IV. Death by water
or, ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS (DOESN'T REALLY MATTER)

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"You look awfully young for a member of the crew."

If the old man had not uttered a word, he would not have known anybody was there. Fighting to control his badly startled reaction, he turned as he walked down the wharf and acknowledged the speaker. The old man was sitting slumped in the shade of some wind-battered waiting shed, directly opposite the wharf and with a good view of whoever was sneaking out from below the main hold. Despite the noontime heat, the man was in black trousers and a shirt carelessly buttoned shirt, looking for all the world like he had just woken up from a drunken stupor. He raised a hand in the lazy manner the people of the south were known for, whiskered face spreading to an amused grin. A cumbersome ring glinted feebly in the light as he did so.

"You look like a cabin rat, though."

It had been several long hours in a cramped crate that he had spent in the hold of a cruise barge, and he had endured its passengers' loud revelry. Now that they had docked south of the Campania region, he thought to make a stealthy getaway, before any of stevedores noticed an extra hand on board. Or that his speech was laced with a Neopolitan accent (all the passengers were Americans) and that he looked every inch a teenager, and that no teenagers were allowed alone on board this cruise (because they did questionable things when they stopped at port).

"Who are you calling a cabin rat, you old tramp," he snarled back, turning away and making for a small crowd that had gathered near one of the yachts at the far entrance. If he could shake the old homeless one's attention off before he attracted any of the nonchalant port staff, he would be free, finally, and could carry on what he came down to the Sicilian isles for.

The dry, amused chuckling followed him, and from the corner of his eye, he saw that the old man had kept up with him leisurely. "Smelling like a rotting crate in the very bottom of a beautiful liner, looking like you've just escaped from a gato capo, the dangerous top-cat, scurrying down this decent, lovely little sun-kissed patch of Catanian port hoping nobody would notice you and that this old tramp could possibly look the other way––a cabin rat."

He shot the old man a vicious look from his shoulder, but not once ceased his pace. Thankfully another ship that was docked nearby was ready to leave, and a handful of port hands had come down to help with the moorings; Gokudera thought of losing himself there. He increased is pace to almost brisk-walking, the naked springtime sun warmer in the Mediterranean making him feel more ubiquitous; the battered hatÖ he'd picked up could only do so much to hide his hideous pale hair, but with his Asian stature and his mother's eyes on his head––cause to turn heads.

"Go away, old man," he muttered roughly, "go to hell." Some stevedores were idly walking along the the opposite path, he'd noticed, panic rising.

The old man's grin widened. "And I would say Va fa NapoliÖA, except that, in your case, well, that is where you're from isn't it?" Grey eyes creased in amusement. "Cabin rat."

The tone was cheeky, playful, and something Shamal would have said to him in a slightly snarkier way, but in his current state Gokudera was in no mood to jest. He pivoted on his heel with a very vulgar rejoinder (something Shamal also taught him) teetering at the edge of his tongue as he opened his mouth, when the nearby loaded ship bellowed its departure. It was a long, prolonged B flat that carried across the port and drew well-wishing shouts from those who were present. Stunned, Gokudera trained his attention to the slowly departing ship.

The old man approached. "Now that is on its way to Rome. Looks like a typical inland barge, doesn't it? Old mechanisms, that thing, but works like a charm. I remember it from when my very own papan carried me on his shoulders to watch its first voyage. Holds far more than three liners combined, and worth thirty thousand more of it too."

The old man was right beside him now, and it was then that Gokudera realised how small he was. How, suddenly, a sense of something immense but hidden had rippled about him like a leviathan under water; but it was a warm sensation, different from the oppressing aura of burly men who hung about in seedy areas like alleys and thoroughfares and piers like these. It made him want to relax a little, yet it filled him with energy. It made him want to believe that this was a safe place, not a port controlled by one of the most powerful families in the mafia underworld, made him feel that he was not an intruder, but was in fact rather expected.

If Gokudera had known what it was like to have a father––a real one, not the image of the don he had in his memory, nor the halfhearted version of the family doctor––he would have found the feeling very, very close.

Instead, he shook himself out of his reverie. Reminding himself that he had very little time left, that he had to make an impression to the powerful Vongola bosses on whose watch Sicily continued its existence, he pulled his hat lower and prepared to leave. This was not his town. He had no family, would have no family, until he made one for himself. With little money to his name (and even this he had changed, not wishing to call attention to the Camorra lineage which he had grown to despise) and a crude map of this new town, he would be living like a rat.

Nothing really matters. Shaking his head at his own situation, he began to turn away.

"There is a small inn across the basilica's portico, The Eight Fingers. Clean place, a transient's place, with breakfast and a late dinner if you speak kindly to the lady at the desk. They're not adverse to cabin rats. Just...no smoking."

There was something about the way the old man said the last few words that stopped Gokudera in his tracks and made him turn around, slowly. The man was standing still, watching him, still in the rumpled dress shirt and the lazy slouch, but the knowing look that he cast cut through the small distance between them smoothly. As if the old man knew he had a pack of cigarettes tucked inside his belt and the cigar-sized dynamites he kept within his person, coated in aluminum foil to avoid detection. As if he could see right through Gokudera, where he came from and who he was, and was passing some sort of private judgement.

"I'll...okay. Thank you."

"I'll see you again I hope, Gokudera of Naples."

He nodded, numbed, and continued his way out of the port and to the city proper, troubled by the encounter for reasons he could not name. Behind him, another vessel announced its arrival; people in large groups streamed out of establishments tucked away by the sides of the street, and Sicily yawned as it shook itself from its siesta.

He did not notice that there was suddenly a crowd everywhere, or that the stevedores patrolling the area languidly had disappeared, or that a room happened to be free in the otherwise packed little inn, good enough and cheap enough for a weeklong stay. He did not notice that the lady at the desk did not question his age (a minor without companions), and that coincidentally there was leftover lunch at the kitchens. He did not notice the same stevedores later play the roles of hallway neighbors, didn't recognise the tall gentleman he ran into at a corner restaurant despite the ring (which glowed blue, bluer than the sky of that late spring day) on the first day he was grudgingly accepted by a local branch gang of the Vongola.

It was only after he corrected the front desk lady's pronunciation on the last morning of his stay, that he'd realised the "old tramp" was the first in the town who had said his new name properly, since he began using his mother's name. It was also then that he'd realised that he never even introduced himself back then, except to tell the man to "go to hell."

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"Was he a problem?"

"Let him go, let him go. In fact, I find him interesting."

"I know a Camorristi when I see one."

"And I know the pigheaded pride of our friend, the 3rd boss of Naples when I see it in his bastard son. No, no, the boy is no threat at all. I don't think he will even admit to being a part of his former famiglia."

"A...rat.ÖB"

"Yes, that's what I told him too. The stowaways these days, always so ill-prepared, and without even a biscuit in their pockets, just lots of useless stolen cash. You are in the middle of the sea, child!"

"N...no. I meant, he's a violator then, a dissenter, contra to the Mafia code."

"Certainly nothing like that poor boy of the Estraneo."

"...he has plans of presenting himself to us."

Jovial laughter. "By all means! That's a lot of spunk there. Whoever he'll be serving under will be blessed to have someone with such a passionate drive to set things right for his boss. Someone he doesn't have right now, but he is searching."

"Is he really Italian? Some bit of Chinese in his blood. He's not using his real name."

"Japanese, the boy is Japanese from his mother. Have one of the groups in the West end look into him."

"Leandro does not take very well to outsiders, mainlanders, or young boys pretending they're cugine. That child is all three. He will have a very stormy time of it."

"Interesting choice of words. But Leandro will do what Leandro does well. Besides I have a feeling that boy will enjoy it more than anything. He'll be treated like an equal now."

"...he certainly seems like the brash type."

"The Dark Ages was a terrible time to be before the RenaissanceÖC."

Zafferano was used to his boss' cryptic pronouncements by now (the Vongola intuition bubbled up and broke the surface of regular conversation spontaneously, as it came), but that didn't mean they ever failed to snag his attention, pique his interest.

"...the--the Renaissance?"

The Nono simply winked in reply, letting the meaning of his words slip away after the boy with pale, pale hair, who had since then disappeared in the sea of people.

Notes for this chapter »

➊ battered hat » the coppola is the standard headgear for Sicilian folks. By extension, it also came to mean 'head' in the general Italian usage, but widely acknowledge to have come from Sicily.

➋ Va fa Napoli » Literally, "go to Naples", which in the vernacular is taken to mean "go to hell" [ › ] Its American-Italian derivative is 'fanabala', which is a highly conjugated variant of the original phrase. Here, the 9th teases 59 because the latter apparenly speaks with the Neapolitan accent and has alighted from a liner that has come from the area.

➌ a rat » in Mafia lingo, to mean someone who has violated the Omertà code/ethic of the mafia body, and, as a whole, violates the mafia organisation itself. Most of the time a hunted individual, both by his/her family and other rivals who risk being implicated. The 9th is again teasing 59 about him being a stow away ("cabin rat") and him deserting his family (although not violating omertà), though the 2nd meaning doesn't occur to 59.

➍ Renaissance » a pun which works better in Italian; from the word rinascita (re for 'again' and nascere to mean 'born'), it means "rebirth", and as a verb, "to be reborn". Essentially what the 9th means to say is that 59 starting over won't be easy, but like a rebirth, fulfilling. He is also foreshadowing the whole idea of 'rebirth' in the series.