Examinees steadily funneled out, some of them so exhausted, that they kneeled to catch their breath as soon as they moved a couple meters away from the exit. She watched as HeeJin almost literally fell down on the damp grass, the backpack dropped close. Chuu felt somewhat torn - on one side, she was glad that the girl was able to run all this way. On the other - they weren’t finished running. If she was so exhausted, it was better for her to fail in a tunnel.

When she looked at Choerry, Chuu met a contemplative gaze. She held it for a couple of seconds, before moving on to check how HyunJin was, neither surprised that the girl was fine, nor unashamed of her decision in the tunnel. If someone was failing on the first phase in a clearly non-lethal environment, she wasn’t about to hold their hand through it. Even if she thought that that specific someone was nice. She wasn’t sure if Choerry was shaming her for it, but there were certainly cogs turning in her head.

HyunJin almost immediately began doing slow stretches, looking barely bothered. She was sweating, and a bit out of breath, but nothing close to exhaustion HeeJin was experiencing. Chuu was somewhat impressed - it was a great result for a first timer on the exam.

As soon as Choerry got closer, she also sat on the ground and enthusiastically engaged the boys in a conversation. Chuu was catching snippets of it as she was digging through her bag, searching for some candies. Or chocolate. Something, she always had something in her bag and Chuu was absolutely, one hundred percent sure she bought some before boarding that crashed airship!

"Wow! You two ended first? That is amazing!” gushed Choerry. “How old are you two?"

“Twelve,” laughed Gon. “I guess I have never noticed how active I am usually in the forests. It must have helped.”

"Still inhuman," murmured quietly HyunJin, shaking her head, but waved Choerry’s quirked eyebrow off. Finished with her stretches, she sat close to HeeJin, fishing out a bottle of water from the girl’s backpack. Unscrewing the cap, she turned to Killua, smiling faintly. "What about you? I am HyunJin, by the way, eighteen.”

"Same as Gon. Killua," he said nonchalantly, not really looking at any of them, expression so distant, it was clear he was annoyed by the sudden group of people dragging him into a conversation.

Finished drinking, HeeJin tiredly thanked HyunJin and laid back on the ground, closing eyes. She exhaled once, introducing herself, but stopped midway, understanding she was too quiet. “HeeJin, Eighteen,” she repeated.

Eyes turned to Kurapika.

“Sixteen, Kurapika,” he said, then pointed with his chin at Leorio, whose hands were propped on the knees, breathing deeply. “Leorio is nineteen.”

“And I’m nineteen too,” finished the introductory circle Chuu, finally finding what she looked for. The timing was good, as there were quite a few glances sent from her to Leorio. With victorious cheer, she raised a bag of chocolate candies. She passed them around, allowing herself a slight smirk, when offering them to Killua. Staring her dead in her eyes, he took several of them. Chuu fought off a grin threatening to stretch on her face, deeply amused with his reaction. She wasn’t the type to use poisons! 

Everyone but Kurapika accepted some. Wise, but also his loss.

"You do seem capable too, Killua,” said Choerry, facing him. “Still, it is weird to see someone so young take it.” 

He shrugged. “You say it like it is challenging. So far nothing I saw was all that special."

Leorio angrily protested, backed by HeeJin’s death glare from the ground.

---

After twenty more minutes their brief rest ended. The door closed with a clang, cutting off an exhausted man, despite his panicked begging as he crawled the last couple stair steps.

In a silence descended on the hill, the examinees stood upright, ready to tackle the next obstacle. HeeJin cringed at a few dirt stains on her jeans and sleeveless shirt, but wasn’t as miffed about it as she would be if she was fully rested. She only hoped it would be not as noticeable after it dried and fell off. She secured the tag back on her coat, putting it back on, and tugged the beanie, lowering it. With her backpack on, she stood next to Choerry, waiting for further instructions. HyunJin was a couple steps to her left, close to Chuu. 

Behind her, Leorio, her brother in sensible human capabilities and limitations, also was standing straight, no longer swaying. The break greatly benefited them both, although he decided to keep his shirt off. She hoped the glue on the tag was a serious one, to hold on even through a jog in such humid air, as it would be a miserable way to fail.

Everybody was looking at Monsieur Satotz, who was overlooking the forest, partially obscured by a light low fog. 

“Treacherous wetlands, also known as the Swindler’s Swamp. It comprises the next leg of the first phase,” he announced. “Please note that there are many crafty and voracious creatures unique to these wetlands. They’ll trick you in a blink and eat you with relish.This is not their whim, but the basis of their entire ecosystem and the reason for the swamp’s name.” He turned around to face the examinees with a serious mien. “If you get lost, you are as good as dead. So take care of following me closely.”

“Nice of him to warn us,” she overheard Leorio confidently mutter to Kurapika. “Can't dupe someone who’s on the lookout for tricks.”

“He’s lying!”

Loud shriek cut through the air and the examinees whipped around. A beat-up man in dirty clothes turned the corner of the tunnel exit, one arm clutching his stomach.

“He’s an impostor, don’t let him deceive you! He’s not the examiner. I’m the real one!”

“Yeah, sure as we would believe...” started some applicants while others stuttered out questions and disbelief: “Impostor?! But…!”

Others had their heads whipped back at Satotz. “Then who - or what - is he?!”

The majority remained silent.

HeeJin frowned. She sent glances to her left, gauging reaction from the girls. HyunJin and Chuu were both looking at the direction of the man, the former's chin lifted a bit, a barely noticeable twitching of nostrils present for some reason, and the latter's facade completely disinterested. She threw a glance to her right, where Choerry was - HeeJin did a double-take - still looking at the forest, ignoring the commotion.

She moved closer, tugging at the girl’s sleeve, motioning at the situation at hand. Choerry looked behind her, at the roughed-up man, then huffed and turned back to the swamp, dismissively waving her hand.

“I’ll show you!” The man moved a couple steps away from the exit, giving a clear view at something he was clutching in his other hand. Distressed murmuring rose through the front. HeeJin hurriedly stood on her tiptoes to see the proof, just as the man raised it. A lean human-sized monkey, both eyes blankly staring at the sky, tongue lolling out. Its fur was covered in mud and few spots of blood, tangled in whatever struggle killed it. The man accusatory pointed at Satotz. “He’s one of the wetland creatures - the man-faced ape!”

She felt her face morph into a polite disinterest, as she dug through her thoughts (there was something wrong but she just couldn’t point a finger at it, was it about their examiner’s composure and this man’s lack of one or the endurance, but animals had great stamina, she thought)

A wave of hushed whispers washed over the crowd, half of the people outwardly reacting, while the other stood still, tensely observing the situation. A blur of white moved in a corner of her eye, but HeeJin habitually ignored it, her head clearing a bit, letting her focus better.

The man continued explaining the situation. “They lust after fresh human flesh, but are too weak to capture prey on their own. So they disguise themselves and lead a crowd of humans to the wetlands where, in cooperation with other creatures, they capture them alive!” She heard HyunJin huff. “This time they’re out to sweep up the entire hunter applicant pool!..”

Her heart froze, when with a short whistle three cards buried halfway in the man’s face. She almost jumped, startled, choking on her breath.

A more noticeable blur of white flashed close to her feet, bringing her back to the ground, jolting her out of her stupor and to the threat.

HeeJin snapped her head towards the source before the body hit the ground. Hisoka stood there, grinning to himself, shuffling cards, the rustle swallowing the hill. 

In a corner of her eyes she saw Choerry, who was suddenly facing the situation, turning around at some point, stepping closer to her. She ignored that, out of instincts that were screaming at her to not turn away from the predator in the room.

Something palpably hopped on her foot and a small memory of comfort soothed her tension.

Choerry quietly hummed and gently took her by the elbow, for some reason almost startling her with that. HeeJin tore her gaze away from Hisoka, and Choerry sent her a quick supportive smile, before pointedly looking to HeeJin’s left, where the other two girls stood. HeeJin followed her lead and saw Chuu, surprisingly tense. Not in an openly aggressive way, but having that subtle focused alertness, that happens when in a room full of people somebody, who is likely to be armed, starts reaching towards a gun. 

While her face projected a mild indifference, her eyes were burrowing in Hisoka. Chuu was leaning forward, her hands by her side, one half-step made forward, almost shielding HyunJin, her shoulder an inch in the way between the two. HyunJin herself was still standing as she was, eyes wide open, transfixed by the performance.

The sound of shuffling cards haunted the hill for a few very long, tense seconds.

Hisoka chuckled. “He-heh. I see. That is the real one,” the man threw a slow gaze at their examiner.

Another three cards were held in Satotz’s hands, the man looking both unimpressed and annoyed by the attack. The combination made the man look borderline grim for a brief second, before he flicked the cards away, closing his eyes. When he opened them, they were tranquil once again.

She heard rustling and monkey yapping. HeeJin looked there, just in time to see another card connect with what was previously presented as a dead monkey. 

“Now we all know,” singsonged Hisoka, not breaking eye contact with Satotz.

To her left she noticed the motion. Chuu forcefully blinked once, momentarily grimacing as she averted her eyes from the scene, stepping back the half-step she made previously. She snapped her eyes up, making contact with her’s, and HeeJin noticed the fleeting mix of confusion and something else, before it was replaced with a smile. She smiled back at Chuu, before turning back to the scene.

“Examiners,” drawled Hisoka, still shuffling his cards, ”are Hunters who do this, without pay, by the request of the Judging Committee. A simple Hunter, which we ourselves aspire to become, would have no trouble dodging my attack.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” said Satotz. “But,” he sent an empathizing stare, “the next attack on me, for any reason, will be grounds for immediate disqualification. Understood?”

“Sure,” placidly agreed Hisoka, smiling and putting away the deck.

In a heavy pause, HeeJin sighed - silence was suffocating, compared to the one that was before Satotz’s speech. 

Loud wing flapping turned her head back to the fake examiner. Flock of birds gathers around the dead monkey and the monkey that was deceiving them, unbothered by the proximity of the examinees. HeeJin felt a heavy pang in her heart. That monkey still looked way too human-like for her liking. 

As the birds began fiesting, Satotz made a slow walk halfway towards them. “As you see, losing isn’t pretty,” he said dispassionately, leaving the underlying implication hanging in the air.

“The law of the jungle is disgusting!” grumbled Leorio behind her and, with a jolt, HeeJin remembered of the other applicants.

“Nice ruse, saying I'm an impostor in order to confuse the examinees into taking the wrong path - right into their clutches. That's the sort of life-or-death deception that makes the swamp the perilous and fascinating place it is,” overt passion surged through his voice. “I’m sure many of you were swayed, and started having doubts about me.”

Several figures shifted and a couple let out a nervous laughter.

Satotz sighed and began walking out of the crowd and down the hill. “Well, so much for that. To the second phase.”

---

Running through mud was far, far more challenging compared to the concrete of the tunnel, slurping sounds of kneaded marsh filling the air, rendering any outside noise inaudible. 

It didn’t take long for the flora and fauna of the swamp to start showing its predatory nature, but only caught some stragglers on the sides, prompting everyone to group closer.

Twenty or so minutes later, fog thickened again and screams filled the air.

---

She was used to nature, having spent hours upon hours each day outside the town, roaming the mountains. She had experienced it damp and was used to that - for a few months that it poured nonstop, rains made the slopes slippery and forests hard to navigate, all smells washing away quickly. Rivers rose to the brims of high banks, usually looking like dried streams that were once roaring with water. 

But it was not this dump - fog was so dense, it was hard to see three meters ahead in some areas. Air was clogging her nose and moist clang uncomfortably on her skin. If she had her mother’s hair, it would’ve started curling by now, that’s how humid it was.

Air was no longer filled with human screams. In the past few minutes HyunJin only heard occasional faraway yelps, but they were nowhere close to them. When the last distant scream ended and an unusual silence descended, HyunJin had stopped in her tracks. She strained her hearing, but heard only nature. Leaves barely rustling, water dripping. A lot of feasting noises of tearing flesh and cracking bones, but none of the footfalls she wanted to hear.

They were unapologetically lost, neither guide nor the crowd to be sensed.

Footprints had been of no help either, even if they weren’t following any of them. They twisted and went in all directions, the applicants who were lagging behind lost and trying to navigate through the deadly swamp. Most of them ended up preyed on by local fauna. She didn’t know how many were lucky to avoid any of the traps.

If they at least had a trail, she could’ve tracked others, since the examinees were just here. Some of them had very strong chemical scents or were using strong cologne, like Leorio, for example. HyunJin could have tried to follow one oh the stronger-looking ones. But there was none and they weren’t following any small couple-people tracks - they were more likely to get out if they didn’t follow likely dead end paths.

She was ready to take the lead, both more used to nature and in better shape than HeeJin. If someone were to react to the danger first, it should’ve been her.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case.

"How do you know where to go?" she pondered aloud. The determined run HeeJin had was too purposeful to be from someone as lost as they were. She weaved between the trees and kept heading in an overall straight direction despite some obstacles she had to circle around. For the first ten minutes, HyunJin followed her silently, trusting that HeeJin knew what she was doing. 

When she stopped in silence, the girl had to physically drag the redhead behind her, pleading to follow her. A confident and semi-collected HeeJin was a sudden enough change from the previously almost giving up girl. Her expression was stiff, but not troubled. HyunJin decided to trust her on this one. 

"Intuition," said HeeJin with her eyes glued to the trees, before sharply changing direction again, opting to go through an area with more water and less solid ground. HyunJin followed.

---

"Choerry, I cannot see the girls," interrupted her rant Chuu. "I think they got lost."

Choerry’s first knee-jerk reaction was a thoughtless dismissal of her words, continuing her pursuit until Chuu gave up a hint. It was her turn to poke, as there was something tangible she could aim her interest at. After all, the display on the hill was an fascinating action, coming from a girl, who didn’t slow down even for a second when HeeJin fell behind.

Choerry was not holding that up against Chuu - some people didn’t like to help others, or those they just met! And that is okay! She met plenty of those and had such among her friends.

But she would be damned if she doesn’t get at least a hint to work with, a needle to thread for the course of the exam. However, Chuu was not cooperating, clamming up and acting as if she only dispassionately watched the confrontation. Choerry felt her curiosity swell inside her this whole time, almost unbearably interested in her new friends and a potential-friend.

But it once again clouded her focus, dammit! Choerry reprimanded herself for getting tunnel-visioned with Chuu’s oddity and leaving HeeJin and HyunJin behind. A nasty habit, her friends liked to poke at it in good humor. Sadly, she doubted she would ever stop that entirely.

She worried her lip. HeeJin and HyunJin getting lost was unfortunate. The swamp proved to be extremely dangerous for those who lagged behind, the background of sporadic screams a constant presence, even if they became sparser in the past few minutes.

"We are going back," she stated, meeting the puzzled look Chuu gave her. 

That made her pause for a split second. Was Chuu not interested in the girls’ continued survival? Choerry thought she was fond of them too. Did she read that wrong? Or was Chuu of the calculating type? It didn’t seem right, but what did she know about the redhead? Nothing. 

Going back would probably seem unreasonable from the perspective of a coldly calculative person - it would benefit to ignore others on this exam by being selfish. After all, what if the order of arrival to the next site was important? It was not uncommon for the first arrivals to have a benefit, Kim Lip told her. But that was in the latter phases, not the first. Was Chuu interested in possible benefits or just uninterested in searching for the girls?

Musing over that, Choerry absentmindedly grabbed Chuu’s forearm, fingers firmly curled around her knitted glove (in the back of her mind a surprised thought flashed about a solid surface underneath it), startling the girl, and dived to the side, away from the Satotz’s guidance, forcing them to do a sharp u-turn.

---

Chuu liked lush old forests, sturdy layered branches spaced just enough to feel the air between them but with decades(or even centuries)-old trunks too frequent to have too wide of a field of view. It was much easier to move through them, jumping from branch to branch on top speed, ignoring whether it was raining the other day or any natural debris there might have been. Only rushing at top speed through the canopy, not having to worry about any mission or people, trusting herself to be agile enough to not kill herself, squashing against one of the trees like a bug against a windshield.

In similar ways, fields and rocky mountains were enjoyable to run through, vast open spaces to flow through without a care in the world. While she was not a nature-dedicated person, Chuu liked it!

However, swamp forests were very much opposite of those, and an addition of unknown purple-haired variables wasn’t making this any better. While she was still running relatively fast, she was nowhere up to her usual speed. Worse, she could not use En, not with Choerry and moreso not with Hisoka fallen back, who, she knew, was lurking somewhere, bloodlusting.

Chuu would very much prefer to not face Hisoka right now. Not ever and not with the impulse she had earlier.

It was unfortunate HyunJin was just looking too much like and her subconscious acted before she did. Chuu acknowledged that she should address this later with Yves and Go Won.

She wouldn’t.

Alas, her mistake made Choerry focused on her, pointedly nagging even while running so close to others, they risked to be tripped. She wasn’t asking any direct questions, but her reminiscence of some likely made-up events in her life had a conspicuous amount of “subconscious moves” and “jumping in front of someone”. She wasn’t overly loud but that was not the point.

When the girls appeared to be lagging behind, she said so, hoping to send Choerry off, as the girl seemed to be pretty invested in them for some reason. Not that she couldn’t care less about them, her situation was just… Different.

But, in alerting the girl, Chuu was dragged along, since, apparently, she missed the memo that she was now glued to Choerry.

After the girl just grabbed her, almost begging to be attacked, turning both of them around, she thought of just going back to follow Satotz again and pretending she never had any business in that.

However, that would burn any possible bridges for friendship between her and any of them and Yves told her to at least try. “Not alienating” was high on the list of basic rules for that.

She sighed internally.

This whole situation was exactly the reason why she thought it was better for two of them to fall behind in the tunnel if they were underqualified. At least that way they could turn back safely and she could ignore the order without feeling guilty. They were nice and sweet and a perfect match for that hypocritical advice - they were girls, her age, skilled enough to get to the starting site of the Hunter exam on their first try, but not too skilled to be suspicious or pose danger to her or her friends. 

And now they were lost in Swindler's Swamp.

With Hisoka lurking around.

Which looped her thought process back into her mistake near the exit. At the start, before the marathon, she had to check if she was seeing things or if HyunJin just had a similar face, but it turned out to be just a morbid coincidence. It still was unsettling, looking at her. Back in the tunnel, she also had a catching up thought that the redhead and Choerry had somewhat similar faces. Luckily, it seemed the latter was too different overall to trigger any sort of reaction in her.

The girls described the exam almost as a vacation, but, so far, it was building up to be anything but. She also had a sneaking suspicion that Go Won was gleeful over the fact that Hisoka moved from taking the exam in her year to Chuu’s. Of course it became a vacation for her after he left!

She undoubtedly had that in mind when Chuu left for the exam. No wonder the girl was smirking!
To think Chuu forgot that warning! Even if it was made a year ago, Hisoka was one of their more or less constant clients, for God’s sake, it resurfaced in their conversations!..

A distant explosion of killing intent made her tense up, instantly dropping into Zetsu. The source was now behind them, not far enough, never far enough.

Chuu prayed this wasn’t his reaction to HyunJin or HeeJin. 

Both she and Choerry sped up at the same time, focused on the search.

---

HyunJin made an audible sound of bewilderment. Over her shoulder, in the center of the clearing that they just made a wide arch around, she saw a mossy boulder uncoil. It shifted and, with a grumble, settled back, in a rock of a different shape.

“You are really good at survival in the wilderness,” mused HyunJin.

HeeJin laughed bitterly. “Worse than you think. Only navigating around and even that works one time out of five,” she groaned. “You have no idea what kind of places I wounded up in by accident!”

They were no longer running at the pace of the crowd, settling in a more patient tempo. It left them with plenty of breath to talk. Thankfully, the fog was also slowly thinning, letting her ponder about the possibility of them finally getting out of the swamp. It was an uplifting line of thought.

“Well, you don’t seem to be dead, so it must’ve worked out.”

“It did. Places were weird, but none of them was deadly dangerous.” HeeJin took a pause, before adding in a quiter, more confused tone: “Some were borderline creepy but that might be just me.”

HyunJin chewed her cheek, thinking of that. “Creepy how?”

HeeJin kept silent for a while and when HyunJin thought of moving on, blackhaired girl said: “I do not know how to properly explain. There was a feeling like something didn’t belong to those places, like… Ah, I really don’t know how to explain. Like. You know the feeling when coincidences are too suspicious or timing that makes you paranoid? A blanket of awareness? It wasn’t anything solid, just a vague feeling...” HeeJin looked back, meeting her gaze for a second. Sighing, she turned back to the road. “I don’t know how to convey that in words. Just forget that.”

She wouldn't forget that. “Was that creepiness linked to something that happened to you?” If so, contrary to what HeeJin was thinking, HyunJin could empathize.

“No?” HeeJin was sounding confused, bending under a low-hanging branch, large leaves covered in brown dots. She kept moving through a copse, ignoring the clearer path three meters to the left. “I don’t think so?”

“You don’t sound so sure,” she pointed out, following. 

HeeJin made an unintelligible noise at that.

After it was clear she won’t elaborate, HyunJin returned to a previous question she had.  “You look like a city girl. Where did you get to learn how to navigate?”

“I didn’t,” HeeJin shook her head, “it is just an intuition.”

They lapsed into silence once again.

She herself was often praised for her instincts and intuition. It failed her here, to her slight disappointment. It stung a little that she had to be guided in nature and not the other way around, but it wasn’t hitting her pride too badly. She rarely got to be in a completely new environment. Especially in so hostile. Was this even a situation she could’ve gone through just by herself? Following her own instincts?

No. There were places where intuition worked and where it didn’t. This wasn’t one she would risk it in, at least, not on her own volition. Currently, the only thing that could be named “a mistake”, was letting the crowd out of sight, but that meant leaving HeeJin behind by herself.

And that wasn't a mistake.

Content, she laid that line of thought aside.

HyunJin couldn’t help but ask: “If your instinct is so unstable, how do you rely on it now?”

“I just believe in it,” dropped HeeJin dismissively.

HyunJin shrugged. This did not seem like a topic HeeJin wanted to talk about. HyunJin was content to drop the conversation and focus on the road ahead.

A couple minutes later HeeJin spoke up quietly. Not expecting continuation, HyunJin had to make an effort to discern her words.

“My experiences taught me that it is better to believe in myself and die due to my own mistakes than it is to sit in indecision and die because of someone else’s,” said HeeJin, by the tone of it, carefully mouthing each word.

The conversation died there.