I-it doesn't look like it's going to get very long per chapter. It won't go canonly, but there are similarities. I-I'm going to stick with the mantra of quality over quantity, and do expect some time skipping between chapters.
Chapter 1
Tsuna knew Namimori. Even if he didn't know all the twists and turns, he at least knew the type of people who lived there, and he knew a lot of other stuff. He knew there were several middle schools clustered together in the town, several market places and malls, stores several other buildings, housing and whatnot. He knew which routes to take if he wanted to go a certain way or head over to a park. But even then, Namimori was big. Too big for him to know everything about. To a short boy who lived in a rather sheltered neighbourhood and kept mostly to himself because he really wasn't good with people and didn't expect himself to be, Namimori was big-big. So as he knew Namimori and didn't know at the same time, he figured it was all well, and never really gave a thought to whether or not he would leave it.
Unfortunately, Namimori didn't have a high school. It was a small enough town that it didn't have that many residents, but it was big enough that it was connected to the train system of Japan, so the residents didn't have to walk a couple of miles to get to the nearest station. Not having a high school in the region meant that after finishing middle school, graduating students had to apply to high schools outside the Namimori they had called home for so long. Sawada Tsunayoshi was one of those students, and he realized during exam week that if he didn't pass, everybody was going to leave him behind, and he would be the butt of many a joke for years to come.
It was alright though. Even if he didn't pass, he thought, it would be alright. He could try again, and it wasn't like he had any ambition in life to try something.
When the news arrived at their house, there were mixed reactions. His mother was thrilled. Tsuna was – understandably – not. He couldn't even wash his own underwear – and she was telling him to go to a high school that was god-knew anywhere? Suddenly, he wished he could spontaneously combust or he could go do whatever so that he wouldn't have to go.
Yes, frankly speaking, he didn't want to go. Put more politely, Tsuna really didn't think it was a good idea. He had less than stellar grades, really depressing opinions of his classmates and complete strangers, and an unofficially voted 'Most likely to die pathetically' rank number one to prove it. (It also probably didn't help that he had been the only one in that category and that even the teachers had voted.)
"But Tsu-kun," Nana pouted, "Don't you think you'd look so handsome in one of those uniforms?"
"That's not the problem here!" Tsuna cried, slamming the table. Ow. "I," He managed out, recovering in what he hoped really didn't look stupid or retarded or anything, even though this was his mother who had been taking baths with him as long as he could remember and damn it, those baths had stopped, okay, when he was old enough to know better, which was at the age of 8, okay. "I can't even – it's like across the world or something!"
Obviously, trying to get over being indignant and trying to formulate reasons as to why – you didn't just go to your mom and say, "WHO'LL WASH MY UNDERWEAR" – or how or – at this moment here, Sawada Tsunayoshi wondered why this issue was the issue, when it really shouldn't have been an issue at all. Maybe it was from how sudden the situation had presented itself that Tsuna was acting like this. Or maybe it was the fact that Tsuna hadn't ever really lived anywhere except in Namimori.
The actual issues themselves, though, were more reasonable. Firstly, Tsuna was in denial. He hadn't even tried – well, maybe he had, but he was pretty sure he failed – at the entrance test and apparently he, Dame-Tsuna, who had zero-coordination and the intelligence quotient of a tree – or maybe even worse than one. Secondly, he didn't know how to take care of himself. Sure, he could learn, but then he'd probably end up killing himself because Tsuna never really did any housework in his life. But then again, looking at these two issues, Tsuna kind of realized he was spoiled.
"I never actually had any hope that you would move onto high school," his mother sighed. Tsuna wished for once that his mother wouldn't have been so gosh darn honest. "But now this is your chance! You can go out and make new friends—"
"But I don't want to make friends!"
…Actually, he did, but the problem was that he didn't want complete, complete strangers to think less of him than the already complete strangers here in Namimori. Sure, here, people were given a heads-up as to how useless he was, but out there? Tsuna didn't really like the idea of that.
"Can't I just go to a high school that's closer?" He pleaded. 'Like…IN JAPAN?'
Granted, it probably was an exaggeration – actually, change that – should have been an exaggeration. However, where other kids Tsuna's age – but not his height or scrawny build – were going to high school commutable by train, Tsuna had been accepted into a school in Italy.
Italy.
…how was it even possible that Tsuna took exams in Japan, but ended up accepted to a school in Italy was beyond him. It went beyond all common sense.
Tsuna questioned the validity and trustworthiness of that letter. Actually, scratch that, he thought it was sketchy. It was a total scam. Of course, he had yet to read it, and was just going, at present, by the information imparted to him by his mother.
"But Tsu-kun, you were already accepted." Nana picked up the paper again.
"Oh, really? That's kind of—" Tsuna was about to sigh in defeat when Nana continued.
"See? There's a scholarship and—"
"Wait a second, what?"
Mind blank, Tsuna grabbed it out of her hands to look at it. There was absolutely no way Tsuna could've gotten a scholarship! Were you crazy? Looking at what Tsuna did in class, looking at what Tsuna was able to get in school – this had to be some kind of mistake. Sure, on the topic of exams, he'd panicked and crammed three years' worth of knowledge into two weeks. But even then, Tsuna had goofed off and played video games during self-allotted study-time, all until the night before the exams.
It took him two full minutes before he was able to read it. The reason probably had to do with the fact that Tsuna's mind had been filled with so much disbelief, his brain had to wait for the chaos to settle.
"I'm going to take a…Tutoring…course?" He read slowly, before skimming the rest of the contents.
'…no matter how you look at it, isn't this super suspicious?' he thought. But it really wasn't the 'super suspicious' part of it that got to him. In fact, it was the letter itself and maybe something else.
What was detailed in the letter was sketchy, if you were to put it nicely. First of all, if you were to look at appearance, the letter wasn't even hand-typed. Writing that looked like they'd been cut up from a magazine (or several, and a newspaper or two by the looks of it), were scattered across the page in curving lines and squeezed into words. Secondly, the letter didn't mention anything about a high school, only a professional tone that said to send a sum that Tsuna couldn't believe wasn't illegal. Five gil, wasn't that a Final Fantasy currency? What kind of person wrote – er, made this? Thirdly, the letter promised that those who underwent the course would be eligible for a scholarship. It mentioned nothing in particular about the scholarship itself, or the school. Sketchy, Tsuna decided, was overrated as a description.
What cinched the sketchy description and barely moved it on to borderline 'burn it, kill it with fire, this is creepy', was that at the end was a small handwritten note that said that if Sawada Tsunayoshi of Namimori Middle school did not apply for this scholarship within an hour, he was going to pay with his life. To quote the postscript at the end of the letter, "Your life isn't even worth paying with."
…wow. Even complete strangers thought Tsuna's life was worth nothing.
To this date, Sawada Tsunayoshi of Namimori middle school had experienced many things in his life. Most of them had something to do with the fact that nobody really actually cared about what Tsuna felt like, and it wasn't exactly a secret that Tsuna couldn't do anything. This resulted in perhaps what society would've called 'bullying', but in reality, it was anything but. With a feeble personality, Tsuna was unable to make friends. As a young boy, Tsuna had decided early on in his life he was going to hide when someone threatened him, and hope that nobody would kill him before his life's plans were carried out. If someone had been looking at said life plans, they would probably convulse in laughter or just shake their heads at his inability to cope, but Tsuna spent a good long few years on that.
Tsuna was in half a mind to tell his mother they needed to throw this away right away and burn it and pretend it never existed because this was obviously some really scary prank someone was trying to pull when the doorbell rang.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
'Where's the dong?'
Seriously, was this his death bell?
"I'll get that." Said his mother, complete unaware of the possible dangers one could encounter from opening a door with a doorbell that went all 'ding' instead of 'ding-dong' like everyone knew it was supposed to. Was the doorbell broken or something? Hadn't they gotten that fixed yesterday?
"No!" Tsuna cried, but it was already too late. The door swung open to reveal what would change his fate forever. Or at least, it would've done so, had Tsuna not slammed the door.
Into the face of a little kid with a large green moustache and beard with eyes.
W-whoops, sorry little ki —
...WAIT WHAT?
He opened the door incredulously, just in time to have a gun pointed at his head.
TBC.
