Smile

"What's this?"

Shizuku crouched beside Jing Yang, curiously studying the dense black symbols etched into the ground.

"They're Divine Characters," Jing Yang said.

Shizuku turned to look at him and quietly waited for him to continue.

Jing Yang gathered more Aura in his hand and pressed it against the Divine Characters, which no one knew who had drawn. Very quickly, he received clear feedback: the speed at which his Aura recovered abruptly increased. His whole body felt as though it were being massaged by an invisible field of energy, incredibly comfortable...

"I'm not entirely sure about the specifics. In short, some Nen Users can infuse Nen into these Divine Characters and use them as an auxiliary tool for Nen."

Jing Yang paused. These unusual Divine Characters had not appeared much in the manga: the ribbon Wing tied around Gon's fingers; the box Ging left for Gon; and on Greed Island, one of Razor's subordinates had inscribed Emitter-type Divine Characters in the arena to assist his teleporting fists...

Overall, the Divine Characters of the Hunter World were somewhat like sealing scrolls in the ninja world.

Except the ninjas' scribbled seals contained ninjutsu and items, while Hunters sealed specific Nen within Divine Characters.

"The Divine Characters in this Ferris wheel cabin probably contain Enhancer-type Nen," Jing Yang guessed. "Maybe an Enhancer's exceptional recovery ability was stored through these Divine Characters, and it activated automatically after coming into contact with our Aura..."

"Why did it activate?" Shizuku asked curiously. "We didn't do anything after coming in."

"We did, didn't we?" Jing Yang smiled. "To recover your Aura faster, haven't you been maintaining Ten? Once Ten becomes instinctive through practice, even if it can't match Zetsu's recovery speed, it's definitely better than letting Aura leak away naturally. An ordinary person wouldn't have this kind of reaction."

"Oh." Shizuku nodded.

"Of course, it's also possible that the condition for activating these Divine Characters is simply having Nen quantity beyond ordinary standards," Jing Yang said. "I hear Divine Characters are troublesome to draw, costing both time and effort, and once they're drawn, they can't be moved somewhere else. Their practical value in actual combat isn't very high..."

Shizuku nodded. "Oh..."

Jing Yang studied the Divine Characters for a while longer, but he truly could not make anything of them.

The two sat facing each other in the seats of the only illuminated cabin. As the Ferris wheel turned, their view slowly rose higher.

Looking at the twenty-some dark, unlit cabins in the night, Shizuku asked curiously, "Do those have Divine Characters too?"

"Who knows?" Jing Yang answered casually. Then, looking at Shizuku's profile as she stared out the window, he suddenly asked, "Shizuku, why did you agree so easily?"

"Huh?" Shizuku turned her face toward him, still wearing that vacant, adorably blank expression. "Agree to what?"

Jing Yang smiled. "To call me boss if you lost. Don't tell me you're planning to welch on it? If you want to welch, do it after we get out. You've got nowhere to run in here."

The Ferris wheel had nearly reached its highest point. Shizuku looked back out at the amusement park's night scenery and said, "I'm not welching. You're the boss."

"Then let me test you. What's my codename?"

"Ji."

"And yours?"

"Yi."

"Your memory isn't that bad after all." Jing Yang smiled. "The first rule of our Dawn of Dawn organization: listen to the boss! Got it?"

"Got it." After saying that, Shizuku asked, "Isn't it Akatsuki?"

"Akatsuki is the nickname. The full name is Dawn of Dawn..."

"Does it mean something?"

Jing Yang asked, "What kind of place has a dawn, has daylight?"

Shizuku thought about it, then answered, "Night?"

"Exactly, night!"

Leaning back in his seat, Jing Yang also looked out at the night view. From high above, the bustling amusement park looked like a tiny miniature landscape.

"Shizuku, have you heard of the Dark Continent?"

"No," Shizuku said.

Anything she did not care about, she could forget the moment she turned around. That was why Jing Yang suspected that even if she had heard of knowledge like the Dark Continent—something the Hunter World deliberately avoided discussing and had stripped from mainstream public awareness—she might have forgotten it immediately afterward...

The Ferris wheel passed its highest point, continued turning, and began descending...

Jing Yang stretched out his still-not-very-long legs, spread his arms, and leaned against the seat with a smile. "The Akatsuki organization's first goal: the Dark Continent. We have to go. Not going isn't an option."

"Oh." Shizuku nodded, then asked curiously, "What kind of place is it?"

"It's because we know nothing about it that we're curious and want to go take a look."

"Oh..." Shizuku looked as though she had suddenly understood.

Jing Yang casually told her what little he knew about the Dark Continent from the manga—Everlasting Rice, the Endless Stone of Discharge, Ancient Cities, Unknown Lifeforms... He did not need to repeat himself. Shizuku's eyes were already filled with curiosity, and she had become interested in that unknown land, hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of times larger than the currently known human world.

Still, Jing Yang seriously doubted how long her curiosity and interest would last.

Would she forget it the moment she turned around?

"You still haven't answered my question," Jing Yang said. "Generally speaking, just losing an arm-wrestling match isn't enough to really stake everything on it and call someone else boss, is it?"

"Are you worried I'll betray you?" Shizuku asked.

"A little," Jing Yang said. "When something comes easily, you feel like losing it could happen just as suddenly."

"I won't."

This time, Shizuku did not dodge Jing Yang's question. "Because there isn't really anything to do anyway. If I listen to you, at least I'll have something to do."

That was such a casual reason, yet somehow not casual at all...

Just then, a small black shadow came flying out of the distant night. With a thud, it struck the outside of the cabin window.

Shizuku turned to look. It was a little gray bird. The Gray Bird clung to the window ledge with both claws and pecked insistently at the glass with its little beak, facing Jing Yang inside.

Jing Yang waved at Rock Sparrow and asked, "Have you been traveling alone this whole time?"

Shizuku looked away from the bird. "Yeah."

"So when you said there was no 'real thing' to do, that means you used to have something to do?"

"I came out to find someone."

"Came out from where?"

"It should count as my hometown," Shizuku said. "Meteor City."

She looked at Jing Yang.

Yet Jing Yang's reaction was completely unlike what she had expected. He asked curiously, "Does Meteor City really have eight million residents?"

"I don't know..."

"Don't know, or don't remember?"

Shizuku answered honestly, "I don't remember."

If Meteor City really had eight million residents, it could basically count as a small country.

"Did you find the people you were looking for?" Jing Yang asked.

They were probably the Phantom Troupe. If he remembered correctly, in the Chimera Ant arc of the manga, a scattered ant Brigade Leader ran to Meteor City intending to carve out territory and become king. Meteor City directly called several members of the Phantom Troupe back to deal with the problem... That was enough to prove that the Phantom Troupe was fairly well-known in a place like Meteor City.

"No," Shizuku answered.

"What kind of people are they?"

"It's because I know nothing about them that I'm curious and want to go take a look."

"What are you smiling about?"

Shizuku asked in confusion, "Did I smile?"

"You did. It flashed by in an instant." Jing Yang walked over, pressed two index fingers to the corners of Shizuku's mouth, and gently pulled them diagonally upward. "You're always so blank-faced that I've never seen any other expression from you, so it was easy to notice."

"Oh..."

Shizuku began analyzing it herself. "Maybe it was because the conversation was so similar to when I asked about the Dark Continent earlier. I thought it was interesting, so I smiled."

Seeing the blank, adorable glasses girl like this, Jing Yang could not help recalling the Yorknew City arc in the manga. When she received the prophecy poem Chrollo gave her and interpreted the date of her own death, she had worn a similar expression—meaning no particular expression at all.

"What about you?" Shizuku asked curiously.

"Me?" Jing Yang said. "That's a long story, so I'd better not tell it!"

"Oh." Shizuku did not press further and pointed at the Gray Bird pecking at the window outside. "Should we deal with it?"

Little Rock Sparrow abruptly stopped pecking at the window.

"Just ignore it."

The Ferris wheel's only illuminated cabin slowly turned down to the ground. Jing Yang rose with a smile and jumped out. "The Akatsuki organization's second rule: companions help each other, do not interfere with each other, and do not betray each other."

Shizuku looked at him. "Okay."

"You smiled again."

"I didn't, did I?"

"You did."

"Oh... then fine."

Opening the cabin door, the two walked out while chatting. Very soon, the Little Gray Bird flew at them and was accurately caught in Jing Yang's hand.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jing Yang flicked Rock Sparrow on the head.

"Chirp chirp!" Rock Sparrow cried twice.

Shizuku belatedly realized, "It's your pet."

"What pet? I just picked it up off the roadside." Jing Yang released it disdainfully. The Little Gray Bird landed on his shoulder and pecked his cheek in dissatisfaction.

The two strolled out of the bounds of this unusual Ferris wheel attraction. Suddenly, Jing Yang stopped. Under Shizuku's puzzled gaze, he turned back toward the motionless Ferris wheel, whose lights had completely gone out as it blended into the night.

"The founder of Blanchette was a Professional Hunter named Allantrail Blanchette. Those Divine Characters might have been his work..."

Jing Yang muttered to himself, then suddenly turned to Shizuku. "Divine Characters are visible to the naked eye, right?"

"Mm." Shizuku nodded.

"Objects materialized by Conjurer Nen Users are physical as well. Before they are dismissed and return to being a mass of Aura, they are hardly any different from real objects."

Jing Yang remembered details from the manga.

When Kurapika fought the Phantom Troupe's Uvogin, even using Gyo, Uvogin could not tell whether the chains on Kurapika's hands were materialized Nen constructs or real chains.

Divine Characters were the same. Though they were products infused with Nen, they were also tangible writing that ordinary people could see with their naked eyes. That was precisely why people who did not understand would only see them as a bunch of nonsensical scribbles...

Shizuku asked curiously, "What did you think of?"

Jing Yang smiled. "If we keep looking for Ochima's job like this, we probably won't get any results. We might as well change targets and focus on finding Divine Characters! It's all business from the same company, so maybe they used the same methods..."