King of Hearts

🍆

Gon and Ikalgo made plans to meet at the next available chance to further explore Gon's magic. Of the methods Ikalgo was familiar with, none of them seemed to work. Gon's magic was otherwise dormant until future notice, perhaps try again next time, or next year.

In the meantime, he spent an absurd amount of time sleeping that night to avoid his responsibilities. It all started with his designated one-hour meditation session for homework that never really ended, and then the next thing he knew, he was waking up to his morning alarm for practice. He shocked himself awake with a startled, disoriented gasp, his eyes bleary and his neck aching from having slept against the wall all night in an awkward position. If his neck hurt two days ago, it ached like a bitch now.

But he had to get to practice, if only to face Coach Biscuit and hear her bark in his face, "Off my field, Freecss! Come to me when you've—"

"Manifested. Got it," Gon finished in a dull, tired voice. He turned on his heels and marched all the way back to the athletics complex. If he couldn't practice, the least he could do was work out.

Since he was already on campus by the time first period rolled around, he was quick to skedaddle to the divination lab as soon as he was showered, dressed, and packed up. He was so swift, in fact, that he beat Killua Zoldyck to their shared lab table.

Gon watched as students filed in. He tapped a pen to his chin and nibbled on the end of it as he caught Canary's eyes as she went to sit alongside the other Zoldyck sibling. I'll have to ask Killua what her name is, Gon thought as he offered Canary a wave she didn't return. He dropped his hand to the desk with a frown and went back to people watching.

The clock ticked closer to class time. He chewed harder on his pen. A girl with vibrant pink hair wandered around to the lab table in front of him, looked at Killua's empty seat, and said, "Excellent partner you've got there."

Gon frowned at her and said, "He'll be here."

The girl rose an eyebrow at him before taking her seat and turning around. Her partner was an unassuming girl with black hair, glasses, and a turtleneck that made her look like Velma from Scooby Doo. "How could you know if you aren't with him?" she said, taking a seat. She glanced at him from over the rim of her glasses just before turning around and sighing, "It's hard to protect someone you're never around."

Protect? Gon mused, and continued to ponder over as class began, and he was forced to juggle his internal musings and the task at hand.

The class was ordered to stand and swap partners. Gon had his divination packet in hand until that moment, and immediately regretted not reading more of it. Before he could take so much as a step away from his table, however, someone claimed the seat beside him.

Professor Wing walked around the class with a checklist. Gon stared at it as it came to him and his new partner. He glanced over and found Canary staring at him like this was all some big coincidence and she hadn't, in fact, chosen him as a partner.

"I, um..." Gon started, clearing his throat. "I'm not very good at this."

"Which ones are you struggling with?" she asked.

He gestured to the entire sheet but eventually, landed on the astrological one. That piece of the checklist was accompanied with a blank space for Canary to write her birth date, time, and sign. "We can use our phones for this one," she said, and so together, they looked at Gon's phone to investigate the depth of Canary's sign. It wasn't as if they could search for suits on the internet, anyway.

"Astrology is the most difficult of the methods. Tarot interpretations are relatively standard, as is astrology, but even the smallest details can change the interpretation," Canary explained. "Cancers have..."