In an old wooden house, on the edge of a coastal island known as Fox Island, the night pressed down upon the place with an unfamiliar heaviness.
The sea outside was calm, but inside the house, the silence was torn apart every few minutes.
"Ahh…!"
The cry of a woman in pain split the air, sharp enough to make even the wind hesitate for a moment.
Several women gathered around the bed, their gazes shifting between worry and anticipation. The old woman the eldest among them held the hand of the young woman lying before her.
"Azma… breathe slowly. Push. There's not much left."
Her voice tried to sound steady, but it didn't quite succeed.
Azma bit down on a thick piece of cloth between her teeth, sweat beading across her forehead. Hours passed… long in an unsettling way.
The old woman had lived her entire life on this island and had witnessed dozens of births, but this one… was different.
Harder.
Heavier.
As if the child were resisting his entrance into the world.
Then, after a struggle that lasted for hours, Azma's screams suddenly faded.
A long exhale left her chest, followed by a brief silence…
Then , another cry.
But this time, it was not a cry of pain.
It was a cry of life.
"Aah… eh… aaahh…!"
Tense shoulders relaxed, and the women exchanged looks of relief.
The child was alive.
…
Darkness.
Silent. Boundless.
"…Where am I?"
The voice wasn't heard aloud, but formed as a thought within a hazy consciousness.
"What happened?"
The questions followed one another slowly, as though the mind itself were trying to function despite some malfunction.
"The last thing I remember…"
A brief void.
Then an image.
An airplane seat.
The hum of the engine.
A flight headed to Germany.
Then—
Nothing.
Absolute silence.
"Did I… die?"
There was no fear in the thought. Only dry curiosity. Like someone reviewing the result of an exam whose announcement had been delayed.
Before he could continue his analysis, light appeared.
It was not gradual.
It was an intrusion.
A blinding beam tore through the darkness without warning, followed by a force pushing him toward it. Pressure. Tightness. Forced movement.
Then a sound came from within him.
Crying.
He did not choose it. He did not decide it.
His body was the one that screamed, not him.
"…Interesting."
Even his thoughts felt slower. Heavier.
"No wonder the birth was difficult. The child was upside down."
A woman's voice said that from somewhere nearby.
The language… strangely familiar, yet he couldn't identify it precisely. He knew it or perhaps he was supposed to know it.
Then he felt something different.
Warmth.
Arms lifting him. An embrace.
He tried to open his eyes. The light was sharp, irritating, as though the world were overdoing its welcome.
"If this is an official reception, it's a bit excessive."
At last, he managed to open his eyes slightly.
A woman's face hovered above him, exhaustion written across it, yet her eyes shone with something deeper than fatigue. He couldn't make out her full features, except for one thing:
Her hair.
Dark black… so deep it seemed to absorb the light around it, in contrast to the room flooded with brightness.
She laughed softly despite her weakness.
"What a stubborn child you are… you truly exhausted me."
Then she added, in a tone where tenderness mingled with fatigue:
"You resemble your father very much…"
She paused for a moment, as if tasting the name before speaking it.
"Toji."
The name lingered in the air.
"That is your name… Toji Fushiguro."
Outside the house, the sea remained calm.
But on that night, on Fox Island… something was born that would not be ordinary.
...
(Four Years Later)
Beneath the shade of an ancient tree, a wild boar rested from the scorching sun of late July
The air was thick with the scent of the sea, mingling with the fragrance of the forest, giving the place a calm, tropical character.
Birdsong slipped through the branches, and the breeze moved lazily, as though unwilling to disturb the stillness.
A sharp whistling sound cut through the air.
In the next instant, a knife embedded itself in the boar's body, pinning it to the tree trunk with a force that did not match the age of the one who had fired it.
The massive body trembled for a moment… then went still.
...
Toji stepped out from between the bushes with confident strides.
He looked like an eight-year-old, even though he was only four; his features were calm, his eyes carrying a gaze unlike that of an ordinary child. He approached his prey, examining it with a satisfied look.
"Clean hit."
There was no pride in his voice only a cold assessment.
"The knife's broken again," he muttered, turning it over in his hands. His voice was small, tired, almost hopeful for a second. "I need a better weapon."
Which would have been easier if anyone were willing to arm a four-year-old with something lethal. Sadly, the adults of the world had standards. Bastards.
Sigh.
He tied the boar to a staff he carried behind his back, then hoisted it over his shoulder without showing any strain.
If anyone had seen the scene, it would have bordered on comedy: a slender child carrying a wild boar three times his size.
"One is enough for this week… I still have to skin and cut it."
He hunted wild boar every day for the last six months.
At first until tracking, killing, and surviving stopped being something he thought about and started being instinct.
Some of the meat went to his village near the town; the rest was sold there. Most of the money was saved, because he would definitely need it later. Assuming he lived that long.
Eventually, he limited his hunting to once or twice a week. The main reason was the population too many hunters, not enough prey, and, frankly, stabbing the same animals over and over wasn't teaching him anything new anymore.
He paused for a moment, as if weighing an idea in his mind.
"Should I leave it to old Kolher to skin it…?"
A brief silence.
"No. By the time I return, it'll be a 'practical lesson' for every kid on the pier."
He continued walking between the trees, the boar swaying over his shoulder with his steady steps.
He hadn't expected to grow accustomed to this life so quickly.
Only four years…
And yet, it felt as though he had lived here for a very long time.
first year in this world was… embarrassing.
It had been closer to a harsh disciplining of pride.
A man with a fully formed mind, trapped inside the body of an infant who didn't even have the right to control the simplest of his bodily functions.
"How do Mc in reincarnation novels do it?"
he wondered coolly.
"They're born, they open their eyes, contemplate the ceiling with profound wisdom… then control everything as if they're in a training seminar."
As for him, He couldn't even control when or were he shits.
It had been… humiliating.
It wasn't the physical helplessness that bothered him, but the realization.
The realization that awareness alone was not enough.
No matter how mature your mind was, the body had its own laws.
And during that year, he had been completely subject to them.
"It was really tough."
And yet…
Amid that daily embarrassment, there had been something else.
Something he hadn't expected.
He saw how his mother cared for him.
How she stayed awake for him, carried him, smiled despite her exhaustion.
It wasn't mechanical duty.
It was genuine care.
In his previous life, he hadn't properly valued that kind of affection.
Perhaps because he hadn't understood it or because he hadn't needed to understand it back then.
Now, completely helpless, he saw it clearly.
At first, he resisted the feeling.
"Attachment?"
The word was uncomfortable.
He tried to approach it with his usual cool detachment, as if it were merely a temporary connection between an infant and a woman fulfilling her natural role.
But emotions are not always governed by logic.
Little by little, without any formal declaration…
He found himself loving her.
Not out of need.
Nor out of gratitude alone.
But because he wanted to.
And that, for some reason, was a truth heavier than all the embarrassment he had endured in his first year.
...
In some ways, he felt a freedom he had never known in his previous world.
No restraints.
No glass walls.
No life moving along a predetermined path.
And in other ways…
This world was not normal.
It was dangerous.
He discovered the truth of his existence in the world of Hunter × Hunter when he was three years old.
He had overheard the village youths speaking excitedly about traveling to Yorknew City.
The name had sounded familiar… but he ignored it at the time.
Until, some time later, he heard old Kolher casually mention the "Hunter Association."
Everything inside him froze.
His first reaction was not excitement.
It was fear.
To be born into a fictional world was one thing…
But to be born into a world where people could be killed for trivial reasons, or simply because they were in the wrong place… that was something else.
Then came the second feeling.
Despair.
This was a world that did not spare the weak.
And the third feeling…
Was a faint smile that did not appear on his face, but formed within him.
"At least… I was born into a world whose rules I know."
Here, a person could do things that would have been considered impossible in his previous life.
Things that surpassed logic itself.
…
When he first tried to sense Nen through meditation, he felt it immediately.
It was not gradual.
It was clear… like a hidden current surrounding everything.
Perhaps because he did not originally belong to this world, his perception of energy was different.
Sharper. More aware.
The excitement he felt in that moment was genuine.
But it did not last long.
His attempts to open his aura nodes through meditation and intense training lasted an entire year.
The result?
Fifteen percent.
"…Disappointing."
He couldn't even surpass that threshold.
He remembered Wing's explanation to Gon and Killua about the differences in innate talent.
Toji felt a trace of injustice.
Talent shortened the road.
"At least… in the last month I've become three times faster than before at opening the aura nodes."
He lifted his gaze toward the sky between the trees.
"But at this rate… I won't fully open them for another two years."
A note of complaint could be heard in his voice.
"It's fine."
If he couldn't accelerate the opening of his nodes, there were other things he could do.
Train the body first.
A strong body was the foundation of everything in this world with Nen or without it.
Then gradually attempt to master Zetsu and Ten.
Even without fully opening his aura, one could adapt to the basic concepts.
Gon had done it indirectly… and meditation helped greatly no matter how simple it seemed in deepening one's sense of Ten.
As for Hatsu…
He postponed thinking about it entirely.
He knew himself well.
If he conducted the Water Divination test and determined his type after a year even though he would likely have opened no more than around 50% at that time he would jump straight to developing a special ability, neglecting the fundamentals out of excitement.
"A common mistake."
And mistakes in this world… could be fatal.
He had a preliminary idea about the type he was most likely to possess.
And he had an initial concept of the kind of user he wanted to become.
But an idea was one thing…
Execution was another.
He continued walking calmly, the boar still resting on his shoulder.
"Two years…"
he muttered to himself.
"Just two years."
Then he smiled faintly a smile that did not suit his age.