summary: The marketplace is a noisy, prattling place, but it gives Tsuna the direction that he possibly needs.
prompt: 6927. Marketplace. Crowd. Someone is lost.
notes: I just want to say two things:
1: SHIT, THIS SUCKS
and
2: I'm so so so sorry Farfy this is probably not what you're looking for at all, IT ISN'T EVEN 6927 WTF
oh and this is technically the third thing (I can't count LOL), but this is sort of set in the present mangaverse, around those ten days that they were waiting to play Choice. That's all~
Tsuna fidgets at the dirty look he's given by the vendor, but he sets out for what he came to do as his eyes hunt underneath merchandise covered boards.
"Lambo? Lambo!"
This is how it's been for the past half hour, and it's useless, he thinks, he knows that a boisterous kid like Lambo will show up sooner or later, and with his luck, at the most inopportune moment. So, he lingers here, on front of a commonplace table full of even duller knick knacks, and he lets his fingers twiddle with an old shabby trinket at the edge of the table and he wonders, ten years ago... could this have been brand new?
Dwelling on it, he starts to feel more lost than the one he's looking for.
Time, space... he doesn't get the half of it. But this has nothing to do with shirking his studies. It has to do with him being here and why he shouldn't be. Why he isn't really here, in this future ...and all the reasons why he should be.
Why he should....
An awkward teenage boy probably blends easily with such a crowd, he thinks and studies his shrimpy hands. Conversations buzz in and out of his conscious, and he barely feels the brushes of all the busy, bustling movements concentrated in this little marketplace.
Then a shove, a shout, and Tsuna is suddenly sprawling on the ground.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"Are you alright, son?"
"Y-yes, hahahaha.... I'll be alright."
A small intervention and the marketplace is already back to its busy, bustling self, and Tsuna, forgetting his limbs, shuffles awkwardly on the ground, pushing up with his dirt crested knees.
"Here," says a strangely familiar voice.
Tsuna looks up and sees that a hand is offered, but he hesitates…. as his eyes trail up from chest…. to shoulder… to… that unmistakable grin…
"So we meet again, Tsunayoshi-kun," the grin broadens as he speaks (impossible, impossible).
Tsuna's eyes widen, and suddenly his existence here feels indecorous: delving past anachronism and far into how he's found himself so far in this game-reality that there's no turning back.
...and astonishingly, he thinks as he meets the perpetrator's gaze with rare confidence...
….Astonishingly, maybe, he doesn't want to turn back.
"It's you, I-I can't believe it," Asymmetrical colors crinkle, as Tsuna takes the hand (dangerous dangerous), and names the stranger:
"Mukuro."