The adorably vacant girl behind the counter frowned.
"Sir, you've got quite a temper! I only asked what you wanted to drink. Did you really have to get that angry?"
The muscular man was losing his mind.
"You only asked what I wanted to drink? How many damn times have you asked me already? I've only put up with you this long because you're a young girl. That's more than enough patience, all right?"
Shizuku pointed at herself.
"Are you saying I've asked you several times already? No, I haven't! Sir, you only just came in, and I've only asked what you wanted to drink once."
The muscular man had had enough.
"Keep playing dumb, girl, and I'll knock your brains out. Don't think I won't."
Shizuku: "..."
The three Spiders standing right behind the man, who had witnessed everything:
"..."
Feitan lowered his voice and asked Chrollo.
"Boss, are you sure this is the girl in the new member information Shalnark sent? Doesn't she seem a little too stupid?"
Chrollo looked at the information on his phone, then forwarded it to the other members.
According to Shalnark's investigation, the girl named Shizuku was indeed a Nen user.
She just seemed to be rather forgetful.
And once she forgot something, she could never remember it again, so she never lasted long at any job.
She would get into arguments with people over one mix-up or another at the drop of a hat.
Just like now.
Finally pushed beyond his limit, the muscular man threw a powerful right straight at the pretty but deeply eccentric girl.
The onlookers in the shop all cried out in alarm!
The man's punch looked anything but weak. If it actually landed on that delicate, pretty girl, wouldn't it seriously hurt her on the spot?
Yet, to everyone's surprise, the muscular man's astonishingly powerful punch struck the girl as though it had hit a wall. Not only was she completely unharmed, but the man cried out, "Ow!" in pain instead.
What just happened?
That punch felt like it hit an indestructible wall. The powerful recoil left my right hand aching and numb even now.
There's more to this girl than meets the eye!
The Spiders and A Luo had also noticed the flow of Nen over Shizuku's body.
The instant the man's right straight came at her, Shizuku's Nen flowed swiftly and effortlessly to the spot he was attacking, forming Ken to protect her body.
With Nen at that level, even an opponent attacking with an equally powerful Nen Ability might not have broken through her defenses, let alone a muscular man who was merely an ordinary person with some brute strength.
Of course the recoil had left his hand numb!
"What the hell are you? You look so slender and frail, so why does punching you feel like hitting something harder than steel plates or stone?"
Unable to make sense of it, the man tried punching Shizuku again.
Shizuku frowned. This time, she did not let him have his way and instead conjured a bizarre-looking vacuum cleaner.
"Blinky, get ready!"
The moment the words left her mouth, the girl leaped up and brought the vacuum cleaner in her hands straight down on the forehead of the muscular man who had repeatedly struck her.
Everyone heard the crack of his skull breaking. A second later, the muscular man lay on the floor, no longer breathing.
"Sure, I can defend myself with Nen, but it's still really annoying when you people keep hitting me without even trying to understand what's going on, you know?"
Looking at the muscular man who was now a corpse on the floor, Shizuku cheerfully instructed the weapon in her hands.
"Blinky, time to get to work! Please suck up this corpse on the floor, along with all the blood that splattered out."
Then the muscular man's corpse was sucked into the vacuum cleaner-like thing, along with the blood splattered over the floor. In less than a minute, every trace of him had been sucked away.
Had they not witnessed it themselves, almost no one could have imagined that a killing had just taken place there.
Feitan's dark golden eyes instantly lit up.
"Shalnark's information was pretty reliable after all. So what if the girl's an idiot? That ability would be incredibly useful to our Phantom Troupe! Boss, should we go talk to her now?"
Chrollo watched Shizuku calmly continue her work behind the counter, looking as though she had done nothing at all, and said evenly:
"Let's watch a little longer."
A killing had taken place in the little shop. Unlike the Spiders calmly watching, the ordinary people fled one after another in terror.
As they ran, they screamed in fear.
"Help! Someone's been killed!"
"Murder! Someone killed a man in here!"
When the manager in the kitchen heard the commotion, realized something was wrong, and rushed out, all he saw were terrified customers desperately fleeing.
"Shizuku! What did you do? Why are all the customers running away?"
Shizuku scratched her cheek with a vacant expression, sounding just as puzzled.
"I don't know! I've been standing here taking orders the whole time. Why would they suddenly run away?"
She seemed to have already forgotten what had just happened.
The manager: "..."
The Spiders: "..."
A few minutes later, after pulling up the surveillance footage and seeing the truth, the manager looked at Shizuku with utter terror.
Drenched in sweat, the man shakily opened the cash drawer, grabbed a large pile of Jenny at random, and pushed it toward Shizuku.
"Please, you can have as much Jenny as you want. Consider this your pay for today's trial shift. Those people who ran out must have reported this already, so you'd better run too!"
If I stay in the same room as someone this vicious, what if she suddenly hits me too, then destroys my body just like she did before? If I die, there won't even be a corpse left to find.
When people faced a being far stronger than themselves, fear was inevitable.
Whether they were outsiders or extraordinarily powerful, they naturally had to face rejection from ordinary people, learn to live alone, and stop trying to live among them.
Tigers did not herd with cattle and sheep.
Just like the Spiders. Apart from their own companions, they did not mingle with ordinary people, and not one of them thought much of those people.
Likewise, when ordinary people discovered their identities or their strength, fear and rejection were inevitable.
Shizuku did not understand.
She did not seem to have done anything, so why were these people so afraid of her?
But Shizuku took it in stride and let it go.
If she was not welcome here, there would be somewhere else that wanted her. At worst, she would just find another job.
Easygoing by nature and extraordinarily forgetful, Shizuku never dwelled on little problems like this.
The girl accepted the so-called "wages" the manager handed her, took off her employee badge, and started to leave.
"Interested in joining our Phantom Troupe?"
Chrollo stepped in front of Shizuku at just the right moment, smiling as he tried to recruit the prospective new member he had his eye on.
Before you continue