Ronin stared at the fortune on the paper. He immediately understood why there was only a single verse.
According to the prophecy, he was going to die next week.
There was no need to predict the rest of the month if he wouldn't be around to live it.
The line about the "missing scarlet" almost certainly referred to his Sharingan being stolen. The second line—about "fate being toyed with starting from a gaze"—explained exactly how he was going to lose them.
Ronin drummed his fingers on the table, a specific face popping into his mind.
Member number 4 of the Phantom Troupe. The guy who got his kicks making puppets.
Omokage.
He was a character who had only appeared in the Hunter x Hunter movie, Phantom Rouge. To be honest, that movie was a drag—totally felt like a cash grab just to parade popular characters around for fan service. Even Omokage's abilities were riddled with plot holes and weird logic.
Omokage was a Specialist.
His first ability was "Soul Doll." He could create eyeless puppets that retained the memories and some of the skills of the original person.
The second was "Soul Call." If you made eye contact with one of his dolls, it would steal your actual eyes. You only got them back if the doll was defeated.
The last one was "Doll Catcher." This let him merge three dolls into his own body, allowing him to use a portion of their Nen abilities.
"A portion of their abilities"—that part was always vague.
Ronin remembered Omokage from the memories of his previous life. The guy had a reputation as an "Eye Collector." There was no way he wasn't involved in the Kurta Clan massacre. In fact, the movie opened with a doll of Pairo—Kurapika's childhood friend—stealing Kurapika's eyes.
The character was basically written into existence just to torment Kurapika.
But according to the lore, Omokage's real goal was to create a complete doll collection of the entire Phantom Troupe. That was the only reason he'd joined them in the first place—he needed to get close enough to touch them to copy their memories and skills.
If he added the target's real eyes to the doll, it made the puppet stronger. It could even lead to a "Body Snatcher" scenario where the doll completely replaced the original person.
In the movie, the Troupe hunted him down because he'd dug up Uvogin's grave, ripped the eyes out of the corpse, and jammed them into a doll.
Did that actually boost the doll's power? Ronin was skeptical.
He figured the "real" Omokage in this world might function a little differently than the movie version, but he wasn't sure exactly how those differences would play out.
One thing was certain: Omokage was a massive threat to both him and Kurapika.
If Ronin hadn't seen this coming, he definitely would have been ambushed. An ability that steals your eyes just by making eye contact? That was a hard counter to the Sharingan. It was practically designed to take him out.
The rest of the poem was easy to decode.
The "Scarlet" mentioned later referred to Kurapika. It implied that after Ronin lost his eyes, Kurapika would follow in his footsteps and face Omokage. A blind Ronin and a Kurapika who couldn't use his Nen properly would be sitting ducks.
Neon actually saved their skins with this one.
"Well? See anything?" Neon asked, eyes wide with anticipation.
Ronin pocketed the paper, his expression shifting to a cold scrutiny. "Great verse. But I have to question your intentions."
Neon's smile froze.
"You said you thought your ability might be a curse rather than a fortune, right? Well, you were right," Ronin lied smoothly. "The reason there isn't a second verse is because I die next week. There's no future to predict after that."
"I..." Neon stammered, at a loss for words.
"Since your curse caused this, you need to take responsibility. For the next week—no, until the first of next month—you're sticking with me. If I die, you're coming with me." Ronin said it casually, like he was discussing the weather.
"No way!" Neon shouted.
Her refusal didn't matter. Ronin chopped her on the neck, knocking her out cold in front of the horrified café staff, and walked out like he owned the place.
The police arrived quickly. Aside from the kidnapped heiress, they found a corpse in a nearby alley with its heart ripped out. It was a janitor that Ronin's Shadow Clone had disposed of on the way out.
Not long after, Light Nostrade showed up, looking annoyed.
Once he confirmed his daughter had been snatched, he simply said, "Wait for the kidnappers to call. I'll handle the ransom. If they don't call, just treat her as dead."
His tone was icy. He sounded completely indifferent to his daughter's life.
And honestly, he was.
She constantly defied him, collected weird garbage, and looked just like her mother. To Light, she was useless—a trouble magnet. Light Nostrade was a pragmatist. If something was useful, he valued it. If not, it was trash.
Aside from her fortune-telling, Neon was trash to him.
---
Ronin handed the prophecy to Kurapika, complete with a decoded version he'd written up.
He also included everything he knew about Omokage, framing it as "theoretical intel" rather than absolute fact.
When Neon woke up, Ronin made her read Kurapika's fortune as well.
This changed the way Neon looked at Ronin completely. She could tell Kurapika was his ally—Kurapika even looked at Ronin with admiration—yet Ronin was dragging him into this death sentence. The guy was a monster. A total sociopath.
Kurapika's fortune was basically the same as Ronin's. It predicted he would die alongside Ronin at the hands of Omokage.
" Is fate avoidable?" Kurapika asked, rubbing his temples as the headache set in.
"Absolutely," Ronin said with certainty.
In Neon's prophecy for the Phantom Troupe, half the members were supposed to die that month. But because Chrollo knew the outcome, he adjusted his plans, and the death toll changed.
Now that Ronin and Kurapika knew Omokage was the threat, they could rewrite the script.
Neon's fortunes were only valid for the month they were written. Once the month turned, the slate was clean.
They had two options:
1. Hunt Omokage down immediately and kill him.
2. Lay low and dodge him until next month, get a new reading to confirm they were safe, and then hunt him down.
Option one was high risk. Option two was tricky—hiding from a guy like that isn't easy.
But either way, Omokage had to be taken off the board. Fast.