The room did not explode all at once.
It tightened first.
That was how disaster usually worked, Tonpa was beginning to learn. Not as a sudden break, but as pressure gathering inside ordinary things until something small became enough.
A shattered plate.
A raised voice.
Too much hunger. Too much pride. Too much exhaustion packed into the same space.
Menchi stood at the center of it like a drawn blade.
The examinee who had snapped did not back down. That was his mistake. Not the first one, probably, but the final one.
"We're here to become Hunters," he said, breathing hard. "Not chefs."
Wrong answer.
Wrong tone.
Wrong person.
Menchi took one step forward, and the testing grounds seemed to sharpen around her.
"If you cannot understand the value of food," she said, her voice calm in the worst possible way, "then you are not qualified to become a Hunter."
Silence followed.
Not respectful silence.
The kind that came right before people made things worse.
Tonpa felt it immediately. Around the grounds, shoulders tightened. Faces changed. Candidates who had been swallowing their irritation for minutes, maybe longer, now looked at one another and saw permission.
The first examinee had spoken aloud what too many of them were already thinking.
Leorio folded his arms tighter across his chest.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered.
"Yes," Tonpa said quietly. "That's why it's dangerous."
Leorio looked at him. "You keep saying things like that, and I keep hating how often you're right."
Tonpa would have answered, but a second candidate stepped forward.
Then a third.
Not physically close to Menchi. Emotionally close enough.
One of them gestured sharply toward the preparation tables. "You rejected everything."
Another added, "You barely even looked at some of them."
"They were garbage," Menchi said.
The words landed like sparks on dry wood.
A low wave of angry voices rolled through the room.
Buhara looked increasingly uncomfortable. He did not interfere. Not yet. But his easy warmth from earlier had vanished completely. He looked like a man watching familiar bad weather build and knowing better than to pretend it was only wind.
Kurapika stood very still, his expression unreadable but alert. Gon watched the exchange with the direct, unguarded attention of someone trying to understand a danger before deciding whether to step toward it. Killua had gone almost lazily neutral, which Tonpa had already learned was never a sign of actual ease.
This was the moment.
The old story still sat in Tonpa's head in rough outlines. Menchi failed everyone. The argument worsened. Netero stepped in. The exam was redirected.
That should happen.
Probably.
Tonpa hated that word now.
The examinee who had started it all laughed once, sharp and humorless.
"So what, then?" he snapped. "You wanted us to fail from the beginning?"
Menchi's expression did not change.
That made several things worse at once.
"No," she said. "I wanted competence."
That did it.
The arguing stopped being scattered after that. It gathered. A complaint from one side. An angry answer from another. Candidates started talking over each other, throwing out frustration with the clumsy intensity of tired people who had reached the edge of patience and discovered there was still more day left.
Tonpa did not join in.
He watched Menchi instead.
She had gone too still.
That mattered.
She was not losing control. She was narrowing.
And when people like that reached their limit, they did not break loudly. They cut.
Leorio shifted his weight, then immediately regretted it and grimaced. "Say something useful."
Tonpa frowned. "To who?"
"To me, obviously."
"You're not going to like it."
Leorio gave him a flat look. "That's never stopped you before."
Tonpa looked back at Menchi.
"She's done passing anyone," he said.
Leorio's face tightened. "You sure?"
Tonpa did not answer immediately.
Then: "Would you bet your exam on her calming down?"
Leorio clicked his tongue and looked away. That was answer enough.
Another candidate slammed a hand against one of the tables.
"You can't fail everyone over this!"
Menchi turned her head toward him.
"I can," she said. "And I will."
The room froze.
Even the angry ones went quiet for a second.
There it was.
The line.
Tonpa felt it like cold water down his spine.
This was no longer a harsh test.
This was collapse.
Buhara finally moved. Just a half-step, one big hand lifting slightly as if to calm the room—or maybe calm Menchi.
"Menchi—"
She did not look at him.
"These candidates," she said, eyes still on the group, "do not understand the basic respect required for this profession. If they cannot even grasp that, then there is no point continuing."
That was not an examiner's frustration anymore.
That was a verdict.
And suddenly the air in the testing grounds changed.
The candidates felt it too. You could see it in the way indignation faltered into something more dangerous. People could handle difficulty. They could handle humiliation if they thought effort might still matter.
Meaninglessness was different.
Meaninglessness made people reckless.
Leorio stepped forward before Tonpa could stop him.
"This is insane," he snapped. "How are we supposed to pass a test if you've already decided we're worthless?"
Several examinees stiffened.
Kurapika turned sharply.
Gon blinked.
Killua's mouth twitched, as if he had expected this from the moment Leorio had been born.
Tonpa shut his eyes briefly.
Of course.
Of course it was Leorio.
Menchi's gaze landed on him like a knife.
"Worthless?" she repeated.
Leorio did not retreat.
Tonpa almost admired that.
Almost.
"You heard me."
Buhara made a low, pained sound under his breath that might have been the spiritual opposite of encouragement.
Tonpa moved before he fully decided to.
Just one step.
Not toward Menchi.
Toward Leorio.
Enough to be close if the room got uglier.
That alone felt noticeable.
He could feel Killua register it. Kurapika too.
Wonderful.
Menchi's voice stayed level.
"If you believe this phase is unfair," she said, "then perhaps you are free to leave."
That hit differently.
Not because it was loud.
Because it wasn't.
The candidates reacted at once. Some with outrage. Some with disbelief. One or two with the hollow, furious laugh of people too tired to process that the day had somehow found a new insult.
Leorio's jaw set.
Tonpa could practically hear the bad decision forming.
He leaned just enough to speak under the noise.
"Don't."
Leorio didn't look at him. "I wasn't asking."
"I know."
"Then stop helping."
That was, unfortunately, very Leorio.
But Tonpa also heard it for what it was: anger stretched over helplessness.
Because Leorio had tried. They all had. Even the ones with terrible sushi had still tried. That was what made Menchi's wall of rejection feel so corrosive. It had nothing to do with failure alone. It was the sense that effort had stopped mattering.
The angry candidate from earlier pointed toward Menchi.
"This proves it. You never intended to pass us."
Menchi turned fully toward him this time.
"I passed those who deserved to pass."
That was true, technically.
It was also the wrong thing to say to a room full of people who had just watched competence turn invisible.
Tonpa looked up.
Instinct.
Nothing else.
The ceiling beams. The open structure above. Air. Space.
No one there.
Not yet.
His stomach tightened anyway.
If the original flow still held, Netero should appear soon.
If it didn't—
He cut the thought off.
No. One problem at a time.
The arguments sharpened. Not into chaos, not completely. But the edges were there now. Candidates began speaking not just in frustration, but in factions—those still trying to reason, those simply angry, those already convinced the phase was a farce.
Kurapika stepped forward at last.
His voice, when it came, was controlled enough to cut through the noise.
"If your standard is absolute authenticity," he said, "then most of the candidates were never given a fair chance. Knowledge and skill are different things."
Menchi looked at him. "And Hunters are expected to adapt."
"That assumes the test was designed to evaluate adaptation," Kurapika replied. "Not ignorance."
A dangerous line.
A smart line.
A line that did absolutely nothing to improve Menchi's mood.
Tonpa could feel the room tilting.
Gon, of all people, was the one who looked most puzzled now. Not upset. Not defensive. Just quietly troubled, as if trying to understand how something that had begun as a task could become this personal.
Killua leaned slightly toward him and said something too low for Tonpa to catch. Gon's eyes stayed on Menchi.
Leorio glanced sideways at Tonpa at last.
"You still think this blows over on its own?"
Tonpa looked up again, then back at Menchi.
"No," he said.
That was enough to make Leorio's expression shift.
Not because the answer was new.
Because Tonpa had sounded too certain.
Again.
The old story, he thought. Hold together for five more seconds.
Four.
Three.
A voice came from above.
"Hmm."
It was not a loud voice.
It did not need to be.
The entire room changed before anyone even fully looked up.
Tonpa felt relief hit him so hard it was almost painful.
There.
Still there.
Still on the rails, at least for now.
Heads lifted across the grounds.
Atop the structure above, Chairman Netero stood with his hands resting lightly at his sides, as if he had simply wandered into existence out of amusement. His old face held that same impossible balance of softness and danger, the look of a man who could be mistaken for harmless only once.
Beside him were the others—officials, observers, order made human by virtue of standing near him.
The candidates went still.
Even Menchi did.
Netero looked down at the scene, smiling mildly.
"My, my," he said. "It seems things have become rather heated."
Nobody answered.
Not because no one wanted to.
Because the room had remembered hierarchy.
Tonpa exhaled carefully and made himself not sag with relief.
He had not realized how much tension he had been carrying in his shoulders until that moment.
Still, the problem was not solved.
Only paused.
Netero descended with maddening ease, as if gravity had agreed to cooperate out of respect. When he landed, the atmosphere shifted again—not lighter, exactly, but more contained.
He looked first at Menchi.
Then at Buhara.
Then at the candidates.
His gaze skimmed over faces, postures, anger, exhaustion.
When it reached Tonpa, it paused.
Only briefly.
Still enough to make Tonpa's pulse tick upward.
Great.
Wonderful.
Another pair of eyes.
Netero folded his hands behind his back.
"Menchi," he said gently, "did you fail them all?"
Her answer came without hesitation.
"Yes."
A ripple moved through the candidates.
Netero hummed once, neither approving nor condemning.
"And do you believe that decision was made with perfect fairness?"
That question landed differently than the others had. Not because it was harsher. Because it left no good place to hide.
Menchi's jaw tightened.
The pause was tiny.
Tonpa noticed it anyway.
"Yes," she said.
Netero's smile did not vanish.
It merely changed shape.
Ah, Tonpa thought. There it is.
The version of kindness that was also evaluation.
Buhara looked down and scratched at the side of his head, clearly wishing for food-based solutions to institutional conflict.
Netero turned slightly toward the candidates.
"An exam," he said, "must be difficult. But difficulty and impossibility are not the same thing."
That sent a visible shudder of hope through the room.
Too fast.
Too obvious.
Tonpa watched Menchi see it happen and dislike it immediately.
Good, he thought. Dislike the room. Don't explode at it.
Netero looked back at her.
"I believe," he said pleasantly, "that a retest would be appropriate."
There it was.
The old track.
The room breathed again.
Not all the way.
Enough.
Menchi did not answer immediately.
Tonpa could almost feel the weight of her pride pressing against the decision. Around the grounds, nobody moved. Nobody dared.
Then she said, clipped and controlled, "Fine."
Leorio muttered, "Finally."
Tonpa elbowed him before the word fully finished leaving his mouth.
Leorio glared. "What?"
"Live longer," Tonpa muttered back.
That earned him a look from Killua.
Of course it did.
Netero's eyes passed over the candidates again.
Then, with almost insulting ease, he said, "The second test will be changed."
A collective release moved through the room this time. Not celebration. More like a drowning man realizing the surface still existed.
But Menchi raised one hand.
"No," she said.
Every nerve in Tonpa's body tightened.
Netero turned to her.
Her expression had changed. Not softened. Sharpened into something cleaner.
"I will conduct the retest myself," she said. "Properly."
Netero considered her for a moment.
Then he smiled again, the version that suggested he had already expected this answer.
"Very well."
Tonpa stared.
Right.
The eggs.
The cliff.
The part that looked much less fatal on television.
Netero addressed the candidates.
"You will accompany Examiner Menchi to the site of the new task."
The candidates stirred, tension replaced now by wary curiosity and bone-deep fatigue.
Tonpa, meanwhile, was busy resenting the universe.
He had almost relaxed.
That had been his first mistake.
The second was noticing, too late, that Netero was now standing slightly closer than before.
Close enough that the old man's next words, though spoken lightly, landed with unnerving precision.
"You seem very tense, Candidate Tonpa."
Tonpa looked at him.
There was no accusation in Netero's face.
That made it worse.
For one dangerous instant, Tonpa considered pretending he had simply not heard.
Then he remembered who he was dealing with.
"Yes," he said.
Netero's smile widened just a fraction.
"A sensible habit."
Then he moved on.
Just like that.
No explanation.
No follow-up.
Nothing that anyone else could call suspicious.
Tonpa stood very still.
He could feel at least three people noticing that exchange.
Killua.
Kurapika.
And Gon, though Gon's notice was a gentler kind, more curiosity than calculation.
Leorio frowned at him. "Why did that sound weird?"
Tonpa stared ahead. "Because everything today is weird."
"That wasn't a real answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Leorio looked like he wanted to argue.
Thankfully, Menchi chose that moment to call the candidates to move.
The grounds came alive again in tired, uneven motion. People collected themselves. Anger settled into muttering. Hope returned in fragile pieces.
Tonpa started walking with the others.
The Chairman had arrived.
The exam had been saved.
The old story, at least in outline, still held.
And yet—
Netero had paused on him.
Noticed him.
Spoken to him.
The kind of attention that should have felt reassuring only made the back of Tonpa's neck go cold.
Because men like Netero did not look twice without reason.
Ahead, Menchi led them onward toward the next test.
Behind her, the candidates followed in a strained line of hunger, exhaustion, and reluctant obedience.
Tonpa kept pace and tried not to think too hard.
He had wanted the room not to burn.
He had gotten that.
What he had not wanted was to become one more detail the strongest people in it would remember.
And as he followed the others out, one ugly thought stayed with him longer than the rest:
If even Netero had started to notice that Tonpa was wrong—
then sooner or later, someone sharper would ask why.