Kay, sorry sorry sorry! *hides* My reason/explanation is at the bottom…
From now on, I'll only respond to reviews I actually have a valid answer for, okay? It doesn't mean I don't appreciate your review if I don't reply!
In general, sorry for the confusion, this chapter might clear things up a little. Thank you so much, everyone, each review had me grinning like a maniac. I'm glad you liked it and found it interesting, and yes, Tsuna is awesome.
Speculation is very welcome, especially as it may cause me to leak future plot details, and no matter how long it takes to update, I will never ever ever abandon this story.
Here you go, please enjoy! Thank you for all reviews, alerts and favorites!
Chapter Three – Delirious
One in a Million
"... Yamamoto-san."
"Sorry to you too... Tsuna? That is your name, right?" At Tsuna's nod, he continued. "And drop the 'san', that's too formal. I mean, we're classmates, right?" Yamamoto plastered on his grin, holding out a hand.
Tsuna seemed to hesitate, before grasping the hand firmly. "Yeah, we are." He felt a hint of surprise that Yamamoto had remembered his name. But after all, he hadn't labeled Yamamoto Takeshi's file with a 'Has Potential' for nothing.
He fancied himself a good judge of character, as he had long been able to differentiate those of pure intentions and those of darker ones at a glance; a skill slowly honed with the help of those he grew up around. His father, his mother, Reborn-jii, his mysterious 'invisible friend', Gamma-san... The list went on.
But Yamamoto... There was something off about him. It wasn't the way he would smile so plastically or the darkened look that would occasionally shadow his gaze. It wasn't even the strange way the boy closed himself off despite acting so welcoming.
There was something terribly wrong with it all. Maybe it was in the scar on his chin, or in the kanji 苦しむ, 'kurushimu', written on his right palm with scars and the small x slashed onto his left. Maybe it was in the strange way he would sometimes stare at Tsuna when he thought he couldn't see.
Also, on top of that, Yamamoto Takeshi looked strangely, almost suspiciously, familiar. That shade of strong brown - with that pronounced, Japanese shape - in his eyes. The spiked black hair, with the white band sometimes tied around his forehead, and the sword Tsuna recognized as the legendary Shigure Kintoki swinging by Yamamoto's side.
Tsuna smiled brightly to dismiss the thought. "We should go back to class, shouldn't we?" he commented absently, receiving a nod in agreement from his classmate. The two turned back towards their classroom, walking in silence.
As Tsuna entered the classroom behind Yamamoto, watching as the taller Japanese boy returned to his seat with a cheery greeting to the others in the classroom, a single thought crossed his mind.
"If he knew class was starting, where had Yamamoto been going?"
Red. Bright brown eyes, drowned in red.
Takeshi has always known of the Mafia.
His parents have never tried to hide it from him. They knew he would, in the end, end up somehow involved with it, or at least, with the Yakuza. His father, a famous ex-free-lance assassin, and his mother, a Yakuza boss' third daughter, were so immerged in the Underground that it was impossible to withdraw, even though they are now retired.
But, they have always told him, even though he knows of this dark world, he must never stop smiling. He must embrace the light. He has tried, and he has succeeded, finding his light within those he holds dear, but it is hard to keep that light bright and pure.
So the first time the light disappeared, he panics. Where… Where did it go? Everything was dull, bland, meaningless. He wants, desperately, to recover that light, that shine. He searches, and when he can't find it, he sinks up to his ears into the black pitch of his despair.
And soon, all he can think is, Tsuna made that light disappear. Tsuna, Tsuna Tsuna. When he looks at his boss, he sees stars. Black swirls the gray. Tsuna made the light go away. Tsuna did. It becomes a mantra in his head.
Nothing seems right anymore. He is haunted by sleepless nights and when he can sleep, he sees red. Tsuna, lying dead, and everything is bright and almost surreal. It's beautiful, he starts to think.
Every time he closes his eyes, that's what he sees. Afterimages glow in his vision. He has fallen in love with that dizzying light, the light he sees when he dreams. He reaches for it, but it always slips from his fingers.
Whenever he manages to touch it, to brush his fingers against it, vertigo shoots through him. It throbs almost painfully, but he soon finds himself addicted to that feeling. He wants to feel it again. Again.
When he sits down at his desk, his cold, clammy fingers clutch the pen like a lifeline. He can't form a coherent thought, and a cold chill runs up his spine. The world freezes, like a photo, and there is buzzing and silence and the echoing words of Kill Tsuna are dark in his closed-off canyon.
As quick as it came, the stupor flashes away, and Takeshi feels guilt. He can't kill Tsuna. Tsuna is his friend. He doesn't notice that on his paper, in blue ink, he has sketched the image of his nights.
He wants to go see Tsuna. Maybe that will calm him. He stands up abruptly, walking out into the halls. He can't see clearly, everything blurs, and he muses, briefly, that he needs a cigarette. Tsuna's office door is open, so he enters without a thought.
Paperwork. That's all he can see, and he desperately wants to catch a glimpse of Tsuna's face. But orange, orange, eyes, and that's not Tsuna. Tsuna has sweet, brown eyes. He remembers so clearly.
The fumes rising lightly from an ashtray outline the colors he sees in thin, hard grey. He inhales, and it clears. "Boss?" He is hesitant.
The cold, orange eyes make him remember empty brown, the flame fading away in eternal sleep. "What is it, Piogga?" The harsh words snap him to what he sees before him. He feels a clench and breathe, breathe. His mouth dries, so he licks his lips.
"Um," he is unsure what to say, "there's someone here to see you, boss."
A motion. It's a nod, he thinks. "If that's all, send them in, will you?" Takeshi nods, too scared of what he'll see if he looks at Tsuna's eyes again. And suddenly, he remembers the drug, the light, of his dream. He is hungry for it.
He can't kill Tsuna, Tsuna is his friend. But, but. That's not Tsuna. That's Boss. Boss isn't his friend. He fights of a crooked smile. He wants to find those brown eyes buried under glowing orange, and maybe he can see that if Boss goes away. That is, if Tsuna hasn't long left him yet.
Tsuna's gone. He's been abandoned. That fills his mind as he returns to the room. This time, the smoke has faded, and it wouldn't have jolted him awake anyways. "Well, where are they?" He hears, but his mind has gone too far away to give him a response.
"Didn't you hear me?" And again, everything is in freeze-frame. This time, Takeshi doesn't hesitate to listen to the voice. Tsuna? Who's Tsuna? Right, Tsuna's gone. Boss can bring him back. But Boss needs to leave first…
"I don't have all day-" Shigure Kintoki flashes from its sheath, and then a gasp. Red. Liquid red. He loves the now familiar sight, the colored river.
"They're right here, Tsuna." Takeshi's mouth forms a hard line. "But you're not Tsuna, are you?"
"You're my subordinate, Takeshi, what are you doing?" Tsuna chokes out, blatantly ignoring the rhetorical question. "I'm not your subordinate, I'm Tsuna's. You have no right to call me by my given name."
Takeshi feels like he's not in his body anymore. From the recesses of his mind, he watches himself speak, respond. He can't comprehend what he's saying, he's too high, but he can sense his numb fingers pulling out the sword from Boss' lung and thrusting it cleanly into his heart.
He can see Tsuna bent over his paperwork, and his heart soars. Those beautiful, brown eyes. He hasn't seen those in… How long? He doesn't remember. But he doesn't care, the high is beautiful. He is so giddy he can't hear anything but again that constant buzz.
His eyes glint in crazed, intoxicated joy, for he is delighted. He is delighted, because the gray and black and dulled-down white is gone in favor of color. Finally he has his light back. The red tint goes unnoticed, purity, what purity? The dirtied light is his everything, everything, now that he has a light again.
He embraces it.
Tsuna sat on the bench, legs crossed. His chin was propped up on his fist as he watched the class stretching to warm up.
It was gym class. But for Mafiosi, gym class meant it was time to show of your skills and strength and prowess and whatnot. Gym meant sparring matches and weapons practice and target practice. Gym meant weightlifting and showing muscles and touching up your skills.
Gym meant exposure.
He wasn't ready for that. The thing was, you were forced to use your full potential. The teachers would settle for no less. No matter if you were trying to keep your ace in the hole, you'd be forced to expose it all.
That would ruin everything. He's been keeping anonymous, keeping basically everything about himself under wraps. Otherwise, his plan would run into quite a few very unwelcome speed bumps.
Thank goodness, then, that the gym instructor – or rather drill sergeant – was the one and only Lal Mirch. He'd met up and talked to his Lal-nee a good while ago, and she was the same as ever. Thankfully she had let him off the hook, but only after extracting a promise that he would train under her supervision in his spare time, most probably the weekends.
But gym class allowed him to observe his fellow classmates, and distinct the talented from the not-so-talented. It allowed for classifying the bluffers and fakes as well as the worthy enemies. It allowed for recognizing the potential threats of future attacks.
The ones he had his eyes on were the ones without any affiliation with a Family; Tsuna had already identified a few he was watching for their skills. They were scattered about a large variety of training stations, showing off their skills, some in a modest manner and others with a lot of flair and ego.
Konohara Ai was a freelance hitwoman that was both snobby and had a high sense of superiority. Fighting 'elegantly' with a crossbow that Tsuna easily recognized as a poor imitation of Vongola Ottavo's favoured weapon, it was easy to see from her dyed black hair with blond peeking at its roots and the golden contacts she wore that she was a cocky copy of the late Daniela.
She was highly skilled with her weapon, that was true, but he could tell she had had few kills, and had yet to see the darker side of the Mafia. She was still naive, and her wake up call would shake her deeply. The question was whether or not she could recover and grow from it.
Then, on the other hand, was a young, shy boy, clearly not comfortable with close combat. But soon, he was proved a lethal adversary with shurikens and with his preferred weapon, a sniper rifle.
Despite his innocent-looking features plumped with left over baby-fat and his petit, almost fragile frame, his eyes held a dark wariness and a tired look that seemed to say, I've seen too much. However, Tsuna was keeping away from this boy and keeping him off his stack of Has Potential files because he could see that this long weak young male would soon crack from the emotional stress and guilt.
And then… There was Yamamoto Takeshi.
It was there, right before his eyes. Tsuna peered intently past the speechless spectators, all arrogance gone from their expressions. Smoothly, Yamamoto executed a move with a whisper of something Tsuna couldn't quite hear from his location in the gym, slicing the practice dummy into a pile of tattered and beaten-looking chunks.
Immediately after the initial speechlessness, people rushed forward, propelling into fast-paced, amicable conversation, edging the questions of who are you and what sword style is that and are you with any Family? Join mine. Tsuna pressed a hand to his throat, resisting the urge to retch.
Darkness. Swimmingly, darkness hides within orange
Tsuna has always thought the world was beautiful.
It is bright. Everything seems so wonderful, so delightful, and he has never once understood the lies light brings. Ignorance is bliss? Bliss, until when everything is at its best, black emerges from white.
Tsuna is scared of black. He hates it, isn't everything light? Black? Black belongs far, far away. Black isn't supposed to be here. It can't be, he won't let it.
So he prances in his delusion. And when black springs, clamps over his mouth, pulls him into darkness and pulls a knife, Tsuna tries to imagine the black away, tries to pretend its orange. Orange, orange. Orange is bright, isn't angry as red or blinding as yellow.
And when the orange fades, black is gone. Black is dead. Good, he says. And when Takeshi bursts into the alley, and his pretty brown eyes loose its light, Tsuna thinks about light, light. They have to have light, or else everything will collapse in.
Light, light. Hm? What's that? Mafia? It's pretty, and bright, right? It has to be. It has to be, or else it has to go away. Like black. So everything is fine.
They tell him that he needs to say bye bye to people, because they're bad, they did bad things, naughty naughty. Does that mean they're black? Then they need to go away. Orange, and then black went away again.
Black keeps visiting. Black visits more and more, so orange, again, more, always. When orange fights black, he doesn't know, doesn't know what's going on. But after orange, lights go on.
Orange-san is an adult. Orange-san acts just like them, business-y and older. Orange-san talks to Tsuna sometimes, says things, he doesn't remember what. But it made him warm and fuzzy, and one day, he goes to bed, and dreams. The dream never stops.
Maybe Orange is still fighting black, then. Who cares. The dream is all pretty. Everyone smiles, and it's just like the old days. Right? Right?
He talks to Takeshi in his dream-world. Wait, when was the last time he talked to Takeshi? Orange has, lots. Doesn't matter, right? As long as everything's nice and good. As long as black stays away. Black is scary. It's not allowed here. Right? Right? He's right, right?
"Boss?"
"What is it, Piogga?"
"Um, there's someone here to see you, Boss."
Nod. "If that's all, send them in, will you?"
Nod.
"Well? Where are they?"
Silence.
"Didn't you hear me? I don't have all day-" Gasp. Pain.
Blood.
"They're right here, Tsuna." Pause. "But you're not Tsuna, are you?"
"You're my subordinate, Takeshi, what are you doing?"
"I'm not your subordinate, I'm Tsuna's. You have no right to call me by my given name."
And then, black. The dream is gone, he claws at the darkness in fear. He hates it. Hates it, hates it, hates it. Go away! Orange, no more orange. Where are you? Where did orange go?
All there is left is black.
Yamamoto was rather, well, pissed.
Why? Well, the lecherous bastards disguised as his classmates, for one. They had hated him. They had ignored him. They had looked down on him, because he smiled, and so they assumed he was immature, not a Mafioso.
Oh, how he wished he wasn't a Mafioso. Because then, his family couldn't be Mafiosi either, and his mother wouldn't have died. She wouldn't have been killed by the stupid Vongola because the clams thought she knew too much to be left to retire.
Had they ever, even for a second, thought that she had family, not Family, to return to? Had they ever considered that she had done nothing wrong, had done nothing to betray them, and that she most likely never would?
She was a smiler, just like him. Her smile was as beautiful as she was deadly. He was proud of his mother, and then they took her away from him.
He was vengeful. He was bitter. He hated the Mafia, and all its wrongs. What he had seen so far at Namimori had only increased that hatred, especially, as he had said, his classmates, who only became 'friends' with those that could benefit them.
They wanted him in their Family, huh? Well, he wasn't about to join them. The Mafia was dark and wrong and he hated it, hated it all. He hated all the Mafiosi, who were unjust, uncaring. Maybe… Maybe he should just join an unknown, small-time Family just to piss them off?
As his gaze scanned the room, his eyes fell upon the spiky haired boy he had bumped into days before. He wasn't bad, he recollected, well, compared to the rest. But he had that Mafia feel about him; he would be no better than the rest.
He would serve Yamamoto's purpose, though, and they were acquainted, so it'd be pretty simple. Plus, he'd be able to answer one constant question: Why was he so familiar? And how come – although he tried to deny it – he felt a magnetic pull to the enigmatic boy?
That time, when he had bumped into Tsuna, he had originally felt strangely compelled to go outside into the hallway, as if something – or someone – was there, calling to him. Was it the mysterious brunet? But he, too, had seemed surprised at seeing and bumping into Yamamoto.
With a sigh he stood up. It was now or never, then, in order to answer his questions. Walking over to the boy's – Tsuna's, that is – desk, he continually hovered there until Tsuna looked up, mild surprise briefly decorating his expression. "Hm? What is it?"
"Hey!" Yamamoto flashed the best casual grin he could muster up. "Can I join your Family?"
井の中の蛙大海を知らず。
A frog in a well does not know the great sea.
A/N: OMG, exactly 3,000 words! Did that make up for the huge wait?
The reason it took so long is a number of things, but two big things is one, I have to organize time for writing in my new schedule, and two, as an author, I just got attacked by plot bunnies. Hm, like, *counts* five different ideas? And surprisingly, they're all yaoi… -guiltyface- They may go up at some point, please keep an eye out for them!
I've not much to say but hope you've enjoyed, and please drop a review!
Ciao ciao!
-Tsukai