The Broken Causeway was the kind of place that punished impatience.
Every few steps, the stone underfoot changed texture. Some sections were stable and dry. Others looked solid until your weight touched them and they sank half an inch with a wet groan. The wind never stopped either. It cut sideways across the broken roads and shattered platforms, making balance a constant negotiation rather than a given.
Below, the swamp waited.
It shifted in ugly, sluggish waves, thick with dark mud and glints of movement. Carrion beasts drifted beneath the surface like thoughts too foul to rise fully into daylight. Every now and then, one of them would surface just enough to reveal a ridge of bone, a pale eye, or rows of teeth before sinking again.
Ponzu hated it.
Yuzuki, on the other hand, only found it annoying.
He moved with measured steps, the metal container held securely in both hands. He didn't sprint, didn't force the pace, didn't trust anything just because it looked convenient. His sunglasses stayed fixed over his eyes, and his expression remained calm in a way that made it seem like this whole phase was just one long puzzle he hadn't gotten bored of yet.
Ponzu followed slightly behind and to his left, hugging her own cargo close.
After a while, she said, "You noticed it too, didn't you?"
Yuzuki didn't look back. "That something's off?"
"Yeah."
He nodded once. "The container."
Ponzu adjusted her grip. "It's heavy, but… not in a normal way."
Yuzuki glanced sideways at her. "You felt it too?"
She nodded. "A little. It's like…" Her brow furrowed. "Like the weight settles differently depending on how I hold it."
Yuzuki's pace slowed.
That was close to what he'd been thinking, but hearing someone else say it helped sharpen the shape of the problem.
He shifted his own container slightly.
There.
A tiny response.
Not movement in the obvious sense.
More like a soft internal readjustment.
His expression changed.
Ponzu noticed immediately. "You figured something out?"
"Not everything," Yuzuki said. "But enough."
He stopped walking and crouched beside a cracked section of stone road. The wind tore at his hoodie as he placed the container down very carefully.
Ponzu copied him.
Yuzuki tapped the outer shell once with a knuckle.
Solid metal.
Then he pressed his ear against it.
Ponzu stared.
"…What are you doing?"
"Listening."
She blinked. Then, after a second, crouched down and did the same with hers.
At first all she heard was wind.
Then her eyes widened.
A faint soft and tiny sound.
Almost too delicate to notice beneath the noise of the causeway.
Ponzu looked at Yuzuki. "There's something alive in there."
Yuzuki sat back on his heels. "Yeah."
He looked out across the causeway again, toward the candidates farther ahead. Some were running recklessly, boxes swinging. Others were using them to shield against the wind. One idiot even tried throwing his onto a higher ledge before climbing after it.
Yuzuki clicked his tongue.
"So that's the trick."
Ponzu frowned. "What do you mean?"
"The box isn't the cargo. The thing inside is."
She looked down at the metal case in her hands and her expression softened a little.
"A living thing…"
Yuzuki nodded. "And Wing never said to protect the container. He said if the cargo gets damaged, we fail."
Ponzu exhaled slowly. "That's cruel."
"No," Yuzuki said. "It's Hunter-like."
She looked at him.
He stood again, lifting the container more carefully now, with better support beneath it.
"A Hunter gets entrusted with things they don't understand all the time," he said. "This phase is about figuring out that something matters before you ruin it."
Ponzu, after a beat, smiled faintly. "You're smarter than you act."
Yuzuki looked offended. "I act smart."
"No," she said. "You act like an overconfident gremlin."
He stared at her.
Then kept walking.
Ponzu followed, hiding a small smile.
For the next stretch, they moved differently.
They avoided the most unstable sections. Tested broken platforms before committing their weight. Took longer routes when the shorter ones required too much jumping or sudden movement. Yuzuki even used small pieces of rubble to check the tilt and give of certain paths before stepping onto them.
Twice, exam staff disguised as desperate candidates tried to manipulate them toward unsafe routes.
Once, a false signpost pointed toward a "checkpoint shortcut."
Yuzuki snapped the sign in half and kept moving.
Ponzu said, "How did you know that one was fake?"
"Because if the Hunter Association wanted to help us," Yuzuki said, "they wouldn't be the Hunter Association."
Ponzu had to admit that sounded reasonable.
Then, not long after they crossed a half-collapsed bridge of stone slabs and rope, someone appeared ahead.
A man stood in the middle of the causeway like he'd been waiting for them.
Sharp features. A predatory smile. Blades hidden all over his body.
Togari.
Yuzuki recognized him immediately.
'The idiot who challenged Hisoka.'
From the manga, he remembered Togari vividly not because he was strong, but because he was stupid enough to poke a monster and got killed for it with humiliating ease.
Ponzu slowed. "Do you know him?"
"Not personally," Yuzuki said.
He shifted his container slightly and stopped a few meters away.
Togari's grin widened when he saw Yuzuki's calm. There was something wrong with that smile too eager, too pleased by its own ugliness.
"So," Togari said, voice light, almost conversational. "You're the one people have been whispering about."
Yuzuki said nothing.
Ponzu moved a little behind him.
Togari rolled his shoulders, metal glinting under his sleeves. "You're strong. I can tell."
His eyes sharpened.
"And I hate strong people."
That made Yuzuki raise an eyebrow.
Togari continued, his smile growing meaner. "They walk around like they own the world. Like they're above everyone else. But when you cut them open…" He licked his teeth. "They all look the same inside."
Ponzu's face tightened.
There was no mistaking it now.
This wasn't just some exam rival trying to get ahead.
This man liked hurting people.
Yuzuki, meanwhile, only looked mildly disappointed.
"I see," he said.
Togari's expression twitched. "That's all you have to say?"
"You want to kill me because I'm strong," Yuzuki said. "That covers most of it."
Togari laughed.
Then his body snapped forward in a burst of speed, blades launching from his arms toward Yuzuki's throat and chest.
Ponzu gasped.
But the blades stopped.
They hung in the air an arm's length away from Yuzuki, frozen in the space before him like they had struck invisible steel.
Togari blinked.
Then frowned.
Then pushed harder.
Nothing.
"What?"
Yuzuki stood there holding the container in one arm, expression calm behind the sunglasses.
Togari's face twisted in confusion. "What kind of trick—"
Yuzuki interrupted him.
"How many people have you killed?"
The question was so sudden that Togari actually paused.
Then, slowly, his confusion melted back into smug delight.
"A lot," he said. "Enough to stop counting."
He looked proud of it.
Excited by it.
Yuzuki stared for one quiet second.
Then he nodded.
"I see."
He handed his cargo to Ponzu.
"Hold this."
Ponzu took it on reflex, eyes widening.
Yuzuki stepped forward.
And in the same motion, Yuzuki's free hand twisted slightly.
"Blue."
The air bent.
Just enough to amplify the line of motion in his punch.
Yuzuki drove his fist forward.
Togari saw it coming.
He just didn't understand the force behind it until it was too late.
The punch landed center mass.
For half a second, the world seemed to pause around the point of impact.
Then Togari's chest caved.
No
It didn't cave.
It disappeared.
A hole the size of a fist opened straight through him, flesh and bone torn apart by the compressed force of Blue riding behind Yuzuki's strike.
Blood sprayed the broken stones.
Togari staggered back, eyes wide with disbelief, then collapsed without another word.
Dead.
Just like that.
Ponzu stood frozen.
She had known Yuzuki was dangerous. She knew what he was capable of in theory.
But theories didn't bleed.
This did.
This reminded her all at once why she had been afraid of him when they first met.
Why every instinct in her body had screamed caution.
Because beneath the awkwardness, the sarcasm, the sunglasses, the strange bursts of kindness—
Yuzuki was still someone who could kill a man with one punch and then move on with his day.
He turned back toward her and took the container from her hands.
"Thanks."
Ponzu opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Then nodded.
Yuzuki stepped around Togari's corpse and kept walking as if nothing unusual had happened.
Ponzu looked at the body once more.
Then at Yuzuki's back.
Still shaken, still silent, she followed him anyway.
---
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