"At least I don't pretend to be young!" Liam declared, crossing his arms with exaggerated dignity. "I'm as old as I am in my heart. I'm honest. Upright. Magnanimous."
Ginta—six-foot-five of muscle, afro, and facial hair—stared at him in complete silence.
The kind of silence that said, I have heard many things in my life, but this might be the dumbest.
Menchi looked between them, confused. "Wait, there's really an old woman in her fifties who looks like a doll? That's a real person?"
Ginta coughed pointedly. "I believe he's referring to Ms Bisky Krueger. Liam, do you know her?"
"I know of her," Liam corrected. "She doesn't know me."
"There's really someone like that?!" Menchi's eyes went wide.
"Bisky is President Netero's most outstanding disciple," Ginta said carefully. "She's also my senior. I'd prefer you didn't speak poorly of her in my presence."
"Speak poorly?!" Menchi clenched her fists, practically vibrating with excitement. "I'm jealous! Eternal youth through Nen?! That's incredible! When I get old, I want that ability so bad—"
"Do you have anything else to do?" Liam interrupted. "Because I'm planning to train all afternoon and you're cutting into my schedule."
Train all afternoon?
The words hit Menchi like a slap. Her competitive streak—already smoldering—ignited into a full blaze.
This kid is training all day. Every day. While I've been competing in cooking tournaments and making excuses.
No. Absolutely not. I'm not losing to a five-year-old.
"I'm training with you," she announced.
Liam shrugged. "Fine. You can entertain my eyes."
"Excuse me?"
"You're visually interesting," Liam clarified. "The green hair. Very distracting. Makes boring training less boring."
Menchi's eye twitched.
Lumos, watching this exchange, made a low rumbling sound that might have been laughter. Or disapproval. With tigers, it was hard to tell.
Ginta studied Liam with an unreadable expression. "You're comfortable training in front of others? Revealing your Nen type is significant information. Most users only share that with close allies."
"Oh, it's fine," Liam said breezily. "I already practiced my Hatsu this morning. Everything this afternoon is just foundational stuff. No ability secrets involved."
Menchi felt oddly touched. He trusts me that much? We barely know each other and he's already—
"Also," Liam continued, "you haven't even fully mastered your Hatsu yet. I could try to spy on you and I wouldn't see anything worth stealing."
The warm feeling evaporated instantly.
"What did you just say?" Menchi's hand drifted toward the kitchen knife at her belt.
"Plus, you already admitted you're a Conjurer," Liam added. "You have no secrets, little sister."
SHING.
The knife cleared its sheath.
"If you're going to look down on me," Menchi snarled, advancing with the blade raised, "then don't run away!"
Liam ran away.
"Stop running!"
"Stop chasing me with a knife!"
"THEN STOP INSULTING ME!"
Ginta watched them sprint in circles around the clearing, knife flashing in the afternoon sun, and wondered—not for the first time—why he'd agreed to mentor anyone.
After the chaos settled (Menchi tired herself out, Liam hid behind Lumos), training officially began.
Menchi had already mastered the Four Major Principles—mostly.
Ten: Wrapping aura around the body. Solid.
Zetsu: Closing all aura nodes to become invisible to Nen users. Adequate.
Ren: Releasing maximum aura. Functional, but sloppy.
Hatsu: Her personal ability. This was the problem. She'd barely started developing it.
She'd passed the Hunter Exam nearly a year ago. But then she'd spent months competing in culinary tournaments, then gotten dragged into this investigation with Ginta. It was now late December, and her Hatsu was still half-formed and uncertain.
I don't even know what I'm making yet, she thought, frustrated. A kitchen knife? A cooking tool? Something else entirely?
"Wouldn't it be better to just focus on Hatsu?" she asked, holding Zetsu with visible effort. "That's the most important part, right? Everything else is just... basics."
Ginta's expression didn't change, but his tone dropped into what Menchi had started calling his "Teacher Voice."
"If you ignore fundamentals to rush toward your Hatsu," he said, "you're building a house on sand. The basics are everything. Without them, your ability will be weak, unstable, and dangerous to use."
Menchi looked unconvinced. In her mind, Nen abilities were the flashy superpowers—the things that let you summon objects from nothing, control minds, shoot energy blasts. That was the core. The rest was just... prerequisites.
Ginta sighed. "Look at him."
Menchi turned.
Liam stood about twenty meters away in an empty section of the clearing. Eyes closed. Fists clenched. Body completely still, muscles tense like a coiled spring.
Lumos lay nearby, watching peacefully. Two birds perched on the tiger's head and tail. Everything looked calm. Natural. Like a scene from a wildlife documentary.
"What's he doing?" Menchi asked, confused.
"Use Gyo," Ginta instructed.
"Oh. Right."
Menchi concentrated, channeling aura into her eyes to see Nen more clearly.
And then she saw it.
Liam's body was wrapped in a cocoon of aura so dense it looked almost solid. The energy clung to him perfectly—no gaps, no leaks, no wasted output. It pulsed with his breathing, contracting and expanding in perfect rhythm.
But here was the weird part: she hadn't felt anything before using Gyo.
No pressure. No presence. No atmospheric shift.
"Is that... Ren?" she asked uncertainly. "But why didn't I sense anything? Usually when someone uses Ren, you can feel it. The air changes. Animals react."
"Because it's not Ren," Ginta said. "It's Ken. And his control is exceptional, so there's minimal leakage."
"Ken?" The word was unfamiliar.
"A derivative technique," Ginta explained. "You maintain maximum Ren output, then use Ten to contain it completely. It's advanced. You're not ready to learn it yet."
"When will I be ready?"
"When you can use the basics without thinking. When Ten, Zetsu, and Ren are as natural as breathing." He gave her a pointed look. "Which means: practice."
Menchi deflated slightly. "Oh."
She closed her eyes, released Zetsu, and activated Ren.
"Ren!"
Her aura exploded outward—wild, uncontrolled, a visible shockwave of energy that rippled through the clearing. Birds scattered. Leaves rustled. Even Lumos lifted his head, ears twitching.
Too much, Menchi realized. Way too much output. I need to contain it—
She tried to activate Ten while maintaining Ren, attempting to replicate what Liam had done.
It went badly.
Her aura spiked unevenly, surging and receding like a malfunctioning engine. The containment failed. Energy leaked everywhere, chaotic and undirected.
She gasped, releasing everything, and slumped forward, panting.
"Damn it," she muttered.
Ginta watched without comment. Let her struggle, he thought. Pain is a good teacher.
Liam, having finished his Ken endurance drill, wandered over to watch.
Menchi had moved on to brainstorming her Hatsu. She sat cross-legged in the grass, muttering to herself, occasionally gesturing at nothing.
"Kitchen utensils," she was saying. "I'm a chef. So obviously my ability should involve kitchen tools. And the most important tool is the knife. So... a knife. A special knife. One that can cut through anything."
Liam, eavesdropping shamelessly while petting Lumos, couldn't help himself.
"If you just want a good knife," he called over, "why not buy one? There are master blacksmiths who make kitchen knives that can cut through bone like butter. Save yourself the trouble."
Menchi glared. "I don't want a normal knife! I want a knife that can cut through anything! Any ingredient, no matter how tough! And it could work in combat too. Perfect dual-purpose tool!"
Liam stood up, brushing grass off his shorts. "Give me your knife."
"I haven't developed it yet!"
"Not the Nen knife. The regular one. The one you were waving at me earlier."
"Oh." Menchi pulled the kitchen knife from her belt and handed it over, suspicious.
Liam took it, testing the weight. Standard chef's knife. Good steel. Well-maintained edge.
Ginta's eyes narrowed as he watched aura flow from Liam's hand onto the blade.
Shu, he recognized. He's using Shu.
Liam walked over to a nearby boulder—about the size of a watermelon—and raised the knife.
Then he brought it down in a single, casual motion.
CRACK.
The stone split cleanly in two, cut surface smooth as glass. The knife's edge showed no damage. No chips. No dulling.
Liam turned back to Menchi, who was staring open-mouthed.
"'A knife that can cut through anything,'" he quoted. "Even a normal knife can do that."
He tossed the knife back to her. She caught it automatically, still processing what she'd just seen.
"What... what was that?" She turned to Ginta. "How did he—"
"Shu," Ginta said, voice tight. "It's the technique of extending aura into objects. Reinforcing them."
"Another... derivative technique?"
"Yes."
Menchi looked between the split boulder, the knife in her hand, and Liam's innocent expression.
"How long did it take you to learn Ken and Shu?" she asked, voice strained.
"Separately?" Liam tilted his head. "I didn't learn them separately. I learned them together. At the same time."
"At the same time?"
"Yeah. Is that... hard?"
Menchi's eye twitched violently.
Ginta, watching this exchange, felt his theory solidify.
He's like Bisky, he thought. Has to be. No one learns advanced techniques that quickly unless they've been training for decades. Which means….
How old IS he, actually?