Tonpa had officially participated in the Hunter Exam an astounding thirty-three times.
He had started his miserable, obsessive journey at the tender age of ten, which naturally put his current, actual age somewhere that really didn't reflect well on his overall life trajectory, assuming you were the type of judgmental person who rigidly mapped a man's achievement against the linear passage of time. He had successfully, miraculously survived all thirty-three grueling attempts.
He had passed absolutely none of them.
The truly remarkable part of Tonpa's legacy wasn't the staggering record of thirty-three consecutive failures. It wasn't even the undeniable biological miracle of physically surviving thirty-three brutal exams that reliably killed a very high percentage of their hopeful participants every single year. The remarkable part was that Tonpa had actually arrived at each and every one of those exams with a crystal clear, completely honest understanding of exactly why he was there and exactly what he was doing, which was a level of self-awareness far more than most serious candidates could ever claim.
He was absolutely not Hunter material. He had known this hard, immutable fact about himself for a very long time. He possessed absolutely no grand illusions about ever actually passing the trials. What he did have, however, was a highly specific, finely honed skill set perfectly suited to his highly specific, twisted goals. He could instantly read the deadly temperature of a room. He could accurately identify the terrifying candidates who would cause him serious, terminal problems if he ever foolishly approached them, and he knew exactly how to give those lethal individuals a very wide, respectful berth.
Conversely, he could easily identify the candidates who were highly promising but dangerously inexperienced, and he could subtly arrange small, humiliating inconveniences for those naive rookies—little traps that cost him absolutely nothing to set, but cost them everything to trigger. He never, ever aimed to actually win the exam. He only aimed to persist, to sit back and watch the chaos, to occasionally make someone else's terrifying exam experience slightly worse for his own petty amusement, and to finally leave the venue with all his limbs intact.
A man with absolutely no interest in winning a game could never truly lose it. He had built an entire, miserable career out of this cowardly principle.
Thirty-three exams. No physical injuries worth noting on a medical chart. He had genuinely, foolishly believed this spotless record was concrete proof of his own high-level competence.
Then, Machi looked at him.
Tonpa had the terrifying, profound experience, in that single frozen moment, of completely understanding that he had been entirely wrong about absolutely everything in his life. It wasn't just that he had been mildly unlucky, or occasionally reckless, or slightly underprepared in the past. It was the crushing, undeniable realization that the last thirty-three lethal exams had safely passed right through him without any physical consequence simply because the terrifying things that could have easily killed him hadn't actually been looking at him at the time.
His prized room-reading skill hadn't magically protected him from the real monsters. He had just been incredibly, blindly fortunate enough, thirty-three consecutive times, not to accidentally catch the direct attention of something that could have done absolutely whatever it wanted to him without breaking a sweat.
Machi was looking directly at him right now.
The freezing cold moved rapidly from the center of his sternum outward, locking his joints. He stood frozen in place with a bright can of juice in each hand and felt the agonizing physical symptoms of a massive threat assessment that his own nervous system was frantically conducting without any conscious input from his brain. The final, terrifying conclusion his body had instantly reached was simple: No available response. You are already dead. His peripheral vision grayed out slightly at the edges. His trembling legs urgently requested clarification from his panicked brain on whether they were still actually expected to hold his heavy weight up.
Liam watched this silent psychological breakdown with mild interest and absolutely no intention of physically intervening. Shizuku had already moved on to reading a different page of her book. Battera and Alice were having a quiet, intimate conversation near the wall.
Only Kurapika actively noticed the massive, suffocating shift in the atmosphere. From that tense atmosphere shift, he looked down at the bright can of juice resting in his own hand, and from his own drink, he looked sharply at the identical drinks Liam and Shizuku were both casually holding without actually drinking from.
"Is there something hidden in these?" Kurapika asked, his voice low and tight.
Alice immediately moved both her and Battera's cans far away from her body in one smooth, practiced motion, using her foot to slide them across the concrete. Akane and Aoi quickly followed her example. Aoi, right in the middle of aggressively kicking her can away, turned her head and looked directly at Leorio.
The juice can in Leorio's large hand had been completely empty for quite some time.
Leorio's clueless expression rapidly worked its way through several distinct, horrifying stages of delayed information processing.
"Calling it poison might be a slightly strong accusation," Liam noted mildly. "It is much more likely just a heavy laxative. A highly powerful, industrial-grade one. Tonpa has been running this exact same tired routine on rookies for decades. Using actual, lethal poison on candidates would just create way too much Association paperwork for him to deal with."
"That is absolutely not reassuring," Kurapika said, glaring at the empty can in Leorio's hand.
"It wasn't meant to be reassuring," Liam replied cheerfully.
Tonpa had finally managed to mentally detach his brain from the crushing emotional impact of Machi's dead-eyed stare. He was slowly backing away with the careful, jerky movements of someone actively relearning how their own legs mechanically worked, when he accidentally walked directly backward into someone solid.
He looked up in panic. One of Second Prince Camilla's heavily armed private soldiers already had a firm grip on his collar before his eyes even completed the upward movement. The soldier effortlessly lifted the heavy man off the ground with one arm and casually deposited him hard onto the concrete floor four meters away from where he had been standing. The soldier immediately returned to his rigid defensive position. Camilla had not bothered to look at any part of this humiliating process.
The massive underground room filled gradually as the long afternoon dragged on. By eight o'clock in the evening, the total candidate count was steadily approaching a hundred people. The cavernous space, clearly designed to hold considerably more, absorbed the new arrivals easily, leaving large, tense stretches of empty concrete floor between the paranoid clusters of people who had all correctly decided that close proximity was a tactical resource to be spent very carefully.
Leorio made several urgent, highly uncoordinated trips to the public bathrooms. The loud slamming of the stall doors eventually became familiar background noise. Several veteran candidates who had participated in previous exams instantly recognized Tonpa's infamous laxative tactic from his long reputation, and they watched the miserable outcome with the settled, cruel appreciation of people who had seen this specific, juvenile joke play out many times before.
Tonpa, who was usually the one standing around actively appreciating this cruel joke, was currently sitting slumped against a far wall. He had his knees drawn up tightly to his chest, and his pale, sweaty face strongly suggested he was a broken man seriously reconsidering his entire toxic relationship with the Hunter Association's examinations.
The harsh fluorescent lights suddenly went out at some point well past midnight. There was absolutely no warning and no crackling loudspeaker announcement. The massive underground venue instantly became entirely, suffocatingly dark.
Most of the candidates had already sorted themselves out into highly uncomfortable sleeping arrangements of wildly varying quality. Backs were pressed firmly against cold concrete walls. Thin, useless blankets were pulled from travel bags. Some simply lay flat on the hard floor. Several candidates were genuinely, deeply asleep. Several more were actively performing the illusion of sleep while intensely tracking their immediate radius purely by the sound of breathing and shifting weight. The Hunter Association's apparent psychological goal of ensuring absolutely nobody relaxed before the trial began was functioning exactly as maliciously designed.
Liam had arranged himself comfortably against the back wall with Shizuku. A thick wool blanket was shared evenly between them because the massive underground space possessed a very specific, biting kind of damp cold that seemed to seep right up through the concrete floorboards. He was currently doing the advanced version of resting that didn't require his brain to fully disconnect from the room's energy.
His Nen beast was currently submerged in the deep shadows directly below the concrete floor, silently tracking every heartbeat. He could feel her cold presence exactly the way he could feel his own hands resting in his lap.
Several quiet hours into the darkness, the digital death energy panel in his mind suddenly ticked upward.
The number shifted from 6 to 7.
He instantly tracked the precise direction of the death without even opening his eyes, pinpointing the location in the dark, and then he slowly opened them.
Across three hundred meters of pitch-black space, two dark figures moved smoothly through the sprawling maze of sleeping candidates. They moved with the silent, predatory footfalls of people whose lethal competence in this specific context was absolutely not in question. They easily located the two unlucky candidates resting the furthest away from any other warm body, isolated in the deep corner with the absolute most distance from casual observation.
They clamped gloved hands tightly over the victims' mouths and noses. They applied sharp, serrated blades smoothly to their exposed throats. They waited patiently in the dark for the desperate thrashing to completely stop. Then, they silently withdrew back into the shadows.
Absolutely nobody sleeping around the victims reacted to the murder. Several people in the immediate vicinity were definitely awake and listening. Nobody reacted.
Kurapika had been watching the entire assassination through narrowed eyes. He simply closed his eyes again, his jaw tight.
Tonpa had his eyes squeezed shut so tight they hurt, and he was absolutely not going to open them regardless of what horrific noises happened in the dark.
Liam slowly shifted his gaze in the direction of the far right corner, where Camilla Hui Guo Rou was currently sitting with her straight back pressed to the wall. She was holding something very small and stark white gently in her cupped hands.
Liam narrowed his eyes, focusing through the gloom on the small white thing until the shape finally resolved. It was a tiny kitten, practically pocket-sized, tucked safely against her palm. She was stroking its soft fur rhythmically with one manicured finger. Her beautiful face, for the absolute first time since he had seen her at the hotel banquet, possessed an expression that wasn't one of freezing, cold appraisal. It was something almost soft. Something incredibly private.
The tiny white kitten's head suddenly turned.
It looked directly at Liam across the full three hundred meters of dark, crowded space.
It slowly tilted its small head.
Liam immediately redirected his gaze back to his own group, only to find Machi looking directly at him with steady, terrifyingly patient attention. It was exactly the way a predator looks at a complex puzzle they have firmly decided to keep watching until it finally resolves itself or breaks.
He sighed quietly, pulled the thick blanket up a little higher over his shoulders, closed his eyes, and let the stale underground air circulate over his face.
Actual, restorative sleep was simply not going to happen tonight in any meaningful, biological sense. That was perfectly fine. Resting his muscles was enough for now.
Battera startled violently awake at some point right before dawn. His heavy head dropped sharply from where it had been resting comfortably on Alice's shoulder, and he laughed quietly at his own clumsiness before his eyes even fully opened.
"I swear, if I hadn't forced myself to do some intense physical training this past year," he whispered, keeping his voice low enough for just their immediate group to hear, "my old, brittle bones would have completely given out on this concrete floor overnight." He let out a massive yawn, stretching his back. "As it is right now, I am merely incredibly miserable."
By the time the feeling of full, tense awareness slowly crept back into the massive room with the approaching morning, the overhead lights were still completely off, but the space had more than doubled in total population. Over two hundred desperate candidates had arrived during the night, and the cavernous underground venue no longer felt so terribly empty. It felt heavily occupied in the exact, suffocating way that tight spaces feel occupied when the dangerous people trapped inside them are actively, paranoidly paying attention to each other.
Liam was staring intently at a highly specific point in the shifting crowd when Shizuku quietly moved to stand right beside him.
Near the exact center of the dark room, a tall man stood out from the crowd exactly the way a brightly lit match stands out in a pitch-black closet. He had vibrant, neon red hair. It was the specific kind of chemical color that absolutely wasn't natural, but had been carefully maintained for so long that it had become his defining characteristic. He had two thick, jagged scars running straight from his cheeks down to the sharp angles of his jaw on both sides of his face. A standard playing card was currently turning slowly, hypnotically, between his long fingers. He had a round number plate pinned to his chest. It read 144.
He was currently standing face-to-face with a massive, muscular candidate who had made the fatal mistake of looking directly at him first. The red-haired man leaned in close and asked, his voice a pleasant, conversational purr that carried easily in the quiet:
"Do you want to know how I got these scars?"