Chapter 1: The Decision

"So the Hunter exam is about to start, are you going to try again ?"

Gon looked up from his breakfast to his Aunt Mito. "Yes….", he said hesitantly

"Look, if you don't want to follow your dad's footsteps, you don't have to," she said.

"No, this is what I want to do '', Gon replied. To be honest, his primary motivation to become a Hunter was to answer one simple question, 'Why the hell did his Dad leave him?' He was told it was to continue his job as a Hunter, and Gon had always wondered, 'just what was so good about being a Hunter that justified neglecting your family'. He wanted to meet his dad and ask him this, or at the very least, become a Hunter himself to experience what it was like. Of course, Gon had questioned if becoming a Hunter just to find the answer was worth it, but he had other reasons as well. For one thing, if he was being honest, nothing else really caught his attention, he simply didn't know what else to do. Also, a significant number of people, in his hometown, Whale Island, seem to be comparing him to his father Ging. It appeared that he was a famous prodigy on Whale Island. Many people seemed to believe that Gon had to become like Ging, this created high expectations,which were near impossible to meet . If he was being honest, part of the reasoning for becoming a Hunter was to life up to these expectations, because as much as he hated to admit it, Gon felt himself of unworthy of meeting Ging with his current skill set, and more importantly, he wanted what he had never gotten before: acknowledgement form his father, which would only seem to happen if he became a Hunter. Thankfully, Aunt Mito and his great grandmother , who also lived with him, didn't compare him to Ging , at least not out loud, but he did notice their tiny tinges of disappointment on their faces wherever he messed up. Additionally, Gon didn't want all these years of training to live up to Ging to be for nothing. Ultimately, the combined effort of these expectations and the desire at one day meeting his father made Gon ultimately decided that he would try the Hunter exam at least once to see what it was like. Many of the villagers had 'suggested' to him the idea of becoming a Hunter like his father, but when he himself first brought up the idea of being a Hunter, Aunt Mito had told him that prove himself ready to leave he had to catch the local monster fish, the 'Lord of the Fish', which apparently Ging had done when he was his age. Unfortunately, that fish was a really nasty bastard, he had planned to take the Hunter exam in the spring but hadn't caught annoyingly persistent fish. He eventually caught it in the summer, and had to wait for the fall although he overheard afterward that Ging had caught it in a shorter amount of time.

As Gon finished breakfast he peered out the window and signed. In truth, even though Aunt Mito said 'taking the Hunter exam again', Gon hadn't really taken the exam before, that is he was eliminated in the process they use to minimize the applicants that actually got to the exam. After he caught the 'Lord of the Fish', on the boat towards the exam area, Gon got seasick due to a storm, and passed out as a result. This was apparently a test 'weed out those unqualified as Hunters', and Gon was informed that the Hunter exam 'wouldn't take him this time around'. After seeing Gon's surname, Freeces, he thought he heard the captain remark 'is that really his son?", but couldn't be too sure. Gon returned to Whale island dejected. Of course he had been told that Ging managed to pass the exam the first time around, and also afterward hadn't returned to Whale Island for years, until he returned with him as a baby. Even though no one said anything, he could see the disappointment of not living up to Ging's standards in their eyes. He was a failure. Gon trained extra hard , so as to not pass out the next time. The next spring he successfully managed to pass the boat. Unfortunately, then he came across his next obstacle, he had to answer a mysterious question by a mysterious old lady, "Your father and son are in trouble, how who do you decide to save' At, Gon was shocked, and initially couldn't figure the question out (or course he hadn't met his father, and didn't have a son), then an idea popped into his head, 'I would save my son since he has more years to live" (and Ging was a deadbeat). He was then told he may pass, so at first he thought he did well. But then he got lost and realized that they sent him in the wrong direction meaning he had failed again. Yet another humiliation for not being able to make the Hunter exam. After some thinking, Gon theorized that there was no correct answer and that maybe he would have passed if he stayed silent. The next time, Gon managed to pass the two obstacles but unfortunately was kept from the Hunter exam, by magical beasts called Kiriko. He realized later that they must have been sent by the exam committee to test him. Thus Gon's ambitions to take the exam where over before it even started each time. Gon signed, he was 14 now, and still failed to become a hunter like his father did at age 12. Given the fact that he didn't have any other alternative paths in mind, and the fact that he didn't want the past 2 years to be in vain , and most importantly validation that he could be like his father, he would do it again. At the very least, he would definitely manage to take a Hunter exam just to see what it was like. Of course, he heard it was extremely difficult, but he believed himself to be pretty athletic, at least compared to other people on Whale Island, though he wasn't sure how much since he was always being compared to Ging , so he decided to give it a shot to see.

And so the day before the boat that would take him to the scheduled hunter exam, something stirred up in Gon's mind. The feeling that he probably wouldn't pass the exam. Gon pushed the thought out of his mind. He had already made the decision to take the exam this time around, there was no use second-guessing himself.