Kurapikaxreader | 𝐶𝐻𝐴𝐼𝑁 𝑂𝐹 𝑆𝑃𝐴𝑅𝑅𝑂𝑊𝑆

Haunting Memories

"Y/n? It is me, Kurapika. I heard you scream, I tried to find you, I just-"

Y/n eyed him curiously. The man was obviously exhausted from something, but she could not tell what.

"Please, even when you caught sight of me you just ran faster, and it's so dangerous out here if you are not being careful. Please," he said, a hand outstretched towards Y/n.

She peered at his hand, soft but flushed, cupped in its white sleeve.

"I just want to go home," Y/n said.

A terrible sadness ripped through Kurapika's heart when she said this and then a shock when she collapsed into his arms from exhaustion.

"Oh, Y/n. Why do we always end up like this?" He whispered. "You shouldn't be here."

He stared sadly at Y/n's soft face now peaceful in sleep as he held her, their sweat mixing. He kissed her head at the hairline and lugged her up as he balanced his already tired body onto his knees, and then his feet.

***

The beating of the steady drums rumbled in Y/n's belly as she hid behind a tree in the wilderness. Her small hands dug into the bark of the tree. The sun was reduced to speckles of light on Y/n's face, filtered green by the foliage above. Her eyes wandered curiously, but it was her ears that worked hard to hear the music of the haunting.

Five or six men waded through the trees like panthers, eyes doused in black paint to keep them from the sun. Y/n could hear their occasional pants that were kept quiet. There was a horrifying screech that echoed through the dark green forest, and it excited her. The wind made its own music like wooden flutes in the sky. The sounds of their feet were only enough to make xylophone tunes upon the roots of the musical trees they stepped on. This was the art of the haunt, a form of magical animal hunting, in the Emerald Kingdom.

"Sen, DA. Kopli, pochitle! Sen DA!"

The men cried the sounds of a nearing success.

"Hunt the animal, find the animal! Jadyn! Two o'clock!"

That was her older brother's voice.

There was a screech of an animal. Y/n heard it far away, but suddenly, she could feel the pum-pum of an animal's hooves and desperation coming straight towards her. She turned behind her and there it was, less than five feet away, the wild yellow eyes of a saber-toothed violet boar, purple irises flipping wildly this way and that, with horrendous foul-smelling breath and spit being ejected from its snout and mouth as it stomped towards little Y/n with the force of a couple hundred pounds.

Y/n felt a tug at her waist and opened her eyes to see her older brother's examining face before her– upside down. His eyes, surrounded in haunter's obsidian paint, were the same charming color as Y/n's but he had long abandoned the babyish round face Y/n possessed and carried instead a sharp and handsome face.

"Let me go, Resa!"

"And let you fall to your death?"

It was only then that Y/n noticed the forest floor was easily 100 feet below them. She wondered if that would really kill her.

"Huaresach!" a voice called.

Resa grimaced at the call.

"Damn it, Y/n."

He placed Y/n gingerly on the thick branch next to his and lightly dusted off her tiny temple uniform.

"I... I'm sorry. I just wanted to see the haunt," Y/n said, a little ashamed.