A/N: Hai. This chapter's purpose is only to show you a bit of their minds ;D Kept short so that it won't bore you, haha. xD Review afterwards please? :3

Hunter x Hunter (c) Yoshihiro Togashi

OWC: 2,556 words.

(Distracted) Thoughts

New, refreshing, and something wild. That was how the breeze felt to the young Akane that seemed to be ready for every more adventure. Being there, feeling the fresh breeze and hearing the silent waves, she felt so free. Freer than she'd ever been. I've never felt THIS free in my entire life, she thought with a contented sigh. The feel of nature around her made her feel whole, and so alive.

However the thoughts of contentment was something that the stabbing feeling at the back of her head stopped. The saying, 'everything good has a price' had always applied to her everyday life, but Akane groaned at the fact that it had to be today. Why today?

She didn't like a single second of it. Nu-uh.

She thought the blond boy was the one staring at her. She supposed it was him. He was the only one she felt hostile, if by a little, but he was not staring at her. She could feel the unseen, mental daggers being thrown at her, but she couldn't pinpoint who were throwing them. A shiver ran through her spine—someone watching her, even if it was the blond boy or someone else, wasn't good news.

She tried to confront her thoughts. The blond boy… it isn't possible! He can't be the one staring at me. He's asleep like the dead, can't you see, Akane? She turned around to check, and she was fairly convinced. Curled up in a ball by a corner, he reminded her of a kitten… but she finally reconsidered her thoughts and put that one away in a box that was labelled, not and never to be thought of.

She didn't feel right, though. She didn't like it, that feeling of being looked down upon. Whoever it was that feeling that someone was looking at her. Angrily. She soon reached the point where she couldn't stand it any longer. She was completely annoyed by that stare. She just wanted to squirm away from those eyes and have her own moment of silence in her head. She wanted to ignore this moment of weakness, but how could she, when she could feel someone staring down at her neck, watching her every move and twitch.

She knew her thoughts sounded wrong, but that would be the only way to describe it.

She knew she wouldn't be able to survive any longer to the indirect torture that person was giving her, so with faintly flushed cheeks, she stomped back to the little corner where Killua hid himself, and sat a few inches beside him, burying her face in her knees. She uttered a micro-groan as she rethought how desperate she was in her current situation.

She wanted to hide her face—she didn't want to be seen any longer. Not by anyone, and she wanted to disappear into thin air like a bubble once there, next thing you don't know where it is anymore.

"Did something happen?" Killua asked her, noticing all those anime-like dark shadows hovering above her head. like a storm. She twitched a little, and he tried to figure out the problem on his own instead. He did, quite successfully, and with a cool smirk he told her, "I told you, it's better to just lay low."

"Yeah, I get it… I learned my lesson… You can stop looking down at me now, sensei," she said annoyingly. She wanted to be strong again in people's eyes. She hated being weak; she loathed even just looking weak. She didn't like it. It was so degrading.

(She knew she wasn't strong enough, that she was weak still, but thinking about it didn't really help either.)

Killua blinked, a little surprised at her rather rude response. Mood swings? "Sheesh. Freaking get a rest now, okay?" he said, still slightly irked and in shock, and Akane just nodded, ignoring his rude way of saying knew he cared, he wasn't just showing it "the right way."

"Thanks."

She suddenly felt so relieved about having Killua with her—at least, she had someone to talk to that won't annoy the hell out of her (at least not the bad way). Somehow she could figure what kind of little brother Killua would be, if he was.

But of course, she only knew that much.

Right after they got on this ship, Killua had not just exactly been 'laying low.' He wasn't sleeping or any of the sorts—he was just keeping a watchful eye and put his enemy-radar on full blast. He gave conscious looks around on everybody in the ship. He had been weighing the powers of who he thought would pass the exam.

He knew that most of the passengers on board the ship wouldn't even manage to get to the Exam site. He could tell that just by looking at them. Not that he was flattering himself (for he didn't like flattering himself except if it was for pure fun), he was merely stating the true and bitter fact. The others, he knew, may not even manage to survive the first round. For him—and he had the right to think this—they looked so incompetent and weak. But you mustn't judge a man by his appearances, so he just looked around anyway, not making real conclusions about their strengths.

If he was at his usual mind, he wouldn't continue this if he found anybody he wouldn't be able to beat. But he was letting go, he was going to keep fighting.

He had really planned on being a low-profile watcher so he had kept in that little corner on purpose. That little corner can see every part of the ship. He guessed Akane wasn't for unseen people-watching so he left her to just walk around, maybe to sort her own thoughts.

Despite all the ruckus he was trying to look into, he still kept an eye on her. A very watchful one, but for what reason he couldn't figure out. For some other reason which he could not define, he also just had that urge to defend her, to make sure she was safe. He didn't understand what he was feeling, exactly. He couldn't pinpoint… but for some reason he knew it would be something very important for him and the future he was trying to create from scratch.

He remembered what he'd left back home and he tried to feel sad, he did, he tried his hardest, but somehow he didn't.

He still was thinking of Akane. Not romantically, of course. It was weird, he thought, how a girl would have the bravery and the guts and all that little shit to join the Hunter Exam. He got that picture in his head that the members of the female species to be very meek and to be cowards, even though the female of the species are always much fiercer than the male.

(He closed his eyes. What did he know about girls? Of the few he'd met, they hadn't been really pleasant.)

But where he grew up from, those things aren't taught. He didn't know That.

He just went on to just feeling the rough surface of his skateboard, feeling the marks and the "wounds" and all the memories he'd made with it. He took a rest from his scouring for enemies, and proceeded to do a very interesting chore of looking out at nowhere. He was spacing out – not that he really had anything to do. He didn't want to have more "friends" at the moment and Akane was busy doing her own things in her own pace. So he kept silent.

He wondered, how many chocolates do I have? Will they last?

As he was about to grab a bonbon from his pocket, he spotted her walking toward him. A little glumly, even. She must've gotten bored with the 'wonderful' view, he thought. So, curious, he asked her if something happened. He reminded her that she should've just laid low. He'd tried his best to warn her, and he just wanted her to know that she better listen next time. It was "only for her good", after all.

Shit, I'm sounding so parent-like, Killua cursed in his head. What the hell did I eat?

However, Akane, the proud figure she is, just nodded. She agreed with him, and he thought that was weird. From what he'd seen with Akane, she'd argue about it or something. But he just shrugged off the topic off his mind.

He was worried about her – okay, maybe not much, not as much as his running low supply of chocolates, but a tiny bit still – because she was acting strangely. Something must've bothered her, but she didn't want to be bothered or anything about it. So he could do nothing.

He sighed. Killua, you're putting your nose in the wrong place.

And he turned around and dropped the thoughts. The best way to let a bird to know it can fly was to drop it and let it use its wings.

She wasn't carboloading on angst, she was thinking.

She was actually busy contemplating on the happenings these past few days – and hours. In the duration of but a few hours (starting with her journey with Killua on the train), she felt like her life's been changed. Or her life had been changing. She didn't know how to describe it, and she didn't and won't know how to put it in words.

Oh, right. This is the first time I'm actually doing this like this, without having to look at someone and ask if I should… she thought bitterly in her mind. She was more than 'kind of bitter' that way. Her parents had always planned her day ahead of her before, leaving her no chance to think, 'What am I going to do today?' since all was already written out like a daily schedule. And she hated that.

It was not like her parents didn't want to give her the freedom, only it was different from the freedom she was feeling at that point in time. The freedom she had experienced lately made her feel so alive, so new, so refreshed, like someone pressed the reset button to her body and her life and she had the chance to do it all over again.

But the new presences that surrounded her blocked her from that feeling of absolute release.

Killua's was definitely something weird, if only for her. To her, he felt so… caring, tender or that sort of thing, yet also threatening and a foe at the same time. He was such a cute kid, yet he was still a very cold person. She would not believe in her lifetime that at that moment, he'd actually care for her in any way. She was not part of his family. She was just a stranger he had met on the way the exam. 'Acquaintances' was actually the right term.

In her mind, she thought Killua was an independent, strong-willed kid with great mind power. And physical as well, so far as she could see. Meanwhile, even if she wasn't weak, she wasn't completely independent. She wasn't a coward, but she wasn't exactly strong-willed—she doesn't trust her strength. She had great mind power, but she would bet on her life that hers wasn't as great as Killua's. Physically, she didn't even bother to guess. Oh, how she wished so badly she was like him…

Other than on the aspect of strength, his appearance also irked her, for some reason. Other than his childish face, his silky hair was so lustrous and mysterious she wants to ruffle it and feel it –she guessed it feels like the softest of silk. No, even softer. While hers… she did not bother to guess. Then, his eyes were filled with so many emotions that welled beneath. She couldn't tell which from which, but she could say that he was as much as a mental and emotional torrent as her.

His expressions told stories – he could be a kid at times, but he knew how to act like a mature, like, really mature, for a 12-year-old boy. Mature enough that she kept on thinking he was older than her. If it wasn't for the height difference between them of a few inches, she would've forgotten she was the sixteen-year-old, not he.

She wanted to know more about him. And she wanted to be something like a second, foster-sister to him. A great sister. In all aspects.

Speaking of being a great example, she remembered that kid with the fishing pole. He looked so friendly that right now she would love to run to him and tell him, "I wanna be your FRIEND!" with a cute smile.

But for the sake of her own face, she instead kept her position and lay low. She laughed a little at the fact that that 12-year-old she had just met was starting to become her role model, somehow.

Just like Killua.

Akane and Killua sat there, silently, both of them divulged in their own personal thoughts and opinions about themselves and of happy things and sad things and their adjustments to the new surroundings. Akane was unsure and conscious – she kept her face hidden by lowering it on her two knees. Killua, meanwhile, was uncaringly apathetic, and just stared into space, thinking of things no one would want to know.

Both of them remained silent and did not want to talk with the other. Not that they didn't want to talk—they were very talkative persons, especially Akane—even though both of them knew that they wanted to open up to each other, that they wanted to know more. Both were curious, you see, about each other's lives and pasts.

But they just didn't seem to be the people who wanted to talk. Not with themselves, anyway. They watched each other movements from the corner of their eyes and that was it. Not one of them dared talk. They were neither awkward with each other nor just plain shy. The two kept in silence (with one of them sometimes murmuring some unintelligible words), in their own dreams, in their own space, in their own time.

This silence was comforting and they dwelled in it with all the love.

Well, until the crack of thunder and lightning, of course.