Colonello had heard that one's life flashed before them when they died but, as he lay here, dying, he didn't have those flashbacks from his childhood to the point where was now. Sure, there were some things he had flashbacks to, like joining COMSUBIN and becoming an Arcobaleno, but those were outweighed by what he remembered most.
Mostly, he remembered a girl with light brunette hair and equally brown eyes. He remembered a girl whose smile lit up the world...or, his world, at the very least. He remembered a girl he ate with, bathed with, slept in the same bed as. He remembered a girl named Sasagawa Kyoko.
He thought about his time with her, living at her house during the battle for the Vongola Rings; during this time, he mostly trained her brother, but that wasn't important, not to him...not right now, anyways. What was important was the time spent with a girl who might've just been out of his league...as if the whole age difference and him being in the form of a baby didn't make the relationship as unlikey as it was. But, you know, those days... Those days were his best days.
Looking back at it all now, Colonello wondered... Did he have any regets? No, he didn't think he did. He'd lived his life to the fullest, after all. "To the extreme", as his once-student might have put it. So why did he not want to die? He wasn't scare of death, like that weakling Skull. So, why...? So he thought it over again, and it was then he realized that he did indeed have a regret.
He'd never told Kyoko he loved her.
But he couldn't now... Not with him bleeding to death like this... Not with him being just a baby, even if she did realize that he wasn't really a child anymore... Not with her being engaged to Sawada Tsunayoshi... He couldn't...!
Still, he didn't just want to keep it to himself for eternity. But who could he tell? No one was here anymore. He was alone, lying around in an empty alley, bleeding to death. There was no one, no one but the wind. The wind would have to do.
Colonello took a deep breath before he spoke, and this breath alone hurt. It was like a shooting pain in his chest. It was awful, but he knew he'd feel worse if he never said those words aloud, even if no one got to hear them but him.
And so he would say those words he never got the chance to tell the girl he loved: "K-Kyoko... I... I love you, kora..."
His blue eyes grew dim as he finished his last words. There. He'd said it. Finally...
If only she'd known...
x X x
Kyoko sat by the windowsill in the manor her fiancee now owned as the tenth boss of the Vongola. It had been an ordinary day. Well, as ordinary as things can be when you don't realize your friends and family were going to be hunted soon enough, and that some of them were already dead...
Suddenly, she felt her eyes grow watery, as if the wind had whispered something to her that Kyoko hadn't quite liked, something too sad for words. And a few tears fell from her eyes, making straight paths down her cheeks.
Wondering what was wrong with her - she'd been perfectly fine until just now - she raised a hand up to one of her cheeks, as if she couldn't believe that she was really crying, and she felt the tears. She couldn't understand why she was crying. Wasn't everything alright...?
It was then that Tsuna entered the room, and was instantly worried the moment he did. After all, he'd just seen his fiancee crying and he didn't know why. He looked at her with a rather concerned expression on his face. "Kyoko-chan, are you alright...?"
She paused for a moment, looking at him with a sort of far-off look in her eyes. She was clearly confused. "Tsu-kun... I...I don't know..." was all she could manage to say, shaking her head slightly.
If only she'd known...