Fernweh: [German] noun. A longing for a distant place.
Tsuna did not fit in.
He knew that very well. His entire life up until now, short as it may have been, had been spent trying to fit in.
Get good grades, make his mother happy, somehow lure his father out of his constant absence, have nice friends. That was the mold the world had prepared for him, but no matter how much he shifted and twisted, he never managed to fit into it quite right.
His grades had always been abysmal, partly because he couldn't grasp certain concepts as fast as everyone else, as if there was some kind of block in his min; partly because, deep down, he just really didn't care about what he was being taught.
There were the bullies too, of course. But they had become such an integral part of his life that he couldn't quite imagine himself without a bruise or two to bring back home and hide from his mother anymore. And really, who wanted to become friends with a victim?
There was his father, whose face he could only remember due to the countless photos spread around the house and whose increasingly rare presence he'd come to resent as much as his absence.
And his mother, who had never really been proud of him. Not once. She was all smiles and giggles and the perfect housewife. She patted him on the head when he tripped down the stairs and gently scolded him when he hid his failed tests.
Not once had he seen her drop the smile, and sometimes, in the occasional bout of boredom, he wondered if there was anything behind that smile at all.
And really, that's all it came down to.
He was bored of this life. He was bored of his home, bored of his oppressive school, bored of everyone.
That's why he so often found himself on the school roof, gazing up at the sky. The sky was the only thing that never really bored him. It would change its moods so suddenly. One moment the sun would be shining, warming up his face, the next he'd be soaked through just by standing in the rain, the occasional bolt of lightning lighting up the world around him.
And he loved it, just how he loved walking through the thick morning fog every now and then or watching the clouds lazily make their way across the sky.
But what he loved most of all was a clear sky. An endless expanse of blue and a sea of countless stars.
Whenever he felt particularly bored – or particularly beaten – he sometimes clambered up the rusty fence that surrounded the roof and sat there, arm stretched upwards as if trying to touch the heavens themselves.
Sometimes, Tsuna thought he might have been a bird in his past life, free to roam the skies to wherever his wings took him. He longed for the sky so much it hurt, because for some reason, he felt it was the only place he could belong.
And in his musings, he sometimes looked down from the roof, wondering if he just tried, maybe he'd sprout wings. Wings that would take him up and away from here, out of his invisible cage.
These musings always ended with a forlorn sigh as he clambered back down from the fence before the demon prefect could catch sight of him. And so his life went on, with him stuck on the ground
But the longing never stopped.
Not until one fateful morning.
