SOUR CANDY | killua z. ✔

41 | whirl

tw: murder, some description of gore

IN THE cramped stall of a restaurant bathroom, Sen prodded at her scars.

The one on her elbow flared wide like a mottled starfish. The huge one on her abdomen stretched from her left hip all the way up her ribcage. It was kind of shaped like the Begerosse Union. 

Her fingers poked and poked, but there was no feeling. Dead nerves, one of the aunties had said grimly.

Sen vaguely recalled the moment she got them. Her mother's witch hands curling into her body, wounds forcibly sealed, heart quickening once again, dragged back to the world of the living.

 The pain of it was blinding. She'd almost preferred the dog's teeth.

That was the first and last time Sen saw her mother. In hindsight, everything made sense.

The only things she had from her mother were imprints. The scars. The memories. 

Sen's apathy towards being kidnapped was confusing to both her and her friends. She'd mulled over her fragmented memories, mulled them over again, and again, trying to come to a conclusion that was already staring her in the face.

The useless fragments themselves gave it away.

It was her mother's way of dangling a neon sign in front of her, yelling out, Obviously, I took you, stupid girl!

Sen had refused to see it the same way she refused to even think about that woman most days.

But why, after years of radio silence, was her mother now busying herself with Sen's life?

She's crazy, Kotaro once told her. Don't try to make sense of what she does.

Except Sen's mother wasn't giving her the option of ignorance anymore. She was forcing her to look.

Sen exited the stall, turning a sink on. Splashing cold water on her face did nothing to soothe the vibrant heat under her skin. She couldn't tell what was causing it; stress, fever, or the sudden morbid interest in her mother/kidnapper.

Her cellphone buzzed.

Sen quickly shook her fingers dry, tugging the phone out of her pocket. A text from Killua informed her that he and Gon had luck finding valuable items at the market.

Right. The job. The jenny.

Sen was a Jackpot-Hunter-in-training, and her friend needed money for a video game that may or may not help him find his dumb father. 

Personally, she had about as much respect for Ging Freecss as she did for her mother. Good parents didn't abandon their kids.

She rubbed aloe into her smarting palms (what the fuck did her mother make her do), winding a new set of bandages around her hands.

Sen wouldn't give herself a clean bill of mental health, but it would have to do. She would make do. 

Sen was too prideful to let her mother ruin her from a distance.

She pulled a thick envelope from her backpack. Ducking beneath the sink, she wedged it between a pipe and the wall.

The job was hilariously easy if she ignored the envelope's suspicious squish, weird smell, and, supposedly, the mafioso who was meant to collect it after Sen left.

Work, work, work. A decent distraction. If it worked for Kotaro, it would work for her.

Upon leaving the bathroom, the sound of silverware and muffled brunch conversation filled her ears.