one word.

You had imagined, dimly, that begging would make him pleased. That it would make him lean into the control, use it, savor it.

Instead, the air felt… wrong.

Like something inside him had expected a different kind of sweetness and found only salt.

Chrollo’s gaze flicked once to your hands- how they lay limp on the blanket, how even your fingers couldn’t curl into fists anymore- then back to your face.

He didn’t say “good.”

He didn’t say “finally.”

He only nodded once, short and contained, as if agreeing with something he’d already decided long before you’d had the strength to ask.

“Okay,” he said quietly. Not a command to obey. A command to survive.

And then he left.

The door closed.

You stared at the ceiling again, throat working, heart pounding too hard against a body that felt too light. The room stayed warm. The pillow smelled faintly clean. Your mouth stayed dry. Your thoughts drifted in and out, jagged at the edges, and you weren’t sure how much time passed before the lock turned again.

When Chrollo returned, he carried a tray.

Not curry this time. Nothing heavy. Nothing rich.

A bowl that steamed faintly, the smell thin but real- a light chicken broth, something soft enough for a throat that had been scraped raw by thirst. A spoon rested against the rim. Another glass of water sat beside it.

At the sight, you tried to sit up before remembering how your body no longer responded, how it was now completely paralyzed.

Chrollo set the tray down and moved to you, easily holding you in his arms again. 

“Easy,” he murmured. 

Chrollo picked up the spoon, stirred once and lifted it gingerly to your lips.

You stared at it, swallowing air. Your pride tried to flare and found no fuel.

“Open,” he said softly.

You didn’t want to.

Your mouth did it anyway.

Obediently, your lips parted in a shaky, desperate reflex as the smell hit your empty stomach and your body lunged toward it like it had been waiting in the dark for someone to offer a hand.

The first swallow hurt.

Your esophagus now unfamiliar to the feeling of eating. You coughed weakly and a little spilled down your chin, and you squeezed your eyes shut, mortified, the sound of your own body.

Chrollo angled the spoon away, waited for your breathing to steady, and wiped the spill with a handkerchief. 

Then he fed you again.

Small mouthfuls. Slow enough not to drown you. Patient enough to let your body accept what it needed without turning it into violence.

You hated that your eyes kept slipping closed between each spoonful.

You hated that your head kept tipping forward until he steadied you again.

And you hated most of all the sound that broke out of you without permission- a small, broken sob- when your body realized, finally, that hunger wasn’t going to kill you today.

Chrollo paused with the spoon halfway lifted.

For the first time in years, an emotion sat on his clean porcelain face. You didn’t bother to notice, instead hungrily swallowing the spoonful he had fed you. 

His gaze dipped to your face, to the wetness at your lash line, and something in his eyes dimmed. 

Internally, Chrollo thought that this was what he wanted.

That your need for him would feel like victory.

But the sight of you like this didn’t taste like victory. It tasted like blood. Like the void that developed inside of him the day Sarasa died.

It sat heavily in his chest, and he realized it was because your begging hadn’t been seduction or surrender.

It had been for survival.

And even with all his control, he couldn’t stop the small, irrational sickness that rose up anyway- because he had wanted you desperate for him, and what he’d gotten instead was your body picking him out of sheer desperation. 

Chrollo flattened that feeling down so smoothly anyone could believe it was never there.

The spoon reached your lips again.

You took another mouthful.

Your eyelids fluttered, heavy and slow, and you didn’t even have the strength to even attempt to stay awake any longer. Your head tipped sideways and your cheek brushed against his chest. Your breath hitched once, then settled into something shallow but quieter than before.

Chrollo held you there and adjusted his grip, careful at your shoulder, making sure you wouldn’t slide off him.

You fell asleep mid-breath, mid-survival, still warm from the food he’d put inside you.

Chrollo looked down at you, the spoon hovering in his hand, and wondered what you were doing to him. There was a feeling inside of him, a wild possessive devotion that didn’t know where to go, so it stayed exactly where it was- holding you up even after you’d stopped asking.

Chrollo. The man on his knees. A scream that ripped through the air with his name like it was the last weapon left. The street. Fingers ripping at your hair. Counting. The moment an impact knocked you to the floor.

Your stomach turned so sharply you had to swallow hard, the sour taste rising up like your body was trying to reject the memory. It was the déjà vu that made it worse, the way your skin crawled as if you had been here before, as if you had run from one trap only to step into another with different wallpaper.

You didn’t jump up. You didn’t sprint. Your limbs felt heavy as molasses with the sleep and shock layering over you, and you didn’t trust yourself not to stumble, so you sat there for a heartbeat longer, eyes flicking across the room from the bed in quick, nervous sweeps.

That was when you noticed your clothes.

Glancing down made you realize you weren’t wearing what you had on yesterday. Someone had changed you without you knowing. The cream cardigan from Mito was gone, replaced by a soft set of pajamas that clung gently to your skin, comforting in a way that made your stomach twist. You dragged your fingers over the sleeve, feeling the smoothness, and the sensation was so wrong—too intimate, too careful—that you felt sick.

Your hand lifted to your collarbone on instinct.

The chain was gone.

Your fingers pressed into bare skin anyway, searching, then curling into the fabric at your neckline like you could grab onto something that wasn’t there.

You forced yourself to breathe and kept scanning.

Desk. Lamp. Chair. Corners.

Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.

Your gaze found the door almost immediately and your heartbeat turned up a notch. You pushed yourself up, slow and careful, the soft down blanket sliding down your arms with a whisper, and when your feet met the carpet you could feel how thick it was, how it swallowed sound. Even your footsteps were being softened.

You crossed the room anyway and wrapped your hand around the knob. Please.

You twisted once.

Nothing.

You twisted again, harder, until the metal bit into your palm and the skin of your thumb went numb.

Locked.

You stared at it for a second too long, breathing through your nose like you could force the panic down by sheer stubbornness, then let your hand fall away and turned back to the room because there was nowhere else for your eyes to go.

That was when you saw how nice it was.

Not nice in a way that comforted you. Nice in a way that made your throat feel clogged with cotton, because it meant someone had inspected every part of you. Someone had looked at you and decided what you would like, what would make you feel more at home, what would make you easier to keep. The lamp on the desk was warm instead of harsh white. The chair had a small pillow sitting on it, cozy and cute. The air smelled faintly of clean laundry and musk from old books. It all just felt like a gilded, windowless cage.

Your attention snagged on the bookshelf along the far wall, and you walked to it without really deciding to. Standing in front of it, you idly let your hand slide over the edge of the shelf, fingers catching the grain, and you could tell immediately it was expensive. Dark wood, smooth and heavy, polished to perfection. It felt permanent under your fingertips.

Then you noticed the little things tucked between the shelves.

A small figure of a cat with tiny comical wings was perched neatly beside a row of books—something you had mentioned once as a side comment. A plant in a cute ceramic pot with the exact kind of flowers you had said you liked sat as if it had been thriving there for months. Another small star hairclip had been placed where you could easily see it and put it to use. You bit your lip, attempting to push down the dread building up anyway.

And then there were the books.

Your stomach tightened as you looked closer, slowly, as if you were afraid to confirm your fears. The books were lined neatly together, spines aligned, and you recognized them one after another with a sickening clarity: the ones you had mentioned, the ones you had loved, the ones you had talked about with him in those quiet conversations that had felt harmless at the time because he had treated you with such kindness.

You reached out and slid one book free with careful fingers.

East of Eden.

The title sat on the cover in familiar letters and your heart tightened hard enough to hurt. For a second you were back in college again, rereading it in bed because loneliness was easier when you could borrow someone else’s tragedy, and then the memory twisted into something uglier because now it was here, in a room you hadn’t chosen, on a shelf you hadn’t built, curated like a lure.

You felt sick.

The lock clicked behind you.

Your body turned before your mind finished the thought.

Chrollo stepped in and closed the door with quiet care, as if noise would have been impolite.

He looked untouched by the situation in a way that made your skin crawl—dark suit pressed clean, hair falling in soft black strands around his face, the bandages around his forehead stark against his skin. He didn’t rush, didn’t crowd you immediately, but the room felt smaller just because he was in it, and you felt as if space naturally reorganized around him.

His gaze flicked over you—awake, standing, furious—and settled with that same calm attentiveness you had mistaken for kindness.

“Good morning, [Name],” he said pleasantly, like he had walked into a normal room to greet a normal person and not a girl he had kidnapped.

“Don’t say my name, you bastard,” you growled, and you heard how raw your voice already was.

Chrollo’s expression didn’t change. He only tilted his head slightly, as if he found the reaction interesting.

You didn’t give him time to speak again.

East of Eden arced through the warm light and hit him in the shoulder with a dull thud before dropping to the carpet. You expected him to flinch. You wanted him to flinch.

He didn’t.

The calm on his face didn’t change, and that lack of reaction made something hot and violent crack open inside your chest.

“What the fuck is this?” you spat, stepping toward him. “Why am I here? Where the fuck am I?”

“You’re safe here,” Chrollo said simply, as if he were making small talk. As if you weren’t terrified out of your mind.

“You killed someone,” you hissed, voice shaking with rage now that it had somewhere to go. “I saw you. You—” Your breath caught. “You had someone knock me out in the street like I’m a joke. and now you think you can—what? Keep me like some pet? Put my favorite books on a shelf and call it a day?” You spread your hands wildly, gesturing at everything, almost pleading for him to snap out of it. “How do you not see what’s wrong with this?”

You felt your eye twitch as your words seem to have no effect on the aloof man who stood before you, still in his cold elegance. Furiously you ran a trembling hand through your hair.

“I didn’t even know your real name.” Your voice grew quiet, hating how you sounded like you were pleading. “Was anything that we had real?”

Chrollo said nothing. He simply shut the door with a click and walked toward you with that same unhurried calm. You glare at him as his hand lifted, reaching for your face, gloveless, slow and deliberate, the sight of bare skin moving toward you made your stomach twist.

You slapped his hand away hard enough that it stung the back of your hand.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” you snarled.

For a heartbeat, he simply watched you. The stillness on him was infuriating, like he was waiting for you to finish performing whatever this emotion was so he could continue talking.

Anger flared inside of you, hot and desperate. You quickly backed away from him and grabbed the cup from the desk next to the shelf and threw it. It shattered against the wall.

“Why?” you shouted, voice rising. Water splashed down and darkened the carpet. You grabbed the pillow off the chair and flung it at him.

Your voice grew shrill, tinged with hysteria. “Why me? Why is it always me? Why do I have to be the one people decide they can take from?!” A crash, “And trap,” the flower pot smashed against the floor, “and ruin?”

You swept the papers off the desk with one furious arm and listened to the scatter like it was proof you still existed. “Do you get off on this? Is it fun to pick someone up and decide you own them like some fucking animal?”

Chrollo didn’t move out of the way. He let things hit him, let water stain the fabric of his suit, let your anger crash against him without stepping in to stop it, and you hated how steady his gaze stayed because it made you feel like a storm he had already predicted.

You threw again. Something that would hurt—an accessory from the shelf, a heavy ceramic that your fingers barely registered before it left your hand.

Chrollo caught it with one hand.

Clean. Effortless.

He didn’t even look down at what he caught. He set it neatly on the table beside him as if placing a bookmark, then lifted his gaze back to you.

Something shifted behind his eyes, a quiet focus that made your throat tighten. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking. You only knew the air felt tighter now, like he finally had decided to listen.

You were still shouting, still shaking, desperately trying to make your rage mean something, and somewhere in the middle of it your words turned into the most dangerous thing you could offer him.

“I fucking hate you,” you spat, voice cracking as frustrated tears started to well. “I’d rather die than stay here trapped for another second.”

That was when he moved.

You gasped as his body blurred, too fast for your eyes to keep up. Chrollo closed the distance with inhumane speed, with the kind of control that made you realize you never had any to begin with. You retreated on instinct and only realized too late that you were already at the edge of the bed, the mattress pressing into the backs of your knees, trapping you in place.

He towered over you and you shrank instinctively from the pressure. Without thinking, your hand lifted to strike him, pure reflex, because you didn’t know what else to do with the panic surging up your spine.

With a single move, Chrollo caught your wrist.

His cold fingers closed around you with a firm, unyielding grip, and for the smallest fraction of a second something betrayed him. Just a faint hitch in his breath, a tiny pause like his body registered the contact before his mind allowed it. It was nothing compared to what you saw in Gon, nothing like Killua’s violent recoil. If you weren’t watching him so closely, you would’ve missed it entirely.

Then it was gone.

His grip went steady. His face cold as ice.

And the contact made you freeze— not because it hurt, but because the intensity in his eyes did something to you that fear alone never managed. He leaned in just enough that through the welling of tears, you could see the way his gaze had sharpened, the way his composure was being held by force rather than ease, the way his breath was too steady for something that looked this close to breaking. Slowly, a single tear slipped down your burning cheeks. 

“You don’t get to say that,” he said quietly, his earring catching harshly in the light.

The voice was flat and it landed like an iron band around your neck.

You yanked against his grip, furious. “Get off me—”

His hold tightened, not crushing, not cruel, simply absolute.

“I won’t let you die,” Chrollo said, and for the first time you heard something underneath the calm, something raw enough to make your skin crawl. “Ever.”

Ever. The word sat in the air between you like a vow and a threat at the same time.

For a moment you couldn’t breathe.

Then he released you.

Not because you won anything but rather because he chose to.

Immediately, the softness returned to his face as if someone smoothed a sheet over a blade, and he stepped back, restoring distance with the same careful restraint that made everything worse because it suggested he was doing this on purpose. He let his eyes follow the streak down your face, as if contemplating if he should reach for it. He did not. 

“I’ll be back later,” he said, voice gentler again. “Rest, [Name].” His gaze flicked to the mess you’d made, not annoyed, not tired, simply acknowledging it. “I’ll have someone clean this tonight.”

He paused at the door.

“My friends will check on you,” he added, almost politely. “You won’t be alone.”

The lock clicked when he left.

—

For a few seconds you just stood there, chest heaving too fast, staring at the door like it might open again if you didn’t blink. Your wrist still felt cold where his fingers had been. The mess you made sat around you in ugly proof-  wet brown soil staining the carpet, papers scattered across the floor, the pillow crooked against the wall. You hated all of it. The way he treated you as if your anger were a joke. Like you were simply some- some child throwing a temper tantrum. 

It was utterly humiliating.

You reach up with shaky hands and roughly wipe the wet tear from your face, feeling the burning friction from how much force you put into it. 

Feeling the mattress dig into your knees, you sat down hard, shoulders hunched forward, hands falling uselessly into your lap. The pajamas were soft against your skin in a way that made you want to peel them off, because softness didn’t belong to this. You pressed your fingers to your collarbone out of habit and felt nothing but bare skin. No chain. No key. Just the steady beat of your pulse under your fingertips. 

You let your hand drop.

The anger that had carried you a minute ago didn’t even feel real anymore. It had burned out too fast, leaving behind something dull and empty that pressed into your ribs. You stared at the carpet, at the stain spreading slowly, and all you could think about was how tired you were- how exhausted you were in a way sleep couldn’t touch.

God. 

You were so, so tired. 

—

Minutes passed. Maybe five. Maybe ten. Time had folded in on itself in a way you couldn’t bother to comprehend.

Then you heard movement outside the door. It was the quiet sound of someone settling in place like they’d been told to stand there and had decided to get comfortable.

You lifted your head slowly and let your eyes drift forward without really seeing anything.

The lock turned and the door opened, a man stepped in.

He looked older, mustache with long dark hair pulled back in a traditional topknot, and a sword at his hip like it was normal. You couldn’t care less. Everyone was insane.

 He took one glance at the room- at the soaked carpet, the broken ceramic, the tipped chair- and his brows lifted in the mildly interested, unconcerned way.

Just the kind of expression you’d give a kid who’d knocked over a drink and then watched someone else clean it up.

He exhaled through his nose and scratched the back of his head.

“…Seriously?” he muttered, mostly to himself.

You stared at him. Your throat felt raw. You didn’t have the energy to yell again, but you still wanted to, because you needed someone to understand that you weren’t the one who started this. That you weren’t throwing a tantrum. That you were the normal one. 

He didn’t look at you long enough to read any of it.

He leaned his shoulder against the wall near the door, arms folding over his chest, and turned his head slightly as if he were listening for something down the hall. Like he was on shift. Like this was just some boring job he had to do.

You hated that more than if he’d shouted at you.

“You’re just going to stand there?” you asked, voice hoarse.

He glanced at you once, quick and flat. “Yeah.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged, subtle. “That’s it.”

The silence after that sat heavy. Your heartbeat sounded loud in your own ears. You couldn’t tell if he was avoiding eye contact on purpose or if he genuinely didn’t care enough to acknowledge you. 

You slid back on the bed until your shoulders hit the wall and drew your knees up, wrapping your arms around them making yourself as small as possible. It wasn’t comfort. It was containment. If you’d stared at the carpet stain or at the door any much longer you feared you would’ve gone insane.

Minutes dragged.

He stayed.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move much beyond shifting his stance when his leg got tired. He looked down the hall more than he looked at you. Every so often you heard a faint murmur outside- another voice passing by, a quick exchange you couldn’t make out- and then quiet again.

Eventually he left without warning.

The door opened. Closed. New footsteps replaced his.

Then another.

Then another.

Time blurred into a pattern: the click of the lock, a different set of shoes, someone posted near the door like furniture. You didn’t get names. You didn’t get explanations. You just got watched.

You stopped trying anything, choosing to set your head between your arms and allowing your eyes to drift shut.

At some point your stomach began to ache in a slow, deep way that made you realize how long it had been since you’d eaten. It started as a dull emptiness, then sharpened into a steady throb that wouldn’t let you forget it. You pressed your palm lightly against your abdomen as if pressure could quiet it.

You kept waiting for night to show itself somehow, but without a window the room stayed the same. Warm. Lamplit. Controlled.

You only knew hours had passed because your body started doing what it always did when it was ignored, your mouth grew dry, your muscles felt weak, your head started to pound faintly behind your eyes. The guards kept coming back in shifts. Your hunger only got louder.

Then the lock turned again.

For some reason, instinct told you to lift your head just enough to see the door.

Another person stepped inside, and your body reacted before your mind did—your shoulders tensing, your stomach tightening, your eyes snapping up to him with that sharp, tired fear.

He was smaller than the others.

Lean, compact, built like a wire pulled tight. He wore a long black trenchcoat of sorts, collar high enough to cover the bottom half of his face, a skull adorning the fabric. In his hand he carried an umbrella. The way he moved reminded you of a sadistic predator observing his prey. He shut the door behind him with a kind of practiced cruelty, letting the hinges shriek.

His eyes found yours immediately.

You didn’t know his name, but you knew him.

You recognized the shape of him from the street. The way he’d been close enough behind you that you could feel him without seeing him. The voice that counted slowly through the pounding in your ears like he was enjoying it.

Your scalp ached at the memory, and you hated that your body remembered so clearly.

He looked at the mess you’d made, then at you, and something like cruel amusement flickered across his face.

“You awake,” he said, voice low, almost lazy.

You didn’t answer.

He tilted his head, black hair sharply contrasting his pale skin. He studied you like you were an insect pinned to a board, letting his gaze slide over your pajamas, the bed, the bookshelf, like he was taking inventory. Then his sharp eyes returned to your face and his mouth curved in a way that wasn’t a smile, not really.

“Run faster… next time,” he said.

It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even spoken with much emotion. It just sounded like advice, which somehow made it worse.

Your stomach clenched and you swallowed hard.

He took a step closer, then stopped, as if he’d decided the distance on purpose. His gaze flicked once to your hairline, and the memory of fingers yanking your scalp made your hands curl into fists.

A beat passed.

Then he made a quiet sound through his nose, almost like a disappointed laugh, and turned his head toward the door.

He left without saying anything else.

The room felt colder after him even though the temperature didn’t change.

You stayed sitting on the bed, staring at the spot where he’d stood, trying to force your breathing to slow down. Your heart wouldn’t cooperate. It kept pounding like it thought you were still running.

You hadn’t cried yet.

Not properly. Not since Chrollo left.

Your eyes felt dry and hot, like they couldn’t decide whether to burn or break. You blinked and it didn’t help.

Then the lock clicked again and Chrollo stepped inside like nothing had happened.

He was pristine again. Of course he was. A different suit this time, pressed to perfection, collar neat, hair falling in soft black strands like he’d had time to smooth it into place. The bandages on his forehead looked stark under the overhead light, too white, too deliberate. He didn’t look like a man who had dragged someone’s life apart. He looked like a man walking into a quiet room to check on something he owned.

In his hands was a tray.

The smell hit you before your brain could brace for it. Warm curry, rich and unmistakable, rice underneath it still steaming. A cup of water sat beside it, clear, simple, and your throat tightened automatically at the sight. Your stomach growled in betrayal, loud enough that you felt heat rise in your face.

Chrollo’s gaze flicked to your expression and said nothing.

He walked closer, stopping at the side of the bed, close enough that you could smell the food properly, close enough that your body could react even though your mind was still screaming.

“Eat,” he said quietly. “It’s your favorite.”

“And how do you know that?” You whispered, voice small.

Chrollo didn’t blink. “You told me.”

The simplicity of the answer made something hot rise in your chest. Of course. Of course he had listened. Of course he had remembered. Of course he had kept it.

Your fingers curled until your nails bit into your palms hard enough to bleed.

He angled the tray toward you, as if offering it properly now, as if you were going to accept it like a normal person being served dinner.

Something inside you snapped.

You didn’t stand up. You didn’t lunge. You stayed exactly where you were on the bed, spine rigid, and you moved with the same sudden violence you’d used to throw things earlier—only now you were too tired to throw, too tired to perform. You just wanted it gone.

Your hand shot out and slapped the tray out of his hand.

Hard.

The plate tipped and the curry went first, thick and steaming as it spilled in a heavy wave. It drenched the carpet below like it was hungry too, brown seeping into the pale fibers in widening blotches. Rice scattered across the floor in soft clumps. The cup of water slid, rolled, and hit the desk leg with a dull knock before it toppled, glass shattering on the hardwood with a sharp crack that echoed up your spine.

For a heartbeat, everything went still.

Your breathing. His posture. The air.

Curry dripped down the front of his pressed suit in slow lines, darkening the fabric once more. His hand remained lifted where the tray had been, fingers open, empty now. You stared at his suit refusing to meet his eyes, heart hammering, waiting for the punishment you’d earned. Waiting for the moment he finally proved he was exactly what you’d seen in that warehouse.

Chrollo didn’t flinch.

He didn’t even look at the stain on himself as if it didn’t even exist.

He simply knelt.

The motion was unhurried, controlled, like he had all the time in the world. His knees met the floor without a sound. He reached toward the shattered glass and began picking up the shards one by one with bare fingers, uncaring if it would cut himself, just careful enough not to leave anything sharp where you could get yourself hurt. Curry slid down his sleeve and he didn’t wipe it away, didn’t scold you or sigh or ask you to stop- he just kept collecting every piece until the floor was safe again, as if the mess didn’t bother him at all but the thought of you bleeding where he couldn’t prevent it did.

The sight of it made your vision blur with anger.

Your hands shook. Your throat burned.

“What—” you tried to speak and it came out broken. You swallowed and forced it again. “What are you doing?”

Chrollo didn’t answer at first. He set the glass pieces into a neat pile, then wiped curry from his fingertips onto a cloth he pulled from his pocket. You realized it was the same handkerchief you had innocently wanted to return to him. He rose slowly, smooth and composed, and the stain on his suit looked obscene against how calm he was.

He glanced at the ruined food as if assessing damage, then looked back at you.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

Not are you okay.

Not why.

Finished.

The word hit you like a slap because it made you feel small in the worst way, like you had been reduced to- to some bad habit he could wait out. Like you were embarrassing yourself and he was being patient about it.

Your face went hot. Your mind swirled with humiliation. His hands were still holding the handkerchief as if mocking you. You wanted to scream. You wanted to throw yourself at him and hit him. You wanted to do something that would matter, something that would finally wipe that unbreakable calm off his damn face.

Instead you sat there shaking, hunger gnawing at your ribs, fury crawling up your throat, and you couldn’t find a single sentence sharp enough to cut through him.

Chrollo’s face softened slightly, not kind, not warm- controlled.

“You’re allowed to be angry,” he said, voice soft. “You’re allowed to hate me. You can break anything in this room if it helps you breathe.”

A beat.

“But you don’t get to use your hunger as a weapon,” he continued, and something cold threaded through the gentleness. “Not against me.”

Your pulse kicked.

Chrollo’s smile returned—small, contained. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’ll eat tomorrow,” he said, as if stating a schedule. “If you don’t, we’ll try again the next day. You can keep doing this until your body gives up.”

He let the sentence settle. Let you picture it.

Because you could picture it. You could see the days blurring. Hunger turning to dizziness, then weakness, then nothing. You could picture him watching the same way he watched everything else- silent, cynical interest- waiting you out like time was on his side.

Then he added, almost casually, “And if you want to lash out at me, that’s your choice. But the next time you try to do it in a way that hurts you too, you’ll lose the privilege of having your hands free.”

“You’re insane,” you whispered.

Chrollo’s eyes narrowed a fraction, not in anger, but in focus, like the word interested him.

“You’re treating me like I’m an object,” you hissed, and the words came faster now, uglier, because you couldn’t bear how calm he was. “Like I’m something you can lock up and feed when you feel like it. Like I’m—”

“You’re not an object,” he interrupted, and the softness of the statement almost made you flinch. His eyes stayed on yours, dark and steady. “If you were, this would be simple.”

The sentence slid under your skin and lodged there. You didn’t know what to do with it. It sounded too honest to be a lie, and too wrong to be comforting.

Your hands clenched again. You could feel your pulse everywhere, throat, wrists, behind your eyes.

“So what am I?” you demanded, meeting his eyes in what you hoped was sharp defiance.

Chrollo didn’t answer immediately. He looked at you for a long second, like he was really thinking about how to answer.

Then he said, quietly, “Intriguing. You’re intriguing to me.”

“That’s it?” you spat, disbelief mixing with the bitterness in your throat. “That’s your reason? I’m interesting so you get to do this to me?”

Chrollo’s gaze didn’t waver.

He leaned closer, not enough to touch you, but enough that his presence pressed into you again and made you feel smaller. You hated that you noticed it. You hated that your body tensed as if preparing for contact.

“[Name], you’re asking for a reason that will make this feel fair,” he said. “There isn’t one.”

You laughed once, breathless and sharp, like it tore out of you by force. “Of course there isn’t.”

Silence.

Then his voice dropped.

“If you want to hate me, hate me,” he said slowly. “If you want to refuse, refuse. But you don’t get to starve yourself and treat it as a way to control me.”

The words cut straight through you because they were true. Because you could already feel your body failing around your anger. Because he’d named the only weapon you had left and taken it from your hands without raising his voice.

You swallowed hard, throat raw and you saw the way Chrollo’s eye twitch when he said his next words.

“And you don’t get to die,” he added, as if it were as simple as making a decision. As if the world bent when he said it. “Not here.”

Your eyes stung. Your vision blurred, hot at the edges.

“You can’t stop me,” you whispered, but it sounded pathetic even to you.

Chrollo held your gaze a second longer, and you could see something that looked too close to possession to be called patience cross his face.

“I can,” he said softly. “So don’t test it.”

Silence spread between the two of you.

The room smelled like curry and clean laundry and your own fear, all mixed together into something nauseating. Your stomach cramped again, a deep, sour pain, and you clenched your jaw hard enough to make it ache.

Chrollo looked down, and turned away from you, stepping toward the door. 

Before he left, he paused, hand resting on the knob, posture still perfect even with curry drying on his sleeve.

“[Name],” he added, voice quiet enough that it felt like it was meant only for you, “when you decide you want to live… you’ll tell me.”

He was gone.

Once again you just sat there, unmoving, staring at the brown mess soaking deeper into the carpet, staring at the place the tray had been as if you could rewind time and unslap your own hand. Your stomach twisted at the smell and at the thought of eating it off the floor like some animal, and the humiliation of even considering it made your throat close.

Your hands shook in your lap.

You tried to breathe like a normal person.

It didn’t work.

A sound broke out of you before you could stop it—raw and ugly, not quite a sob and not quite a scream—and then you were folding forward, shoulders shaking hard enough to hurt, face pressed into your own palms as if you could crush the noise back inside. Tears spilled anyway, hot and relentless, and you hated them too, hated that your body still did this, still begged, still broke, still wanted someone to fix it even after everything.

You cried until your chest ached.

You cried until your throat burned.

You cried until you couldn’t tell if the shaking was from fear or hunger or both.

—

Outside your door, the building kept breathing.

Down the hall, the Troupe was scattered the way they always were, someone leaning back in a chair with their boots up, two of them bent over a card game on the floor, chips and coins clinking softly as they traded insults that didn’t mean anything. A few others sat on broken couches or on the stairs, talking idly over the noise of the city outside, killing time like there wasn’t an auction coming and bodies to make.

Your scream cut through it anyway.

Not loud enough to make them jump, but sharp enough to make conversation snag and stall. A card paused half-dealt. A laugh died in someone’s throat. Heads turned in the same direction at once, toward the narrower hallway that led to the room Chrollo had carved out for you- fresh paint in an otherwise abandoned building, a new lock on an old door, the only place that looked lived-in on purpose.

No one rushed.

They weren’t worried.

They were interested.

A couple of them drifted closer without meaning to, drawn by the sound the way people drifted toward anything that broke routine. Not all the way to your door, just into the hall where the light was dimmer and the air smelled faintly of old concrete and dust. They leaned against the walls, arms crossed, waiting to see what their boss would do next.

Then Chrollo appeared.

He walked out of your hallway with the same measured pace as always, adjusting his cuff as if he’d just finished a quiet conversation instead of stepping over shattered glass and curry soaked into carpet. The renovated corridor behind him looked too clean compared to the rest of the building, like a bruise of normalcy on rotten concrete. He still looked pristine in every place that mattered, hair falling neatly, bandages stark under the overhead light. His face was composed again.

But something had shifted.

Not dramatic nor obvious.

Just a thin tension held in his posture, like a cord pulled tight under skin. A stillness that didn’t read as relaxed anymore.

The Troupe felt it.

No one joked. No one asked questions. Even the ones who looked amused a second ago went quiet, eyes following him with a kind of attention they didn’t usually waste on anything that wasn’t a fight.

Chrollo’s gaze swept over them once, calm and absolute, and the hallway settled under it.

“Rotate,” he said simply.

No explanation. No tone raised. Just a word that meant move.

They obeyed without arguing, shifting back toward their game, back toward their seats, back into the casual sprawl of the hideout. Conversations picked up again in low voices, but softer now, as if the sound might travel down the hall and irritate him.

Behind the locked door, your sobs thinned into something quieter, exhausted and uneven.

And the night went on anyway, slow, steady, indifferent, while the building held you in place like it had been built for it.

omg... I actually loved writing this chapter 

The small key hanging around your neck shifted when you moved, tapping softly against your collarbone. You felt its weight and reached for it without thinking, twirling it between your fingertips until the metal warmed from your skin. The motion was automatic now, the same way you used to gnaw at your lip when you were anxious—except this habit had a shape, a weight, a promise you could physically hold.

Kuro had given it to you the first day you arrived.

He hadn’t made a speech about safety. He hadn’t told you to be grateful. He’d simply placed the key in your palm and said the lock turned from the inside, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to hand someone a way to keep people out. It wasn’t much, but it had meant everything to a body that still flinched at footsteps in hallways.

You let the key fall back against your chest with a small thump and forced your breathing to stay steady before you turned back to the shelves.

The shelf in front of you held glass jars lined up like soldiers, clear, empty, sterile. You set your clipboard down and  lifted one, feeling its weight settle into your palm, cool and solid. It made a faint clink when you set it down with the others, a sound that contrasted sharply with the quiet warehouse.

You didn’t understand the labels. Most of them were stamped in neat shorthand, the kind that looked intentional, coded. It didn’t matter. You’d stopped trying to decode them after the first day. Your job was to move, sort, count, and keep your head down. The distraction was worth the ache blooming in your shoulders.

Sighing lightly, you roll your shoulders back in a small stretch. At least your feet barely hurt anymore. Circling your ankles tenderly, you notice how you could now shift your weight without the old sting flaring through your heels. The absence of pain should have felt like relief.

Instead it made your throat tighten.

Healing meant days were passing.

You glanced at the strip of light on the warehouse floor and pretended you weren’t counting. Four days. Four nights of locking your door and lying awake to the city’s distant sirens. Four mornings of finding bread and water set neatly in the hallway, placed just outside your threshold as if whoever left it refused to cross the line. Four days closer to September first, the date you kept trying not to say out loud because it made the back of your throat tighten.

You forced your mind away before it could spiral, but it snagged on another thought anyway, one that had been sitting behind your ribs since yesterday.

You knew it was Kuro leaving the food. You knew it the same way you knew the lock turned from the inside and the key was yours, because there were always other things, quiet proofs tucked beside the breakfast, like the ointment from the second day or yesterday, when you’d opened your door, the usual bread and water had been there… and beside it, a book and a pair of sneakers.

The Stranger.

And the shoes, new enough to smell faintly of rubber—were your size exactly, as if he’d measured you without ever asking.

Picking up the rag left on the shelf, you wiped the dust away in slow strokes even though you’d cleaned this exact spot two hours ago. The cloth was already stained gray, grit ground into the fibers. It seemed like the warehouse accepted the effort but chose to stay dusty anyway. It felt stubborn, almost personal. You scrunch your nose from the grit in the air before you sneeze. 

Across the room, a worker carried a box past you without looking up. Another flipped through papers at a table with their head down. No one asked your name. No one asked why you flinched whenever footsteps got too close behind you. No one watched you long enough for the attention to turn sharp.

It should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

The silence wrapped around you the way it always had, familiar, dull, a quiet that made you remember lunch tables and being talked over. It made you remember that loneliness could exist even in a room full of people.

Your fingers tightened around the edge of the paper until it bent slightly. You forced them to relax, smoothing the page back flat, pretending you hadn’t done it because it would be embarrassing if Machi sees you mess up on something as simple as this. 

Machi’s footsteps were very quiet. 

That was one of the first things you’d noticed about her.

She moved through the warehouse the way a blade moved through air, quiet, efficient, with no wasted motion. Pink hair tied back, dark blue eyes sharp and flat, expression carved into something that didn’t bother pretending. She visited once or twice a day, never staying long, checking the shelves, papers and you with a glance that made your skin go warm under her watchful eyes.

When you stumbled the first day, she’d corrected you without speaking much. Just a hand, a light tap over the cloth of your shoulder, a shift of an item into the right place. Cold. Straightforward. No softness you had to repay.

You liked her for that. 

Sometimes you caught her staring. Not smiling. Not frowning. Just watching. You always looked away first, suddenly very interested in the alignment of jars, ignoring how your ears would heat up. Could anyone really judge you? She was very pretty. 

She even left snacks sometimes, small packets dropped beside your paperwork while you weren’t looking, and then disappearing before you could decide whether to say thank you or pretend you hadn’t noticed. You found yourself glancing at the corner of your station afterward anyway, half-expecting her to still be there.

She never was.

Kuro didn’t come during the day. He stayed out of your work hours, out of your routine, as if he didn’t want anyone to see him near you for too long. But at night, you’d hear his presence before you saw him: the faint shift in the hallway, the shadow outside your door.

You would open it and find him standing there, fully covered in dark clothes, green earrings catching the light when he tilted his head. He never stepped in too far. He never crowded you. He spoke to you about books the way other people talked about the weather, casual and steady, and you found your guard lowering without permission.

You idly place the jars on the shelf, mind wandering to your talks with him. 

“Wrong section, [Name].”

The voice cut close enough that you let out a small yelp feeling your fingers slip on the jar in your hands.

Glass flashed in the sunlight and your stomach dropped with it—

before a pale hand caught it mid-fall, clean and effortless.

You turned too fast and saw Machi beside you with one eyebrow raised, her face otherwise blank.

Heat rushed up your neck. “Sorry,” you blurted, too quickly. “I—sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Machi didn’t react to your apology. She smoothly set the jar into the correct section with one hand, aligning it so it clicked softly against the others.

“I’m here to pass a message,” she said, not even mentioning your mistake as you gave her a nervous smile.

Your key thumped against your collarbone again. “Message?”

“The boss,” Machi replied, eyes already drifting over the shelves. “Kuro wants to see you tonight.” She paused just long enough for it to feel deliberate. “You alright?”

You flush and nodded too quickly. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Machi looked at you for a beat longer than necessary. Then she turned to leave.

“Wait—” the word slipped out before you could stop it.

She paused without looking back.

Your throat tightened. You didn’t know what you wanted to ask. You didn’t know how to ask for company without sounding pathetic. You swallowed the urge down because you’d survived worse than silence.

“Nothing. Sorry, it was nothing.”

Machi didn’t wait for you to say more. She walked away, and the warehouse swallowed her footsteps.

You stared after her for a second, annoyed at yourself for feeling disappointed, then forced your hands back onto the paper, smoothing the page flat until the crease disappeared.

-

That night arrived the way the last few nights had, quiet, predictable, almost gentle.

You had washed your hands until the gray ring around your nails finally faded, then sat at the desk for a while with the ledger open in front of you, not because you had more work to do but because the smooth white paper kept your mind steady. The warehouse below had settled into its evening stillness, the kind that used to make you tense, but after four days you could tell the difference between normal creaks and footsteps that meant someone was actually moving. Your body still listened for danger out of habit. It just didn’t panic as quickly anymore.

The key at your neck shifted when you leaned forward. You felt its weight and reached for it, feeling the ridges. It was a small habit now, something you did when your thoughts started drifting toward September first, toward the city filling up, toward the fear that had teeth.

A soft knock came from the hallway.

You didn’t jump this time.

You exhaled, set the key down against your collarbone, and pushed away from the desk, chair loudly scraping on the wooden floor. You quickly moved to open the door.

Kuro stood outside with his usual calm, dark clothing neat, green earrings catching a faint glint when he tilted his head. The bandages around his forehead looked clean under the hallway light, making him seem composed in a way that didn’t match the warehouse at all. You couldn’t help but wonder what kind of wound he was hiding underneath the white. Kuro didn’t push into your space. He waited, giving you room the way he always did.

“Good evening, [Name],” he said pleasantly, a small smile gracing his lips.

“Hi,” you answered breathily, and it surprised you how naturally it came out. You stepped back and let him in without hovering by the lock the way you had the first night.

He paused near the desk instead of drifting closer, gaze flicking briefly over the room as if he was confirming you’d eaten, slept, survived the day. There was something quietly consistent about him, never loud, never rushed, never grabbing for more than you offered, and that made your guard lower faster than you could stop them.

Kuro’s gaze lingered on you for a second, thoughtful, and then his hand lifted as if he’d decided something simple. He reached toward your face with slow restraint, not rushing, not taking, and hooked a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

The glove brushed your skin.

Just the lightest drag of leather against the edge of your cheekbone, cool and brief, and it still made your breath catch. Not from fear, your body didn’t jerk away anymore, but from the strange, quiet awareness that came with being touched carefully. The contact ended almost as soon as it began, his hand falling back to his side as if it had never happened.

“You’re working too hard,” he said calmly, as though the gesture had been nothing more than tidying.

You swallowed, warmth creeping up your neck, and forced your voice to stay steady. “I’m fine.”

“How are your feet?” he asked.

You lifted your foot slightly, almost automatic, as if proving it. “It’s fine,” you said, pleased. “They're basically healed.”

Kuro’s gaze followed the movement, then returned to your face. “Good.”

You hesitated, then added, “Your ointment helped. A lot.”

His expression softened a fraction, subtle enough it could’ve been imagined, but it stayed there. “You heal quickly,” he said.

You would have stiffened at that earlier in the week. Tonight, it only made you blink.

“Is that… bad?” you asked, half-joking because the question landed oddly and you didn’t want it to turn sharp.

Kuro’s mouth curved slightly. Not a smile exactly—something thoughtful. “Not bad,” he said. “Just unusual. Most people take longer, especially when the wound draws that much blood.”

The words still carried that quiet precision that made you feel seen. You didn’t recoil, but you did find yourself touching the key again, thumb grazing its edge once before letting it fall.

“I don’t know,” you admitted awkwardly, unsure how to answer. “I guess I’ve always been… good at healing?”

Kuro didn’t press. He didn’t ask how or why. He simply accepted the answer the way he accepted everything you offered him without demanding the rest.

He changed the subject smoothly, as if he’d sensed the mood was starting to shift.

“Have you read East of Eden?” he asked, leaning against the door casually.

Your face brightened despite yourself. It was such an easy topic. Such a normal one. “Yeah,” you said. “In college too.”

His gaze tinged with interest. “Then you remember Cathy.”

You moved and sat on the edge of your bed, hands by your side supporting your frame, posture less rigid than it used to be when he visited. “Unfortunately,” you muttered. “I hated her.”

Kuro tilted his head back thoughtfully and you notice how his black hair moved in a way that exposed his jawline. “Most people do,” he said quietly. “They want her actions to make sense. They want a reason so they can feel safe.”

“There isn’t a reason,” you said. “She’s terrible. And selfish.”

“She isn’t frightening because she’s powerful,” Kuro murmured. “She’s frightening because she doesn’t need to be. People volunteer.”

You frowned. “Volunteer what?”

“Their loyalty,” he said simply. “Their secrets. Their bodies. They hand her everything, then blame her for taking it.”

The words slid under your skin and stuck there. You could feel your pulse in your throat from a recognition you didn’t want to acknowledge.

“So you don’t think she’s a crazy sociopathic liar?” you said, voice flatter.

Kuro’s mouth curved slightly. “Well… not like how you’re describing it,” 

You tilted your head at him, waiting for him to continue. 

“I think people use those words when they don’t want to admit how willing everyone else was,” he said quietly, “If she’s just insane, then no one has to take responsibility.”

“That’s strange,” you muttered, and the honesty of your reaction made your cheeks warm.

“It’s convenient,” he corrected gently. “Calling her a monster lets everyone pretend they didn’t walk toward her on their own

You glanced down at the worn grain of the desk, at the faint scratches in the wood, and let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

“Why would anyone stay near someone like that?” you asked, and even as you said it you knew you weren’t only talking about Cathy.

Kuro held your gaze steadily. “Because wanting something feels better than being empty,” he said softly. “Even when it destroys them.”

Silence settled in the room, heavy and clean.

You didn’t flinch away from it. You just sat there, listening to the warehouse below, to your own heartbeat, to the quiet way Kuro existed in your space without taking it.

After a moment, he stood.

“You should rest,” he said smoothly.

You nodded. “Ok. I will.”

“Goodnight, [Name],” Kuro said.

“Goodnight,” you replied, and it came out easier than it should have.

He left after letting his gaze linger on you a little longer, closing the door softly behind him. You could feel how the small room felt notably emptier without his figure filling half the space. 

Only when the hallway quiet returned did you notice what he’d left behind.

A black handkerchief lay on your desk, folded neatly at one corner. The fabric looked expensive, the smooth, heavy kind that held its shape. Your fingers hesitated before touching it, then folded it carefully the way it had been folded on the desk, because it felt wrong to crumple something that looked so deliberate.

In the corner, small gold embroidered initials caught the light.

C.L.

You stared at them, a slow unease building in your throat. You didn’t know whose initials they were. You weren’t even sure they mattered.

But the handkerchief looked important, and you couldn’t stand the idea of keeping something that didn’t belong to you.

So you hastily slipped on the cream cardigan Mito had packed and stepped into the hallway, shoes loud on the wood, handkerchief in your hand as you hurried down the creaking stairs.

“Kuro?” you called softly.

No answer.

Then you heard voices around the corner. Kuro’s calm tone, and another man’s voice trembling so badly you could hear fear in every breath.

Your grip tightened around the fabric and you felt your stomach drop.

And before your mind could decide what to do, your feet were already carrying you forward.

The hallway felt narrower as you approached the corner, the air colder, thinner, as if the building itself didn’t want to hold what was happening inside it. Kuro’s voice came first, low, even, the same calm tone he used when he spoke about books and bandages and breakfast, then another voice layered over it, trembling so badly it kept cracking apart.

You stopped at the edge of the corner.

You recognized this feeling. The moment right before everything shifted. You could still turn around. You could still go upstairs and lock your door and pretend you never heard a thing.

Your fingers tightened around the handkerchief.

C.L. flashed in your mind.

You stepped forward.

A man was on his knees on the hallway runner, shoulders shaking hard enough to jerk his whole frame. His hands were clasped in front of his chest as if pleading, fingers slick with sweat, knuckles pale. He looked up at Kuro with wet eyes and a trembling mouth, trying to bargain with his life through sobs. You recognized him as one of the workers.

Kuro stood with his back to you, posture relaxed, coat hanging cleanly from his shoulders as if dust and fear were things that couldn’t cling to him. He wasn’t pacing. He wasn’t angry. He simply listened.

“I told you,” the man choked, voice breaking. “I told you everything I know. Please—please, I have kids. I can get more money, I can—”

Kuro tilted his head slightly as if in consideration.

“You’ve been very cooperative,” he said.

Relief hit the man so fast his shoulders sagged, and something inside you went cold because you saw hope latch onto a gentle tone and call it mercy.

Kuro stepped closer.

“Look at me,” he said quietly.

The man lifted his head higher, eyes huge, mouth trembling open. “I swear I didn’t mean to—”

Kuro raised a hand.

Not sharply. Not violently.

A calm interruption.

The man’s words died in his throat as if someone had reached inside his mouth and closed it.

“One more question,” Kuro said.

The man nodded frantically. “Anything. Anything, I’ll answer—just—”

Kuro asked it. Your heartbeat was too loud to catch every word. You only registered fragments: deliveries, names, a location, the auction. The man spilled everything in a rush, desperate to make his honesty worth something.

Kuro listened without moving.

Then he said, simply, “Thank you.”

Relief loosened the man’s face. His lips quivered into something that almost resembled a smile.

And then Kuro’s hand shifted.

The sound that followed was small. Soft. A wet exhale that didn’t finish.

The man’s eyes went wide. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

His body tilted forward.

Your mind refused to understand until it had no choice.

A thin line of red at his throat, small, precise, controlled enough to look clinical, caught the dim light and made your stomach lurch.

Your hand flew to your mouth. Your breath caught and stayed trapped.

The man convulsed once, a horrible, instinctive jerk, and then panic finally found its voice. He clawed at his own neck, eyes rolling wildly, and his gaze snapped past Kuro for a fraction of a second—straight to you.

Recognition sparked in his face. Not of you. Of the situation. Of the fact that you were a witness.

His voice ripped out of him in a sudden, raw scream.

“CHROLLO LUCILFER—!”

The name slammed into the hallway and made your blood turn to ice.

Chrollo.

Lucilfer.

Your eyes flicked without permission to the handkerchief, to the initials you’d been staring at.

C.L.

The scream choked off into a wet gurgle. The man’s body sagged, and Kuro—Chrollo—caught him by the shoulder with careful restraint, easing him down so he didn’t hit the floor hard. Gentle and deliberate. As if noise would be rude.

Then he straightened and wiped his fingers on the man’s sleeve.

No urgency.

No tremor.

He turned his head slightly, and even before his full gaze found you, you knew he’d heard the name shouted into the air. You knew he’d heard it the way a bell was heard.

His eyes met yours.

The handkerchief slipped from your numb fingers and fluttered to the floor, the gold initials flashing once before the fabric went still.

For the smallest moment, something shifted, so small you almost convinced yourself you imagined it. His gaze flicked, not to you, not to the body, but down toward the handkerchief as it slipped from your fingers, to the gold initials catching the hallway light.

A single blink. Slow. Controlled.

Then the calm settled back into place, smooth as cloth being pulled flat, and his expression returned to that gentle attentiveness that suddenly felt worse than anger.

Just quiet attention, steady as ever, as if this was simply another chapter you had reached.

You swallowed hard, throat swollen.

“Kuro,” you whispered stupidly, as if saying the mask could bring the man back. “What—what did you do?”

“What needed to be done,” he said softly.

The words didn’t fit in your skull. Your mind scrambled for the version of him that left bread and water outside your door, that gave you a key, that tucked your hair behind your ear with gloved fingertips and made you feel safe enough to breathe.

That man couldn’t be this man.

“You—” Your voice cracked. “He said your name was Chrollo.”

The name tasted wrong in your mouth.

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t correct you. He just watched you.

Your arms wrapped around yourself, cardigan wool dragging against your skin until it felt abrasive, rough enough to scrape. Your whole body shook, and you hated that your first instinct wasn’t anger.

It was disbelief.

“How could someone like you do that?” you managed, voice thin almost shrill.

Chrollo’s expression stayed gentle. “Someone like me,” he repeated quietly, as if considering the phrase.

The calm in his voice made nausea roll through you.

“I- I’m leaving,” you stammered, and it came out like a plea you didn’t want to admit to.

Chrollo only nodded once.

“Go ahead,” he said.

The permission hit harder than refusal. It punched something hollow into your chest, because it meant he didn’t need to stop you. He didn’t need to chase.

You stumbled backward, and your gaze dropped to the man on the floor. His eyes were blank. One hand had curled forward, fingers reaching toward Chrollo’s shoes, frozen there in a last useless gesture.

You gagged.

You ran.

You shoved past Chrollo and the body and slammed through the door into the night, gulping cold air that tasted like exhaust and rain and electricity. Yorknew hit you full force—neon glare, traffic hiss, voices colliding, footsteps everywhere—and for a second it was too much, a wall of sound and light that made your brain stutter.

Behind you, Chrollo’s voice followed, not loud, not angry, not chasing.

“Go,” he said.

Your breath came out in gasps.

“In this city,” he murmured softly, and the calm certainty in his tone made your blood turn cold, “you will always find yourself coming back to me.”

Your stomach twisted.

Then your body chose movement.

You sprinted down the sidewalk, shoulder clipping strangers as you swerved, the city smearing into streaks of color. A car horn blasted close enough to vibrate your ribs and you flinched hard, almost veering into the street before catching yourself. Wet pavement flashed under your shoes. Your lungs burned. Your vision narrowed. People shouted, annoyed, and you didn’t stop to apologize.

You didn’t stop at all.

The city wasn’t an empty road you could outrun. It was crowded and alive and indifferent, and that made it worse. There were too many places to hide and none of them felt safe. A drunk man laughed too loudly near a storefront and your stomach twisted. A couple brushed past you and the warmth of their sleeve against your arm made your skin crawl. Again. 

You shoved through a cluster of people and cut into a narrow street where the light was harsher and the buildings leaned closer, signs buzzing overhead. Your breath tore out of you in short bursts. The key around your neck bounced with each stride, thumping against your collarbone like a frantic heartbeat that wasn’t yours.

You told yourself not to look back.

You looked back anyway.

Nothing.

Just the city.

Just strangers.

Just neon and rain and noise.

You turned another corner too fast and nearly went down, your sole skidding on slick pavement. You caught yourself on a brick wall, palm scraping rough stone, pain blooming sharp and immediate. Your mouth opened yet no noise came out, your mind swirling with confusion and denial.

Keep moving!

You shoved off the wall and ran again, deeper into streets you didn’t recognize, your heartbeat hammering so violently it made your throat ache.

Two blocks.

Maybe less.

Then the noise behind you changed, not louder, not softer, just wrong. A rhythm too controlled to be accidental. Footsteps that didn’t hesitate.

Your skin prickled before your mind caught up.

A hand seized your hair.

Pain ripped across your scalp so sharply your vision flashed white.

“Ah,” a voice murmured near your ear, amused. “Run hard.”

A strangled sound tore out of you as you clawed at the wrist on reflex, nails scraping skin, but the grip only tightened, yanking you backward until stars burst behind your eyes and your knees nearly hit the pavement.

Then his breath hitched.

Not sympathy. Not surprise.

A sharp inhale that didn’t belong there, as if his body had betrayed him for a fraction of a second. The hand in your hair flexed, tightening once, reflexive, almost possessive, before it eased again, as though he’d caught himself.

You felt it through the pull on your scalp, the brief stutter in control.

The man behind you went still for a heartbeat, and when he spoke again the amusement had edged into irritation.

“…Tch.”

He released you abruptly.

You stumbled forward, nearly collapsing, one hand flying to your head. Your breath came out in jagged bursts. Your scalp throbbed.

You spun around with shaking legs.

He stood under the streetlight, small and sharp, dark clothes neat, eyes narrowed with quiet enjoyment that now looked slightly strained, as if he was annoyed at his own reaction more than anything else.

He lifted one finger.

“If you so desperate to run,” he said lightly, voice smooth again, “I give you ten second.”

Your muscles screamed to move. Your mind screamed trap. Your body chose motion anyway because standing still felt worse.

“Ten,” he began, voice slow, savoring it.

You bolted.

Your shoes slapped wet pavement. Your lungs burned. 

“Nine.”

His counting cut cleanly through the pounding in your ears.

“Eight.”

You shoved past a group of teens, nearly knocking into them, and their startled protest blurred behind you.

“Seven.”

Neon flashed across your vision. You turned too fast, nearly slipping again.

“Six.”

Your chest burned hotter. Your legs wobbled.

“Five.”

You could taste metal. You could taste fear.

“Four.”

The street narrowed. Buildings pressed in.

“Three.”

Your stomach twisted hard enough you nearly gagged.

“Two.”

Your vision narrowed.

“One.”

You didn’t even have time to turn.

Something struck the back of your head, clean, precise, and the world snapped sideways. Your knees buckled. The ground rushed up too fast.

Your last thought wasn’t coherent. It was bitter and exhausted and furious, thrown at your life with the last breath you had.

Fuck my life.

Then everything went black.

Someone on the crew had offered you a place in his quarters—kind, casual, like it was nothing—but you refused. The thought of four walls and staying in the vicinity of another male made your skin crawl. Made your chest tighten. You couldn’t stand another small space. So you stayed out here instead, choosing the open deck and the stars, even if the night air was cold enough to bite.

Sleep still didn’t come easily. Every time you closed your eyes, they were there. Memories of them—of him—crowding in, hovering too close, touching. You lightly gnawed at your lip. 

They lived inside of your eyelids now, sliding into the dark the moment you blinked too long. But you refused to let it get to you, because you were free now! Something still bothered you, though, something you still could not wrap your head around. 

It was the pause after they touched you. 

That sickening, split-second reaction, like their bodies had betrayed them before their minds could catch up. Gon’s breath hitching. Killua’s violent inhale, the way his face twisted like he hated what he felt.

Why?

You didn’t know what you were. You didn’t know what you’d done. You didn’t even know how you’d ended up on Whale Island in the first place. You didn’t believe the story about you drowning, because your healed burns still stung like a phantom when you thought about it, because water didn’t burn like that, because none of it fit into the normal rules you’d spent your entire life pretending to understand.

But you also couldn’t afford to chase the truth. Truth didn’t buy you safety, nor did it give you a bed.

Freedom did.

So you lay under the stars with your arms wrapped around yourself like a shield, and you waited for sleep the way you waited for morning—stubbornly as if you just held on long enough, the world would eventually have to loosen its grip.

When you finally drifted off, it was shallow. The kind of sleep that doesn’t heal, only pauses. You woke at every creak of the ship. Every shout from the deck below. Every time footsteps passed near your crates. Your body jolted awake as if expecting a hand to close around your arm and steer you somewhere you didn’t want to go.

Each time, there was nothing. 

Just salt air and sky. Just the steady rocking that reminded you you were moving farther away.

By the time dawn bled across the horizon, pale and thin like it had been dragged up unwillingly, your eyes burned from lack of rest and your head ached with that bruised, throbbing pressure that had followed you since leaving the port.

You sat up slowly, joints stiff from sleeping curled on hardwood. Your back protested. Your stomach growled, hollow and sharp.

A crewman tossed you a piece of bread without a word. You caught it clumsily, fingers numb from the cold. The bread was stale. You ate it anyway, swallowing too fast, because hunger made you reckless. 

The day stretched long.

The ocean changed color by the hour—deep blue to silver to something darker when clouds rolled in. You watched cautiously, expecting it to turn on you and start pouring.

At some point, a coastline appeared in the distance, jagged and gray. Then buildings. Then cranes. Then the unmistakable silhouette of a city rising into the sky like it was trying to scrape the clouds down for itself.

You let yourself be excited, pulse quickening with the closing distance. Licking your dry lips at the normal kind of anxiety someone would feel when they were about to step into a new place with no plan and barely any money and no memories.

But your hands still shook as you picked up your bag.

The ship slowed. The engine’s rumble dropped into something heavier, like the whole vessel was bracing itself.

The moment the dock came into full view, your stomach sank.

It was too big. Too busy. Too alive.

Men shouted over stacks of cargo. Metal clanged. Forklifts beeped in sharp bursts. Trucks lined up like a procession, impatient and loud. The air smelled like fuel and wet rope and something rotten underneath it all, like the city had a mouth and it never stopped eating.

You stepped forward anyway, bare feet numb from the cold. It was okay, you would let yourself blend in, it would be fine as long as you were free. 

And then you saw the sign bolted above the freight office, half-chipped from salt and time.

YORKNEW CITY – FREIGHT TERMINAL.

Ha. 

Your brain did that thing again where it stopped. 

Yorknew?

No.

No, no, no.

Your chest tightened so hard it felt like your ribs were closing in.

You turned to the captain so fast your vision swam.

“Please,” you blurted, voice cracking on the first syllable. “Please—don’t leave me here. Take me somewhere else. Anywhere. I’ll work. I’ll— I’ll do whatever!”

The captain looked at you with tired eyes. Not cruel. Not soft. Just… practical.

“This is my last stop,” he said. “Can’t help you beyond this dock.”

The words hit like cold water.

“I can’t stay here,” you whispered. You hated how small your voice sounded against the noise of the port. “I— I didn’t choose this.”

The captain jerked his chin toward the stacks of cargo waiting to be unloaded. “The city's paying good right now. Supplies. Auction season.”

Auction.

Your stomach dropped.

“What?” you croaked. You couldn’t believe your luck. 

He glanced at you like the answer was obvious, then spoke louder to be heard over the noise.

“Underground Auction,” he said. “Big one. Two weeks out. Whole city’s gearing up.”

Two weeks.

The number echoed in your skull as if someone had struck a bell inside your head.

Because you knew. You knew without even wanting to.

Yorknew.

Gon and Killua were going to Yorknew next.

You’d heard it. You’d heard them talk about it, like it was their destiny. You’d watched their eyes light up over that game card like it was a compass. You’d heard Gon’s voice at the dock, strained and desperate, still trying to pull you back with words.

We’re going to Yorknew.

Your breathing stopped and your nails almost broke the leather around the strap of your bag.

What kind of cruel joke was this? It felt like the universe was laughing at you. Like it had waited for you to run, waited for you to choose “anywhere,” and then dropped you exactly where you didn’t want to be just to see what you’d do. 

You stared at the captain, unable to speak.

He softened, barely. Just enough to make it worse.

“Find somewhere warm,” he said. “Don’t stand around. City’ll eat you alive.” 

Then he glanced at your feet, dirty and torn on the bottom, and tossed you a pair of old beat up ones many sizes too large. He turned away, barking orders to his crew, and the moment was gone.

And you were alone.

Slipping them on silently, you stepped off the dock and into the city’s shadow with borrowed shoes swallowing your feet and a bag that suddenly felt ten times heavier. The straps dug into your shoulders like punishment. The wind cut through your thin clothes like it knew you didn’t belong here.

You kept your head down and walked.

The shoes slapped wrong with every step—too loose, too stiff, rubbing your heels raw. You tripped once on a crack in the concrete and caught yourself on a stack of pallets, heart lurching as a jolt of panic shot through you.

For half a second your body expected laughter. Expected a bright voice. Expected someone to appear and steer you back.

Nothing happened. Just noise. Just people moving past you like you were furniture.

You left the terminal and spilled into the streets beyond.

Yorknew was nothing like what you’ve seen of Whale Island. Buildings rose too tall, blocking the sky into narrow strips. Signs flashed bright enough to sting. Cars pushed through intersections like they owned them. People flowed around you like a river, and you clung to the edge of the sidewalk like you were afraid the current would sweep you away.

You walked clumsily in shoes that were sizes too big, tripping on cracks and uneven pavement. You caught the attention of those who passed—but not in the way you’d known.

They didn’t stop. They didn’t ask if you were okay. They didn’t offer help.

Just a spare glance. One flick of the eyes as they took in your tangled hair, your trembling hands, your thin attire not meant for the city chill, and then they looked away like you were already forgotten.

It should have been what you wanted. It should have felt like being invisible again. Instead, it made your skin crawl, because you didn’t feel invisible.

You felt watched.

Not by them.

By your own fear.

Your nerves were still tuned to Whale Island. Still tuned to the way Gon’s attention had wrapped around you like a net. Your body kept bracing for someone to step into your path, smiling, blocking, redirecting.

Every time someone brushed past you on the sidewalk, your muscles tightened.

Every time a voice rose behind you, your heart jumped. Every time you saw a flash of green in the corner of your vision, your stomach twisted like you were about to see him.

You told yourself to focus.

Find an inn. Find a phone. Find a police station. Find anything. Then your brain offered the next thought with cruel clarity:

Who would you call?

Your mind went blank again, the empty wall where numbers and names should have been.

You kept walking.

The straps of your bag dug deeper into your shoulders with every step. Sweat dampened your hairline despite the cold. Your hands shook as you tightened your grip on the strap like it could anchor you to the ground.

You tried an inn with a polished lobby and a gold sign.

“Reservation?” the clerk asked, eyes sliding over you like you were mud on the floor.

“No,” you said, voice too quiet. “Just one night. Please.”

He didn’t even check. “Full.”

You tried another.

“Auction week,” the woman said with a flat shrug. “Everything’s booked.”

“I can pay,” you blurted, because desperation makes you stupid.

She named a price that made your stomach drop. That was it. That was your entire bag. Your entire hope. You backed out into the street, throat tight, eyes burning.

The city moved around you without slowing down.

You found a payphone wedged between two storefronts. It was dirty, scratched, and half-broken. You dug for coins with trembling fingers.

A man shifted behind you. Just a shuffle. A breath. A normal sound.

Your body reacted like a gunshot.

You flinched, elbow knocking the receiver so it clanged loudly against metal. The man grunted, annoyed.

“Watch it, girl.”

You stepped away from the phone like it had burned you.

Ah, you couldn’t do it.

You couldn’t stand still. You couldn’t let anyone stand behind you. You couldn’t let anyone get close enough to touch you.

Touching meant—

You didn’t know. Your stomach lurched anyway.

You walked faster. 

Then faster.

Your shoes slipped, heels lifting out and slamming down wrong. Blisters screamed at the backs of your feet. Your steps turned uneven, panicked. People glanced at you again as you stumbled, catching yourself, swallowing ragged breaths.

Your skin felt raw. The feeling of eyes crawled up your spine until you couldn’t stand it.

You broke into a run.

At first it was small, an embarrassed jog that still tried not to draw attention, even as your heart hammered and your lungs started to burn. Then it became real, your body choosing speed over dignity because speed felt like escape.

The bag thumped roughly against your side. The straps cut into your shoulders harder. Sweat broke across your forehead, cold and slick.

Your shoes betrayed you.

Your foot slid inside the too-big sole and you pitched forward, arms flailing. You caught yourself on the corner of a building wall, palm scraping rough brick, pain shooting up your arm.

A laugh bubbled up in your throat, breathless and wrong.

I escaped just to do this. 

Your breath tore out in a ragged gasp. Your vision blurred at the edges.

Enough.

You ducked into a narrow gap between storefronts, shaking, and yanked the shoes off with clumsy fingers. You didn’t bother with the knots. You ripped and pulled until the laces came loose.

Cold pavement bit your bare soles immediately. You hissed, but it was better. Your feet were yours again.

You shoved the shoes into your bag, fumbled the zipper closed, then stepped back out barefoot without giving yourself time to think.

It was humiliating.

It was disgusting.

It was freedom.

So you ran again.

Bare feet slapped against concrete and tile. Every pebble was a needle. Every crack a bite. The skin on your feet was abused and torn, bleeding most definitely by the way it stung. You didn’t care. Pain kept you present and kept you moving.

You ran until the city smeared into noise and light.

And then you saw it—

A narrow storefront squeezed between taller buildings, its window cluttered with books stacked in crooked towers. The sign above it was old and understated, the kind of place people walked past without noticing.

An antique bookstore.

It looked quiet. It looked like the only place in this city where silence wouldn’t feel like a trap. Your body chose it like a lifeboat.

You shoved the door open and slipped inside.

The bell chimed softly overhead. The sound was too gentle for the way you crashed into the space, breath ragged, hair sticking to your face, bare feet dirty and stinging. Inside, the world softened.

Street noise dulled behind glass and paper. The air smelled like dust and ink and old wood. Warm light pooled in corners instead of stabbing down from above.

There were people inside. Not many.

An old man behind the counter, glasses perched low on his nose as he read the newspaper. A mother near the front shelf holding her daughter’s hand, the little girl whispering excitedly at a picture book. 

There was really only a couple, but your brain didn’t believe it. Your eyes darted wildly anyway, scanning for danger where there shouldn’t have been any. Your pulse pounded so loudly it drowned out the hush of pages. Your mind filled the empty spaces between shelves with imagined bodies—shadows that looked like people, people that looked like threats.

You hugged your bag to your chest like it could shield your ribs.

Breathe.

Just breathe.

The old man at the counter glanced up at you. God, you’ve been standing at the door for too long. You cursed yourself, you were probably letting a draft inside. So you forced your legs to take a step into the store.

Then the door chimed again.

“Excuse me.”

The voice was close—too close—soft and polite.

Your entire body jolted like someone had grabbed your spine. You spun, heart jumping into your throat, and your bag swung with you. Your brain screamed move! It was just a stranger, a normal person, looking at your shivering form with mildly bewildered eyes. The city truly makes people see strange things sometimes, he thought. 

You dashed into the nearest aisle tensed like a country mouse trapped in the city—this store was tiny, aisles narrow, shelves too close. You barely fit between them with your bag and your shaking hands.

You turned the corner—

—and crashed into someone.

Not hard enough to knock him down. Hard enough to stop you like you’d hit a wall.

Your shoulder bumped into a coat sleeve.

Cloth.

Just a tiny tug. Small enough that you felt nothing and paid no mind to it. 

A hand hovered near your elbow, steadying you without grabbing. Controlled. Careful. Almost… courteous.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

His voice was calm. Smooth. Low enough that it fit the hush of the bookstore instead of breaking it.

You jerked back instinctively, shoulders brushing the shelf behind you. Books rattled softly.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m—sorry,” you rasped, throat raw. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” he said, and his tone made it sound like it truly was.

You lifted your eyes.

He was attractive in a way that felt unreal against the dusty warmth of the shop, almost beautiful. Dark clothing, fully covered, neat as if he had never been hurried in his life. Black hair and dark eyes contrasting the green orb-shaped earrings that glinted faintly when he tilted his head, catching the light in a small, precise flash. Bandages wrapped cleanly around his forehead, hiding what was beneath them and somehow making him more intriguing, more mystified, like a secret you weren’t meant to touch.

There was something about him that made the air feel heavier. A quiet pressure in the space around him that your body noticed before your brain understood.

An aura.

You didn’t know the word. You just knew you could feel him.

His eyes flicked over you—bare feet, dirty soles, trembling grip on your bag, the bruise at your wrist peeking out as your sleeve slid.

He didn’t look disgusted. He didn’t look amused. He looked… attentive. Like he was seeing you clearly and not judging you for it.

It made your chest ache in a way you didn’t trust.

“You’re hurt,” he said softly.

“I’m fine,” you lied automatically.

His lips curved into a smile. It was warm. Easy. Perfect. Not practiced. Not sharp. Not something that set your instincts screaming.

Just… nice.

If there was anything hidden underneath it, you couldn’t see it.

“I don’t mean to frighten you,” he said gently, and the fact that he didn’t sound offended by your fear made your throat tighten.

You swallowed hard. “I’m not—” you started, then stopped, because you were.

He shifted half a step to the side, making sure you still had a clear path past him. Not blocking you. Not cornering you.

That detail hit you like a strange kind of mercy.

“There’s water at the counter,” he said. “Would you like some?”

Your eyes flicked toward the front of the store. The old man. The mother and child. Open space. Being seen.

He noticed the hesitation and, smoothly, offered another option.

“You can stay here,” he said. “I’ll bring it to you.”

Your pulse stumbled.

You didn’t trust him. You couldn’t trust anyone right now. But you were dizzy from running, your feet hurt like a bitch, your body shook so hard you couldn’t hide it anymore.

“…Okay,” you whispered.

He nodded once, like that was all he needed, then moved away with quiet steps that barely made sound. You let out a trembling sigh and leaned your back against the shelf, clutching your bag tightly, trying to force your breathing into something normal.

Your mind wouldn’t shut up.

Yorknew. Two weeks. Auction.

Gon and Killua.

The dock.

His voice cracking through the wind.

Don’t go, [Name].

Your throat tightened until it hurt.

When the man returned, he held a paper cup with one hand, the other holding the book he was reading before you rudely crashed into him. He offered it without stepping close enough to touch you.

“Here,” he said.

You took it carefully.

The water was lukewarm, tasteless, and it still felt like life. You drank too fast and choked, coughing quietly into your sleeve. Your eyes stung and continued to drink. He waited without comment and without any judgment showing in his eyes. 

As the desperately needed water slipped down your throat, you started to feel the pain in your soles grow sharper and sharper. You hadn’t realized how tight you’d been holding yourself, how your whole body had been clenched like a fist, until the swallow forced you to breathe. The hush of the bookstore seeped in around you, muffling the city’s teeth. Your heartbeat didn’t slow much, but it stopped trying to crawl out of your ribs.

You lowered the now empty paper cup with shaking hands.

The hot, throbbing stings pulsed up through your soles, blooming in sharp waves now that adrenaline was no longer dragging you forward by the hair. Every tiny cut you’d ignored while running came back with interest. You tried to shift your weight against the carpeted floor instinctively, searching for a position that didn’t hurt.

A sharp sting sliced up your heel and you flinched so hard your shoulder knocked the shelf behind you. A couple books rattled, threatening to topple.

Before they could, the man’s hand lifted—not grabbing you, not touching you—just hovering near the spines as if to steady the shelf itself, not you. In a way that was both mildly comforting and embarrassing.

“Careful,” he murmured, voice calm.

Your face burned. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said simply.

Then he glanced down at your feet, quick, polite, and somehow still exact, and you felt your face heat with embarrassment. Though, unlike the stranger who entered after you, this man just assessed without showing any disgust. He turned away and pulled an old wooden step stool from the corner, usually used to reach books on higher shelves. 

“Sit,” he said softly. And somehow, everything he said sounded like an offer you were freely allowed to refuse. Your pride lasted about three seconds before you stiffly lowered yourself onto the stool, knees drawn in slightly as if you could make yourself smaller. 

He reached into his thick coat pocket and pulled out a small roll of bandages and a couple sterile wipes. 

“You carry that?” you asked, voice cautious.

His smile returned—warm, effortless, harmless. “Yorknew isn’t kind to small things.”

“Small things?”

“Strays,” he said, like it was obvious. “Stray cats. Birds. Anything that gets too close to the road when people drive like they own it.”

You stared at the bandages. Kind of… cute. 

The thought was so out of place—so stupidly human—that it slipped out of you before you could strangle it.

A small giggle.

Soft. Wrong. Like it didn’t belong in your mouth anymore.

Your eyes widened in horror and you slapped a hand over your lips, cheeks burning. As if laughter was something you could be punished for. As if the moment you let your guard down, the world would remember and swing.

“Sorry,” you blurted, mortified. “I—I don’t know why I—”

Kuro didn’t flinch. Didn’t look offended. His smile didn’t sharpen into mockery.

If anything, his expression softened, like he understood exactly what it cost you to make that sound.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said quietly, and his own lips rise into a small, fond smile, “My friends tell me it’s strange too.” His gaze flicked to your feet. “May I?” 

You flushed and nodded, mortified at yourself as he began to work on your torn feet. “So… what should I call you?” 

“You may call me Kuro.” He said. 

“Kuro,” you repeated, the name tasting strange on your tongue.

He inclined his head as if accepting a vow.

“And yourself?” 

Your lips thinned, your mind telling you that names were hooks. What if this man knew Gon or Killua somehow? 

You hesitated.

But then he softened his tone. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

That made your chest tighten.

“…[Name],” you said finally, because you needed something to be real.

He nodded, like he’d filed it away somewhere safe.

Kuro didn’t touch your bare skin. Not once.

He folded a piece of cloth from his coat, dark fabric, clean, and laid it over your foot first, creating a barrier like he’d already decided where the line was, using it to hold your foot still with his left hand. Then he took one of the sterile wipes and began cleaning, slow and careful, as if your pain mattered but your boundaries mattered more.

You watched his hands without meaning to.

They were surgically steady. Each movement clipped and clean, like he’d done this a hundred times and never once gotten careless. The wipe dragged gently over the tender spots, his fingers careful to never touch you directly. You still flinched anyway.

Kuro didn’t comment on it. Didn’t apologize. He simply adjusted the angle, lighter this time, as if he’d learned what hurt you after one reaction. 

The bandage followed, wrapped snug around your heel and arch. He anchored it with the cloth so his fingers never brushed you, never took anything you didn’t give. When he tied it off, the knot sat firm without hurting your skin.

You exhaled shakily, realizing you’d been holding your breath. In the background, light classical music played from the stereo up front. 

“…You do this a lot?” you asked quietly, because silence felt too intimate, because your mind couldn’t stop circling the fact that he’d been prepared.

Kuro’s gaze flicked up, calm. “More than I’d like.”

That answer felt like a door left slightly open on purpose.

Your eyes drifted to the book tucked under his arm, a bookmark marking his place. The cover was worn, edges softened like it had been carried often. The sight of it grounded you in a way you didn’t expect. 

“What were you reading?” you heard yourself ask.

Kuro’s smile warmed a fraction. “The Stranger, Albert Camus.”

He lifted it so you could see the worn cover with its softened corners, a spine that looked like it had been opened too many times to count.

And something in your chest pulled tight, sudden and sharp.

You blinked hard. “I… I know that.”

A small flicker of interest crossed his face, nothing exaggerated, just a quiet shift, like he’d found a thread worth following. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” you said quickly, and the speed of it made you feel exposed. “I read it in college.” Your voice softened despite yourself. “I loved it.”

Kuro tilted his head, inviting without pressing. “What did you love about it?”

You hesitated.

It wasn’t a dangerous question. It shouldn’t have felt like one.

But the answer lived too close to your ribs.

“The way it’s honest,” you said, voice quieter than you meant. “Not comforting. Not trying to pretend the world has rules that make sense.” Your fingers curled in your lap, nails biting your palm. “It’s about how nothing matters—and somehow that doesn’t feel like a threat when you read it. It feels… clean. Like if nothing matters, then maybe I’m not failing at being a person. Maybe I’m just here. Existing. And that’s allowed.”

Kuro didn’t interrupt. Didn’t look away. When you finished, he nodded once, thoughtful.

“That’s exactly it,” he murmured, so quiet it felt like he was speaking to the book as much as to you.

Your throat tightened.

Because you weren’t used to being understood without having to claw for it.

He moved to your other foot and repeated the same careful routine—cloth first, wipe, wrap, tie. You sat stiffly on the stool, cheeks warm, heart beating too hard for a bookstore.

When he finished, he sat back on his heels and looked up at you.

“There,” he said softly. “Better.”

You flexed your toes. The pain didn’t vanish, but it dulled into something bearable.

You swallowed. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Kuro said, like it was nothing.

His gaze drifted for the briefest moment to your sleeve where it had ridden up, revealing that bruised band around your wrist.

You tugged it down fast, heat crawling up your neck.

“You’re not from Yorknew,” Kuro said gently.

It wasn’t a question.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“And you have nowhere to go,” he continued, still calm, still not pressing.

Your throat closed. You nodded once, because lying felt too heavy. “Yorknew is harsh right now,” he said. “Auction season. Everything is crowded. Expensive. People come here for ugly reasons.”

Your stomach sank again.

“There’s temporary work available,” he added. “Simple tasks. Moving boxes. Cleaning. It doesn’t require experience.” He paused, then said, almost like an afterthought: “It usually comes with a room upstairs.”

A room.

The word made your body sag in relief before your fear could stop it. You hated yourself for that. You stared at him, suspicion sharpening into something desperate.

“Why are you helping me so much?” you questioned.

Kuro’s expression stayed kind, completely unbothered by your suspicion and the way he treated you reminded you of someone gently coaxing a trapped animal. 

“Because you chose a bookstore to hide in,” Kuro said simply. “And because you look like you haven’t slept. Plus you’re still hurt.”

He motioned lightly to your now bandaged feet and where the bruise is hiding. He held your gaze, and his kind eyes didn’t waver. It reminded you a fraction of what Mito said to you and your eyes misted up before you blink it away.

“If you want,” Kuro said softly, “I can introduce you to someone hiring. Then you decide. No pressure.”

Then you decide.

You looked at the aisle behind you—tight, shadowed, safe. Then you looked toward the front of the store, where the bell still hung above the door, and beyond it the city roared like an open mouth.

You could go back out there. You could keep running barefoot until your feet split open and your lungs gave out.

Or you could take one night of warmth and a job.

“…What kind of work again?” you asked quietly.

Kuro’s smile warmed, gentle as a blanket.

“Loading,” he said. “Sorting. Errands. Nothing glamorous. But it pays.”

You swallowed hard. “And the room?”

“For tonight,” he said. “At least. You look like you need it.”

You didn’t answer immediately. You were exhausted. You didn’t know how much longer you could hang on. The thought of sleeping in an alley with your bare feet bleeding was enough to make your throat tighten with tears you refused to let fall.

You nodded once.

Kuro stepped back slightly, as if to give you space to change your mind.

“Come,” he said softly. “We’ll go before it gets colder.”

You forced your tired legs to move, pushing yourself up from the stool. The moment you stood however, your weight shifted wrong and pain flared through the soles of your feet. Your breath hitched and you swayed, vision tilting for half a second.

Kuro moved quickly, not rushing, not grabbing, just reaching out with that same careful restraint.

His fingers didn’t catch your skin.

They brushed your sleeve near your elbow instead, fabric against fabric, barely there.

Still—

A faint pull threaded through the contact. Weak. Almost nothing. But it was enough that your stomach dropped, that old memory flashing: Gon’s breath hitching. Killua’s violent inhale.

Your body went rigid.

Kuro’s hand withdrew immediately, smooth as if he hadn’t meant to touch you at all. His expression didn’t change. Not even a flicker. He only angled himself half a step away again, leaving you a clear path, leaving you space.

“Slowly,” he murmured, voice still calm. “No need to hurt yourself more.”

Sweat beaded on your forehead as you felt anxiety creeping up your spine. Your gaze snapped to his face, searching for… something. A reaction. A crack. Anything. 

There was nothing. Just that same gentle smile. If there was anything hidden underneath it, you couldn’t see it.

So you followed him out of the aisle on shaking legs, clutching your bag so tight the straps burned your palms.

As you passed the front of the store, the mother glanced at you briefly—eyes flicking down to your dirty feet, your tangled hair—then she looked away again and went back to her daughter’s book as if you were nothing.

You trembled anyway. Because even in a city full of people who didn’t care, you still felt watched. 

And beside you, Kuro walked with calm, unhurried steps, as if Yorknew couldn’t touch him.

As if the city belonged to him.

As if you had never had a chance of ending up anywhere else.

Chrollo is the ultimate performative male... 

To clarify, yes, the curse does affect the other person over clothing, but it is very, very faint. It basically only ensures interest. 

Killua slammed the door behind him and leaned his back against it, staring at nothing while his heart did something evil inside his chest. He could still feel it. Your wrist in his hand, your soft skin molding under his fingertips. Repulsion rolled off of him in waves.

The electricity had been immediate, sharp as biting into lightning… and then the rush. The feeling of intense pleasure that filled his brain with serotonin, that made his grip tighten before he could process it. Sweet enough that his body leaned toward it. Disgusting enough that he wanted to tear his own hand off afterward. 

He swallowed hard, jaw tight, like he could force it all back down. 

He could not. 

His mind raced, catching on the stupid details. The way you trembled like you were trying to take up less space. The way your breath hitched as he came closer. The way tears slipped down your cheeks when you looked up at him, leaving glittering trails of wetness. 

Glittering.

Fuck. He hated himself for even thinking that word. 

And then there was the scent. The faintly clean traces of lavender in your hair. It wasn’t even yours technically. It was Mito’s shampoo, soaked into towels and bedding and the whole house. But it had been there on your skin when he grabbed you, mixed with salt air and panic, and now his brain would not shut up about it like it was something that mattered. Killua felt sick. 

He pressed the heel of his palm into his eyes until it ached. He had been trained to ignore his body. To make it obey him, To make his face blank and his breathing steady no matter what churned inside him. 

So why did his body react like that?

Why did it feel like something tugged at him sharply from the inside, pulling him towards you? As if he had taken the bait, and was now hooked on you. A hook that was forcibly placed inside of him. 

Illumi’s expressionless face flashed in his mind before he could stop it and he flinched involuntarily. That invisible pressure Illumi wore like a perfume, the way it made Killua’s mind blank and his thoughts feel like they were not his own. Killua gritted his teeth. No. He wasn’t doing this again. He was his own person now, free from the Zoldyck mold. Free from his brother's control. 

But his instincts would not let it go. They itched beneath his skin frantically, telling him something was off about everything. Not just with himself, but with Gon too. 

Because Gon had been acting strange around you for days. Anyone with eyes could see it, even if Gon pretended he couldn’t. The hovering. The constant excuses. The way Gon’s attention snapped to you like a magnet, every time you moved, every time you spoke, every time you even looked like you might walk toward the door.

Gon wasn’t like that. Gon was stubborn, he was intense, he would get fixated on things, sure, but not like this. Not with that urgency that made it feel like the world would end if you stepped out of sight. That he would end if you left him. 

Killua despised you for it. And he wasn’t stupid. This obviously wasn’t normal, but he couldn’t figure out why. He thought it might’ve been Nen, some kind of manipulator tactic like Illumi’s, but even a blind man could tell that you were the farthest thing from a Nen master. Your aura was seeping out of you just like how every other untrained person was, so he was completely lost. But how else could you have landed completely unhurt when you fell in the ocean?

There was also another reason sitting behind his heart that he refused to name. 

Gon was supposed to be his friend. 

Not in a gross way. But rather in a way he would never admit. He was jealous. Gon, who was his first friend, his only real friend. And if Gon had someone else, then Killua would be on the sidelines. He hated that thought so much he almost laughed. 

Almost. 

He hated you for stepping into their space. Hate, hate, hate. 

Still, hate didn't explain the pull he felt- feels. Didn’t explain why his hand trembled as he let go, or why he kept remembering your lashes heavy with tears. 

Killua’s throat tightened with revulsion yet his heart continued racing. 

.

The next hour passed like he was underwater. Painfully, as his mind ran in circles around your wrist and the sickening sweetness that followed. He could hear you moving slowly downstairs, splashing water on your face. Trying to hide the puffiness of your eyes he presumed. The light fondness he felt when he pictured that was repulsive. 

Then later, the front door opened and Gon’s voice flooded the house with excitement.

“I got it!” 

Joystation. 

Killua heard the thud of Gon’s shoes as he kicked them off too quickly, the familiar sound of his steps has he quickly pulled you upstairs with him. This daze was probably also why he didn’t notice how your sleeve had ridden up on your arm, how the light Gon’s eyes dampened into the shadows, and how as soon as he blinked it was gone. And how despite that, he said nothing and only silently guided you to the bed. 

Instead, what he did notice was how you flinched when he met your eye. Then the guilt that consumed him when he saw the blooming bruises on your wrist, or your now red eyes that wouldn’t fade no matter how you tried to hide it. Killua forced his face into neutrality. 

He only knelt besides Gon and helped connect the Joystation, feeling the warmth of the morning sunlight as it seeped into the room. He ignored the way you would pause whenever he spoke, ignored how you shrank into the corner whenever he raised his hand. 

Eventually the answer sharpened into something real. 

“It’s only a rumor,” Killua stated, repeating what Milluki had told him on the phone, “but the idea is that someone will be distributing dozens of copies of Greed island at the auction.” 

Gon’s eyes sparkled. “Maybe that someone is Ging!” 

“Yeah.” Killua nodded, a strained smile on his face, “that only makes the rumor more credible.” 

The smile sat on his face like something foreign, stretched and wrong, as if his muscles were remembering an expression without the feeling attached. Gon did not notice. Or maybe he did, and simply did not care, because Gon had already turned back to the card, already spinning possibilities in his head like they were sunlight.

“Yorknew,” Gon said, voice bright with a determined smile. He tapped the edge of the game card against his palm. “We’ll need a crazy amount of money to buy it. I guess we were always destined to go to Yorknew.”

Killua nodded again and his gaze flicked to your corner of the room without permission. You were sitting with your shoulders hunched, hands curled into your sleeves, eyes darting to the door every few seconds like a mouse in a fox's den. You looked smaller than you had any right to look. 

A stupid pull tightened in Killua’s chest again. An urge to fix it, to do anything for you.

His stomach turned.

He tore his eyes away and focused on the Joystation, on the cables, on the screen. 

From the corner of his eye, Killua watched you shrink when Gon took a step closer, even though he did not touch you. “Stay here, [Name]. Me and Killua need to step out for a little while.”

Then Gon turned back to Killua. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk outside.” 

Killua followed, he saw how Gon smiled without it reaching his eyes.

And he did not look at you when he left. Because if he did, he might have done something stupid. And only when the cold air hit his face outside did he realize what he had given you. A moment alone. A chance. 

He could not tell if that made him feel relieved or terrified, and he hated himself for it.

.

You had picked at the sheets as they talked about the game, feeling the edges of the fabric begin to fray under your nails. You realized it was childish to ruin his things but it was truly the only form of revenge you could afford without setting a death spell on yourself. Besides, you needed to vent your frustration in some way or you would’ve gone insane. 

Sleeping on Gon’s bed made you want to crawl out of your skin. His blankets that smelled so uniquely him- like the warm sun and the woods- the scent that clung to you even after you scrubbed yourself raw in the shower. You hated it. You don’t have much of a choice, though, unless you wanted to curl like an animal on the hardwood floor. 

You sat on the bed while they were distracted enough on Greed Island that you could felt like you breathe for once. Intently, you listened through the fog of your anxiety and caught just enough to understand one thing.

They were leaving. Yorknew. An auction with the game Gon’s dad left him.

Then, finally, Gon stood and asked Killua to talk outside. He did not look at you when he left. Killua did not either. 

The door clicked shut.

Your heart slammed into your ribs.

Alone.

You heard them argue outside in the darkness of the night, voices rising sharply. Closer to yelling. It wasn’t possible to hear every word through the walls and wind, but pieces slipped through.

Killua’s voice cut first, tight and harsh. “You’re not bringing her.”

Gon’s voice followed, bright in tone but wrong underneath it. “Why not?”

“Because she’s a problem,” Killua snapped. “You’re acting like you can’t even breathe unless she’s in the room.”

A heavy pause followed

Then Gon, too calm. “She’s coming with us.”

“She wants to go home,” Killua said, like he was trying to pound logic into Gon’s skull. “Let her leave.”

Silence.

When Gon spoke again, his voice was still gentle. 

“She doesn’t remember anything,” Gon said. “She’s scared. She’s hurt. She stays with us until we get to Yorknew. Then we figure it out.”

Killua’s tone sharpened into something almost furious. “That’s not helping her. That’s keeping her!”

Gon’s voice dropped, just slightly, just enough that her skin crawled. “I’m helping her.”

Killua said something you could not hear, too fast. Then louder, clearer, like he wanted the house to listen.

“She’s not yours.”

Her stomach clenched.

Silence followed.

Then Gon laughed. It was short, breathy, almost cheerful.

“Of course not,” Gon said, voice sweet. “That’s why she’s coming with us. So nothing happens to her.”

He was such a fucking liar. Your mouth went dry and stared at the door until the edges of the room blurred, then forced yourself to move before you lost the nerve.

If you thought, you froze. 

So you did not think. 

You threw your feet and hit the floor, sliding your hand along the wall as you crossed the room silently. Your fingers trembled so badly you curled them into your sleeve.

Outside, the argument flared again.

Killua. “You don’t even hear yourself!”

“Killua, stop it.”

Downstairs, a chair creaked in the kitchen. A pot clinked. Normal sounds that felt wrong against the knife edge of their voices.

Your heart pounded harder.

Now.

You slipped out of Gon’s room and into the hall, moving like you were made of glass. Each floorboard looked like a trap. So you chose your steps carefully, placing your feet where the wood looked like it wouldn’t creak.

You reached the top of the stairs and paused, listening.

Outside, Killua’s voice spiked. “You’re not thinking.”

Gon’s reply came quickly, clipped. “I am thinking.”

Killua, lower now, dangerous. “Then why are you watching her like that?”

Silence again. Then Gon, softer, as if he were soothing. “Because she needs me.”

You force yourself down the stairs.

Mito stood at the stove, ladle in hand, shoulders tense. Her brows were furrowed in a way that made her look older than she had all week. She was listening to the argument, jaw tight like she was deciding whether to intervene. 

When she noticed the girl in the doorway, her expression softened immediately.

“Hey, [Name],” Mito said gently. “Are you alright?”

Your mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. The words sitting in your throat like stones.

Mito turned fully, concern sharpening. “What is it?”

Your hands clenched around your sleeve feeling your wrist ache where the bruise sat hidden beneath the fabric. 

You swallowed. 

“I need to leave,” you pleaded, voice cracking on the second word. “Please, believe me. I don’t remember anything, but I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

Mito went deathly still.

Outside, a shout flared, then dulled into rapid words again. The argument was moving farther behind the house, as if the boys had stepped deeper into the yard.

Mito’s eyes flicked to the back window, then back to your shivering form. “Why?”

Your hands shook and forced yourself to lift your sleeve just enough to show the bruise. Not all of it. Just enough that it was undeniable.

Mito’s hand lifted to cover her mouth.

It was worse than you remembered. The purple crawling up like a prisoner band around your arm. Tears threatened you, hot and immediate, but you blinked hard, refusing to let them fall. You couldn’t afford to cry right now.

“He tried to hurt me,” you whispered. “I think he stopped because Gon was gonna come back, but I don’t think’ll stay stopped. And Gon keeps me trapped here. He won’t let me talk to anyone. He locks things. He watches me constantly.”

Outside, Gon’s voice rose again, louder now. “She’s coming with us, Killua.”

Killua’s response was sharper, nearly a hiss. “[Name] doesn’t want to.”

Mito’s eyes flashed.

She set her ladle down with careful force, like she was placing a weapon she did not trust herself to hold and took a steadying breath.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” You repeated.

Mito moved at once. Efficient. No wasted motion. She reached for a small bag hanging on a hook by the pantry and shoved it into your trembling hands.

“We don’t have time,” Mito said lowly. “If they come back in here and see you packing, it becomes a fight in my kitchen. I’m not letting it become that.”

Your fingers tightened around the bag. “Where do I go?”

Mito opened a cabinet, pulled out toiletries, and stuffed them in. Grabbed a clean shirt from a laundry basket, then another. Practical things.

“There’s a cargo ship that leaves tonight,” Mito said. “Supply run. I don’t know the destination but it’s a big city. You’ll tell him I sent you.”

Your chest heaved and you could practically taste the freedom.

Mito shoved the last items into the bag and zipped it. Her hands stayed steady. Her face did not.

Mito grabbed your shoulders so you could look at her properly.

“Listen,” Mito said. “Leave through the front. Stay close to the trees. Do not take the main path. If you hear them, do not stop. Do you understand?”

You nodded, tears welling despite yourself. “Why are you helping me?”

Her eyes widened slightly before creasing softly as she smiled.

“Because you asked,” Mito said. “And because you’re scared. And because that bruise did not happen by itself.”

God. Your composure broke. A small, ugly sound escaped you before you could choke it down. So this was what family felt like. 

Mito squeezed your shoulders once, firmly. “Go.”

So you clutched the bag to your chest and moved. 

Wasting no time, you push open the door as quietly as you could and sprint as fast as you can. You could see the dock and the glittering ocean from the house so you choose to hit it at an angle to avoid being spotted from the front of the house. In the dark line of trees, you ran, ducking under branches, breath fogging up the air in front of you. Everything ached and burned, your muscles unused to this strenuous exercise, but you ran barely feeling your feet underneath you, pumped full of adrenaline. 

Wheezing, you dash towards the lights of the dock, heart pounding so violently that you feel it in your throat. Sweat dripped down from your forehead, working to blind you, and every single shadow leapt at you like someone reaching to grab you.

Finally dock lanterns appeared ahead, small pools of warm light puncturing the dark

The cargo ship rocked at the edge of the dock, larger than you expected, its hull looming. Men moved on deck. Ropes creaked. The whole ship groaned like it was already impatient to leave.

You found the captain near the gangplank, a broad shouldered man with a weathered face. He looked up when you approached, gaze flicking over your bag, your tangled hair, your shaking hands.

Your mouth barely worked with the strain of running.

“Mito,” you rasped. “Mito sent me.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed. He looked you over once more, slower this time. His gaze landed on your bruised wrist. 

Then he jerked his chin.

“Get on,” he said.

Your knees almost buckled with relief. 

You climbed the gangplank, fingers locking around the railing. The deck was cold beneath your feet and you realize that you didn’t even have the time to slip on your shoes. Taking in a deep shuddering breath, you let yourself be comforted by the smell of the ocean for the first time. 

The ship lurched.

Not much. Just enough to make the ropes creak and the water shift.

It was moving.

You let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it didn’t crack halfway into a sob. Pressing your knuckles to your mouth, you bite down on them hard enough to keep yourself from making noise.

You couldn’t cry yet…Not until the shoreline is far enough away.

Then a shout cut through the night and your blood turned to ice. 

It was distant, like someone had thrown it across the dock and hit you anyway. You snapped your head toward the shore, fingers whitening around the railing. 

Your eyes twitched as you let out a laugh tinted with hysteria. 

“Fuck me.”

A figure tore out of the darkness like it had been waiting there the whole time.

Gon.

Hair wild, breathing hard enough that his chest visibly heaved even from this distance. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t even trying to.

For a split second, you thought he looked like a completely different person. Like the bright boy who fed you soup and tucked blankets around your shoulders obsessively had been peeled away, leaving something dark and raw underneath.

His eyes swept the dock, then snapped to the ship.

Then you locked eyes.

Gon vaulted onto a lower section of the dock, closer to the water, moving too fast to be normal. His body looked weightless, as if the distance between him and the ship was something he could simply decide not to respect. And you knew he could make the jump too with his superhuman strength.

Killua followed him into the light, a step behind. He moved differently. Sharp. Controlled. But his head was turned the same way, eyes tracking the ship

Gon shouted again, voice tearing through the wind.

You couldn’t catch every word. The ocean ate pieces of it. But you heard your name.

And then you heard something worse.

“Wait!” Gon called, voice cracking on the edge of it. “Wait [Name], don’t go like that!”

Like that.

Without him.

You stumbled backward from the railing, heart hammering, the deck was suddenly too exposed. You pressed herself near stacked cargo crates, your instincts screaming at you to get out of sight.

The captain barked orders. Men moved faster. Rope scraped. The ship creaked as it pulled further away.

Gon reached the dock’s edge and froze for half a heartbeat, eyes darting between the widening gap and your face like his brain was trying to calculate the world into something he could control.

Then he leaned forward, muscles tensing.

He was going to jump.

The realization hit you like a slap. He wasn’t trying to stop you from leaving Aunt Mito’s house or even Whale Island. He was trying to follow you. To keep you within reach. To make sure you didn’t get away from him even if you crossed an ocean.

Then Killua moved, the white of his hair flashing in the moonlight.

He grabbed Gon’s arm and yanked him back hard enough that Gon stumbled, boots scraping concrete. Killua’s mouth moved, words sharp and urgent, but the wind stole them.

Gon twisted, yanking his arm free.

Killua grabbed him again.

This time Gon shoved him off. Not with full force. Not like he was trying to hurt him. Like Killua was an obstacle. Like he was something in the way.

Gon’s head snapped back toward the ship.

Toward you.

His face was open in a way that made your skin crawl.

It wasn’t anger or sadness you saw on him.

It was need.

Like he couldn’t understand why you would run when he had been so good, so gentle, so careful. Like he couldn’t understand why you would choose the unknown over staying in the place he had made for you. Like you were the very air he breathed. 

He shouted again, louder this time, voice strained.

“You’re coming with us!” Gon called. “We’re going to Yorknew! You can come with us!”

Your mouth dropped open at his fucking audacity. You wanted to punch him square in the jaw, but you couldn’t, because the ship lurched again, stronger. Their figures were growing smaller with the distance.

Gon took another step forward.

Killua stepped in front of him and blocked him.

They argued right there at the edge of the dock, voices rising, bodies tight with tension. Killua’s hands were up like he was trying to hold back a wild animal. Gon’s hands clenched and unclenched like he couldn’t decide whether to push past him or drag him out of the way.

You watched Gon’s gaze flick to Killua for a split second.

Impatient.

Then back to you again, immediate, consuming. The world narrowed down to that look.

…So you threw him the middle finger.

For a heartbeat, Gon looked hurt by it. Like your defiance did not fit anywhere in his head, like it cracked something he had been holding together with that bright, innocent smile. His mouth parted slightly. His eyes went wide, confused, almost broken.

Then his expression changed.

His gaze sharpened, tight and hungry, like you had just proven you were real and now he knew could not stand the idea of losing you. You could no longer make out their expressions. Their bodies were only silhouettes in lantern light, two figures at the edge of the dock.

But you still saw it.

Killua turned his head, white hair catching your eye just once, and his sharp cat eyes found you across the water.

It was not anger but it was a look that made your stomach drop anyway. Quiet. Conflicted. Pulling at you like a hand you could not feel. Then he looked away, jaw tightening, and the dock shrank into darkness as the ocean carried you farther and farther out.

MC curse works by the time the other person touches her, the amount of exposed skin in contact, and the strength of the person's willpower! When Gon saved her from drowning, they were in contact skin to skin for a looong time, so he is a lot more affected by her despite his willpower. Killua, on the other hand, only touched her for a few seconds on the wrist. 

Curse develops from a small, pure kind of pull towards obsessive tendencies- though how they express it depends on the person. 

Until you looked up and saw him. 

Killua had sat across the room, quietly, startling blue eyes fixed on you with a coldness that made your throat constrict. He was devastatingly attractive, you weren’t able to clearly comprehend that last night with how terrified you were, but you saw it now. The way his white hair caught the light, and how his eyes narrowed like a cat's. But none of that matters when all you wanted to do was run away from him. You already knew he was pissed from how he had to sleep in the living room with Gon since they had to surrender the room to you. 

However, the deadly look he gave you was much more than that. His glare told you bright and clear, that you being here was a complete mistake, and that he wished you hadn’t survived the night. 

This had completely contrasted Gon when he barreled into the room like sunlight.

“Good morning, [Name]!”

Your shoulders had jerked at how bright he sounded, how he said your name, like he’d been waiting all night to use it again. Before you could even reply, the questions flooded out, one after another. 

Did you sleep okay? Does your head still hurt? Are you hungry? Do you feel dizzy? Do you… remember anything?

You answered warily while Aunt Mito worked on your injuries, trying to keep your voice steady, trying to ignore the way he hovered too close, like the space between you, however small, was something he didn’t know how to tolerate. It made your skin prickle, with the same quiet unease you’d felt the moment he caught you. You remembered how he’d practically guided you back to bed the night before after giving you some of Mito’s clothes to wear. It was all reassurance and gentle hands, ignoring how every time you tried to push past him toward the door he’d had another excuse ready.

Not yet. You’re hurt. Later. Rest.

You told yourself you were imagining it. That you were overreacting. That the creak of the floorboards and the way the house seemed to hush whenever you moved only felt louder because you were scared.

But fear didn’t explain the way Killua’s gaze sharpened every time Gon got too close.

And it didn’t explain the way Gon never seemed to notice he was doing it at all.

It started small.

A cup of water placed into your hands before you could ask for it. A blanket tucked tighter around your shoulders even when you didn’t feel cold. A chair pulled out for you at the table like you might collapse if you stood too long. Little things that could have been kindness if they hadn’t happened with such urgency, as if he couldn’t stand the idea of you being out of his reach for even a second.

The worst part: he smiled the whole time.

So bright. Innocent. Like a boy excited about a new friend.

It drove you absolutely crazy, because logically, wasn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Someone always there for you, a person for yourself. It should’ve been everything you desired.

Instead it made your skin crawl.

Because instinctively you knew it was different. His actions were urgent. Possessive in a way he never acknowledged. It was like the moment you slipped out of his sight, something in him panicked and had to pull you back in again. You wouldn’t go as far as to call it love—honestly, you weren’t sure you knew what that was supposed to feel like—but this obsessive hovering over your every need, every want, could almost convince you of it. And it scared you. Because this concept was so foreign and the fact was that you’ve only known them for less than a week. 

And he was already acting like you belonged here.

You couldn’t even tell if you were overreacting or if Aunt Mito was just blind.

Once she finished patching you up on the first day, you had tried to sit up, tried to grab onto that normalcy like a lifeline.

“Ma’am,” you started, voice hoarse. “I need to go. I don’t know where I am and I can’t remember anything and I think-”

Gon had moved before you could finish. Not aggressively or forcefully. He simply stepped into the space between you and her with that same easy smile.

“She’s still dizzy,” Gon said quickly. “Aunt Mito, can you help her rest first? She almost fainted again.”

You blinked, stunned by how smoothly he spoke over you. Mito’s face creased with concern. “Oh honey, of course. Don’t worry, you can tell me everything when you feel better.”

You opened your mouth again.

Gon placed a cup of water he was holding a little closer to your lips, coaxing, almost playful. “Drink first, [Name]. It’ll help with your confusion.”

Your fingers brushed his as he placed it in your hands.Skin on skin for the briefest moment. A faint tingle sparked through your fingertips. Not painful, not exactly, but strange enough to make your breath hitch.

Gon went still.

His gaze flicked down to your hands like he hadn’t expected to feel anything at all. Then the stillness broke, and he smiled even wider, almost laughing, like he’d just remembered he was supposed to act normal.

“There,” he said gently, as if you hadn’t noticed the pause. “See. Better already.”

You stared at him.

He looked so harmless and it made it so much worse.

Across the kitchen, Killua watched.

He did not smile.

✦

Over the next few days, you learned the shape of the house in the way a trapped animal learns the shape of a cage.

It was not small. It was not grimy or cruel. It was filled with sunlit corners and a familiar sort of clutter. A folded stack of dish towels. Fishing gear leaned against a wall. A framed photo of a younger Gon, grinning too wide, holding a fish slippery and triumphant.

It should have made you feel calmer. Instead, it made you feel insane. Because every time you tried to step toward the front door, Gon appeared. 

“Oh, you’re up,” he would say, cheerful, stepping into your path with easy timing. “Did you eat? Aunt Mito made breakfast.”

Or, “Wait, where are you going? The floor outside is kinda slippery since it rained last night.” Or, “We should go together. You’re still hurt.”

Always together. Always inside the house.

And whenever you looked past him toward the road that led away from the house, toward the faint hint of civilization beyond the trees, he would tilt his head and smile like he didn’t understand why you would want anything else. 

“You can leave when you feel better,” he promised.

You did not believe him. 

You kept trying anyway.

One afternoon you found Mito in the kitchen alone, humming as she stirred something in a pot. The sunlight made her look softer, orange hair almost golden, and the sight of her steadiness made your chest ache.

You stepped closer, heart hammering. “Aunt Mito, can I talk to you?”

She turned, smiling. “Of course. How are you feeling today?”

You swallowed. Your hands trembled at your sides. “I need help. I don’t remember anything and I need to go home. I need to call someone.”

Mito’s smile faltered, concern knitting her brows. “Oh honey, of course we can”

“She’s still confused,” Gon said from behind you.

You spun.

He stood in the doorway with a basket of laundry in his arms, as if he’d been there the whole time, Killua trailing behind like a shadow. Gon’s expression was bright, almost apologetic, like he didn’t mean to interrupt.

But his eyes were fixed on you.

Not Mito.

You.

“I’m not confused,” you snapped, voice sharp with desperation. “I know I want to leave.”

Gon blinked. For a second, something unreadable flickered behind his eyes, like a muscle twitch you weren’t supposed to see.

Then he smiled again.

“Yeah,” he said gently. “I know. But you’re still weak. Let’s talk later, okay?”

He stepped closer.

You took a step back on instinct.

He reached out with one hand and touched your shoulder. 

Another tiny spark, like static on dry skin.

Gon’s breath caught.

His other hand tightened on the laundry basket, white knuckled for a heartbeat, and his eyes went unfocused for half a second, like something warm and dizzy rolled through him. Pleasure, quick and sharp, crossing his expression before he could hide it.

Then he blinked hard and laughed, too light.

“Sorry,” he said, as if embarrassed by nothing at all. “Come on. I’ll show you the ocean. It’ll make you feel better.”

The ocean.

He said it like it was a gift.

Like it wasn’t also a boundary.

Mito watched the exchange with a fondness that made your stomach sink.

“He really likes you,” she said quietly, more to herself than to you. “He hasn’t had a new friend besides Killua in a while.”

Your throat tightened. You wanted to say, he’s not being friendly. You wanted to say, please listen to me. But Gon’s hand appeared on your elbow, gentle and insistent, steering you away before you could open your mouth again.

“Let’s go,” he said, bright. “Aunt Mito, we’ll be back soon.”

You looked over your shoulder as he guided you out, trying to catch her eyes, trying to beg without words.

Mito only smiled and waved.

✦

He did show you the ocean.

He showed you everything on the island that felt like it belonged to him.

The shoreline where the sand was soft and pale. The rocks where the tide pooled into little shining mirrors. The places where crabs hid and little fish flickered beneath the surface.

He talked the entire time, voice full of easy excitement, pointing out shells, telling stories about things he did as a kid. He told you about his dad, how he left to become a hunter. His dream of finding him. Becoming a great hunter. 

You didn’t understand a thing he said, but you tried to enjoy it.

You tried to breathe.

It would have been beautiful if you weren’t constantly aware of the way he kept you angled away from the paths that led toward town.

If you weren’t constantly aware that whenever someone’s voice drifted faintly from a distance, Gon would step a little closer to you.If you weren’t constantly aware that he found excuses to touch you, like he couldn’t stop himself.

A hand at your back when you stepped over a rock.Fingers around your wrist when you swayed. His palm on your forehead, checking if you were warm, lingering one second too long. Every time, the same pattern. A pause. A breath hitch. A flicker of something sweet crossing his face before he plastered his smile back on. As if he didn’t understand what he was feeling, only that he wanted it again. And the longer he touched you, the worse it got. Not obvious. Not like he suddenly turned into a different person. 

More like he forgot to look away.

More like he forgot to listen when Killua spoke.

More like he started making decisions around you without even realizing he was doing it.

Killua noticed.

Killua always noticed.

“You’re babysitting,” Killua snapped one morning when Gon refused to go fishing with him. “Since when do you care about babysitting?”

Gon barely looked up. “She can’t be alone yet.”

“She’s fine,” Killua said, eyes cutting to you sharply. “She can walk. She can talk. She can leave.”

Gon’s smile stayed in place, but the air changed.

“No,” he said.

The single word was quiet. Flat.

Killua blinked as if he hadn’t heard right.

Then his annoyance flared into something darker. “No what?”

Gon’s eyes lifted to meet his. His expression stayed innocent, still bright, still Gon.

But his gaze didn’t budge.

“She’s not leaving yet,” he said, and then he added quickly, like he was fixing a mistake, “Until she feels better.”

Killua stared at him.

You had never seen him look genuinely rattled before, but something in his face tightened, jaw clenching like it hurt.

“This is stupid,” Killua muttered, voice sharp. “You’re being stupid.”

Gon laughed like it was a joke. “I’m not.”

Killua’s eyes slid to you again, cold and simmering. “This is because of her.”

Your stomach turned.

You tried to speak but it came out as a squeak. “I didn’t-”

Killua cut you off with a glare and Gon stepped closer to you without thinking, shoulder nearly brushing yours.

“Hey,” Gon said lightly, like he was calming a tense dog. “Don’t be mean.”

Killua’s hands curled into fists.

You saw the moment the rift began, thin as a hairline crack, but real.

✦

The days passed.

A week, maybe.

Time blurred into meals and restless sleep and careful, suffocating outings that always ended before you reached anyone else.

You kept trying to talk to Mito. Gon kept redirecting you. You kept trying to get to the road. Gon kept smiling and offering a different route, a different plan, a different distraction.

Killua’s anger grew sharper with each day.

It began as annoyance.Then it became resentment.Then it became something that looked too much like hatred. He started causing trouble in small ways first. He “accidentally” knocked over your cup at breakfast and didn’t apologize. He “forgot” to tell you the floor was wet and watched you slip with a thin smile. He left your shoes outside in the rain.

Little cruelties. Testing. Waiting to see if Gon would choose you over him again.

He did. Every. Single.Time.

And every time Gon chose you, Killua’s eyes went a little colder.

One afternoon, Mito handed Gon a metal box, she looked at it like something she’d kept tucked away for years.

“This is something Ging left with me,” she said, voice serious. “He told me to give it to you when you became a hunter.”

Gon’s eyes lit up immediately. “Ging?”

Even Killua straightens where he’s been lounging against the wall, his bored expression sharpening into interest. Stalking over to his best friend, they immediately start inspecting and discussing what to do with it using words like “Nen” or “Hunter” that completely go over your head, like another reminder that you’re an outsider in a house you never asked to enter.

Then Gon looked at you, smiling bright. “I’m going to figure out how to open this with Killua in my room, it's from my dad! Want to watch?”

You forced a smile that didn’t reach your eyes. “I want to go home.”

Gon blinked, as if the sentence didn’t fit into his world.

Then he smiled again, soft and soothing. “Later.”

Always later.

That afternoon, you sat in his room anyway, while he sat on the floor bickering with Killua, turning it, brow furrowed in concentration. You sat on the bed, watching them and watching the door and trying to plan an escape that never seemed to work.

They activate the box, somehow, with this strange pressure that falls over the room, and listen to the cassette tape that Ging had recorded. Eventually, they figure that they need a Joystation to activate the little game card inside the box.

“I’ll go tomorrow morning,” Gon says immediately, decisive in that blunt Gon way that doesn’t leave room for argument. “Killua, you should stay home.” The white haired boy only scowled. 

You swallow hard, heart pounding. “Can I come?”

Gon looks up at you and his smile is instant. 

“Next time,” he says again, like he’s soothing you. Like he’s promising you something he doesn’t realize he’s never going to give.

Always next time.

Killua sat near the window, silent, eyes half lidded like a cat pretending to sleep.

You could feel his anger like heat.

✦

The next day, Gon left the house to go to the only game store in town. 

He hovered in the doorway for too long before he went.

His eyes kept flicking to you sitting on the couch, lingering. His smile looked strained, like he didn’t like the idea of being away from you even for an hour.

“I’ll be back,” he said again.

You nodded, heart pounding with something you hated admitting. Relief. But also terror. Because the moment the door clicked shut behind him, the house felt different. Quieter.

Not just because he was loud, but because his presence filled space in a way you didn’t notice until it was gone. The floorboards stop creaking. The air stops shifting. Even the sunlight through the windows feels thinner, like the island itself is holding its breath. You knew Killua was watching you. But you also knew he disliked you being here. Maybe he would let you leave.

So you try to take advantage of it anyway.

You get up slowly, ignoring his piercing cat-like stare, and head for the front door with your heart pounding like it’s trying to escape first.

Your fingers barely brush the knob before a voice slides through the room.

“And where are you going?”

You freeze.

Killua stared at you. His expression is blank in that infuriating way, like your panic is boring. Like he’s already decided how this ends and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.

“I’m leaving,” you say, forcing the words out before your courage can shrink. “I don’t belong here.”

Killua’s eyes flick over you once, quick and sharp, like he’s measuring distance. Like he’s calculating.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

He pushes off the wall. He doesn’t rush. He doesn’t need to.

He takes one step and somehow he’s closer than he should be, the space between you shrinking too fast for your brain to track properly. Your stomach drops. Instinct screams at you to run, but the hallway behind you suddenly feels too narrow and the door in front of you feels too far.

“You’re the reason he’s acting like this,” Killua says, voice flat.

“I didn’t do anything,” you whisper, throat tight. “I’m trying to get away from you guys.”

Killua’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile. More like irritation.

“Then do it,” he says, and his gaze hardens. “Except you can’t, because he won’t let you.”

A cold shiver runs down your spine.

Killua lifts his hand, the back of it facing you, fingers loose at first like he’s just going to grab you and toss you outside.

Then his hand flexes.

You hear it before you fully see it, a faint scrape, like something sharp dragging against air.

His nails lengthen.

Thin, pointed, clean, like blades he doesn’t need to pull from anywhere because they’ve always been part of him. 

Your breath catches, this was completely supernatural and you didn’t know how to react besides fucking piss youself in fear. 

Killua watches your face with the patience of someone who’s done this before.

“You should’ve left earlier,” he says quietly. “Before he got weird.”

Your back bumps the door and there’s nowhere to go.

“I tried!” You almost scream, and your hands raise without meaning to, palms out in a useless, trembling defense. “Please—”

“Don’t,” Killua cuts in, sharper than a blade. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what,” you choke.

“Act like you’re helpless,” he says, and his nails gleam again as he flexes them. “It’s fucking annoying.”

Your heart slams against your ribs. Your eyes sting. Your body is shaking so badly you can feel it in your teeth.

Killua takes another step. His shadow swallows your feet and you realize that you cannot hear his steps. 

“I’m going to fix this,” he says as if he were talking to you about the weather.

Your lungs seize.

Fix this?

Yeah you were gonna die. 

He raises his hand and you squeeze your teary eyes shut and waited for the pain.

It didn’t come.

Instead, the air shifted, and you felt Killua stop so abruptly it was almost like he hit an invisible wall.

You tentatively opened your eyes.

His right hand was millimeters away from your throat, just far enough to avoid drawing blood. 

But his other hand had snapped out, grabbing your wrist.

Skin on skin.

Killua’s breath hitched violently, like he’d inhaled water. His eyes widened a fraction, and his grip tightened for a heartbeat, not in aggression, but rather a reflex, as if his body wanted more of whatever that was. His eyes fluttered shut for the briefest moment and his right hand dipped from your throat, giving you some time to breathe. He looked absolutely sickened.

Then he yanked his hand away like touching you burned him. His chest rose and fell fast, like he’d run a mile. For a second, his face looked wild. And you knew it was because he was scared of what he’d felt.

“What,” he hissed, teeth clenched. “What the fuck was that?”

Your pulse roared in your ears. You stared at where his hand held yours, your fingers tingling, your skin buzzing like static.

“I don’t know,” you whispered. You were so mad at yourself for being this weak, unable to do anything, susceptible to all of their whims because if you didn’t, the fact is that you would die. 

“Disgusting,” he spat, lifting his hand to your neck once more. 

Your breath stopped and you wanted to slap yourself. Fantastic! Of course the moment you think about dying you are going to die again. 

But Killua’s hand trembled.

His jaw clenched so hard you could see the muscle jump.

He didn’t move.

He couldn’t.

The silence stretched, tight and unbearable.

Then, in one sharp motion, Killua lowered the blades of his nails. He turned his head away, as if looking at you was the same as being touched.

“Get out of my sight,” he said, voice low and furious.

But you couldn’t, your legs were shaking too hard.

Killua took a step back, then another, like he was forcing distance between you and him. His eyes flicked to your wrist again, to the spot where his fingers had been. His expression twisted, like he hated that his hand remembered the sensation.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said quietly, his eyes burning. Then he turned and walked away fast, footsteps silent on the wooden floor.

He didn’t look back.

You slid down the wall slowly, breath coming in shallow, trembling bursts. Your wrist still tingled.

Outside, the sound of the ocean drifted faintly through the trees, steady and indifferent. And somewhere out there, Gon was coming back.You didn’t know which thought was worse. That Killua had wanted to kill you.

Or that for a moment, he hadn’t been able to. 

And you still had no idea why.

You freeze, trying to make sense of your surroundings- or the best that you can while battling your nausea. The sheets beneath you were rough, as if they had been washed one too many times. In your memory, however, you had just bought new sheets a month ago.  In confusion, you shifted around, trying to touch your surroundings, and felt a sharp, stinging sensation across your body. There were scratches and burns littered all about your skin, and you realized that you hadn't noticed them because they were cancelled out by the throbbing in your head and stomach. Basically, you were in pain everywhere. 

But that wasn't even the main deal. 

Now that your eyes have fully adjusted, you could make out that nothing in this room was familiar to you. You weren't home. 

You whimper, your heartbeat rapidly speeding up, and nausea washes over you once more like a tidal wave. You couldn't understand how you could possibly end up in a stranger's room, especially since you had lost your memories. You didn't drink at all, so a blackout was out of the question...

Unless you were forced to. 

Oh, you felt like throwing up again. Shuddering gasps racked your body as you gripped the blanket covering you. With last night's events blanking on you, you felt you could only come to one conclusion. 

You were kidnapped.

Maybe even drugged.

And there would be no one caring enough to come to your rescue. 

Hot tears welled in your eyes as your lungs continued to grasp for air. Until this point, you’ve never felt more desperate- if there was anyone you could count on, maybe you wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

But you were alone. So you needed to escape. 

Your eyes shakily locked onto the curtained window next to the door, and you threw your legs off the bed. The moment you tried to stand, however, the lightheadedness made you stagger forward, and your knees and palms collided with the hardwood floor. You gagged as bile rushed up your throat from the impact, and you paused to recollect your swirling vision. 

Move. Move!

You push yourself to stand, grabbing the bedframe with nails biting into wood, steadying yourself with shallow breaths. You take one step. Then another. 

Your muscles burn as if you haven't used them in weeks. Each motion makes your stomach violently lurch, but the pain is almost helpful. It keeps you awake and away from dizziness. 

However, just as you were within reach of the curtain, the door swung open and harshly collided with the wall, the impact even shaking the room. 

You inhaled sharply in terror and averted your eyes. The trembling causing your knees to give out beneath you. 

“Wha-woah watch out!” 

As you dropped like a weight towards the floor, lean arms suddenly encircled around your waist, hoisting you back up onto your feet with their support. 

Feeling entirely numb, you failed to notice the shivers passing through their body as your bare skin pressed against theirs. Skin on skin where your sleeve had ridden up. 

You tremble fearfully in his tight grip, but the person only readjusted their grip and tenderly lifted you up into a bridal carry. You flinched and looked upwards towards their face in surprise. Why would someone who supposedly kidnapped you treat you with such kindness? 

Warm light from outside the room shone on his outline with a warm yellow. Boyish brown eyes look down at you, wide and earnest, like you've startled him more than he's startled you. His muscles ripple as he unconsciously adjusts you in his grip, pressing your cold, bare arms closer to his warm ones. His lightly tanned skin was striking against the white tank he wore; you could tell it was the kind of tan that came from living near the sun and sea. Messy dark green hair sticks up in a stubborn way that should look ridiculous, but somehow makes him look cute.  His lips part as if he's about to say something, then close again, like he's choosing his words. 

For a second, he just... stares. 

Not blankly. Not cruelly. 

Almost like he wants to make sure you're real. 

"You're awake," he says softly, and something in his voice makes your chest tighten. It was the relief, so obvious, like he's been waiting for this. "Hey, it's okay. You're okay."

You don't feel okay.

You feel like prey. 

Your eyes dart to the door behind him, to the bright hallway beyond. Your lungs pull in air too fast, too shallow. 

And he notices. Of course he does. 

He tightens his grip around you reflexively, like your fear triggers something in him that he can't control. Then, just as quickly, he loosens his grip, clearing his throat like he's embarrassed. 

"Sorry," he blurts, too quickly, and he sets you down while maintaining his grip on you. "You almost fell." 

A lie. 

"Where-" Your voice cracks, and you swallow. "Where am I?" 

The boy blinks, then smiles wider, as if the answer is simple, harmless. 

"Whale island," he says, like it should mean something to you. "My aunt's house. You're safe here." 

The name slides off your brain without catching. The only part your mind clings to is my aunt’s house, because it doesn’t sound like something a kidnapper would say.

Unless it’s a lie.

You flinch at the thought, and his brows knit together immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, leaning in without meaning to. The movement brings your bodies closer, skin brushing against your forearm, and—

His breath stutters.

It’s subtle, but you feel it. A sharp inhale, as his lungs seize for a heartbeat. His eyes flick down to where your skin touched his, then snap back up to your face too fast. His cheeks flush faintly. 

You don't understand what it means, but your fear spikes anyway. You didn't understand anything. Why this wildly attractive boy was holding you, why you were here, where the fuck whale island was. You didn't understand anything, and that drove you crazy. 

"I'm Gon," he says, and his smile returns in a puppy-like way. "Do you... remember your name or how you got here?" 

"...[Name]," you say nervously. "But I don't remember how I got here." 

The moment you say that, the panic starts up again, and you feel dizzy. Gon's expression falters for a fraction of a second, too quick to be noticed by you, and as soon as it was there, it was replaced by warmth. 

“That’s okay,” he says quickly. “That’s okay. Aunt Mito said you might be confused when you woke up.”

Aunt Mito.

An adult. A witness. A person who might help.

Your gaze darts past him again, towards the curtain you were reaching for. Towards the window. The thought of sunlight, people, noise, anything that isn’t this room, makes your chest flutter.

“I—” you rasp, and your throat tightens. “I need to go.”

Gon freezes, and his bright smile tightens at the edges. “Not yet,” he says, too fast.

Then he catches himself, softens his voice. “You can barely stand. You’re hurt. You’ll fall again.”

“I don’t know you,” you whisper. The words come out quieter than you want them to. They sound pathetic.

Gon’s eyes widen a little. He looks, for one terrifying second, like he’s about to argue with you. Then his expression shifts again, and you don’t know which version of him is real.

“I know,” he says, softer. “I know you don’t. But you’re safe here, I promise.”

“Why am I here?” you ask, voice shaking. “How did I get here?”

Gon answers immediately, like he’s rehearsed the story in his head enough times that it’s become smooth.

“We found you in the water,” he says. “At the bay. You were drowning. You weren’t waking up, so I brought you here.”

Drowning. Your eyes flick down to the burns on your arm. Water doesn’t do that.

“How—” you start, and your head throbs so hard your vision blurs again. You sway in his arms without meaning to, nausea surging. Instinctively, you grab at him for balance, and your fingers catch his wrist.

Bare skin on bare skin.

The reaction is instant. A visible shiver runs through him, like a ripple passing under his skin. His grip tightens for a heartbeat, not rough, but possessive in a way that makes your stomach twist. His breath hitches, and his eyes flutter closed for the briefest moment, like he’s bracing against something sweet and overwhelming.

Then he pulls his wrist away like he’s burned.

Too late.

His gaze locks onto your hand, then your face, pupils slightly blown in the dim light. His lips part, and for a moment he looks… dazed. Not drunk or sleepy, but like he’s been struck by something he can’t name. He blinks rapidly, as if clearing his head, and forces his smile back into place. It doesn’t sit right anymore.

“Sorry,” he says, voice a little uneven. “You’re just— you’re really shaky.”

You stare at him, heart racing. Your fingers tingle where you touched him, but you don’t know why.

You don’t know anything.

The silence stretches tight between you, filled with your ragged breathing and the faint noises coming from outside the room. 

Then footsteps pound down the hallway.

A second figure emerges from the light, his bright white hair catching your eye. Blue eyes snap towards you, and you flinch. They were so cold, completely the opposite of Gon, and they shone in an annoyance and indifference that you've known all your life. His eyes flick away from you towards Gon, and his expression sours. 

“What happened?” he demands, scowling, “You rushed into the house as if it caught on fire just for this?”

Docile with fear, you could only look away to avoid his cold glare, instinctively moving closer to Gon's warmth. To which the green-haired boy shuddered in response. Killua only narrows his eyes sharply at this scene and barks, "Gon!" 

Gon jolts slightly, like he forgot anyone else existed. “She woke up,” he says.

The white-haired boy’s gaze flicks over you quickly, assessing. Then it cuts back to Gon, narrowing.

“You’re acting weird,” he says flatly.

“I’m not,” Gon replies all too fast.

The boy steps further into the room, eyes landing on the way Gon’s arms are positioned, your shivering form, the way his best friend's fingers keep flexing like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

He scowls. “Whatever. Is she hurt?”

You swallow, throat tight. Your voice comes out small. “Let me go.”

The white-haired boy’s eyes snap to you, cold and impatient. “Where’s ‘go’?”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes. No address. No memories of any names or numbers, despite the fact that you remember it existed. Your stomach drops all over again.

Gon speaks before you can even breathe. “She doesn’t remember,” he says smoothly, too smooth. “She probably hit her head.”

The white-haired boy’s eyes narrow, like he doesn’t like how quickly that answer came.

“Probably,” he repeats slowly. 

Gon smiles at you again, bright and careful, like he’s trying to keep you calm. “My aunt will be back soon. She’ll help you, okay? You just need to rest.”

Rest.

In a stranger’s bed, in a stranger’s clothes, with two strangers here, and one watching you like you’re something they dragged home. You wanted to scream, scream about how fucking unfair this was to you. But you say nothing. 

Your pulse pounds in your ears. You glance toward the window again.

Gon’s eyes follow your gaze. His arms tighten a fraction. Not enough to hurt, but enough to make you feel it.

And you don’t know why the thought that hits you next is the scariest one yet.

He might actually believe he’s helping you.

And that might not matter at all.

However, the closer you got, the more Gon started to realize that you were in fact not a star- but rather a human girl. A human girl that was very much on fire.

...Cool!

He smiled excitedly, just about to point it out to his silver haired friend seated next to him. However as his brain processed what he had just saw, Gon realized with a jolt that... humans usually weren't supposed to be on fire, were they? 

Well shit.

Gon's smile dropped nervously, “Killua-” 

Apparently the cat eyed boy had registered that fact around the same time he had because they both bolted upwards in newfound urgency. 

The boy frowned, seemingly more annoyed that his time relaxing with his best friend was disturbed rather than concerned for the girl who was about to land in the ocean.

“Yeah I saw, let's hurry then.” 

.

They arrived at the bay just in time to see you collide into the glittering waters with an explosion of vapors. 

Besides him, Killua swore lightly under his breath and scowled, "Gon, you go and I'll stay here to assist when you get her on shore."

Gon nodded without hesitation and sprinted into the water. 

Waves nipped at his body as he submerged, causing him to shiver slightly. 

Not from the cold, but rather an eerie feeling tugging at the back of his head, telling him to stay away. 

Something was wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Gon thinned out his lips, choosing to ignore his gut due to the urgent situation. There was no time. He immediately kicked toward the spot where he saw you land. There was an uncomfortable stinging in his eyes from the salt water as he pushed further underwater but the adrenaline kept him going. 

When he was sure that he had arrived in the right spot, Gon let his eyes adjust to the darkness.  And it wasn't long before he noticed a blurry figure in the water. Eyes fully adjusted, he let out a light gasp, air bubbles frantically floating towards the surface.

Blue-tinted moonlight that dipped beneath the waves caressed your skin in such a way that it left him mesmerized. There were several scratches and burn marks that littered your body, not severe enough to explain how you had fallen, but just enough to make his chest tighten unknowingly.

Oh- you were still drowning. And sinking.

Snapping out of his daze, he lunged forward, stretching his arms towards your figure in order to pull you towards him. However, as soon as Gon's skin made contact with yours, a tiny electric shock pulsed through him and he froze. The foreign sensation felt suffocating but just as pleasurable- like something he would want to be exposed to over and over again. Almost like a drug.

An addiction. 

Gon let his eyes flicker closed for a moment as he recollected himself. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion- god just what was happening to him?

His grip on you tightened. Whatever that was, whatever you were, none of it mattered right now.

There was no time to spare, and he needed to get you to shore. Fast. 

.

The first thing Killua noticed was the difference in Gon's demeanor. 

He waded onto the shore, delicately carrying your limp body in his arms. Nothing too strange except for the fact that this was Gon. Not the first one that comes to mind when thinking of the word 'delicate'. 

However, the most ridiculous thing was the way he kept looking at your face with that weird look in his eyes, as if he were scared the moment he turned away, you would vanish. C'mon now, the girl was unconscious!

Killua frowned in annoyance. 

It was definitely small enough that most people probably wouldn't be able to notice, but this was his best friend you were talking about- his only friend. 

"Hey," Killua sighed, feeling obligated to help out in some way, "want me to carry her instead? Since you're wet and stuff." 

Instead of answering, though, Gon only brushed past him with a tiny smile on his face. 

"Nah, I got it. Let's bring her back to Aunt Mito's house so she can rest." 

The whole time he spoke, he had yet to spare Killua a single glance. 

The silver-haired boy raised an eyebrow at his strange actions, annoyance circulating through his system. But he said nothing in retaliation as his friend trekked uphill towards the house. 

It would be fine, he thought, it's just a girl. Once you were healed up or whatever, everything would be back to normal. 

Besides, he could always just get rid of you if you proved to be a problem. 

Gon would choose him over you anyway. 

Right?

Why were you always the one your friends forgot to invite when they made plans?- when they hung out? Why were you always the one that sat quietly in the corner of the group while everyone else talked and laughed?

Whenever this happened, a cold yet burning sense of loneliness would creep up from the pit of your stomach and clench tightly at your throat.

Yet no matter how bad it got, in the end, you would always come to the conclusion that you would prefer to surround yourself with people who didn't care about you rather than none at all. 

And that was... normal, right? 

╚══《✧》══╝

"...So everyone got the information, right?" A girl with bleached streaks in her hair- Sara- says, "I sent the dinner plans and stuff in the group chat."

What group chat? 

You wanted to speak out but somebody else's voice beat you to it, "Should be it. I invited everyone in our group." 

What about me? Am I not a part of the group?

It was during lunch break between your classes when they brought up some 'plan' to go out for dinner. Apparently something that everyone in your group had been talking about for a long time; it was also something you've never heard about up until now. 

"Um," Pulling out your phone, you swiped at your messages and frowned slightly, "I don't think I'm in it?" 

Nobody answered your question. 

Feeling awkward that no one heard you, you turned back to face your lunch quietly. Then one of your 'friends'- someone that has never talked to you before called out and pointed at you, "I think she said something earlier." 

This time, they all turned to face you boredly. You snapped your head up, a bit surprised at the mention of your name. "Oh- I just said that I don't think that I'm in the group chat you were talking about before." 

"Huh." Sara raised a delicate eyebrow and glanced absently at her phone, "Oops my bad, guess I missed 'ya. I'll add you later... um- oh [Y/N]." 

Shit... You felt sick to your stomach.

And you weren't sure why. Perhaps it was because of the frustration building up inside of you that they kept on forgetting about you, and that you actually had to remind them yourself in order to be recognized. Or... it could've just been because you ate something bad.

Thankfully, instead of puking your guts out in front of everyone, you pushed down any brewing nausea and merely nodded. At that, they all turned back to their own conversations, losing interest in whatever you had to say afterwards. 

The rest of lunch continued the same way as usual- you sat at the corner while people around you talked. Of course it wasn't like you never tried to join in on their conversations, but whenever you tried, they either just blatantly ignored your words or straight up said it was private. 

Screw them then, you thought bitterly while twinges of annoyance and loneliness pricked needles at your chest, who needs them when I have myself? 

But you knew you were lying.

It was almost funny to you that the times you felt the most lonely were when you were surrounded by others. You gnawed at your lower lip, feeling white hot tears gather in the corners of your eyes, vision growing blurry by the second.

No one noticed you crying. Of course they wouldn't notice. Why would they ever bother with someone like you. Someone so... so invisible.

Fuck. You wondered if they would even care if you even died.

You bit at your lip harder, and bit, and bit, and bit, and bit. Until you could taste the tang of iron on your tongue. 

Drops of tears slipped down your cheeks as you licked the wound gingerly.

...Ah, your stomach started to hurt again.

╚══《✧》══╝

When you pushed open your front door, you were greeted with the smell of chinese takeout and light murmurs in the kitchen. From your parents presumably. What a surprise.

They were nice people you supposed, worked nine to fives, and were too busy to pay you much attention. The usual. Often more than not, they would go overseas on business trips for months at a time and leave you alone in the house with enough allowance to survive. You knew you couldn't blame them for it, they were busy providing for you, for the family. But... still, you couldn't help but resent them a little that you couldn't even find the solace of company in your own home.

You sighed and slid off your shoes on the doormat outside. At least one advantage of rich parents was that you didn't have to live in the dorms since your house was close to your college campus. 

Hopefully your eyes were no longer swollen.

"Welcome home..."  You muttered.

Noticing the living room lights were turned off, you flicked them on and walked towards the dining room. Your parents were at the dinner table talking about something you couldn't bother to understand. They must've started dinner without you. At the sight of your entrance, your mother glanced at you in acknowledgment before turning back to your father. 

You sat quietly on your side of the table with a plate of food.

After a few minutes of eating in silence, your father cut off the conversation and turned to you, "So, how were your classes?" 

Why were they trying to play parents now, especially when they never bothered to contact you about your life during the long months they were gone before?

You curtly replied and stabbed a fork into your food. "Fine." 

He raised an eyebrow at your short answer, "What about your friends? How's it going with them?"

Stop pushing. Leave me alone. Don't talk like you know me.

"Fine."

Your mother furrowed her eyebrows, "Watch your tone at the dinner table, [Name]." 

"What tone." you scowled at your plate. Feeling angry and bitter, you allowed yourself to project your buried emotions onto them. Stop hounding me, leave me the hell alone like you've always have. "I said, like, two words." 

Your mother frowned and put down her utensils on her plate, "[Name], what's going on with you? You don't usually act... like this." 

Like... this? She's got to be joking.

Without much thought, you narrowed your eyes and scoffed, "What would you know? You're never around to know what I act like anyway."

You froze at the same time your parents did. Instantly you look away to stop yourself from seeing their expressions, guilt biting at your conscience. 

At the back of your head, you knew what you had just said was incredibly selfish... but were you really wrong though? They, as the parental figures in your life, should be around to support you at your lowest moments, to help you grow- all they left you was a cold empty home and the ghost of a once happy family. 

Your father slammed his hands on the table and rose to his feet. 

"[Name] [Last name]!" 

Hearing him yell just made you feel more and more repressed. Your face grew hot and your nose started to burn as you desperately tried to push the frustrated tears back inside.

You stood up to match his stance and threw your hands up in exasperation, "What?! You knowthat I'm not wrong! You leave for months at a time and you never even bother to contact me- " Feeling your throat constrict with emotion, you choke slightly on your words, "Sometimes, I just wish- that I had different parents. Parents that'd actually care about me."

From what you could see in your blurry peripheral vision, you saw your mother's face go slack. Gritting your teeth, you continued, "Seeing how you're never here, you must really not want to see my face-" 

"[Name] you know that's not-"

"I don't know anything! You won't fucking talk to me!" 

Gasps come out in short breaths and you feel pins and needles in your body. The same tears come pouring out and slide messily down your face. The dizzying roaring in your head deafened you from their words as you took an unsteady step back from the table, "If- If you really don't want me around that much, then I'll leave. I won't bother you anymore."  

As you stormed out of the house, the anger in your heart slowly dissipated into wrenching pain. The same way a wet rag would be squeezed of water. 

There was a soft plea in the midst of your whirling thoughts: for your parents to come after you, for them to offer you the comfort you so longed for. 

You paused at the porch. 

Won't you come after me? Or will you forget me the same way everyone else does?

You waited, clinging onto the last shred of hope-

One second. 

Two seconds. 

Three seconds. 

...They never came.

A light sob wracked your body and you tore off the porch, onto the sidewalk. You had no destination in mind. You just needed to get away; to leave everything behind. Away from everything you've known thus far.

╚══《✧》══╝

Water rushed beneath your feet as you stood waiting.

How much time has passed? An hour? Two? You didn't know without your phone, yet maybe that was for the better.

You had found yourself walking until the part of town you recognized blended into unfamiliar territory. And now, standing by the railing of a bridge, you swiped your hands across your eyes to dry out the wet tears. You weren't going to kill yourself- obviously- you just wanted some space, some alone time. You let out a dry laugh at the thought; loneliness truly is bliss until given by others.

Honestly, you knew you would have to swallow your pride and go back sooner or later. Willingly or forcibly. 

By now, the moon was glinting through the dark clouds and an autumn chill had begun to settle into the air. A gust of wind blew past and you shivered, "I guess I should go back now-"

"Hello." 

"Shit!" Your heart leapt into your throat, and you whipped your head around frantically to face the voice, "Who the hell?"

You froze in shock.

Whatever you were expecting, it wasn't this.

It was a child, or rather, it wore the shape of one. The outline of their body was blended into the dark background, your eyes unable to focus on where to place them. Their edges shimmered with something like static, soft and constant, the way air looks above a concrete road in summer, except the night was freezing. 

Then something worse crawled up your spine. 

A strange sense of Deja Vu. 

The child laughed softly, airy and wrong. "Oh no. My physical form is just like that. Humans tend to just brush past me. But you can see me." Their head tilted. "Isn't that interesting? " 

"What?" Your voice came out thin. "What are you talking about?" 

"Hm." They smiled like you were asking something silly. Then their gaze flickered over you from head to toe. "That's unimportant."

Your heart slammed against your ribs. The fear you felt wasn't logical. It was older than logic, the kind that lived in bone and instinct. The kind you felt when you stood too close to a cliff's edge, when you heard footsteps behind you at night, when you realized something was watching in the dark. 

Except it wasn't the dark. It was them. 

They raised a finger and pressed it into your chest.

"I heard your desire," they murmured. "And I believe that I can offer a solution... for a small price." 

You should've said no immediately, but something in you said yes anyway. How could you live like this? Alone and resentful for the rest of your life?  While everyone finds their home, you live in their shadow, begging for scraps. 

You forced your voice to work. "A price."

"Yes."

"And what would you know what I desire?"

Their smile softened, and somehow that made it worse. "I know everything about you [Name], I've known you for a long time."

Your throat tightened.

Goosebumps sharply raised on your skin as the sense of deja vu sharpened, like a picture snapping into focus for half a second. A memory you lost. A place you've forgotten. A voice you've heard, maybe in childhood, maybe in nightmares, maybe in the spaces between consciousness. 

You hated it. 

Hated that it felt familiar. Hated that you wanted to understand it. 

You tried to pull away from the railing.

Your body wouldn't move. 

Fear surged hot and sick. You jerked again. Nothing.

The child watched, a smile widening just a fraction, as if they were enjoying your struggle without needing to do anything. 

Then, finally, your body relaxed. You tore away from the railing and stumbled back, the child watching. 

Your breathing came out fast and uneven. "What do you want from me?"

They hummed, as if considering, then lifted their hand. Their palm was open.

The air popped faintly, like static snapping off a sweater. Your skin prickled in response. 

"Straightforward question," they said. "Would you like me to whisk away all your problems? Everything."

Everything. The group chats. The stares. The corner. Your parents' blank faces. The way the whole world seemed to forget how you existed. 

 "All you have to do," they continued, "is shake my hand." 

You stared at their palm. 

You should have said no. You should have screamed. 

But the air around them hummed, and your thoughts slipped like wet soap. It wasn't like you stopped being afraid. The fear stayed, sharp and present, but your mind wouldn't line up. Like someone was acting for you. 

Your hand lifted a few inches before you realized you were even moving. I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared. 

"Stop," you whispered.

Your voice was unrecognizable to yourself. Broken and pleading. 

The child's eyes flickered to your hand hungrily. "Hurry"

With their word, something inside your chest that wanted to be seen so badly reached for you. The loneliness in you rose up like a hand reaching for the first person who ever reached back. 

Your fingers touched their palm, and something snapped.

Too late. 

Their fingers closed around yours. 

A wide grin split their face, and it looked so wrong, too big for the shape of a child, too delighted.

"Wonderful," they breathed, "Then I'll see you on the other side, [Name]."

You ripped their hands loose from yours and stumbled back

"What?" you choked out. "What did you do?"

They laughed softly, the sound crackling at the edges. "I wish you luck."

Your heart hammered. "Wait- wait. What was the price?"

"Be careful," they said, voice almost kind, "of those you keep close."

"What was the price??"

The world split open beneath your feet. And for one heartbeat, you were weightless.

 Then you fell.

The air ripped past you. Your throat opened for a scream, but no sound would come.

Above you, the child's blurred face hovered at the edge of the world like a glitch, like a smudge of light in the dark.

And then it vanished. 

You dropped into the abyss with nothing to grab and no chance to stop.