Itsy Bitsy Spider

42. One Over the Other

Beans cleared his throat. "Eleven applicants have made it through to this final phase," he said, looking down at the paper. He then clasped his hands behind his back, the surface of his bright green head shining in the light as the list crinkled. "Feel free to roam around the airship or wait in your rooms. We'll call you individually on the speakers when ready."

Most of their eyes were on the small man—was he even one? His name, Beans, seemed to describe him best—as he quickly left their side, and all their previous examiners followed him.

The only one who wasn't watching was Feitan, who had no interest in the examiners, Zushi, who was practically vibrating from concealed joy at being on yet another airship, and Zepile, who was clutching the back of the boy's collar in an attempt to calm him down and keep him from running off or accidentally crashing into a wall from delight.

Feitan was comfortable where he was. It was relatively quiet in his spot. The applicants he didn't know or care about hadn't spoken a word since getting on the small ship, and the loud kids were being babysat by the man with too much eyebrow. But even their loud droning was offset by the fern that separated them, the plant being a barrier between him and their world. There was a muffled tone to his corner of the universe, and there was a warm, almost reassuring, fuzzy weight atop his legs. He let his own head dangle to the side and nearly closed his eyes, setting his hand atop the cat.

The crackling of the speakers echoing through the halls shook him—ever so slightly, hardly at all, if you asked him. It seemed to be a recurring theme. He hated it.

There was a momentary pause. "Mr. Feitan, please report to the exam office."

Exhaling, he rose with a scowl, clicking his tongue once to signal the cat to jump off.

He looked at Bacon, with his torn up ears, one of them half chewed off and the other dangling floppily. There seemed to be no damage to his inner ear, but the scars reached down pretty low, as if they'd been that heavily wounded before. Bacon was rather without fat, as contradictory as that was according to his name. He was rather skinny beneath layers upon layers of fur. Darker grey stripes lined his ash-colored back, the fur a bit knotted and matted in some places but otherwise soft. Feitan had already weeded out most of the prickly burrs in Bacon's thick coat anyway, and without those in the way he was rather pleasing to pet. The areas that weren't soft were the remains of his battle scars, but he liked petting those too. Bacon was a cat, and all of him was perfect.

Cats were good because cats were not people. Feitan did not like people.

There was a peculiar sense of tingling at the corners of his lips when he started towards to where that bean was, and he caught the sight of Bacon stretching before nonchalantly tailing him out of the corner of his eye. Snatching a piece of bacon off the counter top as he passed by, Feitan tossed it to the cat, who gobbled it up greedily before continuing to follow his footsteps, all the way to outside of the room.

He'd felt the aura of that neon-headed girl a long time ago, wandering anxiously out in the hall after pretending to have gone to the bathroom. It was buzzing, alive, and now it was fluttery and tangled up in a frenzy. As soon as Feitan took a step outside, he found it off how her body was sitting quietly by the window with her expression even more indifferent. Her unmastered aura gave it away, troubled, sad. Maybe a little bit more than just sad.

Her aura was not big. Compared to the potential Nen of all the other applicants that had passed thus far, hers was probably the weakest. But her mental state couldn't have gone unnoticed. Yes, they were all weak and couldn't compare to him, but maybe, maybe Rein had matured enough. By now, she could probably take notice of the girl's—