REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 70: Kurama
Rose-pink school uniform. Rose-pink hair falling past the shoulders. A face so beautiful that the question of male or female did not resolve itself on first look, and too beautiful to approach without working up some nerve first. Even sitting perfectly still with one leg crossed over the other, the presence he gave off was an entirely clear do-not-disturb signal.
But the moment his gaze moved to Yusuke, the frost dissolved completely. The expression that replaced it was the open, warm kind that came with seeing someone you were actually glad to see.
"Yusuke? What are you doing here?"
"Me? Watching fights stopped being enough, so I came to be in one. How's your mom doing?"
"She's recovering well from the surgery, thanks to you. But she'll need ongoing care and rest for a long time, so I came to see if I could earn something toward the costs. Lighten the load a little."
The exchange between them had the easy, ordinary quality of two people who knew each other's lives.
Yusuke turned to the side, chin gesturing toward his two companions.
"These two are with me. Kuwabara. And Ross.
This is my friend, Kurama."
"Good to meet you both."
Kurama, whose appearance had established itself in a visual tier that seemed to exist separately from everyone else in the room, nodded and smiled.
Ross was fine. He had recognized Kurama the instant he saw him, and the perspective of knowing considerably more than he was supposed to kept him settled. He returned the smile.
"Likewise."
Kuwabara, on the other hand, looked as though he had developed an acute sensitivity reaction specifically to very good-looking people, and his overall comfort level was visibly low.
"Contestant Kurama! Contestant Jake! Please proceed to floor fifty-seven, Ring A!"
The announcement cut in. Kurama heard his name and stood up decisively.
"That's me. We can catch up in a bit."
"Sure. Hey, come eat barbecue with us tonight!"
Yusuke got the invitation out as Kurama moved past. The smile Kurama turned on Ross and Kuwabara as he passed them was polished, genuinely pleasant, and carried an obvious degree of distance built into it. He was clearly not the type who opened up easily. The ease with Yusuke was its own thing, rooted in something specific.
"I can't stand him. So smug."
Kuwabara started muttering the moment the door closed.
Kuwabara's issue was that he simply looked older than his age because of how he was built. Kurama's effect on a room came from something different entirely, from a combination of genuine beauty and an aura that made treating him like an ordinary high school student essentially impossible regardless of what you knew about him.
"Kuwabara, you just equally dislike every good-looking guy. You know that, right?"
Yusuke had no intention of letting it go unaddressed.
"What did you just say!!"
Caught exactly where he was most sensitive, Kuwabara erupted immediately. A second locker room grappling incident was clearly in the immediate future.
As it turned out, all three of them had been fast-tracked to the priority queue by jumping directly from floor one, and they were called up in quick succession without much waiting. The organizers clearly made a point of sending them to different floors: they probably had no interest in a significant early-floor upset happening before the competition had properly developed.
Floor fifty changed the nature of the venue entirely. The ground floor had been a series of small, open rings in a crowded hall. Floor fifty was a proper arena, with audience ticket access, on-site commentary, cameras positioned to pick up every angle, and broadcast going out through multiple media channels.
The match rules had also been upgraded. On top of the baseline, a three-minute three-round points system had been added. Outstanding technique scored one point per instance. A knockdown scored two. Accumulate ten points and you won by Technical Knockout, or TKO. This scoring system remained in place above floor two hundred.
Fighters were no longer identified by number. They used their registered names, and their faces went directly onto the broadcast.
Ross stepped into the ring and felt the attention coming from all directions.
The big screen had been running the clip of his floor-one instant win on a loop. But when the host opened betting, Ross's thoroughly ordinary student-with-no-particular-story-on-his-face appearance managed to mislead the majority of the crowd into backing his opponent anyway.
The opponent was a step above floor one. Still not a problem. Another clean arc through the air, another body landing in the spectator area.
All-Style Judo throws were genuinely useful. At this rate, he had every intention of riding them all the way to floor two hundred.
When Ross exchanged his floor-fifty ticket at the floor-sixty window for 60,000 Jenny, the others had already started filtering back.
By the Sky Arena's standard scheduling, two fights per day was the limit for new arrivals. That meant reaching floor one hundred, where fighters received their own private rooms, would take at least two more days.
Three became four without any particular discussion. The barbecue reservation picked up one more seat.
When Kurama walked through the door of the small barbecue restaurant, the interior, which had been comprehensively infused with the smell of smoke and charcoal, became noticeably more pleasant.
"A Hunter Exam, I see. I was at home at the time and couldn't get away, unfortunately. Otherwise, attempting to get a license would have been a worthwhile option to explore."
Kurama, who had somehow managed to make eating charcoal-grilled barbecue look like dining somewhere considerably more refined, said this with the air of someone who had now connected the dots.
"It had some unexpected twists, but overall it was a worthwhile experience."
Yusuke let out a faint exhale that carried some weight to it.
They had only been at the Sky Arena for a single day, but he was already getting a feel for the pace of this place, which was distinctly different from home. This was what a city built around the world's business felt like.
Kuwabara's chopsticks had been making a quiet, measured approach toward a freshly-grilled slice of thin-cut beef tongue that was technically on Yusuke's side of the grill.
"Kuwabara! That's my beef tongue!"
"First come first served, that's how it works!"
Caught in the act and refusing to reverse course, Kuwabara snagged the slice, started eating without waiting for it to cool, and half a second later found an arm wrapped firmly around his neck.
Sleeper hold.
Within a few seconds, Kuwabara was patting Yusuke's arm in repeated small rapid taps, requesting mercy.
Enhancement type really did hit hard when it grabbed you.
Watching Yusuke act exactly as he always had, Kurama allowed himself a quiet laugh. He picked up his juice glass and tilted it slightly toward Ross in a small acknowledgment.
Ross could relate to Kuwabara's earlier instinct now. Kurama was holding strawberry juice, and it looked like red wine. The Hunter world's roster of legendary beauties might need to reconsider its numbers.
"Since you're a friend of Yusuke's, I'll be direct."
After the quiet, easy clink of their glasses, Kurama set his grape juice down and looked at Ross steadily.
"You already knew who I was before we met. Didn't you?"
On the grill, fat was dripping from the meat onto the coals. The sizzle it made had suddenly become the loudest thing in the room.
***
30+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces