I should probably admit it already.
This fucked-up world has no intention of leaving me alone.
It is nothing new for this goddamn Togashi world to plant death flags everywhere, but sometimes it feels like it has a particular grudge against me.
And this was one of those times.
"Hm? Are you with the mafia too? You have quite a decent aura on you."
"For fuck’s sake."
This was Yorknew City.
And standing before me was the Phantom Troupe.
To explain how things turned out like this, I would have to turn back time a little.
**
"Me?"
"Yes. We received a request from the mafia that specifically names you. Ordinarily, a named request would be for us, so this is unusual."
About six months after Gon and the others had left.
Zeno had summoned me.
"That is certainly strange."
Just as Zeno said.
The Zoldyck Family was the one that accepted assassination jobs. They did not assign such jobs to butlers or relatives by marriage.
At most, we accompanied them on missions.
No matter how well it worked, you would not put a robot vacuum cleaner in charge of bank business, would you? It was like that.
Besides, unlike the Zoldyck Family, the identities of us butlers were not widely known.
If someone had specifically requested me, it meant it might be someone I knew.
"The client is the boss of the Nostrad Family. Does that bring anything to mind?"
"Not at all."
I did not know anyone from the mafia.
The only family I had committed to memory was the Zoldyck Family.
"He asked me to relay a message in case you seemed likely to decline. He said, "I am Kurapika. I can now repay the debt I owe you.""
It was Kurapika?
I had wondered who the hell in the mafia could possibly know me.
More importantly, that was the name of the organization Kurapika had joined? What an insanely difficult name.
"Normally, I would have declined it myself. But he said he was one of the boys who came here before. Since this was a personal debt between you two rather than official business, I thought I would ask."
Hm. What should I do?
Honestly, I wanted to refuse.
Kurapika was a character whose entire identity was built around revenge.
By now, he had probably mastered Nen, gone around with red eyes, and made it his purpose to beat the shit out of the Troupe.
Joining a mafia organization must have been part of that plan too.
I had barely escaped Hisoka and returned to the Zoldyck estate. There was no reason to put myself in danger again by going outside.
Illumi had not been home lately either, so I had been enjoying some fairly peaceful days.
I really should turn this down.
"My apologies, but—"
"The fee is two billion Jenny."
"Please tell him I will leave as soon as possible."
Fuck, Kurapika. You know your big brother missed you, right?
**
Up to that point, everything had been great.
I reunited with Kurapika in Yorknew City, got paid, and ate good food with Kurapika and the new friend he had made in Yorknew.
I guess I spent about a week playing around on mafia money?
When he had bowed his head before to show his sincerity, I thought he was being overly dramatic, but he had meant every bit of it.
The guy was fucking solid. Then again, that was why he was willing to stake his life on avenging his clan.
Come to think of it, blond-haired characters in 2D media always had loyalty.
Like that Hero of the Leaf Village, Edward’s brother, or that curly-eyebrowed cook on some pirate ship.
At first, I felt a little guilty and uneasy about having him treat me to everything, but after we talked a few times, I was able to relax.
What he wanted from me was not an assassination.
If he had asked me to assassinate the Phantom Troupe, I would have returned the advance and run, no matter how much Kurapika resented me.
Kurapika’s resentment? What the fuck is that? Can you fight Hisoka?
So what could he possibly want to entrust to me that was worth burning two whole billion Jenny?
It was guarding Neon Nostrad, the daughter of a mafia boss.
"My ability is not suited to bodyguard work. Would it not be better to find someone else, even now?"
Of course, I would still take my commission. Even ten percent was two hundred million.
But Kurapika shook his head.
"That is why the nominal contents of the request are not bodyguard duty, but the assassination of suspicious individuals. You just need to eliminate anyone who approaches Neon. And..."
Kurapika continued, speaking with firm conviction as if seeing me again had confirmed it for him.
"You really are the strongest, Mr. Gotoh. Now that I have learned Nen, I understand it even better. Even if every person hired by our mafia came at you together, they would not be able to beat you."
Why was he rating me so highly? This old man was not that strong.
It seemed listening to him talk about his past for several days, rather than just discussing the job, had made the kid a little emotional.
Still, Kurapika, you had gotten pretty ruthless.
Kill everyone who approaches Neon? What the hell happened to you in the past six months?
"There are three reasons I called for you, Mr. Gotoh. First, because I wanted to repay you somehow for recognizing me for who I was."
He had said that from the moment he requested me. I knew that much.
"Second, to make certain the mission of guarding an important person is carried out. And third... this is the most important one."
"What is it?"
"To make me stronger."
Look at this little bastard. Was that two billion your tutoring fee?
Bold little prick.
No wonder he would not spend two billion on bodyguard duty alone.
"Did you not have a master who taught you Nen?"
"I did. But I cannot meet that person right now. And I feel as though there is nothing more for me to learn from them. They told me I should grow through real combat for a while."
They had said nothing but the truth.
Fundamentals only counted as fundamentals if you could use them in real combat. Even if you practiced three-pointers alone on a basketball court all day, it was ultimately meaningless if you could not make them with a defender on you.
The aura I had seen from Kurapika was already excessively large for someone with only half a year of training.
Simply increasing his firepower was no longer the answer.
Maybe it would have been different if he were an Enhancer, but Kurapika was not such a simple type.
"Then what do you want to learn from me?"
I wanted to teach him without using coins if possible. But did I even have anything to teach him?
He already knew about vows and restrictions, after all.
That was the only legal doping available for Nen abilities. The rest might look plausible, but they all came with side effects in the end.
A prime example was post-mortem Nen.
Hisoka used it, making it look absurdly overpowered, but in reality its activation rate was as low as 0.1 percent, and if it failed, you just died like an idiot.
I had never actually seen anyone succeed with it.
Usually, when people died, they could not hold on to any other emotion. They died terrified.
Besides, it was impossible to know how the Nen left behind after death would manifest, or whom it would target.
It was not really an ability you could knowingly use.
So I really had nothing to teach him, did I?
"Do you remember when we played coin-hitting at the estate on Kukuroo Mountain?"
Of course I remembered.
I had only been trying to get a little dopamine rush back then, but those juniors had made me suffer like hell.
Other than Canary, I had made every one of them dodge coins without Nen, at speeds appropriate to their skill level.
Fucking bastards.
If Killua had arrived a little earlier and heard that Godfather bullshit, every last one of us would have been fired at best and dead at worst.
They pretended they were doing it for me, but I almost got killed too.
"At the end, a coin came out of the hand of the butler standing behind Gon, and it ended with Gon’s victory... but you deliberately arranged for Gon to win, did you not?"
What? It had been a total fucking improvisation. How did he know?
Could Kurapika already see Nen back then?
But Kurapika casually dismissed my thought.
"It was not that I saw it with my eyes. Gon said he noticed because the butler behind him made a subtle movement, as though gripping something in his hand. That was why I also thought Gon had guessed it."
You motherfucker. He did something like that too?
He had gone and created a situation where he could get us all killed by himself.
I wanted to go back and inflict some justified, reasonable abuse on him, but he was already gone.
A guy who did stupid shit after being told not to was never going to live long in Togashi world.
He had already become Mike’s food.
"But Killua told me later. He said Gotoh would not use a trick like that. He said you must have done something to let Gon win."
Killua told him.
Goddamn internal whistleblowers were the problem.
Once these kids got even a little close to someone, they had no such thing as secrets.
Still, he was the master of the house, so there was not much more I could say.
"That means the coin remained in your hand until the very end, Mr. Gotoh. In an incredibly brief moment, without anyone noticing, you passed it to the butler behind him."
Yeah, yeah. Against amateurs who had not even learned Nen, I was an insurmountable wall. Amazing, right?
So what exactly did you want to learn?
"Mr. Gotoh, I want to learn the subtlety of the Nen technique you used. If possible, I want to learn rapid activation and precision as well."
I see.
But you could win even by firing chains at people head-on. Did you really need a technique like that?
Still, he had wired two billion to my account, so I would teach him.
It did not seem like teaching him would affect the original story either.
He was going to take down at least two members of the Troupe anyway, was he not?
There was no reason not to teach a guy who was going to erase this world’s death flags all on his own.
"It will be quite a difficult road. I am not a kind teacher."
"That is exactly what I wanted."
And so, we began two-billion-Jenny tutoring.
**
That was how it was supposed to be... That was supposed to have been all...
"I am currently looking for a chain user. If you know where he is, I would appreciate it if you told me."
Even if I tell you, you are going to kill me anyway, you fucking bastard.
Why can nothing ever just work out?
The night of September 2nd.
Uvogin versus Gotoh.
Begin.
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