REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 60: When You Meet a Stubborn One, the Best Move Is to Stay Far Away
Ross did not spare a single thought for the disapproval of certain candidates or the disappointment of the examiners.
The Chairman himself had said there were no restrictions whatsoever. Using a well-timed piece of information to secure a win was entirely legitimate by every measure available.
Information warfare is still warfare.
With that, Ross became the first candidate of the 287th Hunter Exam to pass the final phase and qualify for a Hunter license.
"Good luck out there, you two. I'll be watching from the sidelines."
Ross gave Yusuke and Kuwabara a cheerful thumbs-up, which earned him two immediate middle fingers in return, exactly as expected.
"Next! Second match! Candidate 294, Hanzou, versus Candidate 405, Gon! Please step forward!"
The originally planned thirty-minute interval between matches was scrapped on the spot, since the first match had been decided without either fighter throwing a punch. They moved directly to the second.
And Ross, at close range, witnessed firsthand what Gon's stubbornness actually looked like in practice, and exactly how thoroughly it drove Hanzou out of his mind.
The short version: Hanzou outclassed Gon in every measurable way. Gon simply refused to say the words. It did not matter what happened to him. Internal organ damage, temporary hearing loss, a broken arm: none of it produced a concession.
At one point, while Hanzou had escalated to genuinely wanting to hurt him, Gon looked up and delivered the following piece of reasoning: "If you cut my legs and I bleed to death, as long as I never say I give up, you're the one who gets eliminated."
Ross had previously encountered this from the other side of a screen, surrounded by viewer comments arguing back and forth about it. Seeing it unfold in person settled the question cleanly.
He genuinely did not like children of this particular type.
There was another name for this degree of stubbornness: extreme selfishness, dressed up in the certainty of your own rightness.
Ross could understand how a twelve-year-old growing up without parents arrived at this personality. No matter how warmly you dressed it up, an aunt was still only an aunt, and was never going to be a mother.
Understanding how it happened did not mean he had any desire to spend time around it.
Someone like this without power was manageable. The moment they acquired enough to affect the people around them, the selfishness would drag everyone close into the consequences. And the bill for what they caused was usually paid by the people who cared about them most.
Casual acquaintances got off lightly. But the closer you were, the more thoroughly they burned you. The worst part was that people like this felt no remorse about it. They simply kept going, repeated the same impulses, and called it conviction.
As the match dragged into a stretch of pure one-sided punishment with no strategic content left in it, Ross found himself feeling genuinely sorry for Hanzou.
Hanzou had done nothing wrong. He was following the rules and fighting a straightforward fight. The opponent was the one who lacked the ability and should have had the sense to concede and move on to the next round.
Instead, the atmosphere in the room had arranged itself as though Hanzou were the one doing something cruel.
But the defining moment of the whole affair was what happened next.
With no way to handle someone apparently willing to die before saying the words, and no desire to actually kill him and forfeit his own qualification for the sake of another attempt next year, Hanzou was left with no option but to concede voluntarily and move to the next round.
At which point Gon got angry. He announced he could not accept a win under these circumstances.
"So to confirm: even though I have sincerely conceded, you still require an actual contest with a proper outcome, and furthermore it has to be a victory achieved in a manner that satisfies you personally. Is that right?"
Hanzou, veins standing out visibly across his head, laid out Gon's entire internal logic with perfect accuracy.
"Yeah!"
Gon, one arm broken and blood across his face, nodded with complete and genuine enthusiasm.
Then he did not know anything for a while.
"YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT!"
Hanzou's rage converted into a Shoryuken, and Gon went to sleep on the spot.
Good hit.
Even as a pure spectator, Ross had been sitting on a stomach full of frustration. That one punch released some of it.
As he turned to go, Hanzou's eye caught Ross in the periphery, and he found Ross giving him a thumbs-up. Something shifted in his chest.
At least someone here is on my side.
And so: Hanzou advanced voluntarily to the next round, while Gon, knocked out and being carried to the rest room, became the second candidate to pass the exam.
"Third match! Candidate 407, Kuwabara, versus Candidate 246, Ponzu! Both parties, step forward!"
Hearing his name, Kuwabara said nothing, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked in silence toward the open area at the center of the room.
Ponzu, the only woman remaining in the candidate pool, drew a long, slow breath before stepping out.
"Is he going to be okay?"
Ross and Yusuke, internal team communication.
"Not even a little. That guy does not hit women. It is basically a religion with him."
Yusuke spoke like a man who could already see the ending.
"Both parties, are you ready?"
"Hold on!"
Sure enough, before the match formally started, Kuwabara called for a stop. Under the puzzled looks of everyone present and the immediate wariness in Ponzu's eyes, he crossed the floor in a few strides and seized both of Ponzu's hands without asking, before she could reach for her bees. Her hands were not particularly soft. In fact they were quite rough.
"Please go out with me. With the goal of marriage."
The ugly man looked directly into Ponzu's eyes with an expression of absolute sincerity.
The atmosphere in the room went still.
"Oh, of course."
Yusuke's palm connected with his own face. Beside him, Ross's mouth twitched.
Right. Kuwabara's thing was not just that he did not hit women. He also confessed to every pretty girl he encountered, on the spot, without hesitation.
Not that his standards were low. Look at who he had gone after: Botan, the underworld's guide; Yukina, the snow maiden. Both were beauties of exceptional quality by any measure.
You could almost argue that if he had even half of Yusuke's looks, he might have evolved into a different kind of problem entirely. But instead he had been issued a face so aggressively unfortunate that even Hisoka experienced something approaching a physical reaction upon seeing it.
Without any surprise, Ponzu declined. She also readied herself to release what was left of her bee swarm and fight.
What actually happened:
"A real man does not hit women. I concede."
Shot down without ceremony, Kuwabara turned on his heel with an air of easy dignity and walked back to his corner. Then he looked up and encountered the expressions on the faces of his companions, which were complicated in a way that resisted description.
Had he played it cool? He had.
Was it actually a little cool? Well. Maybe a little.
Looking at Ponzu, who had only just processed that she had genuinely passed the exam and was losing her grip on her composure, breathing hard to keep herself together while the corner of her eye gave her away with the faintest trace of tears, Kuwabara decided he had no regrets about his choice.
Then he checked the whiteboard for his next opponent. Candidate 403: Leorio.
As it happened, Leorio's gaze swept across to him at exactly that moment.
Two men who were technically in their early teens but whose appearances had aged so aggressively past their years that strangers instinctively addressed them as grown adults: they locked eyes across the open floor, and where their gazes met, sparks flew.
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