Author's Comment: Just a quick drabble that may or may not be too short to put here. Oh, well. EnmaTsuna is fantastic.

Based off the song by Alive in Wild Paint, Anxious Disease. You should all give it a listen, it's a great song!


When the first ghost of a laugh escaped his lungs, he knew that this was something… different, somehow.

He couldn't pin a name to it— no name or word in existence could be assigned to describe the feelings and thoughts racing through his veins.

And when things calmed down in his environment, taking advantage of his temporary peace, they frequently saw each other with different expressions than when they'd first met. Different, but all the more familiar and something that made the redhead's small smile wrinkle the bandages that covered his cheeks.

Whenever Tsuna smiled that awkward, crooked half-smile of his, a plethora of unvoiced shivers invaded the young Shimon's stomach; racing about and tickling his nerves, it stirred him. Not in the way he's normally whine about in a flurry of frustration, however. It made him want to uncharacteristically grin ear-to-ear in return to that small smile.

Up front, he never realized what any of it meant.

His painfully ordinary life went on unscathed, unbothered in its path.

"My pride is… you."

The words— four simple, uniquely relevant and explanatory words— echoed inside his head, creating intricate patterns, pursuing his consciousness as he lay on his side with his gaze fixed on the waning moon visible from his bedroom window.

It wasn't like he didn't care. No, he just knew better than take the initiative he was craving. It wasn't in him to have such courage and vigilance, the qualities that he admired so. It would lead to dire consequences, he knew. He knew; he knew all too well. He was just Enma.Kozato Enma.

Nonetheless, both his mind and body ached for his friend, his best one at that; he wants the hands that bandage the cuts and bruises on his face to be not his own, but his,the soft, gentle digits—

It felt like a disease, Enma thought. An anxious, nerve-wracking disease that claimed his physical, mental, and spiritual aches all the same; a malignant, quick-spreading creature chained within him. He couldn't succumb, he couldn't—

I love you but I'll never stay.


Thanks to whoever read this! I'm not going to beg, but review if you feel like it— I'd love to know what you think!

~Dieci