47
After taking a hot bath and much needed rest, Sachiko realized it was almost time for her to go back to Hunter x Hunter world. So, she decided to call Satoru and tell him that she was going back.
But, as soon as Satoru picked up the phone, his voice was quite cheerful, almost the complete opposite from before.
"Hey, sugar, you're all done? How about we go for a nice dinner at that seafood restaurant you've been wanting to go this whole week?" He asked.
Sachiko paused and looked at the clock. She barely had thirty minutes so there was obviously not enough time for any dinner or quick bite.
"Sorry, Satoru. I have to go back now." She replied, "Maybe next time."
Gojo was quiet on the other end of the phone for a moment, then he asked, "Come on, are you still mad at me for the tough training session?"
"I'm not mad." Sachiko replied, "I mean I was a bit mad at first but.."
"You know a nice dinner would probably fix it. I'll pay, as usual and we can go to a karaoke bar afterwards, kinda have a unwinding session..stress relief is important, you know.." Gojo said.
"Well, next time, Satoru. I have to go now and I'll probably be out of reach for another week or two." Sachiko said. While Gojo's invitation sounded fun and tempting, she didn't have enough time left in this world. For the first time, Sachiko truly felt like she didn't want to leave this world behind. It was different simply not wanting to miss the modern Japan or her favorite snacks and food. This time, it was more like the idea of leaving this Jujutsu Kaisen world and not being able to hang out with Satoru left a bitter taste in her mouth.
"I want to..really. I just..." Sachiko muttered, "I just have to go back, Satoru. I'll see you when I get back, okay?"
"Damn, sugar, you sound...stressed. Everything okay? Is there anything keeping you from..."
"No," Sachiko quickly replied, she didn't know why she worded things that way. Now, he would probably think she was being held captive or someone was forcing her to do things. "I'll just be going on a trip."
"One where there's no internet?" Gojo asked, "I mean even if you go out of Japan, you should still receive messages online and we text on Line."
"It's complicated, alright? I'll.." Sachiko paused. Should she tell Satoru about the crossing world thing? It sounded crazy but she would need to do so sooner or later because her excuses for continuous one week intervals of absence and out of reach would only go so far. Satoru was smart, he already knew something was off so Sachiko would need to come up with a more plausible lie, reason or tell the truth to a degree. That was if she planned on seeing him and Sachiko found herself considering the alternative.
Not seeing Satoru again, at all. It would be much easier and less headache actually because in Jujutsu Kaisen canon, things would go terribly wrong in the next year and she could get involved in the crossfire if she were to stay near him.
But, Sachiko realized she already hated the idea of not being able to go out with Satoru for a nice dinner and a fun karaoke session today. Making the decision to cut him off would mean she could never have any of those fun times with him again. And, Sachiko realized she would hate that.
"I'll...explain to you later. Just not for a while." She eventually said.
Gojo let out a sigh, "Alright, sugar. I'll wait. Just text me when you get back. I'll see if I can plan something then."
Sachiko smiled, "Sounds like a plan. See you, Satoru."
"See you, my sweetcheeks." Gojo replied.
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When Sachiko got back to Hunter x Hunter world, a week had passed. Sachiko called Killua and Gon and heard that they were arriving at Yorknew city later in the day. So, she decided to go pick them up when they arrived. After all, she still needed to get the copy of Greed Island menory card and deliver it to the buyer.
"Sachiko san!"
"Eyepatch lady!"
Gon and Killua waved their hands as they saw Sachiko waiting for them. Gon ran to her and seeing Gon running towards Sachiko, Killua didn't want to lose, so he also ran towards her.
Sachiko chuckled seeing the two kids acting like kids and ruffled their hair when they arrived.
"Oh, Killua, you've got taller?" Sachiko stated.
"Of course, I'm growing, you know." Killua crossed his arms.
"That's true." Sachiko nodded, "Gon seems to..get taller too." She said, not sure if it was true but it made Gon happy so she shrugged. A win was a win.
"Sachiko san, what're we going to do now?" Gon asked.
"Hm, you just got back from a trip so why don't you come to my house and rest for the day. I also need the card so you can give it to me when we get home." Sachiko said.
"Great, you hear that, Gon? We don't need to rent a room." Killua cheered.
"I'm still charging you two rent." Sachiko said, "Last time I heard, you two have hundred of millions."
"But..Sachiko san..I need to buy Greed Island Game." Gon said.
"Don't worry about that game. You can't buy that with a few hundred millions so even if you paid me back with all your money, it won't make a difference." Sachiko said.
"Wait, seriously? How expensive is the game?" Killua asked.
"Oh, the hunter website would probably say around 8.9 million for the lowest bid but I'd say it it'd go around 30 billion or more." Sachiko answered with a yawn.
"Seriously?!"
"For real?!"
Both Killua and Gon shouted in disbelief.
"Yep, if you don't believe me, go look it up at the hunter website but 30 billion is my estimation so you won't be able to find that." Sachiko replied.
"How do you even estimate?" Killua asked, curious.
"You know..I'm an informant, actually." Sachiko replied, "It pays more than fighting at Heavens Arena."
"So you just switched jobs? Who'd even pay you if they can just buy information from hunter website?" Killua teased.
"Well, not everyone has an official hunter license and you'd be surprised if you know how much information I have." Sachiko said smugly. Then, she clapped, "Alright, let's just quickly grab some take out and go home so you guys can go explore with more energy. I also need some stuff to get done."
Just like that, they headed to her rented mansion after grabbing take out for dinner. Sachiko quickly ate her food, then got the greed island memory card copy from Killua before going to the agreed place with the buyer.
Sachiko made sure her disguise was prefectly in place before heading to the place. She now had straight black hair and her face was changed into more mature look, her eyes were red and there was no trace of her orginal look or time manipulation eye.
As she walked in, she saw a masked man standing in the room.
Sachiko said the code she gave to the buyer online and listened the masked man's continuation to the code. Once it was correct, Sachiko smiled and said, "Here's the agreed memory card."
The masked man nodded as he handed her a box, "Here's five hundred million."
Sachiko opened the box and checked if the amount was correct. Then, she nodded, "Alright, pleasure doing business with you."
"Likewise, Phantom." The masked man replied.
After Sachiko left, he called someone on the phone and said, "Find out what you can about Phantom, yes, the online informant."
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After the exchange, Sachiko returned to the safe location, changed into another disguise and blended into the crowd. Then, at another safe location, she finally removed her disguise. This way, it would be hard to pinpoint her actual appearance even if she was tracked intially.
Sachiko decided to grab a quick coffee and dessert after a hard work, which was more of justifying her self-indulgence in sweets. She really had no idea how she started to crave sweets more and more.
"One iced latte and one of those cupcakes each please." Sachiko ordered at the counter and sat at a table near the window.
As she sipped her iced coffee directly from the glass, Sachiko enjoyed the "peaceful" view of Yorknew city.
While it looked pretty peaceful on the surface, Sachiko knew that mafia and crime were pretty embedded in the city itself. Otherwise, the biggest auction from the mafia wouldn't take place here.
While she was enjoying her coffee, she heard a rather familiar female voice at the counter.
"I'll take one hot americano. No sugar."
Sachiko turned to look at who was ordering at the counter and saw a woman in a dark purple business suit, with a short skirt and a blouse that revealed her cleavage. Appearance wise, she had short blonde hair and a prominent, aquiine nose.
'Pakunoda? What's she doing here?' Sachiko thought. She expected Phantom troupe to be arriving to Yorknew city around this time but she didn't expect she'd run into Pakunoda alone.
Sachiko felt a little uneasy because Pakunoda had the ability to read memories of the person she was touching. What made it more unnerving was the fact that trying to fool her by thinking of irrelevant thoughts or creating fake memories do not work.
Because Sachiko had a lot of secrets and secret abilities, including cursed techniques and memories of watching and reading hunter x hunter, she didn't feel comfortable with the idea of being around Pakunoda. Especially since the fake memory thing wouldn't work, Sachiko felt that she currently had no means to avoid her memories being read.
Well, she actually had nullify but because she had not tested it out yet, she wasn't sure if it could nullify Pakunoda's nen ability or how it worked with nen abilities in general. Sachiko took a mental note to test it out with less harmful nen abilities first, then if it worked, she'd think about how to further test if her nullify would be useful against Pakunoda's memory reading.
Before that, Sachiko decided to lay low for a while.
Meanwhile, Pakunoda sensed a presence staring at her for a brief moment and when she looked in the direction, she saw a girl already looking away and drinking her iced coffee. The girl didn't seem to be a nen user, because she couldn't sense any aura around her, but the way her gaze lingered on her for a moment, long enough for her to notice made Pakunoda wonder if the girl knew her.
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When Sachiko got back to her rented mansion, it was already late past midnight. She took another hot shower and fell straight onto the bed. With continuous training recently, she had been pretty tired and it didn't take long for her to fall asleep.
Meanwhile, Killua and Gon were brainstorming ideas on how to make 30 billion before the auction. Earlier in the evening, they had already gone to an internet cafe and visited Hunter website to buy the information about Greed Island. As Sachiko said, they found that the game would be sold at auction and lowest bid would be 8 billion jenny. But since Sachiko's estimate was around 30 billion, Killua told Gon that it was better to prepare 30 billion if he really wanted the game.
"How about we ask Sachiko san if she can borrow us some money?" Gon asked.
"I don't think she has that much money laying around with how much she seems to spend." Killua replied, "Besides, she is already asking us to pay back the money. I don't think she'll give us more."
"That's true," Gon sighed, "What should we do?"
The two fell into a deep thought after that and the final solution they came up with was to find treasures and sell them at the auction to make money.
----------
For the next few days, Sachiko spent her days finetuning her two already established nen abilities. She noticed that Gon and Killua were up to something, and more accurately saying, they were about to lose money as in the anime by finding treasures from online websites. However, Sachiko didn't feel the need to interfere.
Learning the hard way to not trust online websites was important and Sachiko wasn't one to stop those kids. Besides, losing a few hundred millions wasn't the end of the world and she could laugh at them as a bonus.
So, she teased the two kids about how they essentially dug their own grave and burnt their money.
"You know you guys can make some money by taking on bounty hunts or small missions online, like we did right after the hunter exam." Sachiko said to Killua and Gon.
"Bounty hunt?"
"Yeah, could be a nice training for your nen as well. You guys haven't come up with nen ability yet, have you?" Sachiko asked.
"No," Killua shook his head, "You kinda said you had more to teach us, then you disappeared, you know."
Sachiko laughed awkwardly, "Right, I forgot about that! Anyways, now that I remember..I'll give you guys a new schedule to train. But first, let me see your progress."
Killua nodded and showed her his Ten and Ren. Gon also followed suit and Sachiko hummed in approval. "Not bad, you two. And Killua, good work. I didn't expect you trained this much while having fun. Way to go!"
Killua smirked, "I told you I wanted to become stronger than my brother. That's the least I could do."
Sachiko clapped, "Now, that's some determination! Alright, I'll give you two a task."
"A task?" Gon repeated, his voice filled with curiosity.
"Yep, it's simple actually. You have to maintain your Ren for four hours. Once you accomplish that, I'll teach you guys some more advanced nen techniques." Sachiko said.
"Now, we're talking." Killua grinned.
"We can train but I'm still a little worried about the money.." Gon said, "Do bounty hunts make that much money?"
Sachiko shrugged, "I don't know, maybe? It kinda depends on what kind of difficulty level tasks you can take on but it's more reliable than selling treasures you find on sketchy websites. And you can also train while you earn money that way."
"Eyepatch lady's right, Gon." Killua said. "We're already down to our last ten million so might as well try something else."
"Okay..." Gon eventually said.
"Great, so I'll let you guys choose a few of these tasks here." Sachiko gave them a list of relatively low level bounty hunts for nen users. Because of her information gathering in a while and her recently growing informant persona, it didn't take long for her to find several bounty hunts and paid missions suitable for Gon and Killua's current level. "I've done some background check on these so these should be good. Or at least shouldn't kill you both."
"How reassuring." Killua rolled his eyes, as he took the list and skimmed through the contents.
"Take your time reading and deciding on which ones you're gonna take." Sachiko said with a laugh, "If you want to find other tasks rather than these, you can do it too but it might be risky so think before you act, okay?"
"Okay.."
"Especially you, Gon." Sachiko pulled Gon's cheeks.
"Sachiko san...it hurts.." Gon said.
"Sorry, sorry. Force of habbit." Sachiko laughed, "Anyways, good luck."
Killua hummed but Sachiko could see that he was still excited by the idea of getting stronger and the idea of earning money to help Gon while keeping his training made him appreciate her efforts. Not that Killua would admit it but Sachiko was pleased seeing this version of Killua.
Now if only there was something she could do to change Gon into being more logical than purely idealistic..
Sachiko shook her head and sighed, "That'll probably be a lot of work... "
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Sachiko's update stats
[Name: Nakamura Sachiko
Alias: Phantom
Age: 19
Relationships: Gon Freecs (Close Friend), Killua Zoldyck (Adopted brother), Kurapika (Friend), Leorio (Friend), Hisoka (Rivals), Illumi (Enemy), Geto Suguru (Enemy), Gojo Satoru (Romantic Interest), Wing (Acquaintance), Zushi (Acquaintance).
Assets 224.7 million yen, 800 million jenny house, 3.72 billion jenny.
Hunter level: A
Jujutsu sorcerer level: Lower Special Grade
Cursed technique: Cursed energy manipulation (Proficient), Time Manipulation Eyes (Competent), Nullify (Competent), Pain killer (Proficient), Reverse Cursed Technique (Proficient).
Cursed energy: 50,000/50,000
Cursed energy reserves rank: B
Nen Techniques: Ten (Proficient), Ren/Ken (Proficient), Zetsu (Proficient), Gyo (Proficient), Ko (Proficient), Ryu (Proficient), In (Proficient), Shu (Proficient), En (Advanced Beginner).
Nen Abilities: Sticky Steel Threads (Conjuration), Silent Death (Transmutation).
Nen Type: Manipulator, Transmuter.
Aura pool: 112,500 units.
Curse points: 99950.
Hunter points: 220.
Cursed tools: Special Grade Scythe.
Skills : Intermediate Sword Skill (Competent), Assassins Art: Shroud (Competent), Assassins Art: Silent gaits, Rhythm Echo (Proficient), Disguise (Proficient), Advanced Hand-to-hand combat (Advanced Beginner).
Abilities: Enhanced sense: Eyesight, Super Hearing, Superior Strength (20x), Enhanced Reflexes, Pain resistance.]