Chapter 9

My name is Rena Stargazer.

I'm 12.

I have apples.

Care to share?

I am Rena, from Tanben City.

I bought it from MinTanners, thanks.

I don't know this city... I have arrived only recently.

No, I don't drink.

I don't want to.

I don't want to kiss anyone at all. It doesn't have anything to do with your gender.

Yes, I am.

Second time trying.

I failed the sweaty phase.

I don't know. Keep trying? I want to have a job.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Hmm?

Rena.

I can't say I want to. I appreciate the kindness, though.

Yes?

Nah. I'm good.

...

A span of 18 years isn't enough to have experience stored in mind. 18 years are only good for destroying whatever little sense that came built-in, forgetting about the thorns in the path to further ages, closing eyes in order to see.

Rena Stargazer was solitary from the start.

Parents want to see their children have friends. They worry when their child spends a little more time than usual with the said friend and start to think otherwise, go back and forth between these two concerns, non-stop until when they suddenly realise that the kid has grown up.

Some kids are born grown-up.

A sensitive child.

Her heart is just so full of affection.

She is too good for this world.

She perceives things differently.

She overthinks.

She doesn't think before she acts.

Absent-minded.

Too much intelligence must have caused her to go mad, don't you think?

I don't know what to do with this child anymore.

She will find her way.

She has found her way already.

Bitter.

She does everything her way, I don't feel like I'm her father at all; and you, what kind of a mother are you? How did this child end up this way?

Just who is Rena?

Rena Stargazer had a void. She could not fill it up. She couldn't say she tried to. She was a natural at disregarding things, no matter how important. She paid the problems so little heed the problems were as good as nonexistent. She lived together with them harmoniously.

Rena doesn't treat us like we're her parents.

Rena Stargazer wasn't the type to love. Her thoughts didn't settle down with one thing for longer than a month. For someone who couldn't find it in her to obsess over, or just get ambitious over something; it was difficult to pursue a dream or lock her heart to somewhere. She didn't feel like a daughter to her parents, like a student to her teachers, like a friend to her classmates. She had never been someone else's.

So I can't see her as my daughter.

Rena Stargazer could communicate to people fairly easily. She could be a people's person. She was estranged from the lives of the others through her preference not to.

She is free to do whatever she wants.

Rena Stargazer...

Rena is gone.

...isn't difficult.

Good grief. It was a tough sixteen years, coming on and off and on again.

She just didn't come across someone to take a peek at the roots of her quirks.

"I'm Rena."

"I don't care who you are."

In all honesty, I did. But all because you were suspensively bold in the dead of the night, and off your Nen enough to gravitate towards an assassin's aura.

I will tell you about the Rena Stargazer I know. But before that...

...

There is a thing about blue eyes that makes it impossible to look at them arbitrarily. I don't remember looking into blue eyes and not feel like the owner's trusting me with his biggest secret. When I pry them way, my eyes don't return to me with the same amount of spiritual wisdom as before.

Looking into blue eyes is refreshing, something I like to do whenever I have the chance - and is an action only a girl as bizarre as me can put this much meaning into.

It is but a coincidence that the highlight of my life has the most petrifying blue eyes I've ever seen, anyone has ever seen I'd like to think.

I've been going on about how I feel rejuvenated by blue eyes and how they somehow give me a clearer insight of life. But then, in Melody's guest room, blue eyes were the lock on my tongue, the stiffness in my legs, the sudden cold cascading to my hands from my neck. Maybe because this was the first time they were exposed to this degree, the first time Killua Zoldyck let the spark of worry, excitement and pure surprise show up in his eyes - maybe because I was too dishevelled and unprepared for this that I took the sensation of blue eyes as something from myself, not a stranger's glimmer of life but my own gaze that I let linger on everything stranger. In my head, all the voices - the voice of my exhaustion, my stupefaction, the reason (even if it was too low to be heard properly even at times when my mind was in harmony), the voice that told me to just raise my feet off the ground and throw myself at Killua - were rising into a cacophony and stilling until only one voice was clear for me to hear: Speak up. Tell him. Go. Touch. Lend an ear to your impulses.

So I did.

I didn't know if it was the best thing to do in that kind of situation. I wasn't sure if Killua was going to take that normally or have a miniature freak-out. Hell, I didn't even know if it really was the thing I wanted to do the most at that moment. But I did.

I think I kicked Alluka's face as I launched myself onto her brother. I wasn't smooth, had never been. Though it was okay. She didn't wake up. Killua didn't comment on it.

So we kissed, me still clumsy and drooling a bit, him moving his hands in the proximity of my backside to get me to sit on his lap, all the while we were right next to his sister's sleeping face. Talk about conniving.

"You're drooling." he said, affection so profound in his voice I has to cock my head to the side to find the right angle and gaze intensely at his face.

"You're melting."

"What?" Wrinkles shot through his forehead between his eyebrows.

"You have no tough walls up, and you are being as soft as your pillow back at your home, which was the most comfy thing to ever grace my head by the way. You kissed me for five minutes straight, you also didn't do anything to hide your inner mess from me." My hand found his collar on its own and I started to play with the buttons, tilting my head a little left. "So you missed me?"

"Do you expect me to get flustered? Mad?"

I snickered. "It'll be a lie if I say yes or no."

"Yeah, I did. But I didn't have any expectations, I thought you fell into their hands. I would come back for you, but I barely smuggled Alluka out of their den."

It was time to get to the serious talk, then. "I heard you got captured."

His face fell. "You would think twenty years of being an assassin would give me place to extend my shield to cover a second person as well. First I let them take you from my hands, then Alluka."

"I shouldn't climb to the cloud nine just by hearing this." I let out, too late to realise I was thinking out loud as usual. Killua chuckled softly, amazing me for the umpteenth time for the day.

"You should. I won't be allowing you to do it often."

His collarbones I felt under my hands were sharp, concealed under surprisingly warm skin. All of a sudden, I was hypersensitive to his feeling under my touch, his breath on my face, his legs under mine. I dropped my hand to his chest, caressing through the fabric of his shirt. My breath became audible, coming in short episodes of inadequate oxygen.

"Are you in a good mood?" I cooed, my hand stopping with my words. I lowered my hand to let it rest on his abdomen. "Am I excused to get spoiled a bit?"

He squeezed his hands at the sides of my thighs. "No more than Alluka is excused to."

I had the final blow ready to drown my hesitance with forward action, though. I brought my mouth near his ear to let him hear my low whisper. "But she had you to herself before I came. Now I want my share."

A sigh from his part let me know about his willingness to give up all cautions and measured movements, which I complied to by planting a kiss under his chin.

"I'm thinking maybe we will find some time for ourselves if we let the two in the room next door take care of this young lady for a bit."

Shaking his head, Killua locked eyes with me. "I won't trust anyone with her until she learns to properly defend herself."

"My teaching Nen won't be anywhere as effective as your assassin training." I said in response to his expectant eyes.

"You won't be teaching her Nen." Killua explained. "You will be staying with us."

"Where? How?" These were only two of the questions, and the shortest ones at that, which were filling my brain. I thought that Killua was about to reveal something big, and gathered myself from my slack position on his lap.

"You won't be going out of your way. Continue your poison studies, go on travels - to NGL if you want. I'm going to need some realistic setting if I want to actually prepare her to real life. She's barely been out of the protection of home before, and her first experience wasn't at all encouraging is it?" He grimaced, eyes darting down to find my chest too close to his. The worry in his eyes vanished quickly.

"But Rena, you will be so sorry for making me feel at home."

Now was my turn to return the sentiment, to help the introvert twenty-year-old expressing himself through self-denigration.

"I won't be if I find home by your side."

With Alluka's sigh that signaled she was past the heavy phase of sleep, I found his lips one last time for a long, longing kiss, its impact enough to make Killua shiver as he pressed the length of my body onto himself in a motion that felt like he was arguably using me as an upholder. In the seconds that sucked all the coldness from my hands and my neck, leaving me even hotter than the ever warm Killua, I felt more loved than I ever did any other time in my life. I think even if my cheeky words didn't give away my heartfelt emotions, close to happiness but seasoned with the fear of the unknown future; my head's tipping back and my fluttering eyelashes did. We parted, though with difficulty; and I helped myself up before lending a hand to him, leaving the sexual tension in the air unresolved. This was how he wanted to play, so I gladly played along.

It was just our brushing hands and Killua's contentment having a stranger -as far as she was concerned- around that might have made any bells ring in Alluka's head (unlikely with the grandeur of innocence going on with her), but as I spent the rest of the day by Killua's side, I felt whatever there was to be felt in the way I was snug under his arm and complimented his height and weight alike in appearances. It was the comfort, the reassurance I could do with, and a small amount of satisfaction that I had him under my eyes, my hands.

Right, I had him under my hands.

I remember what I was thinking that night just like I remember every moment but one with Killua. That night, I couldn't give it any meaning that I was shying away from actually removing the dresses out of the way and touching him just the wanted way, I suspected that my comfort on our first night stemmed from that one moment I couldn't remember - what made me go with a stranger to his house. Because it didn't make any sense that now my hands were frozen, I could only stay glued to the side of the bed and could only receive Killua's touches and kisses with nothing to give on my end. Only when he stopped to shake the hesitation out with a look that I saw the schemes in my head in broad light - there was my old self again, saving what I had now to later, in order not to miss it when I ran out of it - only I don't remember a single time I actually brought what I hid into the open. I always ended up losing things. I was so accustomed to it I was doing it unconsciously now, knowing somewhere deep within my mind that I'd lose it again if I didn't enjoy it now. But old habits were impossible to kill. By oneself.

I just had to let Killua kill them for me. How lucky I was that killing was his specialty.