CHAPTER 7

"All right." Okume stood in front of Killua and Hayuri. "Now we'll learn advanced nen techniques. The first one will be Gyo, which you already know of. If you focus your aura in your eyes you should be able to see the aura of things and people around you. Go ahead and try."

Hayuri and Killua did try what he said. After a while, both had managed to see the aura around them for a while.

"Now, every time I raise my eyebrows like this" he excessively did as he said. "You will both use gyo and find where in my body I'm focusing my aura."

He raised his eyebrows and Killua and Hayuri immediately did and searched for his aura.

"Your forehead." Both said simultaneously.

"Good. This will not only prepare you to always use Gyo when facing an enemy, but also to quickly asses him and see where he is using aura. This will allow you to anticipate an attack." He lifted a finger. "You'll have to use Gyo as I said. If you fail to answer within one second, you'll have to do 200 back squats and 100 pushups."

"Hai." Killua and Hayuri answered simultaneously. Okume raised his eyebrows as much as before and both focused their auras in their eyes. Soon they could see where his aura was focused.

"Left shoulder!" Killua answered.

"Left shoulder." Hayuri answered just a second later.

"Right, but this took you over 5 seconds. You'd be dead by now." Okume-sensei crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Now do your penalty."

Both nodded and did as they had to.

"Now, I want you to do this together. Sit facing each other." They did as instructed. "Good, now listen. I want you to count to three, then focus your aura somewhere in your body and use Gyo at the same time. It will take you some time to manage to do both in sync, but you'll need to do so later on. The one person who last sees where their partner's aura is, will have to do the same punishment as you just did. However, both of you must find the other person's aura, even if you're last."

Both nodded and began their training. After the whole day had passed Hayuri swore she didn't remember her arms and legs hurting so much ever before. Not only was she kind of tired because she had to use her aura in a way that required lots of concentration, but she also had lost every time. She wasn't too far behind from Killua, but if he took 5 seconds, she took 7. She was always dead last, and by the end of the day she was worn out. They took off to the kitchen to do their chores as usual and Hayuri hoped that her body would last long enough.

"Hey." Killua said from the doorway. Hayuri simply looked up, too tired to say anything. "Why don't you just sit there and tell me what to do. You'll probably make a mess out of something if you cook in that state."

Hayuri widened her eyes a bit. "Ok. Thank you."

"It's nothing." Killua mumbled almost imperceptibly. So she simply gave him advice about how to do the dish they were supposed to prepare, he was skilled enough to do it by himself by now anyways. While he worked she couldn't help but think he was sort of like a kid sometimes. When Killua offered to help and allow her to rest, he had been looking to the ground and there had been a faint blush on his cheeks. Also, he tried to make it sound as if he wasn't actually helping her, when it was clear in his expression that he was. So, she had learned something knew about him today; he was actually shy while taking care of someone else. She smiled to herself.

After dinner, they both went to bed. Hayuri was exhausted, but realized that she couldn't keep this up. If she had to endure this for more days, she would definitely collapse. So she decided to work on her Gyo out in the garden for a couple hours before sleeping. When she felt she had somehow improved, she went to sleep.

The next day, Hayuri started winning against Killua. She was grateful that she could rest her aching limbs a bit and that she had somehow surpassed him (not really, since she did more training than he did). Sadly, her bliss lasted only for two hours, when he caught up to her. After another ten or fifteen minutes, he was winning already. So, she had to do pushups and back squats for three quarters of their training time. She tried to guess how many she did, and the number didn't appear to be lower than 10000 back squats and 5000 push ups. Even though Okume-sensei was not present, training was hell for her. At the end of the day, she was almost as tired as the day before. She was brooding in her thoughts about doing more chores when Killua spoke up.

"It was worth the try." He said.

"What was?" she questioned.

"You're late training. It you hadn't done that the gap between us would be bigger. Also, if you hadn't, I wouln't have had the chance to do some workout and push myself. So it was a good for both of us that you did."

"Haa…"Hayuri looked down and wiped the sweat off her forehead. "It's easy for you to say, when you don't have to work hard at all. It all seems to come naturally to you. I don't even feel like exerting myself like this again tonight; I'll be just as slow tomorrow."

"Don't say that. You're not slow at all. You are pretty good and shouldn't compare yourself to other people. Just focus on where you are now and how much you can give to improve." He smiled. "Keep up the good work."

Hayuri looked surprised and was about to answer when he stood up.

"Now, come on. Let's go do our chores. Don't think I will be doing all your stuff once again." He said and left.

Killua wondered why he had said that to her. It's true that when she won against him in the morning it was a nice change to do some workout, but that kind of thing didn't really mean much training to him. Now that he actually thought about it, it was natural to try and help your training partner become stronger. If she was stronger, it would help him finish his nen training sooner and, therefore, continue with his mission sooner. It made sense to him, so he just accepted that answer and entered the kitchen.

When they started preparing the vegetables, the rice and the meat, he made sure to do to most heavy work himself and allow her the easiest tasks. They finished preparing and sat down with their sensei to eat up. They told him about their progress; they didn't need over 5 seconds to activate Gyo now, but only 3 or 4 seconds. He said that he was impressed with how fast they had learned, and encouraged to keep doing their best.

When they were finished, they took the dirty dishes back to the kitchen and she washed up, while he dried them and put them away. While doing so he realized something; when he helped her, he kept on remembering about the day she had carried him uphill for almost 9 hours. It seemed that he was not only helping her because it would be of use to him, but because he, somehow, was feeling the need to return the favor.

It was a strange thing for him to do, since he had never been considerate with anyone except his sister. He wondered what changed his usual course of action, but didn't ponder on it for long. After all, it didn't matter what his intentions were, it was still useful to him to help her out right now.

When he was lying in bed, he felt her get out of her room and go to the garden to train, as usual. He smiled and his eyes softened a little. She didn't know it, but he kind of admired how much dedication she put into training. Of course, he had been through a much more rigorous training before, but he had never done it out of his own accord. It had always been a sense of duty and obligation or to not anger his father and brother. He had never felt an inner drive to work hard. On the other hand, Hayuri, even though not being as good as he was, always tried her best. He could see the determination shining in her eyes when she trained. He wondered if he would ever feel like that.

The next three days training went the same way; the first couple hours Hayuri would get the upper hand thanks to her late night training, but Killua would always win at the end of the day. At the end of the third day, they were both equally pinpointing the others aura. It also appreared to be in less than one second. So they found Okume sensei and showed him what they could do now. He smiled and congratulated them for mastering Gyo. He recommended, from now on, to individually train their Ten every day for half and hour, their Ren for half an hour, and they Gyo for a couple minutes. He also allowed breakfast to start one hour later so that they could work on their basics before they learned the new stuff.

The next day they gathered in the garden area and not in the spare room as usual. Okume-sensei seemed to have a different kind of training in mind.

"So, from now on we'll be training the advanced techniques in nen." Okume pointed out. "First of all, you'll learn how to extend your aura to an object; this technique is called Shu. As I told you before, this will allow you to learn to control your aura better and also, it can help you make a weapon of almost any object. For example." He picked a thin stick from the ground and lifted it. "This stick is now a deadly weapon." He walked over to a stone and pushed the stick into the surface. The stick remained intact and the stone broke into a couple pieces.

Killua widened his eyes. That was what Hisoke did with his cards, wasn't it? It seemed like a pretty handy technique to use, especially around people who couldn't use nen.

"Now, I want both of you to take a stick and break it so that it has a sharp end. Then, embed it with your aura and go chop some firewood for storage with it. I want you to make 100 small sized chunks with only one stick. If it breaks you have to start over again." He said, pointing to the back of the extensive garden where many dying trees were located.

Both walked to the back and picked a stick. He broke it in two and made sure that the edges were sharp. Killua closed his eyes and imagined his aura surrounding the stick. When he opened them and used gyo, to see he had nailed it. He smirked, this seemed kind of easy to him.

He walked to a dead tree and used the stick to cut the tree down. It worked easily and he started chopping the trunk into smaller pieces, using it as a knife. When he was around number 30, his stick broke. He cursed and started once again. Maybe it wasn't as easy to protect the stick with enough aura so that it didn't break.

Hayuri was having as much trouble as Killua. On her first try she had managed to cut 26 chunks when her stick broke. She tried many times and each time she managed to cut a couple more chunks. At the end of the day, both had already cut over 500 chunks each, and were now nearing 80 pieces per stick. The next day at noon Killua managed to cut the 100 pieces, with Hayuri doing so an hour later. They picked the firewood they had cut and took it to the wood shelf in the storage room. When they were ready they stepped outside and Hayuri wiped the sweat off her temples, noticing how the days were starting to get too hot. They had been trining inside for the last month, so she hadn't realized the change of season.

"Now Okume-sensei has enough wood to last a couple of years at least." Killua pointed out. "Not that he's going to need it now."

"Yeah, it's getting hotter." She said while walking under the shade of the young tree that still stood in place. "I hope we don't have to do much training outside."

As soon as they sat down when lunch was ready Okume sensei clapped his hands together.

"Good!" he said before even taking a bite. "Now come the more interesting training. This one will involve the two of you doing hand to hand combat and applying the concepts that I'll be teaching you from now on."

"Does that mean…" Killua started.

"That we'll be training outside under to scorching sun?!" Hayuri exclaimed and made a defeated expression.

"Of course. You won't be doing any hand to hand combat in my house until you break it down." He pointed out. "Also, I don't want you to ruin my garden. So you won't be training here either and we'll be going out to that hill for training." He pointed out to a nearby hill. "It'll take us around 10 minutes to get there if we run, and it'll also serve as a warm up. From now on, lunch will be prepared in the mornings before we leave and we'll eat it there, so that we don't waste time."

"Hai." Both Killua and Hayuri said in unison.

"Now, since tomorrow you'll start fighting, I want you to take a good rest for what's left of the day. You won't get another free afternoon until I'm done teaching you, so make the most of it!"

"Hai!"

Hayuri decided to listen to her sensei, so she was currently taking a hot bath. She relaxed her body and supported her head on the edge of the tub. She was actually a little concerned about fighting, since she knew that he was stronger than she was. She wasn't used to meeting people that could beat her. Only a couple of members of the place she was taken into were strong – even stronger than Killua – but didn't really fight her as equals. They had only trained her, so she hadn't really tested her abilities against a stronger opponent. Well, apart from Hisoka, of course, who hadn't really fought her with all his strength and managed to beat the crap out of her despite of that.

Also, Killua had seen her fighting before, but she hadn't seen him do anything besides knock out a couple weak candidates back in the hunter exam. She sighed. Well, at least fighting him like that would prove to be a good training. After soaking for almost an hour, she got out, dried herself up and left the bathroom. When she walked out to the exterior hallway she found Killua sitting on the edge of the floor slab with his feet hanging down towards the garden. She walked to him and sat down beside him. He seemed to notice her presence, but didn't say anything as he observed the trees. They sat in comfortable silence for a while until a couple birds started flying against each other in the air.

"Did you know that the male individuals of that kind of bird actually fight for territory?" Hayuri pointed out. "In most species, fights are for female attention, but this one actually developed this kind of behaviour. Maybe it's due to the fact that they are native to an area that has scarce vegetation and water. When they fight in the air it seems as though they dancing, since they're trying to push each other out of the area. Even though it's a conduct developed due to hardship, it's beautiful. It's almost like they're dancing, don't you think?"

"Really? I thought it was some kind of mating dance." Killua said without looking away. "It does look like they're trying to do so, doesn't it?"

"Not to me. But maybe I'm not a good reference view, since I'm too used to observing birds and wild animals. All I see in there is a fierce fight for territory." She shrugged.

"Well, it shouldn't be something to be surprised about. You must be pissing your pants by now."

"What?!" Hayuri sharply turned her head to look at Killua.

"I still can't make a decision about tomorrow." He said and turned his head towards her. There was a dirty smirk in his face and his eyes were filled with amusement. "I don't know if I should either beat the crap out of you or simply knock you around for fun."

"Take that back!" Hayuri felt a vein pop in her head. "You are stronger than I am, but don't think too highly of yourself. I'm only a little behind you, so you better not lower your guard. Bastard."

"Yeah, right."Killua said with his usual smug smirk. Hayuri must have made a funny face, because he intertwined his fingers on his nape and threw his head back. He started laughing. Loudly. He was mocking her and Hayuri knew that would've normally felt anger. But, somehow, seeing him laugh like that for the first time, shocked her too much to react at his teasing. When she met him, he had seemed incapable of laughing like that, and her assumptions had proved to be right for the whole month that they had trained together. Seeing him wiping the tears out of the corner of his eyes and sighing in contempt, made a warm feeling appear in her chest.

"We'll see about that." She said in defiance, but a warm smile adorned her features.