Kurapika hasn't met anyone like Alluka in a long time.
Gon is similar; very similar, really. But there's something underneath his consistent happiness, Kurapika thinks. He's caught glimpses of it, but only small ones. Alluka, however, seems to have nothing of the sort--she's innocent through and through. That surprises him, considering all she's been through... he doesn't know the details of it, but he knows enough about what the Zoldycks did to Killua to know that whatever happened to Alluka must have been horrible.
Still, it's good that she's happy. She's a child, after all, and children should be happy. She deserves that.
Right now, she seems very happy--spooning strawberry ice cream into her mouth and beaming. Some gets on her chin, so Kurapika slides her a napkin before taking a bite of his own: mint chocolate, something he hasn't tried before. Well, to be honest, he hasn't really had time for things like going and getting ice cream on a whim, so this is all quite new to him. But Alluka said she thought he'd enjoy the mint flavor, since it wasn't too sweet, and she turned out to be right. It's very good.
"You like it?" Her smile gets even wider in response to his nod. "Good!"
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, Alluka swinging her legs under the table and humming a little bit to herself, before Kurapika speaks again.
"Are you happy here, Alluka?"
"Huh? Yeah! It's really yummy ice cream," Alluka replies with her mouth full, and Kurapika can't help but laugh.
"That's not what I meant, Alluka. I meant with Gon and the rest of us. Are you happy?"
"Yeah!" She's even more enthusiastic this time. "I've never had so many friends before! I just had lots of stuffed animals but they never played with me or anything. I was super lonely until Killua came back, and then I met all of you, and now I'm really happy! I think I'm the happiest person in the world!"
He smiles back at her, and then she adds something else that momentarily gives him pause.
"And no one here calls me a boy, either," she mutters half under her breath.
A... boy? But why would anyone--
Oh. Oh.
"Well, you know," he replies, trying to keep his tone nonchalant(even though he wants to feed her family to wolves), "sometimes people think I'm a girl. Do you think I'm a girl?"
"No!" Alluka shakes her head. "That's dumb!"
"It is, isn't it?" Kurapika shakes his own head and smiles. "Sometimes people are just dumb, or mean, and they say things they shouldn't. But that doesn't mean it's true."
"...It kinda hurts, though," she mumbles.
"Yeah. It does, doesn't it?" Kurapika's not usually too bothered by it--it's more like annoying bugs than anything else--but too much at once can definitely get to him. And if he thinks too hard about it, the dysphoria does have a tendency to start acting up. So he tries not to.
But, if it's for Alluka's sake...
"When I was really little, everyone thought I was a girl," he says quietly, and sees her eyes widen a bit. "Even I thought so at first. It took me a little bit, but I realized--I'm not a girl any more than you are a boy."
"You're like me." Alluka's eyes are wide, and she looks like she's tearing up. "You're like me! I didn't think anyone was like me!"
"It's not as uncommon as you might think." Kurapika smiles. "There's lots of people like us out there."
"For real? There's more?!" She sounds like she was told she'd have free ice cream for life--somewhat in awe and extremely excited. "Lots and lots?"
"Lots and lots," Kurapika confirms with a nod. "And there's also lots of people who support us, too."
"Oh, I know that!" Alluka beams. "Killua yells at people a lot about it. He's never ever said I'm a boy, not even once."
"That's really good." His own smile is getting a little wider. "And you know, if you want to tell the others, you can. I promise they won't treat you any differently. I told them a while back, and they were all great about it."
"Nnn... I don't wanna." Alluka shakes her head. "Not yet."
"That's totally fine!" Kurapika makes his smile as reassuring as possible. "You don't have to if you don't want to. I just wanted you to know that if you ever do want to, they're safe people to talk to about it."
"Okay," Alluka says agreeably, and goes back to eating her ice cream as if nothing's happened. Though a moment later she pauses, asking, "Can we talk about it more later?"
"Of course." Kurapika means it, too. "I'll be here to talk to whenever you want."
Alluka beams, and although he's certain it doesn't compare at all to hers, Kurapika smiles back.