Chapter 2 : The First Encounter
They all came back to their own room. Hidako came back to her own room, which was styled Japanese, with a huge picture of a tree on the wall. She took off her updo to a long straight hair and brushed them. She was brushing her hair in front of the mirror until she saw a man standing inside the room, from the mirror. Wearing a light kimono in dark green.
"Your zetsu must be very good. I didn't realize you were here" Hidako continued brushing her hair.
"Father told me to come over to your room and see you" Illumi said, he walked towards Hidako.
"I want to see your nen" Illumi's whispered beside her right ear. She could feel his hot breath on her skin. It wasn't the first time a man being that close to her but it was the first time a young good-looking man would breathe that close near her.
"Do you have any book with you?" She replied. He brought a book with purple cover. "The Lost Island" that's the title of the book.
"Please open which page you want me to read" Illumi opened the book randomly. Hidako saw that he was just testing her. He never came to her reading session. He never witnessed her power.
She sat down properly while Illumi sat 1 meter in front of her. Observing her, from her dark silky hair to her pale pink lips and her frail figure.
"Page 45. Chapter 5. The blue arowana. The size was approximately five horses combined into one. The first time i met it, it was trying to eat frogs around it. The fish lives in group near the waterfall. They liked clear water"
What was could only be imagined was seen and felt by Illumi. The crystal clear waterfall. The coldness of the water. The fins of the fish. It was like he was inside the book, experiencing it. Illumi moved forward, trying to touch the fish.
"But the fish is untouchable. The fish has electricity roaming thorough it's body. If someone touches it more than 1 minute, their body will be burnt"
Illumi could feel the spark of electricity on his finger, he quickly took back his hands off the fish.
Illumi smiled. She was really a perfect gift. A nen so flexible she could do a lot of things with imagination so vast, she was a gem.
"I tried catching the fish using a plastic nen-infused rod with frogs as bait. The fish took it and i managed to pull it to the land. The fish changed its size, it became small, as small as regular arowana. It was still alive, still moving, still splashing"
Illumi tried to capture the fish using his hand. He could feel his hand grabbing the fish. Wet and alive. He tried crushing the fish but nothing happened.
"Illumi could grab the fish because i let you. You couldn't kill it because i didn't let you"
Hidako interrupted Illumi's attempt. She closed the book.
"My power work by creating illusion that affects people here" She explained while pointing her head using her index finger.
Illumi looked at his hands. They're dry, the splash, the water, which felt real wasn't real at all.
It was just hallucination. A very vivid one.
"What are the requirements for the nen to happen?" He asked bluntly. Dark eyes staring into her brown eyes.
"No. Not now. Later, i'll tell you after we're married" She smiled, gazing at his eyes with softness and slight flirtatiousness.
Illumi remembered that her hyper-realistic story-telling ability was also used to pleasure old men, some of them must be perverts who wanted her to portray the sickest imaginable things in the world, like those old Japanese scroll Illumi saw in one of his missions that portrayed two octopuses pleasuring a woman using their tentacles. That explained her flirtatiousness towards Illumi. Usually, when a woman became flirty towards Illumi, he would feel nothing. But, there's something really exciting from Hidako, most part of it because of her unique nen.
"I suspected the water played some kind of contribution towards the size of the fish and their electricity but then i tried putting the fish in regular water but it doesn't change its size. I tried adding nen flow into it but it doesn't change. But, once i threw it back to the water. It changed its size" she continued reading.
The whole thing played like a movie, like a small waterfall in front of him, behind her.
"That's enough" Illumi replied her. She closed the book. No more coldness from the waterfall, no more the smell of forest and fish, no more fish.
"I want to bring a gift for you. It's personally from me" Illumi showed a small box for her. It was a green velvet box. Inside it there was a emerald-embellished hair accessories. A hairpin.
"It's beautiful, Illumi" She spoke to him. Their hands touched when she accepted the box. Hidako would've blushed if she was the blushing time. His hands were cold. But, they felt soft and ... young. So different from the hands of the old men who came to her reading session or the hands of her father.
She admitted Illumi was attractive. Physically. Maybe it was because of those tales of long haired young generals in the old Gortese romance books she read that always made her squealed when she was alone. Very few of her clients were women who liked her to read romance stories and one of them was this Gortese tale about a forbidden love story between the long-haired general and the princess. Illumi was exactly how she imagined how the generals would look like, except that they had lively slanting eyes. But, Illumi's dark huge doll eyes had their own charm, Hidako thought.
"Thank you," Hidako said to him. The man stood up, took the book with him and left the lady alone in her room.
Hidako was impressed by Illumi. He was not as bad as she thought he'd be. She thought at first being with Illumi meant that she would be with a machine who's made to do its job mercilessly. He was cold, even his touch was cold too. But, he was not as cold as she thought he'd be.
Hidako never expected that her step-father would choose someone young for her to be married to. She was expecting an old man who's going to die soon so they could get their money and expand their influence. But, the assassin family was definitely a surprise for Hidako. She was expecting a mafia family. But, marrying into assassin family gave them even deeper access to the underground world, would also probably give even more access to the unknown world knowing that Illumi Zoldyck's a professional hunter.
It was another day at the mountain and it was a cold morning. Hidako woke up to a knock at the door. Hidako stood up and opened the door, while still wearing her sleeping kimono. A blond male butler with eyes that looked like as if he had not slept for days and with name tag "Hishita" showed up with a small folded white carton letter and a bouquet of flowers, mixed of roses and baby's breath. The blond man helped putting the roses in the table in the room while Hidako opened the letter and read it.
"The test starts now. I'm expecting you at the flower garden at 10 AM"
With regards,
Kikyo Zoldyck.
A hand-written message from the future mother in-law. A test? As expected before, Hidako could see through that Kikyo's a hysterical borderline-insane woman who's obsessed with her children and also very controlling. She's an Azian woman too, just like Hidako herself, who perhaps had certain kind of crazy attachment towards her first son, like most Azian mothers, who would want a perfectly obedient wife for her son.
"Lady Hidako, please excuse me" Hiashi politely said to her.
"And i wish you luck" He added before he closed the door.
NOTE :
So, the fanfic will pretty much delve into some of Asian cultures with some Hunter x Hunter factors and fantasy too. I was actually confused which category should i put Hidako's nen in, i wanted to put her as conjurer but her ability is more like a specialist but it's still confusing to me because what she conjured was hallucination that could only affect the mind but not the body. If any of the reader does not mind, please help me in categorizing her nen type... thank you very much.
