SOUR CANDY | killua z. ✔

8 | catch

tw: some assholes get killed

THE LAST thing Sen thought she'd partake in was a Tragic Backstory Session with her new companions like they were in some coming-of-age movie. 

But there she and Gon were, on an airship bound to Phase Three, listening to Killua telling them about his family. 

His family of big-name assassins. 

Zoldyck was a name that reached even Sen's little island, mainly because the family's home country, Padokea, was just north of Jappon. The rich people at the resort were nasty gossips.

"My whole family's got high hopes for me," Killua explained. "They say I have the potential to be a top-rated assassin. But who wants their entire life mapped out for them, y'know?"

Sen didn't know. To be honest, she took comfort in the fact that her roles in life were laid out for her from the time she was born. Follow your brother. Take care of your sisters. Work these days and these hours. It made life predictable. 

Was it so bad to enjoy consistency?

"Anyway, when I told them I wanted nothing to do with the business, they flipped out! It was crazy! My mom was crying and screaming. Horrible parents, right? No wonder I'm so rotten!"

Is that what having a mother was like?

Sen stared silently out the floor-to-ceiling window. 

It offered a beautiful view of the city lights from above. At night, it looked like glimmering, gridlike swathes of diamond necklaces had been strewn across the land by some heedless goddess.

She's busy thinking about how much Mai would love this sight while Killua was waxing poetic about killing his family.

"What about you, Sen-chan?"

Sen looked at them. "What about me?"

Alarms were shrieking in her head. 

"Your family," Killua clarified. "What do they do?"

"Uh..." Sen's heartbeat picked up. I come from a race of shapeshifting magical foxes who like to lie and trick people into horrible deaths. 

Right now, it was safer to trick herself into a horrible death.

"... My mother owns a resort," she said, finally. "On Inariyami Island."

Killua spun around on the bench to face her. "You mean White Pearls Resort?"

She nodded, tapping the resort's logo on the shoulder of her ugly, glittery sweatshirt. Sen didn't give a verbal answer because she was too busy suppressing the urge to punch herself in the face.

"Sen-chan's rich!" Gon exclaimed.

Sen grimaced. "My mother is, I'm not. My siblings and I don't live with her or anything, we just work there. We live paycheck to paycheck, like all the other employees."

Shut up, shut up, shut up—

Gon tilted his head. "You don't live with your mother? What about your dad?"

"Don't have one. My brother raised us."

She felt itchy. The scarring on her arm and torso burned. Too close, Sen. Change the subject. Lie. Divert. Anything.

Sen's ear pricked. Someone was coming from the left. No—

A gust of air slid past them.

Sen whipped to the right along with Gon and Killua, facing whatever had just managed to inch its way around her field of perception. She was half-kitsune. Nothing was supposed to get past her.