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Chrollo paused the disturbing video he was watching to adjust his posture, realizing that once again he was leaning towards the computer. He sighed and stretched; at that moment, some members of the Troupe were gathered in that abandoned building in the center of Yorknew, one of the world’s largest metropolises and one of the epicenters of global criminal activity.
“Hey, Danchou,” Pakunoda entered the room after discreetly knocking on the door. “Shalnark went to sleep and said you were still here working. I brought dinner.”
Chrollo turned around, immediately recognizing Paku’s voice. She was carrying paper bags from a local fast-food chain in her hands. The smell of grease and frying oil permeated the small room — where there were only a table, two chairs, a computer, and an overflowing trash can —, which made the boy’s stomach growl against his will; the day had been so busy that the last time he had eaten was during breakfast, and now it was almost midnight.
“You are my savior,” Chrollo stood up and pulled out a chair so that Paku could sit next to him. “Shal and I were monitoring the content posted on Spider Web, but there’s still a lot to verify; the site has exploded in popularity recently.”
Spider Web was the darknet domain owned by the Phantom Troupe, used to lure criminals from all over the world into their trap. The site allowed the posting of photos and videos, particularly of illegal content: torture, mutilation, all kinds of abuse, murder, evidence of long-forgotten crimes, and anything else that the insatiably perverted minds of its users could imagine.
Pakunoda sat down next to Chrollo, looking at the computer in front of them. She handed one of the bags to the young leader of the Spiders and took out her own combo of cheeseburger, fries, and soda from her bag.
“Something interesting?” asked the girl, biting a fry.
It had been three years since Chrollo had returned to Meteor City after his training, officially beginning the activities of the Phantom Troupe. They still hadn’t found any clues about Sarasa’s killers, but they had already begun to infiltrate the criminal underworld, carrying out progressively more ambitious robberies and gaining connections and useful information. And the Spider Web served as a decoy for important people — politicians, celebrities, businessmen, activists, and many others —, providing the Troupe with excellent material for blackmail.
“Remember that political opponent of that authoritarian dictatorship in the northern Federation of Ochima?” the boy with the cross tattoo on his forehead went back to the beginning of the video he was watching and pressed play. “That one who was killed with twelve stab wounds in the back and whose death was ruled a suicide?”
The two watched intently the video of the man’s brutal murder. The computer sound was off, but they could practically hear his screams. Even though both Chrollo and Paku had already killed people before they even turned eighteen, even though they had spent the last few years learning to desensitize themselves to death and the act of killing, even though they no longer felt that visceral, terrifying agony when they saw corpses, they could still sensed a slight unease deep within themselves, the last vestiges of their humanity they tried to suppress at all costs.
“Wow,” was all that Pakunoda could comment. That kind of content no longer had much effect on them; it was just another shit happening in the fucked-up world they lived in — but at the same time, maybe there was some kind of perverse fascination in seeing that man being killed, but none of them wanted to think about it; they knew they were becoming monsters, there was no need to remind them like that.
“Yeah,” Chrollo agreed, unwrapping his still-hot cheeseburger and scrolling to the next post, which was also a video made by a shaken camera, this time from a user known as @mommyhelpme. It took their minds a few seconds to recognize the dark forest that opened that video, and put the pieces together with the description that could be seen below it:
I was packing up my office the other day and found some interesting gems. I had forgotten about this little work of art: a few years ago, some fellas and I went to Meteor City to search—
The rest of the description was cut off by a “Read More” button.
Paku covered her mouth with her hands. Chrollo’s cheeseburger fell on the table. He rushed to pause the video, and in the frozen image in front of them there was pure darkness, but it was still possible to clearly see a strand of orange hair in the corner of the screen.
There was the clue they needed to finally bring justice to Sarasa, the justice they had patiently waited for so many years. However, it wasn’t triumph that Chrollo and Pakunoda felt at that moment; all the years of meticulous emotional training they had undergone to become the brutal assassins they were today crumbled in a single second. For the first time in a long time, they were scared, they were very scared.
Sarasa’s death, the catalyst for the collapse of their souls and their rise to villainy, was now available for the vast consumption and enjoyment of society’s most sadistic figures. Even after death, that innocent child would never find peace, and in part, that was the fault of her forever grieving childhood friends.
“Paku, go away,” Chrollo was the first to break the anguished and shocked silence that had taken hold of the room; his voice remained impeccably sober, but there was an almost imperceptible tremor. “Get out of here.”
“What?” Pakunoda felt a punch in the gut as she processed those words, surprised by their intensity. “N-no! Chrollo, I—”
“I told you to leave this room right now!” the boy shouted, looking at the girl. “This is an order!”
Paku felt paralyzed; she couldn’t move, she could barely breathe. In the more than ten years she had known Chrollo, he had never shouted at anyone, not even after he returned as Danchou, not even at the enemies he murdered.
He had never spoken to her like that before.
Pakunoda stood up and left the room, leaving her dinner behind. She was running through the corridors of the decrepit building, as if trying to escape her own pain, her head like a desperate whirlwind.
Finally, the blonde girl fell to the floor of the room she shared with Machi; luckily, the other girl wasn’t there, otherwise Pakunoda would have had to explain the reason for the tears that were streaming down her face. She had been a ruthless assassin and a thief since she was very young, it was simply pathetic to cry because Chrollo, her boss, had raised his voice at her.
Deep down, Paku knew that Chrollo had reacted that way because he didn’t want her to see the video of Sarasa being killed, to discover the terrible details that, until then, only her killers and Chrollo had known. But it still hurt, more than made sense.
“Paku?” the girl was startled to hear Chrollo’s voice, lifting her head to see him kneeling and bent over on the ground in repentance. “I’m sorry for yelling, I’m sorry for making you cry. I wanted to protect you, but I ended up causing you more pain,” his voice was weak; he didn’t expect her to forgive him, and he would understand perfectly if that were the case. “I promise I will never raise my voice again, and if I ever do, you can kill me.”
Pakunoda felt the knot tightening in her throat loosen. It brought her some comfort to realize that, despite everything, they were still themselves.
“You fucking idiot,” Paku spat, watching Chrollo raise his head to look at her, surprised; it was the first time he had heard her swear. “Why didn’t you just cry with me, right by my side, like in the good old days?”
Chrollo sat down beside Paku; now both of them were crying. Reliving Sarasa’s death had terrified them, and they now felt as if they were once again those frightened little children from so many years ago, but this time without the rain to hide their tears.
Chrollo left the room and returned shortly with the fast food they had left in the office. He and Pakunoda ate together, right there on the floor, their faces still swollen and red from crying; the cheeseburger wasn’t hot anymore, but it was still tasty and brought them the perfect tranquility they needed.
Paku longed to hug Chrollo, hoping they could find comfort in each other’s arms as they dealt with their resurfaced childhood trauma, but the Nen conditions she had imposed upon herself prevented such contact, a punishment she had inflicted upon herself and him.
“Do you think everything we’re doing is a way of punishing ourselves for surviving?” Pakunoda wondered at one point, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Possibly,” admitted Chrollo, taking a sip of his soda.
“What are we going to do now?” Paku sighed, wanting to know how the Troupe would act on the new clue they had found, and what they would do after avenging Sarasa.
“Tomorrow morning I will call a meeting with the entire Troupe,” the leader of the Spiders simply answered, without going into further detail.
The rest of that fateful night was spent in silence, with both sleeping side by side on the floor, surrounded by soiled food wrappers. The terror of their repressed necrophobia had exhausted them, and they knew that in a few hours, the real nightmare would begin.
That moment of shared weakness would be their little secret.