a/n: lmfao i'm honestly going to be uploading random things from now on, university is killing me
Sawada Nana becomes a registered Japanese citizen the spring of her marriage to Sawada Iemitsu.
She makes sure all two of her favorite people are involved in the planning.
For the large part, Nana maps out most of it with Iemitsu. They both want a small ceremony- they don't have that many friends, family is something they both hold dear so thats one of the first things they get out of the way. The outdoor venue is a discussion that drags on for weeks before he finally reassures her that weather is not a problem. It better not be, she remembers murmuring through the stressed out nights of rooting through papers and lace tablecloth designs. During these times, Yeseul is an angel who Iemitsu swears is out for his blood. Together, they team up against her fiancé on the aesthetics.
By the time the wedding rolls by, Nana really couldn't be any more happy as she walks down the isle holding the six year old's hand.
She thinks as she turns her attention away from her beaming husband to the last seconds of her beautiful Yeseul's staredown with Iemitsu's boss's youngest son that she's finally found a proper home.
When Iemitsu dips her into a passionate kiss, Nana laughs a laugh so bell-like that it blends into the sweet melodies of the wedding march. Her arms encircle around the neck of the love of her life and streamers burst out from all around them.
Cutting through the air like gunshots.
Rim Chaeah meets Lazaro de Cristofaro when her parents are caught by customs and she's hiding in an dirty alleyway with a screaming baby.
In a town that neither of them can properly pronounce, their eyes are drawn to the first things that their starved souls familiarize with the most.
For Chaeah, it's the way he doesn't even hesitate when he happens upon the two of them. In only three seconds, he lends her his coat and coaxes the baby asleep in her arms. He only has to put a warm hand against her cheek and she's filled with a wave of harmony and security. She thinks this man will keep me safe and the baby quiets.
For Lazaro, the woman in the alleyway is the only thing that shines brightly in this dingy old and smelly neighborhood. He ignores the frustrated shouts echoing in the background in favor for his intuition. Letting them guide his actions as he calms the child in his arms and warm the woman up with his flames.
They don't meet again until years later.
In a town with a name too short to remember and appearances too stunning to forget.
Nana and Iemitsu fall in love under a meteor shower through the security of a single glass panel in a University library.
One of the first things her new foster parents make clear to Nana is that Yeseul was to address her as sister the entirety of their stay in their house.
Rim Chaeah, at the time, had nodded and agreed wholeheartedly. Wanting nothing but to separate herself and the child from a history of torture and abuse. If not for the social fallout, the teenager was scared of what would happen if someone found out just where they were before they entered the System. If that meant severing a bond in favor for one on a shorter straw, then so be it.
She doesn't think more of it as they live out their days in the South. She gains weight, meets new friends, and watches over her baby 'sister' after school. All at the same time making up lies and pushing down the memories that disconnect her from her peers. She studies and studies until she's at their level. She blends in until she all but becomes another face in the crowd.
When Yeseul's first word is revealed to be a hearty cry of 'unni!', Rim Chaeah cried for what seemed like forever when the neighbours finally came knocking.
Sawada Chou is registered into the System on Oct 4 19xx. Oldest daughter of Sawada Nana and Sawada Iemitsu.
Surprisingly enough, falsifying a birth certificate is the easiest part. Getting the eight year old to go along with the act was where things started going wrong.
"Why do I have to change my name!" The girl pouted, jumping from the window to squeeze between Nana's elbows. If she kicked Iemitsu along the way then he went to a great length not to show it in the form of pirouetting out of sight in favor of tempering the screaming kettle.
Nana knows her daughter to be a smart girl. There were things that Nana would have never said around the girl that she would already know; she was inquisitive, never failed to pass up the chance to provoke Iemitsu, patient and everything a mother would want in a daughter. Maternal biases aside, Nana wanted the best for her girl. For the newly named Sawadas, changing her name was just that.
Yeseul might have been smart but explaining why they always got strange looks when she would excitingly recount the events of her day in loud Korean during their shopping trips was hard enough.
Years later, she would wish that her mother had more courage to power through the glares and uncomfortable shuffles as they spoke their mother tongue.
Staring at her new name now though, all she can do is offer a silent surrender in favor of releasing the tension in her mother's shoulders.
There was a joke that haunts Tsuna growing up about how his older sister almost managed to control all of Japan when she was in her teen years.
In a time where the bullying wasn't as vicious and his sister was a constant presence in his life, people would come up to them in supermarkets or on the way to daycare and bow as if Sawada Chou was secretly an intergalactic space princess in disguise.
(she could deny it all she wants, but young Tsuna watched enough Space Warriors to know a secret identity when he saw one)
Sometimes they'd get fruit baskets from mysterious senders.
Other times, people would stop them and laugh about 'the time you took over Kokuyo on your lunchbreak and Hibari Ryo walked in while you wailed on the Boss with a doraemon milk cartoon' and 'hey can I take a picture with you? my wife would never believe me'.
"Noona, what was that all about?" He'd stare up at Yeseul with curious eyes, holding her hand more tightly as the two watched the latest stranger- a big burly man with a curious Sanrio sleeve curled up beneath the thin fabric of his white dress shirt.
There would always be an air around his older sister whenever things like this happened. One that he can clearly describe years later.
In a child's eyes, Tsuna thought Yeseul was a celebrity- everyday involved being coddled by the friends who would randomly drop by to visit 'o-jou'. There seemed to be no end to Yeseul's social circle. Just when he thought there wouldn't be anyone new, another one would show up and throw him into a whirl.
Honestly, joke or not, Tsuna believed in that rumor more than he believed in anything else.
To him, it seemed that whenever Yeseul failed to make it back home by dinner, she was saving the world. He imagined that she was actually fighting against the evil Lord Chihuahua with Ultraman and the Power Rangers and at the end of each battle, she'd stop Tokyo Tower from falling on its side, maybe even catch some Clow cards and make sure Hibari Ryo put a muzzle on the infamous little brother before bedtime. She'd always made sure to call home and Tsuna made sure he was the one who'd pick up first.
He'd be in the living room playing. There was a routine to it. He'd drop everything just to run for the phone, exchange some words, pass the phone off to their mother before turning on the TV. Somehow, she liked to time her calls to weird things happening on the News.
He never knew what those weird adults were talking about but he knew that Yeseul was already on it.
During her first year of high school, she swears to herself that she would stop actively searching for trouble.
"Sawada, why are you always around when there's trouble?"
Hibari Ryo, the soon to be police chief of Namimori, had long grown used to the idea that trouble followed Yeseul around like a plague.
The look on her face was well worth the vocal exercise when she groans and digs her head further into her arms.
The bullying gets worse when Yeseul leaves to study abroad.
Nana likes to make it obvious that she is the mother of two brilliant and gorgeous children.
When more and more of Tsuna's friends begin to stay over, she leaves little hints of her oldest daughter's existence. Sometimes, she'd stay on the phone for long stretches of time, well aware that she should've started dinner a while ago but "momma's on the phone," "lambo shh."
She'd laugh and coo, dot over her own son and stopped comparing the two the more she realized that Tsuna missed her too.
Bianchi came up behind her once as she was cleaning up the dusty bookcase in the living room.
Nana was staring at Yeseul's graduation picture, the one where she had her arm around Hibari-kun and the two were smiling with such mirth that it threatened to split their entire faces apart. Bianchi watched as the women reminisced, fingers trailing dreamingly over her daughter's happy face.
What she said caused her to laugh till kingdom come.
"You still look as young as you were back then."
Tsuna doesn't find out about Yeseul's return to Namimori by phone.
Instead he finds out in an elevator with Dino and Squalo (miraculously with attached ear drums and a slightly less than panicked mood).
It was after they broke the curse and they were in the middle of some discussion or another when the doors opened to the seventh floor and a loud "Sawada!" bellowed out.
Tsuna let out a surprised squeal.
There were footsteps padding up to the doors before a head of brown hair came whirling around the corner and almost destroying the panel.
"Close the door! Close the door! Close the door!" She was screaming in a panic, waving her arms and heaving in huge gulps of air. Tsuna did as he was told and paused when he realized just who that voice belonged to.
Beyond the closing doors, the voice continued to scream but soon it was silenced by the screams of the now reunited Sawada siblings
In the present arc, the fixed ages are:
Iemitsu: 38
Nana: 36
Xanxus, Squalo, Dino , Yeseul: 24
Tsuna : 13
Rim Chaeah = Sawada Nana
- pronounced like Chae-ah , Ch-A-ah (cha in chase)
(Rim) Yeseul/Ye Seul = Sawada Chou
- Rim is the last name Nana's parents possess, after they arrive in South Korea. Nana only uses it sparingly and thus its not a major part of her identity
- the name Chou was chosen because it makes her Korean name sound better, it fits awkwardly following Sawada to signify how this is a piece that doesnt fit and if you play with the sounds it sounds a lot like 'Miss Sawada' (Sawada - o jou [お嬢]) lol idk
- " yeh-sool " is how you pronounce Yeseul
Lazaro de Cristofaro= Sawada Iemitsu
- got it off an Italian Name Generator and chosen because I really like the story of 'Lazarillo de Tormes' lmfao lmfao lmfao
a/n: i dont know if i'll ever get the chance to fully explore Yeseul's family history so here it is anyways: Nana's family originally hail from North Korea and she spent most of her young life in one of NK's largest concentration/prison camps. The family's sentence is just about over when the parents overhear the guards talking about how they might send the free men off to re-education camps which are just as bad and so they decide to escape like ASAP. During this time, Nana is impregnated and so the risks are higher and the (Rim)s are even more motivated to escape if so only for the baby to have a waaaaaay better life. Flash forward a year later, they're almost safe and homefree when customs catches their parents. The baby has already been born and Nana is just about to be dragged back to Korea too when Iemitsu shows up. Epic illegal stuff happens and Nana ends up under temporary foster care with his contacts in South Korea where she continues to learn Japanese. More years later, the two meet each other once again and fall in love and decide to move to Japan.
Nana's 'airheadedness' here is thus explained by her lack of education as a young developing child and reinforced with her need to always go for the easier choice - thus the façade of optimism despite knowing that times are just as bad. This is kind of inspired by my parent's refugee stories and my dad's willingness to tell me only because I'm 'old enough' (I don't know my mom's and I really doubt she'll tell me)
Yah so thats why theres so many name changes. Nana will always be known as Nana. While Yeseul will be known as Yeseul unless prompted otherwise in terms of safety and security.