Tonpa did not look back.
He maintained the same pace, the bag at his side swaying lightly with every step.
The same window he had used moments earlier caught enough of the hall behind him for Tonpa to see Leorio emerge from behind a pillar—then stop abruptly when Tonpa slowed.
Tonpa waited for a heartbeat before resuming his walk.
Leorio was trying to be stealthy, and that alone made the effort worth watching.
A man of his height, wearing a suit and displaying every thought that passed through his mind on his face, was not ideally suited for covert surveillance.
But he was the right target.
Tonpa moved between the tables until he reached the far side of the hall.
The three veteran applicants he had recognized through the body’s memories were already waiting for him: the hooked-nosed man who had once spent an entire night playing cards with him, the man who had helped him switch road signs during a previous exam, and the third man, who had lent Tonpa money and spent the following two years trying to get it back.
The hooked-nosed man raised a hand when he saw him.
“Finally.
You said you had something important.”
Tonpa sat down, pulled the three juice bottles from his bag, and placed them on the table.
The third man glanced at the bottles.
“If you brought my money with those, I might forgive you for taking so long.”
“I brought something more important than money.”
“So you didn’t bring my money.”
Tonpa did not answer.
He cast a brief glance toward the passage he had come from, as though checking that no one had followed him, then leaned forward and lowered his voice.
In the curved, polished side of a metal pitcher, he caught a warped reflection of Leorio stopping behind a nearby pillar.
The performance began.
“We need to stop.”
The three men looked at one another.
The hooked-nosed man frowned.
“Stop what?”
“All of it.
The juice, deceiving rookies, sabotaging their exams.
We need to leave this behind and find another way to live.”
A brief silence followed.
Then the man who had helped switch the road signs burst out laughing.
“Did you finally drink your own juice?”
Tonpa did not smile.
He kept his eyes lowered and tightened his jaw by exactly the right amount—not enough to make it look like a performance, but not so little that the words appeared meaningless to him.
“How many times have we done this?” he asked.
“How many applicants have we driven out of the Hunter Exam?
And how many times has doing that helped any of us pass?”
The man’s laughter gradually faded.
No one answered.
Tonpa continued.
“I started taking the Hunter Exam because I needed money.
My mother was sick, and I couldn’t afford the treatment she needed.
I thought a Hunter License would solve everything.”
He paused as if the next words were harder to say.
‘A sick mother.
Old, but still reliable.’
He had not chosen the story at random.
Tonpa knew why Leorio wanted to become a Hunter.
He knew that illness and money formed the shortest path to the part of the man hidden beneath his loud voice and quick temper.
“I failed the first time, then the second.
After a while, every rookie who succeeded started to look like someone stealing my chance.
I convinced myself that reducing the number of applicants would improve my odds.
Then I started enjoying the sight of other people failing, until I forgot why I had entered the exam in the first place.”
The third man raised an eyebrow.
“You never mentioned your mother during all those years.”
Tonpa looked at him, letting the weariness enter his eyes before it reached his voice.
“Because I didn’t want to turn her into a story you could laugh about.”
The man’s eyebrow lowered slightly, though he still did not look convinced.
The mockery, however, had disappeared from the other two men’s faces.
Tonpa might have believed himself if he had not been present when the story was invented.
His voice grew firmer.
“Today, I risked my life for a child I tried to trick with laxative-laced juice only hours earlier.
When I saw him worried about me, I realized I had become worse than the people I blamed for my failures.
If we cannot become Hunters, then the least we can do is stop making certain that everyone else fails with us.”
A window appeared before his eyes.
[Group Deception Registered.]
[Targets Affected: 2]
[Nen Points +4]
[Experience Points +4]
Tonpa’s expression did not change.
He continued watching the two men as though their answer mattered more than anything else in the hall, while the faint scrape of a shoe reached him from behind the pillar.
Then came the second chime.
[Deception Registered.]
[Target Difficulty: High]
[Nen Points +15]
[Experience Points +15]
[Leorio’s Trust Level: 0% → 3%]
Tonpa needed every year of experience he possessed to keep himself from smiling.
The important part had worked.
Leorio had not heard an apology intended for him.
He believed he had stolen a truth Tonpa had never wanted him to know.
After a moment of hesitation, the hooked-nosed man asked, “What do you want us to do?”
“Start by leaving the applicants alone during this exam.
Afterward…
find another way to live.”
The man who had switched the road signs nodded slowly.
The third man reached across the table, picked up one of the juice bottles, and turned it between his fingers.
“Beautiful story,” he said.
“I’ll believe you’ve changed when you return my money and throw these away.”
‘One of them still has a functioning brain.
Unfortunate.’
Tonpa took the bottle back from him.
“I said I had changed.
I didn’t say I had become wasteful.”
A quick footstep reached him, followed by another.
Leorio was leaving.
Tonpa remained where he was and did not look behind him.
He ended the conversation with a few terse words.
The hooked-nosed man rose first, followed by the man who had helped him switch the signs.
Their skeptical companion gave Tonpa one last look before joining them.
Tonpa stayed behind, arranging the juice bottles with unnecessary care as he waited.
Only several pillars and a short stretch of floor separated his table from the one where Gon and the others were sitting.
The pillars blocked the view, but they did little to stop sound—especially when the speaker was Leorio, a man seemingly incapable of whispering without informing half the building.
“I heard him myself,” Leorio said.
“He was talking to his old crew and telling them to stop deceiving the applicants.”
Killua’s voice followed.
“And you were eavesdropping on him?”
“I was investigating his plan.
That’s different.”
Gon asked, “What else did he say?”
Leorio hesitated before answering.
“He said he started doing this because of his mother.
She was sick, and he needed money for her treatment.
After failing the exam so many times, he began reducing the number of applicants to improve his chances.
Eventually, he forgot why he started and turned it into a habit.”
A brief silence followed.
Then Gon said simply, “So he really does regret it.
I knew he had changed.”
A notification appeared before Tonpa.
[Gon Freecss’s Trust Level: 5% → 6%]
“Or he wanted you to hear that exact story,” Kurapika said.
“He didn’t know I was there,” Leorio replied immediately.
“I hid well.”
Killua made a short sound that Tonpa could not identify as laughter or disagreement.
“I’m not saying I trust him completely,” Leorio continued.
“But what I heard wasn’t meant for us.
Even his friends were surprised.
It really does look like he’s trying to change.”
Kurapika answered after a moment.
“Asking them to stop does not benefit him directly.
That gives his words some credibility, but it proves nothing by itself.”
“I still think he’s suspicious,” Killua said.
“And that’s assuming he didn’t know you were listening.
Still, dragging three other people into the performance just to deceive you would be a lot of trouble, even for him.”
The notifications arrived one after another.
[Kurapika’s Trust Level: 0% → 0.5%]
[Killua Zoldyck’s Trust Level: 0% → 0.5%]
[Total Nen Points: 24]
[Experience Points: 364/600]
Tonpa waited, expecting another chime.
None came.
Apparently, the System did not count people who received a lie in someone else’s voice, even when it influenced their judgment.
It was only an inference, but his unchanged balance made it a convincing one.
‘It accepts free advertising, but refuses to pay commission.’
Tonpa kept his expression solemn in case Leorio glanced back through the pillars.
Only when he lowered his head toward one of the juice bottles did the corner of his mouth begin to rise.
He had not needed to convince all four of them individually.
He only needed to deceive the loudest one and let him sell the lie to the rest for free.
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