Had the air grown denser in the confines of the tiny room at the table of which the four now surrounded?
At least, it seemed so. Yet despite Killua's urge to either question or scold the girl who had finally returned without so much as an acknowledgement towards any one of the preexisting three, he immediately thought better of it. Although he was dreadfully worn from an unease of nerves throughout the entirety of the previous evening and carried forth unto the present moment, his mind was still able to recognize the benefit in concluding one interrogation before beginning another.
Temporarily opting to ignore Misaki's presence, he turned to Haku once more and completed the inquiry he had been interrupted from expressing earlier:
"How do you know that two members of L.I.G.H.T. were there if nobody talked about it at all?"
Sighing, Haku groaned, "Okay, you got me…"
Bending his forearm in to a vertical line at the elbow while simultaneously creating a plateau out of his palm, Haku conjured the same familiar device that he had previously revealed as a tool for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes on his seismographs.
"This is how I know," he admitted with his eyes closed submissively.
"I thought you said that was for…" Gon began, confused.
"Yes, I know," Haku slurred out, "and it is used for that… just not for that exclusively."
Killua narrowed his eyes.
"So how does it tell you the members of L.I.G.H.T.?" the blue eyed boy asked seriously.
"It only tells me four," he explained through an almost painful fatigue, "and here's why: While Gon-kun and I were searching for you and Misaki, we were approached by a few men from the organization. Gon-kun was busy fighting off their advances, but there were more men on the island than just those which approached us. I attached devices to a few others that did not come after us, and two of them were at the meeting last night."
Haku's body rocked very slightly from side to side as he spoke, and he suddenly clutched the rounded edge of the table as if to steady himself, straining to open his eyes meanwhile.
"The device is rooted in electronics," he continued wearily, "and if I link it to a seismograph, it measures the magnitude of an earthquake. However, when I used the laptop back at home as an anchor…"
"Ah," Killua interjected, now understanding, "you can track the person it's attached to, right?"
"Precisely," Haku agreed, releasing the word at a far slower pace than usual in order to say it correctly.
"If you can only track the person it's on, how did you know that their headquarters is here?" Gon questioned; his face a sheer marvel of curiosity and wonder made flesh.
"Well I…" he trailed off, bowing his head.
"You don't, do you?" Killua accused, his tone bordering the line of irritation and disbelief. "…And how did you even know that two of the people there were from L.I.G.H.T.; you haven't had access to that laptop since we were at your house."
"There are a total of at least four in this village, the exact number which I tagged on the island," Haku argued quietly in an attempt to redeem himself. "Their headquarters must be located here, or that would be an incredible coincidence. Also, when I'm close enough to use my En, I can indentify the devices without the anchor."
"You forget something, Haku-san," Misaki finally said as she rose from her seat, and the boys turned suddenly at the sound of her chair sliding against the wooden grains of the floor to view her impassive expression. "Even when cloaked with In, your devices are not impossible to see so long as one uses Gyo. An organization that is so secretive that they would actually be willing to clean up after an eruption that no one else was supposed to know about and go as far as to kill anyone that might catch them during the act would probably be using advanced techniques quite often in their travels. If they know that people have been returning to the scene of the crime, wouldn't they be actively trying to cover their tracks and checking repeatedly to make absolutely sure they aren't being tracked or followed?"
Killua bit his lip.
Haku frowned through his grimace and then insisted, "They can't remove the device once it's anchored; only I can do that."
"What about 'Nen Exorcists'?" Gon chimed in; recalling a previous scenario the pair had encountered in the past.
"If L.I.G.H.T. is going through all this trouble to stay a mystery, it's likely they might even have an exorcist in the organization to make sure that members aren't ever restricted by a nen attack."
Misaki beamed for a moment at the silver haired boy before forcing her lips in to an indifferent, thin line across her face and her eyes to dull considerably. She turned away from the group and drew small, quiet steps toward one of the bedrooms, ultimately abandoning the scene.
'Such a clever boy,' she pondered as she examined the intensity gathered in his blue irises over her shoulder. 'You'll give me a run for my money when it's my turn to answer your questions, I can tell.'
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound was neither hesitant and questioning nor particularly graceful in its delivery against the thin sheet of wood acting as a door. Killua was hardly apologetic for the aggressive nature of his fist against the barrier, as indeed he believed that Misaki was the one who ought to be begging for his forgiveness, if anything.
"Enter," her voice permitted in a single, monotonous beat, and without delay he obliged.
The sight he was greeted with was unexpected. The girl had her left foot curled and tucked neatly beneath her, while her right leg was tented at the knee to support the elbow of the adjoining side on the single bed. In this hand she held a book, using her thumb and smallest finger to wing out the pages with a self-facing palm, as though the inked sentences were displayed before her on a pedestal. Her remaining fingers supported the spine while the opposite hand was gently collapsed in her lap, rising only to occasionally turn the page. On the floor were both the wig and the costume, together in a collected heap, and she was attired in her typical shorts, coral laced hiking boots, and ponytailed plum hair.
"I didn't see any books in the house before," Killua murmured suspiciously.
Misaki's amber eyes ran back and forth across the page, but she did not utter a reply.
In a low, but demanding voice, Killua asked, "Where did you go last night?"
Without so much as glancing up from her novel, she replied, "It was a personal matter."
Killua's brows descended marginally as he persisted, "You said you were coming right back, and then abandoned us."
"It's not 'abandoning' if I come back," the girl explained, her tone lacking any real passion in the words she spoke.
"Don't try to change the subject," he warned. "We thought you were coming back and we waited for you all night." Turning the foundation of his words more intense, he repeated, "Where did you go last night?"
Killua watched as her eyes continued to roll to and fro in a rhythmic pattern over the bonded sheets of paper. His pulse accelerated in response from frustration.
"Answer my question," the boy urged, his aura beginning to release in his resentment of the silence that appeared to envelope the small space around them.
"I have," she finally told him with disinterest, "and I'll answer any new questions as well. If you only asked the right ones, then you'd probably have the answers you seek."
Hardly in the appropriate mood to solve the puzzle of her mind games, Killua wrenched the brown wig from his head and fired it with anger-fueled precision on to the floor nearest Misaki. To his dismay, she did not as much as bat and eye at the minor tantrum.
"Who was that old geezer?" he asked, giving in to the hint to ask different questions.
"I worked for him once when I was a Contract Hunter," she lied convincingly.
"What did he want?" the boy asked, mussing his flattened hair.
"To discuss a contract, what else?"
"Assassination?" he asked, raising his brows in remembrance of a previous conversation.
"Maybe."
"Did you… accept?" Killua asked slowly.
He became bothered by the long silence that followed, especially since he noticed that her eyes had ceased their constant movement across the pages. She was thinking intricately about something that should have been a simple yes or no answer…
"I told you, I'm not an assassin anymore," she responded softly.
Killua considered her reply for a few brief moments before marching ferociously to her bed side and snatching the book from her fingers. Still, her eyes avoided him.
"It doesn't take all night to just say 'no', does it?" he insisted.
"It does if the client is a senile old man," she argued.
"How did he even know you were here?"
"He followed me," she whispered. A pause while Killua winced with discomfort at the implications of the statement, and then: "I've told him no, and now he's gone. Please return my book to me."
Shaking his head, the boy glared at her as he tossed the soft-covered rectangle at the plum haired girl. She caught it with ease, and their stares met for the first time since he had entered the room. Killua was well aware that her story was flawed and certainly untruthful- or at least not entirely true- but nonetheless there was something that dwelled within his psyche that urged him to accept her words… at least for now.
'I… want to believe her,' Killua realized with sincere shock at the contradiction swirling tightly coiled rings in his sleep-deprived mind.
Despite her eyes having already lowered back on to the thin, paper pages, Misaki seemed to take notice of his weariness and said, "You should have a nap while there is time to do so. You lost a lot of aura just now while you were questioning me."
Grumpy and burnt out on dealing with both the girl and his adverse thoughts and wishes, Killua gladly turned to the door and reached for the large, protruding bolt which simulated a knob. His eyes became distracted meanwhile as they scanned the mainly empty space closed in between the four walls, and then landed upon the cover of the book.
"What are you reading?" he murmured in a soft whisper as he studied the locked gaze she held upon the object.
No response.
"Hey, old lady," he reattempted, "what kind of book is that?"
The pad of her free middle finger guided the page across the collection of others she had surpassed, but no words came from her lips.
"Old hag," he shouted a little too loudly, "what is your book about? Answer me, will you!"
After a moment, Misaki blankly mumbled, "My name is not 'old lady' or 'old hag', you know."
"Well I didn't say those things the first time, and you still ignored me," Killua snapped.
"It's about an adult man that falls in love with a twelve year old girl, and all the glory and repercussions that come with such a situation," she explained indifferently, successfully side-stepping his statement.
Scrunching his features, he asked, "Adults can fall in love with teenagers just like that? Must be one of those weird, girly romance books..."
Willingly glancing up at him, Misaki scooted over and patted the mattress where she had just been seated. Killua hesitated before lazily approaching the bed and sitting down on the warm patch of blanket. His back faced the girl and his feet still touched the floor. He knew well that her skin smelled sweetly of fresh soap, and did not wish to inhale the scent that would once more insist that he ought to dig deeper in to the holes of her story.
"How will you be able read like that?" she asked, a small trace of amusement seeping in to her voice.
Against his better judgment, Killua admitted awkwardly, "I don't really know how to read much…"
This apparently gained her undivided attention, and the former assassin could feel her eyes on his back.
"You don't know how to read?" she questioned in legitimate amazement.
"I didn't say that!" Killua protested, his cheeks growing warm with embarrassment at the sincerity in her voice. Trying to brush off the feeling that he was being indirectly mocked for his lack of the skill, he explained on rapid fire, "I just never learned properly how to do it. I learned some on my own, anyway. Besides, I don't need to know how to read and write a lot to get a message across..."
A sudden weight upon her right shoulder slowed her verbal narration to a halt mid-sentence, and Misaki tilted her head to find that the silver haired boy had indeed fallen asleep with his head against her. With wandering eyes she had occasionally strayed from the page to peek at him, enthralled in his attempts to so obviously to figure out where she was in a paragraph as she dictated the words aloud to him. At first he had made a point of leaving a decent sized gap between their bodies, though eventually his curiosity in the print of the story had lured him right to her side. Eventually, it must have grown to be simply too much to keep his eyes moving from one separate cluster of letters to another.
In spite of herself, she smiled down at the peacefully sleeping Killua and indulged in her desire to gently tousle his still partially flattened hair.
'Is this what it would be like to have a little brother?' she wondered.
Staring at the youthfully blank face, she felt a strange, slightly off pulsing in her heart beat. It was incredible that Illumi's brother could appear so innocent and… non-threatening? Was that the correct word?
'He's still a cold-blooded killer,' she reminded herself in a sore attempt to stay focused on her contract.
Her cheeks tinted slightly and she reeled her attention back in to her novel.
'You're warm, Kil,' she mentally interrupted herself before sighing and opting to simply bend back the corner of her page and stare quietly at the wall ahead to clear her foolish, noisy thoughts.