Posted: October 17th, 2014

Times Edited: 11

Last Edited: July 28th, 2015

Guess who just received their 5th fanart for this story? This kid. Thank you bunches to user MirikiaL who has created a wonderful fanart for me! While they have emailed it to me, a full description is on my profile! Thank you again! :D

~Joys of the Heart~

Warning: Foul language, violence, weapons, a longer chapter, sort-of boring (personally), exposition of this arc… the like.


Flashback:

"Who the hell are you and why the hell are you here?"

The sound of those brisk words caused my eyes to open a third time, where the brightness of the room temporarily blinded me, but I snapped out of it when cold metal pressed against my forehead.

Fear left the usually-tough girl that I was useless as I was confronted with something that I hadn't ever been exposed to before; an ultimatum.

"Answer me... or I'll shoot."


Chapter Four: Teasel

Any of various stout biennial plants of the genus Dipsacus, of Eurasia and North Africa, having prickly leaves and prickly heads of yellow or purple flowers. Used to produce a napped surface on wool and other fabrics.

Meaning: misanthropy, cynicism, pessimism, doubt, and/or suspicion.


"Well? You're staring like you don't know what the hell you're doing, stupid kid. Who are you? A spy?"

I opened my mouth to answer the large brute that stood in my way. The coarse fur that was Shoichi's carpet had disappeared from beneath my toes and a slick, wooden floor had replaced it.

Nothing came out of my agape lips, and the man before me only toyed with what I knew was no toy. A real gun; more than likely stocked with real ammo that had a real potential to kill me. Just like in those god damn movies that I had seen but never really taken to heart. Frozen, I waited for the large man to lose his patience, even though every muscle in her body screamed at me to run.

Stay, die.

Run, live.

Speak, live.

Silence, die.

The broken thoughts clouded together within my mind, making it nearly impossible to tell left from right and right from wrong. The gun shone in the light as the large man became clearer to my eye; his golden eyes – yes, golden – burned into me with every waking second that seemed to pass. They contrasted beautifully from his dark hair and his tanned skin, of which happened to be the hue of a freshly-brewed cup of breakfast tea… the same kind that I had had that very morning before I left for school.

"What the hell do you think you're playing at? Are you mocking me? I'll blast your brains out of your goddamn head!"

The patience that this man possessed, who didn't seem any older than his early twenties, was beginning to slip from the state of little to the state of nothing. I opened my mouth once again, closing my eyes shut as I stumbled away from the likes of him.

"I'm not doing anything wrong!"

"To hell with that; how the hell'd you get in here? We're under strict lockdown and we have been for the past week and a half! How could some stupid kid like you," he waved his gun with emphasis to and from my face, hardly missing my nose. "make it into our headquarters without any motive?"

Okay, who was on the hard drugs here?

I haven't done anything wrong; I had only been hiding from Shoichi's mother so that my friend and I wouldn't get caught in the midst of our conversation, but now I was standing in front of a man with a gun who was threatening to shoot my brains out… and then there's another question:

Where the hell was the closet that I had been hiding in?

Logic itself was becoming distorted as I struggled to keep my voice steady: "I don't know what you're going on about! I was in the closet and now I'm in an open room!"

The golden-eyed man let out a breath exasperatedly as he cautiously approached me, getting close enough for me to smell his breath, which caressed my face and left only the scent of licorice lingering in the air.

"Bullshit. Kid, you're dead! I'll feed your decomposing body to the rats that live in the sewers if you don't tell me what the fuck you're doing in here!"

His hand tightened instinctively on his weapon when I took a deep breath. "I was just having a conversation with Shoichi and now I'm stuck here!"

The man's golden eyes widened before he relaxed his weapon-wielding arm for a second without putting it down. He proceeded to look me up and down, muttering something under his breath before speaking directly to me:

"Shoichi?"

I watched him relax for a moment, but he tensed once more when I began to speak:

"Yes, Irie Shoichi. He's some nerd kid that I met the other day who asks me to edit his papers for grammatical errors, but now you're pestering me and waving that… thing in front of my face like a madman!"

I couldn't even seem to bring myself to utter the word 'gun'. While I don't know firsthand how much damage that those weapons could cause in the hands of the wrong person, I do know that guns are used for execution, whether it be person or animal.

The man lowered his gun down to his sides and stared at me with the most bewildered stare I've ever seen. It was almost as if I had spoken an entirely different language to him for a split second and he was asking me to explain myself, but he shook it off before asking a surprising question in a much quieter, curious voice:

"How do you know Shoichi?"

"I just told you!" I felt like a loaded pistol as I began to get frustrated now; this man was pestering me for no reason, not to mention that I have to somehow find my way back to Shoichi.

Maybe I fell through a trap door or something...

"We met a couple of days ago and I edit his essays for him, and even though his grammar is utter shit, we still get along! Can I go home now?"

"What the hell are you taking me for, a fool?" The man asked suddenly, looking much more dangerous than before as I got a quick glimpse of two piercings on one of his ears when he shifted positions to hold up his left hand to his face, scratching his chin. "What business does he have with some kid? You're a spy, aren't you?"

My head was beginning to spin. I can't believe what the hell I'm hearing.

"What kinda stuff are you on and where do I get some?" At this point, I can't even resist the sass in my tone as I laughed it off as crudely as I could, assuming that whatever was happening was some sort of fluke. "I don't know shit about spying. Besides, how do you know Shoichi? He doesn't seem like the type of guy to talk to strangers."

"We're not strangers to him, and if you keep pretending like you know him, I'll break your neck." He responded sharply, cracking every knuckle in his left hand one-by-one, as if he was threatening harm to me silently. "Now, tell me what you're doing here or I'll shoot you."

I wish he would stop saying that…

Uneasiness crept into my skin, giving me goose bumps; whoever this guy was, he was making me nervous real efficiently. I don't need to be an expert to see that he's dangerous, and he sure acts like he is for those who can't seem to get the message. Whatever's going on here, he means business.

"I don't know!" I burst out, my frustration reaching its peak. "I'm just looking for Shoichi and I don't know where the hell I am!"

Every muscle in my body told me to run again; wherever I was and whatever I'm doing… everything within the vicinity of me seemed dangerous.

However, this man with the golden eyes–Golden-eyes, as I had elected to mentally address him–rolled his eyes in frustration that was probably synonymous to watching a toddler pitch up a temper tantrum. Of all things that I had expected to happen within the next few seconds, my guess would have been for him to fly off the handle and call me a liar. However, I never expected for him to do what he did:

"Ah, screw it. He'll know what the hell to do with a lying little troll like you. Fine, come with me. Pull anything and you won't even know what hit you when you're laying in a pool of your own blood."

Golden-eyes had cooled down, and I decided that I wasn't about to wait until he got all revved up once more, so I followed his lead… even if I had to bite my tongue at his 'lying little troll' remark.


Shoichi breathed out a sigh as his mother finally disappeared from his room, leaving in haste while shouting back at him that his homework had better be finished or he'd never see the light of day.

"How frustrating…"

The redhead raked his fingers through his hair, adjusting his glasses as they began to slip off of his head, and he continued toward the closet slowly, wondering just how Hana had managed to be so quiet throughout the time that his mother spent yelling into his ear.

"With her personality, I'd have thought that she would have come straight out, ready to give my mother a taste of her own medicine or something to that effect... I'm surprised she stayed this calm..."

"Hana," Shoichi quietly edged toward the door handle. "Um, I–I think I can find a way to sneak you out, but we had better hurry, or she'll come back…"

He reached for the closet door timidly, expecting the girl to burst from the loins of the wooden door any second, but not even the sound of her breathing made it through the wood.

"Huh?"

Shoichi opened the door quietly and slowly, expecting his friend to jump out and scare him… or even worse, be incapacitated on the carpet floor, but what he wasn't expecting to see confronted him in the moment.

The closet, empty as can be, stared back at Shoichi as the realization dawned on him.

Hana wasn't here.

She was gone.


I forced myself to stay still as the golden-eyed man took hold of my hair, pulling me through a dark corridor in the building that I had suddenly appeared in. While there were lights in the hall on the walls, they weren't on, and therefore, it was like I was swimming in that darkness once more. Questions swirled in my mind in no particular order, but when I looked up at the man who was practically dragging me down this dark hall, I could see a deep tiredness in his eyes… and it wasn't the type that went away with sleep.

"You look like you've had a rough day," I tiptoed around the subject and took a deep breath to make myself seem more professional than I had been earlier, trying not to make him angrier than he probably already was. "It's not me, I hope?"

"If it was you, you'd be dead." Golden-eyes betrayed a hint of something other than anger in that moment when the strength in his voice faltered on the word dead.

"Give it a rest with the 'death' and 'I'll kill you' crap," I jerked my head in his grasp, trying not to rip all of my hair out of my head. "It's not like you'd actually joke about that stuff if it happened to one of your family members or something…"

Golden-eyes let go of my hair and whipped me around to face him. I shivered when I witnessed the fire in his eyes as he forcefully grabbed my hair once more.

"Yeah, sure; it's not like I don't live with it every damn day or anything. I suggest you not try me, kid. I'm not in the mood for this shit."

It was then when I noticed the waver in his voice, the slight break in the strength that he had shown me so far. There was something wrong, I realized as my brow crinkled together in thought, and what it could have been was well beyond my comprehension.

"Wait here."

Golden-eyes instructed me when the two of us came to a stop only paces later, and I did as I had been told even though if I did pose an actual threat, Golden-eyes would have just made a huge mistake.

If I was an actual menace to society, I could have run off by now without being told to stay still… or maybe it's because I'm just a 'kid'. Adults and their labels…

Even though the prospect of moving and walking around like I was specifically told not to do was extremely tempting, I knew that if I so much as thought about it, I would probably end up shot.

The thought of that caused me to shiver:

Being shot.

The act of shooting a gun, even.

Maybe even as far as guns in general.

I had never truly felt uneasy until I had watched Golden-eyes hold that gun in front of my face, waving it around as if he were actually going to kill me. Oddly enough, it wasn't the "killing" that put me on-edge; it was the gun itself. How it was manufactured to kill people and/or animals. No matter what way you spun it, that was what it was for. Self-defense, hunting… it all led down the road of death. Instantaneous death if you wanted to get more specific with it.

"Okay, kid. Follow me."

Golden-eyes had reappeared, and my dark eyes wandered to the holster on his hip. The dark weapon stared straight back at me, but I refused to allow him to sense my fear. Instead, I stood up straight and followed him silently down the hall to a rather decorated door. While there was nothing telling on the door, I could hear music humming softly through the cracks in it.

"I've got this kid. She claims that she knows you, but I feel like that's bullshit, so I'll let you decide for yourself."

Golden-eyes opened the door for me, shoving me inside before allowing himself in, but he rolled up his sleeves as he took a hold of my hair once more.

"What; are you scared I'm going to run away?" I asked through gritted teeth, but I received no answer as another man came out from what I assumed to be a closet.

His bright-red hair shone in the fluorescent lights, but it was in that very instant that I recognized who the man was.

A small, tight whisper weaseled through my lips as I took in the much more mature facial features of the scared, mama's boy that I had only met five days ago.

"I didn't even realize you could get even nerdier than before."

The thick-rimmed, dark-as-night glasses that he wore framed his face well, compared to the thinner, beach-sand tan ones that I had become used to in the short five days that we had known each other. Those bright-green eyes that I recognized were the same, but only shadowed by doubt and something else that I couldn't quite read into.

This couldn't be the same kid that I saw only moments ago, right? I've got to be going insane. There's no way that that's even possible.

Our eyes met and I jerked away from Golden-eye's sudden tightening grip on the dead cells upon my head.

"Want me to get rid of it or not?"

"'It' yourself." I huffed, earning another jerk of my head.

A sharp retort came across my mind, but I stopped myself just in time as the familiar, cold metal pressed against the back of my neck, sending a shiver all through my hair and my toes.

"I haven't been joking, kid. Don't test me."

The lulling hum of music in the room was almost soothing.

Almost.

It's like the feeling of comfort some morticians get around the bodies of the deceased; the room is full of people with different scars, stories, and goals… but they are slowly decomposing as the minutes drone on. The only sound was that of the calming music, filling the voids where the sounds of voices cannot.

"Dante, calm yourself. Seriously; it's just a kid. Maybe it's lost."

The man that I knew to be Irie Shoichi shrugged me off, hardly giving me another glance. It was almost as if he had other things on his mind that were much more pressing than I.

It started with a giggle, which morphed into a snicker, and finally took its full form as a laugh. No matter the seriousness of his tone, I outright refused in my inner mind to believe that this man was the same boy who had the quiet, awkward sense of humor that I knew.

"What are you laughing at?"

Golden-eyes–Dante as Shoichi had addressed him–had reacquired his tight grip on my hair as I continued to laugh. There was no way that he had grown to be as tall as he was in such a short time and there was no reason why he had to act like he was somebody. As far as I'm concerned, he's just a boy who had no idea how to talk to women... or anyone, to be honest.

"How did this happen?" I asked as the laughter died out and I replaced it with my wits.

Shoichi knitted his eyebrows together, but his gaze didn't leave my face. It was almost as if he was searching for an answer, but he kept his mouth shut as he silently moved toward his bed and picked up something that was lying on his bedside table. I couldn't see what it was and I didn't even have a guess as he stole another glance at me and turning straight back to Dante.

"I'll take care of this."

Dante obeyed immediately, taking his leave and placing his weapon back into the holster on his hip.

"Alright. I'm gonna go get myself some lunch."

The golden-eyed man backed out of the room calmly, whistling down the hallway as if it–the whole confrontation I had had with him–had never happened. The silence grew between Shoichi and I, and that only made it even more awkward than it already was.

Does he even recognize me?

It was the instant when Golden-eye's footsteps disappeared down the hall when Shoichi pushed past me and opened the door quietly, sneaking out and turning back to me briefly.

"Come with me."

Temporarily stunned by the lack of feeling in his voice, I followed him like I was told, but suspicion soon crept up from my unconscious mind as I followed him through the spiraling hallway.

"Where are we going?" I wondered aloud, but the redhead declined an answer as he hurried ahead, not even bothering to check if I was still following him.

Against my better judgment, I followed him as closely as I could, following him through every door that he decided to dash behind.

Left.

Right.

Straight.

Right.

Right.

No, that's wrong. Back up and go left.

Left once more.

Straight.

Straight.

Right.

Straight.

Just how big is this place? When are we going to stop?

Stairs spiraled upward as Shoichi skidded to a stop and checked to make sure I was still following him. After that quick glance, he continued up the stairs, skipping as many steps as he could muster.

"You've got to be joking," I muttered as I took my first step upward.

I started up the steps slowly, but when I looked up and saw the glare that Shoichi gave me from the top of the stairs, I picked up my pace, but when I finally got to the top, he was off again. This time, though, it wasn't very far: he took a quick left turn to a seemingly-empty hallway and he approached a door as he stopped. This door, instead of being intricately decorated like Shoichi's, it was a plain mahogany tint without anything special presented on it. The knob even looked to be misused and ready to pop right off.

Shoichi slowly turned the knob and the door let out a wail, but he snuck his way in and I followed. However, he shut the door behind me and leaned against it to prevent me from making my way around him and leaving... assuming that I would have when I realized what he had been holding in his hand the whole time.

I spotted a familiar shine as Shoichi revealed his own gun, and I thought back to the moment when he had picked up something before asking me to come with him. My jaw slacked, but I shook myself and refused to look at the gun, only staring around the empty, dusty room.

He won't shoot me... he couldn't...

The floor was covered in a thick coat of dust, and instead of this floor being like the ones downstairs where they were shiny and sleek, this one was cracking and creaky. The only things inside of the room seemed to be a couple of old dressers with beautiful inlays, a dusty couch with a cover over it, and a bed that I could guess was full of bugs and, you guessed it, more dust. The one window in this room was a hexagon that was placed a little out of my reach, but it surprisingly lit up the whole room.

"How did you get here?"

I turned back to Shoichi, whose gun shivered in his grip as he pointed it my way.

He won't shoot me.

"I don't know." I shot back, forcing myself to stop looking at the killing machine in his hand. "Could you put that thing down? You're making me nervous."

My voice shook with effort, but Shoichi surprisingly relented and lowered his weapon, allowing his hand to slack along with it. He noticeably relaxed once the weapon was out of the picture, but it appeared that he had more to say:

"Hana, you know who I am, right?"

Shoichi appeared to be choosing his words carefully, lowering his voice to a whisper. I nodded slowly before reaching up and smoothing down my ruffled, dark brown hair.

"Irie Shoichi. We met five days ago, but…"

"…you stepped into the closet and dropped one of the Ten-Year Bullets that was in that box. I remember that day."

Suspicion began to grow in my mind within an instant. How did he know? This had to be a figment of my imagination at this point. How did he know about what had happened just now?

"How do you know?" It was only a whisper that slivered out of my mouth, but Shoichi stood up straight and his voice was strong as he replied:

"You've traveled ten years in the future, Hana. I'm twenty-five years old right now. It's real, don't worry, but you shouldn't be here. Not for longer than a couple minutes, at least."

It's been longer than a couple minutes, hasn't it?

"Am I supposed to trust you?" I asked carefully, eyeing the gun in his slender hand. "How do I know that you're telling the truth?"

After all, by all accounts of logic, what he was telling me had just happened was practically impossible.

"I knew who you were, didn't I?" Shoichi stood in front of the door, standing up straight without a hitch in his posture, unlike the Shoichi that I know... who is supposedly back in the past.

"As if that's enough to make me trust any of the bullshit you're spewing. It's going to take a bit more than that to make me trust you."

I watched a glimpse of concern pass through his features, but it was nothing more than a glimpse as he looked down at me with confidence.

"My grammar is still absolute shit, and if it helps, I break my glasses in frustration when I can't figure out why you're gone for three hours in my closet."

"You can't prove that second part," I retorted quickly. "Does that mean that I get to get out of here in three hours?"

The man faltered for a moment and he genuinely shrugged his shoulders, wrapping his arms around himself as he kicked his foot up against the plain door.

"I don't know. Honestly, I'm not sure why you're here in the first place other than being reckless like always, but if that was the case, you're here for something. I'll probably need to do more research on it."

The degree of respect and lack of scorn that he showed me appeared to be characteristic; something that the Shoichi I knew would do. He quietly stood up straight as I stood atop of the covered couch to get a look out of the window as he spoke.

As the glare diminished, I caught glimpses of trees and flowers scattered about, telling me that it was hardly autumn; the trees had just began to turn color and the lack of chirping birds told me that it was getting colder.

"Where are we?"

"We're still in Namimori, just… a different part of it than you're used to, I suppose."

It was as if he was attempting to keep everything under wraps. After all, I was in the future! Just a simple question could tell me how my life was going to shape up!

If he thinks that I'm going to pass that up, he must not know me very well after all!

"How is the future, anyway?" I started out guarded; trust wasn't something that this 'Shoichi' had earned easily (or at all, really…), but maybe if he told me things that were probable about my future (if he still knows me here), I could possibly decode exactly what was going on here.

Shoichi adjusted his glasses carefully, staring straight through me as we locked eyes.

"I'm not sure."

"Liar," I jumped into my own offense. "You're here! You have to know something!"

"No, I didn't mean it in that way," Shoichi corrected himself quickly. "I'm just not sure how we are. Things are slow as of now, but I'm sure we'll be fine."

There was a certain degree of hidden meaning behind those words that Shoichi so carefully uttered, but I was reluctant to read into them just yet. Too many questions (and not choosing them carefully) could result in not getting any answers whatsoever.

"If you don't mind me asking, what am I like in the future? Do you still know me? Are we still friends?"

If I ask a lot of basic questions, maybe he'll be more prone to tell me more in-depth stuff.

Shoichi adjusted his glasses for the second time. "You and your sarcasm don't exactly change, and yes, we're still friends, if that's what you'd call it."

"What do you mean 'if that's what you'd call it'?"

I griped for an answer, but Shoichi only shrugged once again, this time turning away for a moment. "I'm not sure."

What did I expect? I guess he's always been this uncertain with things! 'I'm not sure' this, 'I'm not sure' that… did I seriously expect to get anything out of him?

My frustration came down as quickly as it had flared up, and Shoichi took advantage of the silence by speaking out:

"I'm going to start my research on how you can be in the future for this long. All that I ask of you is to not let anyone else know you're here. No one ever enters this room and this room is not monitored, so you won't be detected as long as you don't move around too much. I'll bring you up some food and a couple of blankets, but just don't be reckless and get seen. Dante probably won't even remember that he saw you; the dumb lampshade doesn't even remember his own name sometimes, so you should be relatively safe. I'll take care of the rest."

"Now I know it's you!" I laughed a little bit, allowing my muscles to loosen up. "You and your shitty sense of humor!"

Though, the image of Golden-eyes surfaced in my mind anyway, even when I was hardly focused on him at all. It could be true; if he had a terrible memory, then he may not remember finding me and threatening to kill me.

But how do you just simply FORGET that you found an 'intruder' and waved a gun in front of their face, accusing them to be a liar and a spy?

"Um, can I ask you a question? Last one, I promise." I quickly stopped laughing as I formed a question that I knew I wouldn't get another chance to ask.

Shoichi paused from walking out of the room, taking his hand off of the door knob. "Huh?"

"What is my life like in the future?"

There was a long pause of silence, and I feared for a moment that he wouldn't know what to say.

"It doesn't matter. You won't be able to change it, anyway."

The door shut quietly behind Shoichi, and I sat in a stunned silence that seemed to be so powerful that it could even stop time. What was so horrible that he would even decline to even speak about it? What would my life be coming to?


Q&A:

WHAT IS THIS?

This? This is a Fanfiction, silly goose.

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Those… those (and you'll see even more of them later... then again, I suppose the only one you've met so far is Dante) are some people that you will probably become very familiar with to be entirely honest, so yeah. Pick your favorite. Love them. Cherish them. Soon.

Is this… the plot?

Well, this is a part of the plot that I had never really thought over in my previous version (more like 'didn't put it in') and yeah. I feel like I've finally gotten all of the kinks out of my reasoning for everything that's going to happen, so hopefully I can write it in an engaging and not-boring way… this arc is going to be kind-of short, but not too short.

How did Hana manage to get here?

You know how Shoichi got some of those bullet things from the Bovino family (which I'm sure they didn't mean to give him) that he used to see what his future would be inside of said box? Well, long story short, she dropped one of those and this happened. (I made them bullet-looking things, by the way, because I couldn't remember what they actually looked like).

Wait a minute… where did TYL!Hana go?

Hmm, well, that's a difficult one. She didn't switch places with TYE!Hana, so it could (and I'm not saying that it does) imply something that I can't really say right now without it spoiling, I suppose… and I'm gonna let you guys use your imaginations for the moment, yo. I can't spill everything about my plot yet.

We're missing some of the main characters right now! When will people like Tsuna be introduced in your fic?

If not in this arc, but the next arc. I feel like people like Tsuna will be mentioned soon here, but if not, he will definitely have a bigger part in the next arc that I have planned (which isn't that far away!). Hold your horses! Also, in this arc, I can't necessarily have you all know everything that will be going on in that Future (because that would spoil the whole fic) so, feel free to post what you think, but I can't say whether you're right or wrong!

Important: What's with the definition of the chapter title at the top?

I went back through and edited all of my chapters to have the definitions of the flower and what they look like just for my readers! I thought it'd be cool if I did a little extra research for every chapter, you know? While some of the definitions I ad-lib from sources, some of them are completely dictionary definitions. I hope no one minds me being too creative for my own good…


Author's Notes:

I wanted to end it a bit sooner, but I decided to give you guys a longer chapter. I'm loving the direction we're going in, guys. It's perfect.

Oh yeah; I do love the constructive criticism that you all are giving me! Usually I don't appreciate it because most of the time people say it in such a condescending way that makes me want to respond realllyyyy sarcastically and I have to physically hold myself back from my keyboard, but all of you don't do that and it's GREAT! Don't be afraid to tell me if something seems amiss, guys! I appreciate it!

I have updated the submission rules on my profile for submitting fanart if you choose to do so! Please check there if you have any questions, and if your question is not answered there, shoot me a PM!

Again, thank you to user MirikiaL for taking their time and drawing me a fanart! It really means a lot to me! :D

Don't forget to favorite/alert/review! I really appreciate it, guys! I answer all reviews that are not obviously rushed (ie, not one sentence… or 'update pls'.). (Oh yeah… I also don't answer most Guest reviews… I apologize!) Bless people who review every chapter!

(I say 'guys' a lot, don't I…?)

~Teafully~