"How long have you been spying on me?" I ask, holding an arm across the doorway.
Ging pushes past me and waltzes into the house. "Long enough to know you're having nightmares again."
Eta. She can map everyone on the island. She must've told him about my...I don't even know what to call what she saw. Panic attack? I can't believe she sold me out. Years ago, Ging used to cradle me back to sleep when I woke up screaming from my nightmares. Fuck, he knows way too much about me. Things that hurt...But that's in the past, he doesn't know me anymore. "Yea well they went away once. I'm sure I'll figure out how to get rid of them again."
"Do you think you can fuck your pain away with that guy?"
My face stays blank as possible as I stare at him. His beard is patchy and his spiky brown hair's hidden under turban like hat. Most of his body is buried under a long sleeve shirt and baggy white pants. Like I'd give him the satisfaction of an answer. "You're just jealous because I never gave it up to you. And even I do use him for my pain, that's really none of your business. Now why are you here?"
He tips his head to the side for a moment. "Just visiting an old friend."
I purse my lips. Hmmph. "Now all of a sudden you're interested."
His voice softens. "I never stopped being interested."
Oh no he doesn't. I don't care how he feels about me, though I don't understand why, he just saw me with another man. I've clearly moved on and am not interested in making up with him in any way. "The same way you never stopped being interested in Gon?"
Ging looks around as if Gon's hiding somewhere in my house ready to pounce on him. "He's here already?"
Wooow. The gall of this deadbeat. My eyes bulge in rage. "Motherfucker why are you keeping tabs on me and not your son?"
He laughs so hard he grits his teeth as if he views my frustration as cute. "You're a lot feistier than I remember."
My neck rolls as I face him. "Sure of myself more like. That happens when you grow up. You should try being there to see it sometime."
One of his eyebrows raises. "You left me, not the other way around."
"I'm not talking about me. I do not want you. Your son on the other hand has traveled half the world to see you."
He bites his lip and shrugs. "Gon shouldn't be playing the game to see me; he should do it because it's a kickass game that'll teach him how to be a better hunter."
My head lowers to my fingertips for a moment. This fool's starting to give me a headache. "Kickass game? Ging, have you been smoking crack? The only person that boy is trying to hunt down is you. Why are you so scared of meeting him? He's actually an awesome kid. And even if he wasn't, children still need parents. Sons need fathers."
He walks further into the house taking a sidelong glance into the kitchen. "Apparently so do daughters."
I cut my eyes at the back of his head. "Excuse me?"
He turns to the side and looks at me. "Stop acting like this is about Gon. Face it, you're still pining over your dead father, who no man can live up to. Which is funny since he left you with an abusive mother who turns out wasn't your mother.
I fold my arms and feel my eyes sharpen like knives pointed at Ging. I forgot how vicious he could be when his ego was bruised. He really knows how to go for the jugular. "Watch it, asshole—"
He points a finger in my face. "And you'd still be in that shithole if it weren't for me."
Air sucks between my teeth as I knock his hand away from me. "I got out because I wanted to get out. You just happened to be the first option that came along. I would've gone to anything or anyone who could help me."
"But you didn't, did you? You came to me, a man who could teach you something, yet maintain his distance. Not unlike your father. Not unlike Hisoka, and Lord only knows who else."
This is what I get for opening up to someone about my past...no wonder Hisoka avoids doing it. People can use it against you like any other weapon.
But I couldn't hide my poverty, my tattered clothes and bruises. Ging saw that without me saying a word. Yet underneath it all, he saw my potential and offered to train me for the hunter exam. I remember all the countless times we fought with bamboo rods, how he thwacked me in areas I left myself vulnerable. In the river, on the road, the middle of villages. Wherever he took me, however he hurt me I knew it was to make me stronger.
Now, I don't trust anything he says. And how much does he know about Hisoka? How long has he been spying on me? "Shut up," I hiss through gritted teeth, "you don't even know him."
Ging guffaws. "I've seen things about him that you haven't, but fine. Keep living that lie if you think it'll help you sleep at night."
There's a silence between us. I've no interest in arguing on Hisoka's behalf again. I just want to get to know the guy. Why is that such a crime to everyone?
"You never wanted a relationship," Ging continues, "you wanted a routine. A familiar dysfunction that challenged you. Then when you thought you learned all that you could, I went from being your hero to your enemy."
I roll my eyes. "That's bullshit. You were 20 and I was 16. I was young and didn't have many options but to learn—"
His eyes wrinkle up as he shakes his head. "Don't play victim. Don't act like there wasn't something real between us. You're better than that."
Tired of looking at him and his bullshit, I turn away and look out the door at the moon. "I never said there wasn't more...or that it was all your fault. Just stop trying to use my past against me."
His fingers tug at a few of my locs. "Why? You haven't stopped harping on mine."
I shoulder him away from me and step forward. "That's because your past is effecting your child's present."
He sighs and raises his voice. "I never asked for him."
There's a cramp in my chest, a pain that I hope Gon never has to feel. How could Ging say that about his own child? I push at his chest. "Then why did you have him?"
He catches his balance and stares at me. "You have no right to judge me. You're just as fucked up, except worse because you pretend you're not. Like you've outgrown it. The real reason you've avoided me all these years is because you didn't want to hear the truth about yourself."
"I avoid you because you're a self-serving asshole."
"That might be true, but it doesn't change the fact that none of what you got going on matters. Your beauty, talent, intelligence. All the people who desire you. It doesn't change how empty and broken you or your relationships are."
Fuck this. Maybe some of what he said before was true, but this is just spiteful. I go to punch Ging in the face, but he jumps up and out of the way. When I look around, he's nowhere to be found. Suddenly an insane amount of pressure knocks me against my back and off my feet. It's been a while since I've seen Ging use his nen. To this day I still don't know what his ability is, yet his nen has always been strong and beaten me. But not today. I refuse to lose to this asshole ever again.
I get up and see him standing calmly in my doorway. Hands in his pockets. Determined to knock him down, I run at him so fast the ground disappears. Only a few inches from his face, an invisible wall of nen knocks against me. I try to push through it, but that only strengthens it and makes it press back harder. That's fine. The harder he blocks, the harder I'll punch. My hits send ripples through the wall, but little else. I rev up my nen to Ko, concentrating 70% of my aura into my left fist. The rest of my body will be vulnerable, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.
My nen flares up to a purple flame. Cracks begin to form in his wall, but all he does is smirk. He takes out one of his hands, draws it back and thrusts it forward. The force blows me out the backdoor into the grass field and digs my body into the ground like a shovel. Just to think a few minutes ago I felt so soft, delicate, and feminine in Hisoka's arms. Now I'm a crater that's been burrowed into the earth, leaving everything around me in pieces. Birds fly away from all the commotion above me, covering the stars on their way. I watch in a haze as I force my eyes to focus and my body to get up.
"Since you think you've grown so much, why don't you show me?" The force of nen I felt before suddenly wraps around me, picks me up and flings me back into the ground. "Come on, show me." Again and again, up and down, like a ragdoll, breaking me a little more with each blow.
"You think you've gotten stronger without me and you can't even get out of my grasp," Ging says.
He's right, this is pitiful. I look around trying to find him only to see more of the night sky.
"Shame. I thought you could do better. I'm actually getting bored."
Dizzy and nauseous, I try to center myself remembering the flowers' aura I took earlier to repair Hisoka's nose. I wonder if instead of taking the aura, I can move it. What condition will I set for myself? I'll gradually lose sight every five minutes it takes to beat my opponent, and if I lose I'll go blind for a day. That should be high stakes enough.
I look down at the grass rustling in the wind beneath me then close my eyes and open the pores of my hands and try to lift a section of dirt and rock. My hand feels heavy at first, like it'll fall off, but then I try to imagine the earth as an extension of myself and it becomes lighter. I can feel it begin to lift in a whirlwind. I shape the wind between my palms like clay, form a circle. I can feel each stone like they're each one of my fingers.
I twitch my ring finger and one of the stone shoots into the nen wall and its grasp weakens around me. I shoot three more rocks, feel a few dents in the wall and hear Ging grimace. Does that mean whatever harm I cause his nen wall, he himself feels? Good. Hopefully the pain will teach him not to screw with me anymore.
I ball my fingers into a fist and feel the stones close in on me and the nen wall, yet somehow I know the rocks won't hurt me. I feel the nen wall crush and dissipate like bones to dust. I shape the stones into several steps for me to climb down. I can see Ging leaning against a tree nearby and walk over to him.
Ging pants and stares at me like a hungry wolf. "Look at how powerful you are. How sexy—"
I grab him by the neck and raise him against the tree's spine. "I'm not here for your entertainment." I press into his trachea with my thumb as he gulps for air. His uninjured hand reaches for mine to loosen my grip.
"What we had before is over. Who I'm with and what I'm doing are none of your concern," I say.
Ging smiles like he knows something I don't. What's he got up his sleeve?
I squeeze tighter. "Do not come near me again or I'll break your fucking legs. Forget about me and focus on Gon. Hopefully he'll get more out of you than I did." I let go and watch him drop to the ground before turning to walk away.
"You're looking for Mattheo, right?"
Shit. I stop dead in my tracks and turn my head to look at him out the corner of my eye. "You waited til now to ask me that?"
Ging laughs and gets up, brushing dirt and twigs off his clothes. "Like I said, I wanted to visit an old friend. Now that we're all caught up, we can get down to business."
*
We use the book to transfer to the ridge of Ardaca, a rain forest where the poachers' safehouse is according to Ging. There's a fair amount of walking since we didn't want to land close enough for anyone to see or hear us. It's a swampy sweatbox of a region with flying roaches and mosquitos as big as my face. A hawk with wings the span of Ging and I combined swoops down and buries its claws into one of the insects with a crunch.
The ground is mainly mud and tree roots. It's so muggy it's hard to breathe. I'm only wearing a tank top, shorts, and hiking boots but still sweltering. The heat during the daytime must be unbearable. Meanwhile Ging walks with relative ease in whatever breathable fabric he's in.
I have this feeling we're being followed. Little things like twigs breaking around us, the feeling of human eyes on my back, footsteps other than my own trapsing the forest. Yet every time I look around the perimeter I can't find anything. Occasionally I'll see a wisp of pink cross my peripheral vision, but when a fuchsia bird with feathers like rope passes by, I assume that's what I've been seeing. Why would a bird be following us though?
"If you knew where the poachers' hideout was, why didn't you shut them down sooner?" I ask Ging as we climb up a hill.
He bends back the grass so we can go through. "I only found out today from one of my contacts who recently was initiated into the poaching ring. As you can imagine they're a hard club to get into and even harder to track down. They call themselves The Harvesters."
I laugh lightly. "You have contacts aka spies now?"
He reaches back to give me a hand. "I always have. It's good to have eyes and ears out when I'm not around."
I think about Hisoka and I dancing at the club, our kiss, our...session after dinner and wonder how much Ging saw. It's creepy to think he was watching me. That was never his kink before. What was he hoping to see? "And you just happened to have them out for me?"
Ging gives me a sly smile. "Don't flatter yourself. My world keeps turning whether you're in it or not."
Once we reach the top of the hill we look across the land to pinpoint where the safehouse is. There's a stream of smoke coming from the northeast along with a few dim lights I see on and off between the swaying banana leaves. We head down and start coming up with a plan. I notice the mosquitoes hover around the ground beneath their comrade as it's being eaten by the hawk... as its blood drips, their mouths drape along the dirt and sop up the blood. They must be attracted to the scent of blood.
"The females need blood in order to lay their eggs" Ging says.
We decide to use the bugs body heat to trigger the alarms. When the guards check out the disturbance, we'll sneak in through the roof, cut the power, scout out where Mattheo is and grab him.
I throw a shooting star into the head of a mosquito. While I wait for it to stop spasming, I grab a banana lead to wrap it up, then carry its lifeless body over my shoulder. "So why'd you find me?"
"Because I'm a glutton for punishment," Ging says walking ahead of me.
I look back to make sure the other mosquitoes are following us. "I'm serious."
He slides down a decline and waits for me to follow. "I wanted to see you all grown up...and see if you wanted to talk about your nightmares."
Jeez how much did Eta tell him? We walk off to the side of the road before I answer. "No. You reminded me of how dangerous it is to open up to someone."
"You know I didn't mean what I said back there."
I chuckle. "Yes you did."
He bobs his head and shrugs. "Okay, so I did. When did you stop being able to handle the truth?"
For an insect, this little shit's heavy. I decide to let Ging do the heavy lifting for a bit and toss the bug filled leaf on the Ging's chest. "A lot of that was spite. Besides, it's not like you haven't lied to get what you want out of me before."
He readjusts the leaf to make it more compact, crunching the mosquito's body down to a ball. "That's because you respond better to negative reinforcement."
I look at the mosquitoes following and feel the vibration of their buzzing. "That's toxic as fuck."
He continues on, looking around at the trees to make sure we're alone. "It's not my fault it's true. You were always strongest when you were wounded. When you were underestimated, beaten and broken, that's when you came alive. That's how I found you, and from what I've seen that's who you are still."
I fold my arms. "And you were always attracted to people with broken wings. Razor. Dwune. Me. You mend and provoke us just enough to help with your projects. Use us like tools then put us down when you get bored. Not much has changed about you either."
"I did want you to heal. That's why I didn't come after you when you left." The river runs nearby, frogs croak by the reeds. He holds one hand with the other and I can tell he wants to hold my face instead. "I knew your world was getting bigger than what I could give you. I knew you were going to hate me for a while. And maybe I knew that after what happened with Gon and his mother I didn't deserve you."'
I look over at Ging while he looks down at the ground. He's never admitted anything like that to me before. I forgot how good he can be at manipulation. I almost buy his sincerity.
"I missed seeing the woman you've become. But I always knew you'd be back," he said.
"And how'd you know that?" I ask.
"You may run from your past, but you can't escape it. The only way it'll stop haunting you is if you face it and stop trying to mask old pains with new ones like Hisoka."
Real smooth. There's a stream full of the moon's reflection that I stare into as we cross a rickety bridge. The sliver of pink crosses my vision again. "I'm really tired of people trying to tell me who I can and cannot date. You and your son have that in common."
We hear a grunting sound in the distance, one that sounds like it's charging towards us. "The pain of getting beat in a fight is not the same as getting your heart broken, Oby."
Ging unsheathes a machete and throws it to me. I catch it and face the direction of the charge. "Who said anything about heart break?"
He stands stalk still and waits for whatever's approaching. "You might be able to bullshit yourself, but I'm not in the mood for games. I can tell by the way you look at him, you care and you want him to be someone he's not. He's a murderer, a liar, a sociopathic narcissist."
A boar rushes through the bush and jumps out at me. In the split second I have before its tusks run me over I behead it. "You realize you just described yourself, right?"
Ging's eyes narrow. We can't leave the boar out or the mosquitoes will gravitate to it. I grab the front legs of the beast and Ging grabs its back legs. "I don't get off on killing people or do it outside of self-defense. I don't enjoy chaos. I don't just help people for personal gain."
We roll it into the stream to drown out the scent. I rinse of the machete and hand it back to Ging. "Why do you think you know him after one day?"
He puts his knife away and continues moving. "Obviously I've seen him around elsewhere. I was one of the instructors the first year he took the Hunter Exam. He also frequents Aiai."
Aiai, known as the City of Love, is where almost every romantic scenario happens. It also houses the island's largest prostitution ring.
I don't believe this. Ging's just baiting me and I refuse to take it. Refuse to wonder if he's telling the truth or not. If Hisoka's the piece of shit everybody keeps saying he is, then I'll see it in my own time. "So if you can't have me, no one can?"
"Not no one. Just not Hisoka. So do you want to know what I know?" he asks.
"No, I don't," I reply.
"You know I'd never do anything to really hurt you right?"
"I think you're a man who will do or say whatever you have to to get what you want and to hell with anyone else."
We're a half kilometer from the entrance when Ging grabs my arm and holds me in place. "Oby, face facts. He's an exceptional fighter and he likes pain. He teaches you things. He's your wet dream. You think the two of you share the same wounds, even though you don't. Pretty soon you'll be in love with him and that's when he'll break you, simply by being who he's always been. That's what he does, breaks people. Just to entertain himself. Then he'll forget about you by the time he reaches his next opponent."
I snatch away from him and speak in a sharp hushed tone. "How about this: you get off my case, and I'll get off yours."
Suddenly lights beam down on our faces out of nowhere. An alarm siren goes off signaling intruders. I look around, but can't find any traps. How did they find out we were here? The click of guns being locked and loaded follows. I hear a shot go off, not a bullet, but another device being thrown. I look around and see a net being launched in Ging's direction. The mosquito filled leaf on his back falls to the ground and I push him out of the way only to get caught in the net myself.
"Get out of here!" I shout.
He activates his nen and shapes it into a knife to cut an opening in the rope. "I'm not leaving you behind."
Another net is shot through the air, but this time Ging dodges it, jumping up into a tree. I can barely see his face with the leaves in the way. Just as he gets ready to move towards me, he looks ahead and freezes for a moment, his eyes bulge with fear. What does he see? Inching into the shadows he looks back at me for a moment before disappearing. "I'm sorry."
Gunfire follows, but I know he'll be able to evade the bullets easily in the shadows. What would make Ging leave me in the line of fire? Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather he go and get help, but it's not like him to scare easily. Something tells me he's not coming back at all. I've only seen this kind of cowardice in him once...
Men surround me, two pick me up, removing the net only to try tying my hands behind my back.
A man with a neck tattoo of the three triangles approaches me and lifts my face with the butt of his gun. "What were you and that other man doing here?"
There's no use answering his questions. He's just a middleman. I won't bother talking til I get to who's in charge. "Ummm...bird watching?"
I know the hit's coming. The gun knocks against my jaw and cheek with a smack. I can feel the metal's imprint linger on my face and with a burning sensation. No matter, I can deal with a little pain to pass the time. The pink returns to my peripheral vision, in the shadows about 20 feet away, only this time it doesn't move, just watches me, knowing I can't come after it. Stupid to think that'll stop me.
I can tell it's not the bird I saw earlier, but something else. I flip out of the men's grasp, head butting one and using it as my shield against a bullet from the other. I break the needle nose off the dead mosquito next to me and slash it across one of the men's necks so blood can splatter out. The rest of the mosquitoes rush over to the smell of blood, briefly blotting out the night sky with their wings. They devour the man and temporarily block me from view. I only have a moment before more men come after me, but that's long enough to see what I need. I take a shooting star out of my bra and launch it in the direction of the pink.
It lands in a hand with a pin cushion and needles attached. She raised her hand to protect her face, but now it quickly lowers. I see a pair of big blue eyes, messy pink ponytail, and a short sleeve kimono jacket. Machi. Did she trigger the alarm? Why would she come after m—
A blunt object bashes me on the back of my head and everything goes black.
Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! Please vote, comment, and add this tory to your library if you liked it! The amount of toxic masculinity and filth read in this chapter is disrespectful lmbo. But still I love to see it. 🤣🤣🤣 Chapter 20 will be posted shortly as it was originally of Chapter 19. Any suggestions on how to make the story better? Let me know! xoxo