Linssen's Short Story: The Hunter Exam

Linssen was a tall, thin, soft-spoken man who had a curious habit of tucking his hands into his sleeves and a perpetually morose expression on his long, horsey face.

He claimed to have completed the Hunter Exam two years prior — and, according to him, had bounced around doing “odd jobs” for various wealthy clients before landing the security gig with Nostrade, but Kurapika had always found that rather hard to believe. Kurapika wasn’t in the habit of paying his subordinates any mind, rarely gave any one of them more than two or three minutes’ worth of his undivided attention (with the notable exception of Senritsu), but he’d always been puzzled by Linssen’s presence, mostly because the man had always seemed so very out of place. He wasn’t violent or bloodthirsty or brash or intimidating, had none of the requisite “tough guy” characteristics. Linssen possessed all the mild, polite manner of an accountant, and was so skinny it often seemed as if one strong gust of wind could knock him right off his feet. How he’d passed the hunter’s exam and lasted long enough to get into this line of work was anyone’s guess. But he was calm, capable, and had proven himself to be reliable, which was more than could be said for many of Nostrade’s enforcers
See, what he needed them to understand — what he suspected nobody truly understood save for Senritsu and Neon — was that he was in charge now, completely, inarguably, indefinitely. In another life, another world, Kurapika would been horrified by the thought of taking advantage of a man in so obviously delicate a state of mental health as Light Nostrade, but the person he was now had found it disturbingly easy to work his way into the man’s good graces; all it had taken was three little words: I’ll handle