"Do you really like it that much?"
A stranger's voice suddenly came from behind Neon, startling the pink-haired girl—like she'd stepped out of a fairytale—so badly she jumped.
Ronin looked at her surprise and felt no guilt at all.
He'd been watching Neon for a while.
From the moment she entered the museum, she headed straight for this heart. And while she was absorbed in the so-called "monkey heart," Ronin had noticed that the elderly janitor in charge of cleaning had walked past this spot more than once.
He seemed unusually focused on Neon.
No—more precisely, he seemed nervous about Neon… or about the "monkey heart" she was staring at.
Something was off.
Ronin made that judgment, though he could also tell the old man was just an ordinary person.
"Sorry—did I scare you?" Ronin asked with curious politeness, shifting his gaze to the heart. "You were staring so intently. Is there something special about this monkey heart?"
But he couldn't see anything unusual about it.
Maybe because he'd never seen a monkey's heart before. Who even displays something like that as a specimen?
From that angle alone, it really was strange.
"No, no… it's just a normal hu—monkey heart." Neon's cheeks were a little flushed, and she slightly avoided Ronin's eyes.
Short blond hair, a rebellious gaze, a cool, aristocratic aura, plus a well-fitting suit and a voice that felt distant yet perfectly measured—Neon couldn't help feeling shy.
It felt like the school heartthrob had suddenly come over to talk to her.
Ronin didn't notice Neon's little reactions. What he noticed was the "hu—" she'd accidentally let slip.
So it was a human heart.
That explained a lot. In Ronin's impression, Neon was a collector of human organs—how could she suddenly be obsessed with a monkey heart? Unless it was because monkeys were "close" to humans?
And if the "monkey heart" in the display case was actually human, then the janitor watching this place so closely was highly suspicious.
But Ronin wasn't a judge and executioner.
So he pulled out a business card. Under Neon's puzzled gaze, he dialed a number.
Soon, a middle-aged man arrived at the monkey-heart display case.
Aside from a bit of male-pattern baldness, he looked completely ordinary.
He was the museum director.
"I want to buy this monkey heart specimen. How much?" Ronin went straight to the point.
"Five hundred thousand jenny. Anything else catch your eye? We sell everything here," the director said bluntly.
To Ronin, the price wasn't high—especially when he saw the surprise, regret, and unwillingness on Neon's face. He paid on the spot.
Five hundred thousand wasn't much, but for a specimen, it was a decent sale.
Yet the moment Ronin bought it, he faintly sensed killing intent from behind.
The janitor.
"Who are you, exactly?" Neon asked uncertainly after the director left with a sigh.
Ronin lifted the bag holding the "monkey heart." "I'm not really interested in collecting human organs. But I am interested in you."
"You're trying to hit on me?" Neon crossed her arms and took a step back.
"More accurately, I'm interested in your ability," Ronin clarified.
Neon wasn't Ronin's type. She was too skinny—he was genuinely worried that future kids' "cafeteria" would be so empty there wouldn't even be soup, and that he as an adult wouldn't be fed, either.
And besides, Neon's hands weren't as pretty as Milia's.
Neon's face flashed with a split-second look of shock. Then she sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"Your eyes just now were really rude!"
Ronin didn't care about being "rude." What he cared about was her deliberate attempt to hide things.
Because that suggested Neon had already noticed her Nen ability—she just hadn't revealed it to her father yet.
Otherwise, her treatment would've skyrocketed.
Not only would Ronin never have been able to get close to her so easily, her father would also be bending over backwards to satisfy her every desire. A heart specimen worth only 500,000 jenny would be nothing to a "treasured" Neon—probably the price of a single meal.
"Let's talk about ability," Ronin said directly. "If I can tell, that means we're the same kind." He handed her the heart bag. "It's yours. You like it, don't you?"
"This…"
Neon hesitated.
On one hand, she had zero resistance to the heart in Ronin's hand. On the other, his "same kind" claim made her curious.
Still, his sudden appearance made her wary—what if he had bad intentions?
In the end, curiosity and desire for that heart overcame her fear of danger.
And as she accepted it, Neon also thought: if he wanted to force her, she had no way to resist anyway.
The fact that he offered a gift and invited her instead felt like sincere goodwill.
After Neon agreed, the two didn't linger at the museum.
In a café, Ronin glanced out the window and could still see the janitor, who clearly thought he was hiding well.
"What's your ability?" Neon asked curiously. She had a good impression of Ronin now, but so far she only knew his name.
"I can make water increase," Ronin said, placing both hands on his coffee cup.
In the next second, under Neon's shocked gaze, the coffee overflowed from the cup.
Neon no longer doubted him. She took out paper and a pen from her bag.
"Write your full name, date of birth, and blood type," she said, pushing the paper and pen to Ronin.
Ronin quickly wrote everything she requested.
Then Neon picked up the pencil again. As she twirled it, an ugly-looking Nen beast appeared on her right hand.
Nen covered up to her upper arm, while the rest of her still looked like an ordinary person.
In the next moment, Neon began writing rapidly—scratch scratch scratch.
"I'm done." She stopped quickly. "My special ability is fortune-telling. People say it's accurate."
"People say?" Ronin took the paper with the written fortune, asking curiously.
"Yes." Neon answered seriously. "The first time I discovered this power was when I was messing around with classmates at school. They told me everything I wrote ended up coming true later."
"But the results weren't good, so she said my fortune-telling was a curse. After that, I never did fortune-telling for anyone again.
Still, since this pen can write by itself, I know it's some kind of strange superpower. Oh—and my method is special. The content is made of four or five four-line poems.
It predicts what will happen each week this month. Right now there's only one poem on the page—huh?"
Ronin stared at the page, sinking into thought.
The words read:
"An important crimson hue will be lost,
A toyed-with fate begins with a meeting of eyes.
A fiery red will follow in your footsteps,
And in the end the Spider gains a new collectible."
~~~
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