The upper-floor medical suite was quiet except for the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the cold drizzle tapping against the glass windows.
Yuzuki sat on the edge of the examination table, bare to the waist.
The damage from the match against Chrollo showed clearly under the harsh lights. A wide purple bruise stretched across his left side, where three ribs were cracked, one with a slight displacement. A deep ache also ran along his lower spine whenever he shifted his weight too quickly. The right side of his torso carried an angry laceration that pulled against its fresh sutures with every breath, and his left shoulder was a raw, pitted wound where Chrollo's blast-hidden manipulation strike had torn away flesh. Beneath his skin, his aura flow faltered in thin, uneven pulses. Even maintaining Ten made the pathways around his wounds tremble.
Standing over him, her small hands resting on her hips, Biscuit Krueger looked ready to tear the concrete walls down.
"You're not fighting tomorrow," Bisky said. Her voice carried none of its usual playfulness. It was low and tight with fear she could not hide. "You can't heal that shoulder, your ribs are unstable, and your aura is almost gone. One more Red could cripple you. Purple could kill you."
"Bisky—"
"Hisoka isn't Chrollo," she interrupted, her eyes glittering. "Chrollo chose to stop. Hisoka won't. He'll keep going until one of you is dead."
Yuzuki pressed his right palm flat against his ribs to steady his breathing. Beneath the thick black blindfold Shizuku had tied for him earlier, his brow creased.
"I can't withdraw," Yuzuki said softly.
"Why?" Bisky demanded. "For the title? To prove you aren't scared?"
"He almost killed me during the Exam. I still wake up checking whether my heart is beating." His hand tightened against his ribs. "I'm still scared of him. But if I leave because of that fear, he keeps deciding how I live. I won't let him."
He turned his head toward the corner of the room, where Kastro and Wing stood in silence.
"Back then, I almost died alone. This time, I know who I'm trying to come back to."
Bisky stared at him for three long seconds. The anger in her face slowly melted into a hollow, aching grief. She turned her face away, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist with a sharp, defensive jerk.
"Stupid, stubborn brat," she muttered, her voice thick.
Wing stepped forward, setting a wooden stool beside the examination table.
"Then we work with the body you have," Wing said calmly, pulling a roll of heavy medical tape from his pocket. "We can't heal you by morning, so we'll remove every movement that pulls at those wounds."
A medic returned to clean and redress Yuzuki's shoulder and side before they began. For the next forty minutes, the medical suite became a controlled rehearsal space.
Kastro demonstrated most of the footwork adjustments himself, showing Yuzuki how to protect his damaged left rotation.
"Shorten your stance," Kastro instructed, his tone steady. "Don't turn through the left hip. Use Blue only for small sideways pulls, and keep Hisoka in front of you."
Yuzuki tested a tiny lateral pull, shifting his weight two inches to the right. Pain tugged beneath the sutures on his flank. Wing raised one hand immediately.
"Enough. You understand the movement," Wing said. "No deep cycles. Keep Ten close to your skin and spend nothing you don't need."
Near midnight, the door opened softly. Shizuku walked in carrying a small paper box. She stepped over to Yuzuki, reaching up to unknot the dark cloth around his head.
From the box, Shizuku pulled out a brand-new silk blindfold. Pure black and cooling against his skin. She carefully wrapped it over his eyes, securing the knot at the base of his neck.
"This one's thicker," Shizuku said in her flat, quiet voice. "It won't soak through as fast. Bring it back."
Yuzuki touched the soft fabric. "Thanks, Shizuku."
"Don't die," she added simply, tossing the old cloth into Blinky, which swallowed it with a quiet slurp. "I don't want to pack up your room."
A narrow balcony panel slid open. Netero stepped in from the rain and closed it behind him before anyone could ask how he had reached the balcony. He rolled an unlit bamboo pipe between his teeth as he studied the battered boy.
"I watched Hisoka's matches," Netero said light-heartedly, though his eyes remained sharp.
Netero leaned down slightly, his voice dropping.
"I won't order you to withdraw. But answer me this: what has to happen before you stop?"
Yuzuki went quiet. He had answers ready for ordinary fights: when the referee called it, when he could no longer stand, when continuing became pointless. None of them felt honest now. Behind the blindfold, Yuzuki ran through every way the final could end. There was no safe exit strategy against a man who desired his death.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"Then decide before the bell," Netero said softly. "Hisoka won't give you time once it rings."
Netero opened the balcony panel again. One moment he stood beneath the medical lights; the next, the rain had swallowed him.
On the opposite side of Heaven's Arena's upper tower, the lights were entirely extinguished in Hisoka Morrow's private suite.
The drizzle ticked against the spiderwebbed windowpane Hisoka had cracked earlier that evening.
In the center of the dark room, Hisoka stood naked to the waist before a tall mirror. His pale skin was mapped with fresh purple bruises from his match with Lucien Cain. His dislocated right pinky finger had been pulled back into alignment, held straight by a taut layer of Bungee Gum.
Hisoka stretched a thin layer of Bungee Gum over the raw abrasion on his forearm, holding the torn skin in place. Texture Surprise spread across it a moment later, hiding the damage beneath the appearance of smooth flesh.
Yuzuki was thirteen, half-broken and nearly empty. The idea that he could kill Hisoka should have been absurd.
Yet, as Hisoka looked into the dark glass, a strange, feverish warmth spread beneath his collarbone.
With playful precision, Hisoka sent thin strands of gum beneath his skin, arranging them around the outer edges of his lungs, the great vessels and the tissue surrounding his heart. He left one simple command inside it. If his heart stopped, the gum would contract.
It was a delicate, absurd trick. He doubted death would ever get close enough to test it.
"Ah..." Hisoka purred into the dark room. "How delicious..."
He let the thread settle into dormancy and looked out across the rain-slicked city toward the lights of the arena.
Dawn broke over the city around Heaven's Arena in shades of bruised violet and pale gold.
In the kitchen of Yuzuki's suite, the quiet sizzle of a skillet filled the room.
Yuzuki stood at the stove in a clean black shirt and loose trousers, his new blindfold securely tied. His movements were slow, but his hands were steady as he turned three thin scallion pancakes in the pan.
"You shouldn't be standing," Bisky grumbled, sitting at the table with a mug of tea. "We have staff for this."
"Staff doesn't salt the batter properly," Yuzuki replied quietly, sliding the pancakes onto a ceramic plate.
Kastro sat across from Bisky, quietly accepting a portion, while Shizuku sat beside him, already dipping a section into soy sauce. Wing had already left to speak with the medical staff and tournament officials.
For twenty minutes, nobody talked about tactics. They ate simple food in the quiet morning light, the domestic warmth of the room standing in stark, heavy contrast to the brutal violence waiting near the top of the tower.
No one said it, but every glance lingered longer than usual.
---
BONG—
BONG—
BONG—
The heavy resonance of the arena bell echoed through the ventilation shafts of the building, vibrating through the floorboards beneath their feet.
The call for the Battle Olympia Final had begun.
Yuzuki set his chopsticks down on the wooden rest. He stood up slowly, taking a controlled breath through his nose, feeling the firm support wrap around his injured ribs whenever he breathed.
Yuzuki reached the door, his black silk blindfold catching the pale morning light. Behind him, chairs scraped across the floor. He did not need the Six Eyes to know the others were following.
---
Find early chapters on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]