Tsuna takes a deep breath in before entering the classroom he had once hoped to never see, let alone go in, again. At the arrival of another alumni, those already gathered pause to look at him, to try to guess who he is and how his life has played out.
"I should have known that Dame-Tsuna would not only be late but also severely under dressed," snorts one of the nameless bullies from Tsuna's past, breaking the ice and causing most others to laugh. Tsuna joins in awkwardly, trying to stealthily move to the snack table, both for the sake of his character who would undoubtedly need the food and for the glimpse of low quality yet still delicious chocolate, the type he craves yet is unable to have for various reasons.
'At least I know how bad I look and don't think a cheap, ill-fitting suit is the height of fashion,' he thinks scathingly in the direction of the young man who had spoken before inwardly grimacing. 'While Reborn, and Hayato too, come to think of it, would be proud of such a remark, although less so that it wasn't out loud, all I can think of is how much I've changed. Especially in these circumstances.'
For changed Tsuna has. No longer is he the weak, Dame boy who was bullied by the school as a collective whole. No longer is he too scared to fight back, or even fight at all. Tsuna is now the Neo Vongola Primo (however much he hates the title, he can really only admit that he brought it upon himself for refusing that of Vongola Decimo), a strong willed and intelligent young man, the leader for what is currently the number one mafia syndicate and what is in the process of becoming the number one freelance law firm. The irony of such an image change is far from lost on Tsuna, but it was the easiest to make by far.
Of course, most of his former classmates have no idea about any of this. The only ones that wouldn't have bought his homeless man act would be those who he's still in contact with, who are few even including his Guardians. They can only see his ill fitting clothes and unwashed body, doubly effective when few were expecting anything different after he disappeared halfway through high school and not returned(Nono had suddenly been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so Tsuna was rushed to Italy along with most of his guardians. Those that had stayed, those being Hibari Kyoya and Yamamoto Takeshi, had done nothing to quell the rumours that came of his abrupt disappearance, the primary among them being that his mother had finally grown sick of caring for such a useless son and kicked him out). The few in Namimori who knew the truth, outside his guardians of course, were Sawada Nana (finally informed of her husband and son's true professions, having taken it in stride and demanded to be kept in the loop so that she wouldn't open the door one day only to be told that her family had 'disappeared'), Sasagawa Kyoko, Miura Haru, Kurokawa Hana (all three of whom work for the Vongola, although at Tsuna's insistence, only with their legal companies), Mochida Kensuke (who had joined the Vongola through an obscure family connection and had almost gotten himself killed when he first discovered Neo Vongola Primo's true identity), and Kusakabe Tetsuya. Even Hibari's underlings have no idea that Tsuna is even involved.
As such, in the interest of his image, no matter how terrible that image is, and his remaining privacy Tsuna has decided to masquerade as homeless for the duration of the reunion.
"Hey, Sawada?" a soft voice calls Tsuna's attention away from the delicious chocolates that he had been so close to devouring.
"Oh! Um, is there something you wanted Tanaka-san?" Tsuna replies timidly, inwardly cursing at her interference.
"Just Tanaka's fine, Sawada, we were classmates after all. I just wanted to say I'm sorry for the way I treated you back in middle school. Looking back makes it clear how unfair and unnecessarily cruel we all were to you and while I can't speak for the others I know it's something I regret."
Tsuna stares at the small, and obviously sincere, woman in front of him in shock before giving her a small smile.
"Don't worry about it, it's all in the past now. Plus, there are certainly things that I did back then that I'm not proud of so, really, it's fine Tanaka," Tsuna gives her one last smile before turning back to his chocolate. Or, he would have had a large, rough hand not grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
Yamada Ichiro, another old classmate, was glaring at him, his hand tightening on Tsuna's seemingly fragile shoulder (Tsuna snorts at the thought. As if he could possibly be fragile when he had Reborn for a tutor and has Hibari Kyoya and Rokudo Mukuro as Guardians) and his face twisted in anger.
"Where do you get off smiling at my girl like that and calling her so familiarly, Dame-Tsuna," he snarls, spit flying into Tsuna's face as Tsuna struggles not to react with lethal force, as he has been trained to do.
"Ichiro, what are you doing?" Tanaka cries out, horried, and drawing the attention of the people around them. Yamada, however, ignores her and roughly shakes Tsuna hard enough to make his teeth click together, causing him to almost bite his tongue off.
Tsuna takes a small breath before sinking completely into his Dame-Tsuna persona and fearfully whimpering, "I-I'm sorry, Yamada-san, I-I didn't..." Tsuna trails off as the crowd that had been watching this in interest ('I guess not everybody's changed since middle school like Tanaka has,' Tsuna thinks wryly) suddenly turns to the doorway as it opens, signally another arrival.
"Boss!"
"Oh dear God, no," Tsuna whispers, his plans of remaining anonymous to the public, and his hometown in particular, crashing and burning in a painful, firey death in front of him as Hayato and Takeshi stride towards him.
"Boss?" a confused voice emerges from the crowd. "But I thought Yamada was an ordinary salary man." The crowd, going by the murmurs that suddenly started up, seemed to agree.
"And don't Yamamoto and Gokudera work for the Vongola?" another voices breaks out, more confident than the last.
"Yeah aren't they, like, super high up too?"
"Woah, really?"
"Yeah, I mean, why else would Yamamoto have given up on his dream of becoming a pro baseball player?"
"And that job definitely suits Gokudera, he was always one of the smartest in the grade, if not the entire school."
A group of women, much smaller than in middle school, sigh dreamily at their own delusions. By now, both Hayato and Takeshi have reached Tsuna and Yamada, causing the crowd to again grow quiet so as to catch every bit of gossip revealed.
"Boss are you okay?" Hayato asks Tsuna in concern before sharply turning to Yamada and viciously yanking his hand away. "And watch where you're putting your hands, you," he growls.
"I'm fine, Hayato, really it was nothing," Tsuna soothes, knowing it to be enough to placate his guardians (at least for now), for Hayato and Takeshi have grown just as much as Tsuna in the ten years since their middle school days.
"Haha, that's good Tsuna, afterall, it wouldn't be good if you got hurt in a place like this," Takeshi remarks, posture becoming almost undetectably more relaxed, although his smile still seems to be giving Yamada horrific visions. Tsuna snorts.
"Yes, I'm aware of how the others will react. What are you doing here so early anyway? I thought you were visiting Tsuyoshi-jii-san first?" his lightly questioning tone cause Hayato and Takeshi to wince.
"Yes, well... Something's come up so we have to go back," Hayato says hesitantly, his voice lowering. Tsuna looks at them both sharply before nodding.
"It was good to see you again, Tanaka," he says politely before turning with his Guardians to leave, his posture having completely changed from that of a cowering weakling to that of a powerful and confident their footsteps fade away, the shock that had come over the occupants of the classroom finally disappears.
"Ehhhh?"
Kurokawa Hana smirks as she listens to the wild theories coming from her former classmates, the least ridiculous involving an imposter who had pretended to be Tsuna to make them let their guard down so that they could steal everybody's secrets.
"You know, you could have said something Hana-chan," an amused Sasagawa Kyoko startles her out of her thoughts. Hana snorts and shakes her head.
"Like they would believe me. I mean, just listen to what they're coming up with right now," she replies. Kyoko smiles.
"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps from you it wouldn't have seemed so strange. You've always been so honest and straightforward afterall."
"That's a nice way of putting it, but even if that were the case," Hana continues skeptically. "The boss was having too much fun playing pretend for me to break it so easily."