Chapter 6: The Concept of Learning

Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn, nor any of the characters that have appeared in the franchise. I only own this fic, and my OCs.

Note: The names of Kazue's squad right now cracks me up. Kazue, Kyoya, Kensuke, Ryohei, and Rasiel. Say that ten times fast. (The remaining two guardians will not fit this pattern, so don't get any ideas lmfao.)

Also,

If you like BnHA and you haven't checked out my other story, Hydrangea yet, you should definitely give it a try! It'll have darker, more mature themes, and the protagonist of the story couldn't be any more different from Kazue. I'm sure you'll grow to love her all the same, though!

Kazue couldn't possibly be any happier than she currently is, right now. Her heart is full. Meiko very graciously decided to host a 'welcome home' party for Kazue and her boys.

Her boys.

From an outsider's perspective, it may look like her boys (her family) don't get along well, but Kazue knows better. Despite all the trash-talk and petty insults, their souls vibrate against each other (as if they're laughing) while they brawl against one another in a battle royale-like fashion.

Of course, Kensuke is using a bokken, Kyoya's tonfas are padded, Ryohei's using only his body, and Rasiel is equipped with plastic frisbees, but they're having fun nonetheless.

"You're not going to join?" Meiko's eyes sparkle as she watches the fight. They've all grown so much in the past month. There's so much more to work with.

She can only thank her uncle and his associate for such great results.

"Mm," Kazue laughs when Ryohei lands a particularly harsh uppercut against Rasiel's chin; the victim of said uppercut gives out a relatively monkey-like screech as he repeatedly slaps the boxer with his frisbees in retaliation. "I think my weapon itself might give me an advantage. They're all close combatants."

Meiko hums in agreement. "Rasiel uses chakrams, and even though he's fully capable of utilizing them strategically, he's too prideful and has instead chosen to fight melee as the other boys do."

"I don't think he's thrown them once this whole time."

"He hasn't." Meiko chuckles, "You had better get that under control before it's too late. He'll die an early death if he doesn't learn how to reign in his pride."

Kazue sighs. "Meiko-sama," she pinches the bridge of her nose, "You know just as well as I, that all four of those boys are very similar in that each of them is as stubborn and prideful as the next. They're going to give me such a headache."

They're all annoying in their own way. Kensuke has a smug sort of pride. He's playful, and can definitely the sweetest of the bunch (actually, Ryohei's got him tied), but his sugary words have been known to have hidden meanings. Ryohei has the classic Japanese 'man-of-the-house' pride. He's honorable and noble, but this also means that he has no regard for himself and does not know when to back down. It's very straight forward, and he definitely reminds her a bit of samurai. Kyoya is regal. His pride is fierce, and anyone who isn't blind can see just from the way he stands, from the way he breathes, that he thinks (he knows) he's hot shit. And lastly, Rasiel. Rasiel is the most obvious of the bunch. He's an in-your-face, 'hey, look at me!' type of braggart, and it's especially infuriating because he can easily back all of his confidence up. He's a genius.

They're all so dumb and Kazue loves them so much. She knows that she'll likely have to live a long life of following after their destruction, cleaning up their messes, and apologizing to every single person that any of them will ever interact with for the rest of their lives, but Kazue loves them anyway. She wouldn't trade them for anything in the whole universe.

"Well, I suppose it's good that I called for backup, then," Meiko says casually.

Kazue's about to ask 'why,' when Reiko appears with four kids of her own— Tsuna being one of them. He bounces excitedly as they approach.

"Welcome home, Ka-nee!" He jumps into her arms, "I've missed you! I have so much to tell you!"

"Tadaima," Kazue responds with a fond smile as she gently pats his hair.

"Hello, Kazue-san!" Kyoko greets happily from behind Tsuna. Hana and Takeshi also give her little waves of their own.

Kazue dips her head in greeting. She doesn't miss the two fans hanging from Kyoko's belt loops, nor the quite large-for-her-body bow and quiver that Hana has strapped across her chest. Even Takeshi has a bokken of his own, and he's watching Kensuke intently, eyes narrowed on the boy's much different form from his own.

Her gaze drops to Tsuna's hands. His knuckles are all wrapped up with bandages, not unlike Ryohei's.

So it seems like Tsuna's little group also had some training over the past month. She'd love to see what they had learned.

"Why don't we have a little bit of a team exercise," Meiko's voice carries across the portion of the lawn that they've dubbed their 'training meadow,' sometimes referred to simply as 'the meadow.'

Kazue's guardians regroup, and they eye Tsuna's posse with interest.

"Let's see...I don't want the younger kids to get slaughtered right away, so let's put Takeshi, Kyoya, Hana, Kazue, and Tsuna on one team; and Ryohei, Kyoko, Kensuke, and Rasiel on the other."

That way, the siblings won't all have to worry about fighting one another, and people with similar specialties can fight against each other. Specialty wise, Meiko would peg Takeshi against Kensuke; Hana against Rasiel; Kyoya against Kyoko, the poor girl; and Tsuna against Ryohei. That leaves only Kazue, who seems to be the only mid-ranged fighter.

Not for long.

"But the team's are uneven," Takeshi scratches his cheek innocently, "That doesn't seem very fair."

Meiko grins. Funny he should mention that.

"Kusakabe!" She calls, and a maid dressed in a bright yellow Japanese-European maid uniform drops from her perch in a tree.

"Kusakabe, is your son around?"

"Ah, Tetsuya?" The woman wonders aloud. "You want him to join the spar?"

Kyoya's eyes widen in recognition of the name. The Kusakabe clan has always been loyal to the Hibari. Every member of the Hibari main house is assigned a Kusakabe partner. The maid— Natsuki, was assigned to his mother when she became engaged with his father. They've become close friends, and Natsuki eventually agreed to become Meiko's guardian. Since Meiko isn't a sky, she doesn't receive guardians through flame-bonding. Her guardians independently pledged themselves to her.

It's not an unusual arrangement. Skies are quite rare— even in the Vongola Alliance, which seems to have an abundance of skies between the Vongola, CEDEF, Varia, and the Cavallone. The Scorpio Famiglia, Giegue Group, and Leilei Brothers are all led by storms. TRAD6, and The Beccio Famiglia are both led by clouds. The Evocatore prefer mists as leaders, the Nero Famiglia is led by a rain, and the Nouveau by a sun.

The Bovino, a smaller, unallied but notable family has always been led by a line of lightnings. And of course, some of the smaller famiglia do get lucky. The Tomaso and Todd families both have young sky heirs, similar in age to Tsuna. The Giglio Nero is led by the Sky Arcobaleno herself. The Estraneo has not one leader of a specific flame, but a panel of leaders, each in charge of a different sect of the family. (Unbeknownst to them all, a young sky begins to gather his pawns; pawns to form what will become known as the Gesso Famiglia.)

"It'll be good for him to make some friends his age, don't you think?"

Natsuki doesn't even think about it for very long before she stretches her cheeks with her thumb and pointer finger and whistles as loud as she possibly can. The pitch gradually glissandos from an extremely high pitch to a much lower note.

The younger Kusakabe comes running, and he doesn't bat an eye when Meiko tosses a bo staff at him.

Kazue blinks at him once (he's a storm! How odd, because his mother's a sun, and most kids usually take after their mother if their father isn't a sky) before leaning over and grabbing her own.

"Great," Meiko claps her hands together, "Tetsuya will join Ryohei's team. That will even out both the numbers."

Tetsuya bows to the group. "It's a pleasure to meet your acquaintance. You all may call me Tetsu, if you'd like."

The group murmurs their own greetings and introductions.

After a while, he turns to appraise Kazue.

"It's nice to meet a fellow polearm user who's my age." He smiles, "I usually prefer a corseque, how about you?"

Corseque. European. The weapon itself is really quite long; longer than the average Asian polearm, though he very likely uses a miniature version at the moment due to his age. The corseque is three-pronged, with two wing-blades that dramatically flair outward at the end of the weapon, and a probably foot-and-a-half long needle-like blade that sticks out of the pole itself.

Although like her, he's going to be using a bo staff for the spar, his fighting style will be noticeably different from her own.

She's very excited. She has much to learn from him. Fon and Meiko know enough about weapons to teach her, but they're both martial artists first and foremost. Kazue doubts she'll ever find a polearm expert as talented as her mother, but she'll strive for that level of perfection as best as she can, how ever she can.

"I haven't decided yet," she responds simply, "I'm trained in the art of wushu, so it's been hard to find something that I particularly like. My master, Fon, prefers the podao, and it works well with wushu, but I'm not a fan since the pole itself is so short. I think I might be interested in a Korean woldo, though."

"Good choice." He nods, "Very long base, but still has a good base-to-blade ratio. The shape of the blade isn't as distracting as it's Chinese counterpart, the guandao. Plus, despite its length, it's still smaller and lighter than the guandao, which is perfect for wushu, a martial art based off of flexibility, speed, and misdirection."

Kazue presses her hands against her cheeks as a blush spreads across her face. Kyoya takes a step forward and growls at the boy as Kensuke and Rasiel cackle in his expense. Ryohei laughs with them, just because he can.

"Ohmygosh," she whispers, "I like you."

Of course, she only means that she admires his knowledge of her favorite category of weapons, a knowledge that may even possibly be on par with her own.

But he doesn't know that.

Tetsuya's eyes just about bulge out of his face. He chokes on air.

"Well, now," Meiko interrupts, "If you're done with introductions and...flirting-" Kyoya hisses at his mother. She winks at him, "-you may begin!"

"Sorry, Tetsuya, I do like you, but-" she bends her body to an almost 90-degree angle when she leans forward to let Kyoya propel himself over her back and jump the boy, "Kyoya wants to have a taste of his future companion first!"

"If you're not strong enough to be my assistant, I'll bite you to death!" He aims to slam a tonfa against the side of the taller boy's face. Tetsuya just barely manages to block the tonfa with his staff.

Thank God the tonfas are padded, or the staff might have actually splintered from that hit.

Kazue slams her staff against Ryohei's shoulder as he approaches Tsuna. Tsuna sends her a grateful smile before getting a running head start and tackling Rasiel into the dirt. She watches as Tsuna quickly rolls off of her storm, just in time for some of Hana's arrows to fly over his head and jam themselves into the ground where Rasiel's own head once was. He was planning on just using his frisbees; this is just a spar, but it looks like Hana's got some other ideas. He clicks his tongue before one hand reaches up under the hem of his shirt while the other, into his pants. He pulls out two sizeable stacks of chakrams, hooked onto each of his pointer fingers.

Rasiel throws a chakram in her direction; slicing one of the incoming arrows through its middle, while he dodges the other. He points another chakram in Tsuna's direction, and Tsuna salutes at the blond playfully before running off and tackling Kensuke, right before he was to land a solid hit on Takeshi with his bokken. Kyoko gracefully leaps into the air with her closed fans clenched between her dainty fingers, arms raised above her head.

She almost lands a hit at the center of Tsuna's head, only to be stopped by Takeshi's wooden sword. Tsuna exhales in relief.

Those things are made of metal. They hurt. And, they should probably be padded, but that would defeat the purpose of the fans' folding mechanisms.

"Thanks, Taketake!" He sweeps a leg out— an attempt to trip Kensuke before he can get to Takeshi.

"No problem, Tsutsu!" Takeshi swings his bokken as if it were a baseball bat, pushing Kyoko away.

Kazue's eyes focus back on the opponent standing before her.

"Hey, big guy!" Kazue greets her friend excitedly.

She's sparred with Kensuke and Kyoya countless times in the past month, and she's even already dodged quite a few of Rasiel's chakrams. Ryohei, however, is new territory. She's heard from Fon who his tutor was.

Not that she's jealous or anything— please, her master is Fon, strongest martial artist in the world, and she specializes in a traditional Chinese martial art. Reborn is just, well. Reborn.

She has high expectations.

"Hey!" He yells back. He grabs onto the end of her pole and roughly pulls it toward him, attempting to disarm her.

When he fails, she gives him a somewhat admonishing look.

"I'd be dumb to let go of this when fighting you."

He laughs. "Well, it was extremely worth a shot!"

His grip is still on the staff, so he yanks again, this time, just to pull her forward. In brute strength, Ryohei is obviously much stronger than her; so even though she digs the heels of her feet into the ground, he's still able to force her to slide closer to him.

She ducks under his punch. She takes advantage of his right hand still firmly grasping onto her staff and flexes her core. She puts two hands onto the pole and jumps, arching her back just enough to avoid collision with his head. She plants her feet behind him, and her grasp on the pole twists his arm uncomfortably enough that he lets go. In that spare moment of time, she swings her staff forward and catches it with her other hand. Her chest presses against his back as she pulls on her weapon, applying pressure against his neck. She'd be suffocating him if she were serious and they weren't sparring.

Ryohei laughs. "Holy cow, that was extreme! You gotta show me how to do a flip like that later."

Parkour was part of his training with Reborn, but he hasn't mastered any flashy movements yet.

"Okay!" She agrees easily.

"Well then," he grunts when she applies even more pressure. Then he pops a quick squat, throwing her off balance when his chin brings her down with him. As she falls forward, he slithers out of her grasp and he does the unthinkable. He angles his body and aims a taekwondo kick at her side before she can catch herself.

"Ack!" She stabs her staff into the dirt to keep from falling completely. A ground fight against Ryohei is the last thing that she needs. She will not be able to overpower him if he gets her pinned. "That hurt." She hisses, slightly miffed, "When did you learn how to kick?"

He gives her a dazzling grin. He sparkles.

There is no way that he doesn't have a little bit of mist in him.

"When we're sparring, we're not boxing." He recites his teacher's speech, "I have to differentiate competitive fighting and combative fighting."

"Huh." Is all she says before Tsuna comes running and aims a high taekwondo kick at the back of Ryohei's head. It lands.

"Hey, I saw that!' The younger Sawada points an accusatory finger. Ryohei turns around with a hand rubbing the back of his head as he faces his new opponent.

"You extremely got me!"

"Take me seriously." Tsuna barks with furrowed brows, "I've been learning krav maga!"

"Wow!" Ryohei nods in approval, "That's an extreme one! Deadly if utilized by right body."

Kazue quirks a brow. When did he learn how to utilize the word utilize?

Did Reborn somehow broaden his vocabulary as well as his repertoire?

"So I should give you an extremely good chance to practice, huh?" Ryohei laughs as he surges forward and punches Tsuna as hard as he can in the gut.

The boy wheezes.

"I've been taking this spar extremely seriously this whole time! I won't hold back just because you're younger."

Tsuna sighs as he lowers his body into a more defensive position.

This is definitely going to hurt.

Schwing-

Kazue easily dodges Kyoko as she pounces the older girl and begins to swipe her bladed fans at her. Kazue knows that she can easily start swinging her staff and defeat the smaller girl, but then she'd feel bad. They're just a bad matchup.

"You sure you want to do this with me?'

Kyoko continues her relentless assault, never faulting even if she still hasn't landed a hit. She is training in capoeira, and though it still has many, many differences from Kazue's wushu, it's also quite similar. Both martial arts focus on flexibility, speed, and diversion. Both arts were created to be as deadly as they are beautiful, and both arts, which utilize flashy flips and long swipes, when watched from afar appear like dancing.

The girls easily move around each other, bending their bodies into difficult positions as they dodge each other's attacks.

"It's either you or Kyoya-san," Kyoko says as she raises her foot far above her head and aims another kick at her opponent.

Oh, well, in that case, she can definitely understand why the girl targeted her over her cloud. She doesn't want to fight Kyoya, either. Still, Kazue knocks the foot away with her pole. She shakes her head.

"You should have gone for Kyoya. Our styles are too similar."

Kyoko's also extremely inexperienced when compared to Kazue.

They could go on like this forever if Kazue really wanted to. But she doesn't. Kazue bends back into a bridge to dodge a swipe of Kyoko's fan before kicking up and using the momentum pull herself into the air. She turns the tip of her foot a little to latch onto Kyoko's shoulder and bends a knee to pull the younger girl forward. Kazue locks her thighs around the younger girl's neck.

Surprised by the unexpected attack, Kyoko falls backward and gasps when she feels a shock of pain from the impact of hitting the ground.

Kazue quickly stands and points her weapon at Kyoko's nose.

"I could beat you over and over again, but you wouldn't learn a thing from me. You will learn from Kyoya, though."

As if on cue, the boy flips in from somewhere and lands beside her. Kyoko squeaks, scurries to put some distance between them, and holds up her fans defensively.

Kazue squints at Kyoya.

"This definitely was not planned, but uh, good luck!" She winks at Kyoko just as a shadow of a pole appears above her head.

She parrys it with her own staff.

"Ah, yes," Kazue giggles as she runs from Kyoya's territory. She doesn't want to interrupt them. Tetsuya keeps at her heels. "It's a shame that you're a storm." She swings at him.

He easily redirects it with his own staff.

"Why's that?" He attempts a jab at her. She leans back into a bridge in order to dodge and smoothly transitions it into a back walkover.

"Because I like you and I'm still missing a lightning and a mist." She shrugs.

Her soul doesn't exactly resonate with him the same way it does with the others, so she can't quite imagine how different this conversation would be even if he had mist or lightning flames. Tetsuya was probably born loyal to the Hibari.

He laughs. "I'm honored to have been considered."

Then, he changes his grip. He brings his hands lower on the staff, way lower than Kazue is comfortable with when welding her own weapon.

"I've noticed that you prefer more dynamic movements. Lots of different types of spins, and long slashes instead of strikes." Tetsuya thrusts his hands forward, so fast that she's barely able to redirect the hit with her staff.

He continues his assault of jabs, gradually speeding up as he does so. Soon enough, she's not just redirecting his hits anymore. She's also dodging and flailing about, trying to create an opening for her to get a solid hit in.

Unfortunately, he's faster than her. (And also taller, and longer, and has had more training than her—)

She laughs as the spar continues.

Kusakabe's fun, and she's already learned so much. Of course, he's right, swiping can only work for as long as she uses a bo staff. If she wants to switch to a woldo, she'll have to practice with her staff as if it has a blade attached to the end of it.

Which she will get started on, effective immediately.

She inhales sharply when the end of Tetsuya's pole is jammed somewhat aggressively into her gut. He has the gall to smile at her apologetically.

She hopes Kyoya keeps him around.

Sawada Iemitsu is about to lose his goddamned mind.

His secretary slash one night stand from a drunken night nearly eight years ago just dropped a flaming blue child onto the top of his desk. Oregano, his now ex-favorite lackey, decides that this is the perfect moment for her to leave his office. She leaves behind maniacal laughter as the door slams behind her.

He pinches himself. This has to be a dream.

Iemitsu blinks owlishly at the woman as she twirlers the ends of her hair around her finger— a nervous habit. She seems to be in deep thought.

Iemitsu has never been a praying man, but please, God, this had better not be what he thinks it is.

The child with blue hyper dying will flames dancing on his forehead waves at him with a watery smile. He's clearly confused, but after making eye contact with him, Iemitsu can safely say that he is not.

Iemitsu's entire life thus far has only been a series of horrible, terrible, bad decisions, but let it be known that he is not unintelligent. He can connect two and two together.

Iemitsu is horrified.

"I wasn't going to tell you," the secretary says, "but it turns out, he takes after you more than I initially thought."

Iemitsu groans. He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.

And now that it's been confirmed, he wants to just dig a hole and bury himself in it.

He had his suspicions, years ago when the woman had asked for maternity leave, but she assured him. She promised him.

Clearly, she lied.

How on Earth does a man who wants absolutely nothing to do with children end up with so many? Are there more than he needs to know about? Should he be surprised if another one shows up on his doorstep the following morning?

He wants to flail his arms and scream and yell at her. He had the right to know sooner. This kid is like seven. He wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Was she out of her goddamned mind? Why did she go through with the pregnancy? She had to have known that he is married, and he knows that she's not the motherly type. At all. He knows that she frequents the local clubs, bars, and casinos, and he knows about her little side hustle gigs that she lands whenever she gambles away too much money. He's surprised she hasn't gotten pregnant again. He wants to kick the desk and jump out of his window, but the kid's innocent gaze reminds him so much of his Tsuna-fish. He can't find it in him to express his anger.

Well. He supposes that it makes sense since they are brothers.

He mentally groans again. He's getting a vasectomy.

"Anyway," the woman sniffs, "I'm getting married soon to one of my regular clients, and he doesn't actually know about him."

Ah, there it is.

So she is pregnant again, but she's actually getting married this time and can't afford for her new husband to know about her dirty little secret.

Iemitsu rubs his fingers against his temples. He can feel a headache incoming. "How are you going to take care of him if-"

"I'm not." She interrupts, "I'm quitting my job and I'm moving to Switzerland. He's yours now."

His jaw drops.

"What."

"His name is Sawada Bajiru. I call him Basil. I thought he should at least be in touch with your culture, if not you yourself, so I taught him some Japanese through books and Japanese dramas. Obviously, he won't be as fluent as your other children, but, if he'll be fine if you decide to pass him on to your wife." She shrugs. "I don't actually care."

"You have to understand." He can't bring himself to look away from the boy. "Sweetie, that's actually a little distracting, could you turn those off?"

The child frowns in concentration. Basil's forehead flame sputters a little before it completely dissipates. Iemitsu instinctively reaches over to pat his head.

"You have to understand," Iemitsu repeats, "that this is all very sudden. How do you expect me to just take a child without any warning?"

She scoffs. "Well, that's kind of the point. You can't say no to him; he's your child. It's you or the streets, and you wouldn't do that to him."

He's actually a little annoyed now.

"How on Earth could you do this? He's a human being, not a puppy."

"My husband is rich. I won't have to work a single day for the rest of my life if all of this works out."

"He's rich? If you want money, you have to know that I'm," he laughs a little, disbelievingly, "loaded, right? You could have told me about Basil sooner."

She purses her lips. While that is true, "That doesn't matter anymore, he's your problem now. I'm going to Switzerland. Please do not attempt to contact me or my new family."

He doesn't even know what to say. He releases some sort of sound from the back of his throat in protest, but she's already halfway out the door by the time he can stammer out a weak "Wait!"

"Anyway," she flicks her hair over her shoulder before she disappears behind the door completely, "good day."

He laughs incredulously as he sees the shadow of the woman book it down of the hall (and probably out of the building) through the frosted glass window of his door.

Then, the child cries.

This is karma. It has to be. This is the world making him pay for running away from Nana all those years ago and for being such an absent father to Kazue and Tsuna.

He doesn't know what to do when the child cries even harder after realizing that his mother will not return.

Iemitsu is never having sex ever again.

Elementary school, Kazue soon rediscovers, is really quite dull. Reliving her very eventful summer in her daydreams only seems to make her school days drag even longer. As the teacher continues to drone about -what is it?- oh, the multiplication table for another eternity, Kazue finds herself doodling her dearest friends. She already knows all of this. Daniela and her guardians privately tutored her up until she was shipped off to Namimori. She's sure she'll have to actually try to study in a few years, once the other kids have caught up with her, but for now, she's bored.

She doesn't know if Rasiel not being there is good or bad fortune. Apparently, despite being only a year older than them, he's already halfway finished learning a highschool curriculum. Despite not having to go to school, Meiko has been gracious enough to hire him a private tutor so that he can continue his studies.

On one hand, it's probably a good thing that other children aren't subjected to his personality, but on the other, Kazue quite misses him and his annoying laughter whenever she and the rest of the squad are at school.

It just feels incomplete without him.

To the left of her, seated by the window, Kyoya stares at the open sky and watches the clouds drift. He's not exactly a genius, but he is smart. He normally takes time over the weekends to study a few chapters ahead of the class so that he can do whatever he wants during the school days. This way, he still aces all of his schoolwork despite periodically skipping his classes to roam the hallways. When he hears the rapid scratching of her pencil, his eyes briefly shift to meet hers. She glances down at her paper.

After sneaking a quick glance at it, he returns his attention back to the clouds with a bit of pink dusting his cheeks.

She covers her lips with her left hand as she snickers in amusement.

Her next target, Kensuke, is slumped over his desk in the seat in front of Kyoya; diagonal from her. He's asleep now, but just moments earlier, he was reading a manga book which he had hidden from their teacher's eyes by tucking it into his math textbook. Kensuke, while horrible with Japanese grammar and literature, is really good with numbers, so he normally doesn't pay attention in math. Kazue's half convinced that somewhere wired in his brain is a calculator.

It just doesn't make any sense. Ask him any math equation, and he can solve it without any troubles— this includes materials that are supposedly many grade levels above them.

She smirks as sketches the small pool of drool gathering on his desk.

Gross.

To the right of her, Ryohei is staring at his multiplication chart with extreme focus. Kazue doesn't think that he's actually reading any of it. Maybe he thinks that if he stares at it long enough, he'll memorize it?

She pauses her sketching for a bit. She pokes him with the eraser tip of her pencil.

"You good, bud?"

He squints at the card for a little longer before dramatically exhaling and leaning back into his chair. The crook of his neck is pressed against the edge of the chair's back. He watches the moths dancing around the ceiling's lights, defeated.

"It's no use," he says, "the numbers keep moving."

"Moving?" She repeats curiously.

Kyoya perks up to attention.

"Does it happen when you're reading normal words, too?" Kyoya asks.

The boxer accidentally kicks the foot of his desk, making it emit a loud scratchy sound as it slides when he turns his body to look at Kyoya. Kensuke awakens with a jolt.

"How did you know?" Ryohei asks, eyes wide.

Kyoya's lips pull into a frown as he studies his fellow guardian. One of his father's subordinates at the station has a condition that makes it hard for him to read, and outside of 'moving text,' Ryohei does display some of the other symptoms. It was actually his mother who convinced the man to come with her to a doctor to be diagnosed since there is so little awareness for it in Japan as opposed to other countries. The man lived well into adulthood without a single person bringing the condition up as a possibility.

"Come home with me today," Kyoya commands before turning back to his clouds.

"Mwoh?" Kensuke mumbles incoherently as he rubs his eyes. He blinks rapidly as he attempts to get used to the light. "You want all of us to come?" comes out a little slurred, but he gets the message across.

"Don't care. Going to ask hahaue to take Ryohei to a doctor."

"Eh?" Kensuke straightens his posture.

Ryohei gasps. "Am I sick?"

He's met with silence.

"Kyoya, explain. We can't read your mind." Kazue reprimands.

She swears, he'll learn how to use his words one day.

Hopefully.

"Dyslexia." He simply says.

"Oh my god!" Ryohei slaps his hands onto his cheeks, "Dys-what?"

"Dyslexia," a doctor explains to the crew, hours later, "also known as reading disorder, is characterized by trouble with reading despite normal intelligence. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, 'sounding out' words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads."

"Oh," Rasiel cackles, "I thought he was just extremely stupid!"

"Hey!" Ryohei cries while Kensuke smacks Rasiel upside the head.

"What? Is it out of the question for him to have possibly taken too many punches to the cranium?"

Kensuke snorts, "I'm about to put your cranium through a wall if you don't shut up. Ryo isn't stupid."

Meiko and Kazue both bow and thank the doctor as the boys bicker. Though, Meiko visually displays a bit more annoyance than Kazue. She's glad that Kyoya is an only child, lest she deal with this type of bickering constantly. Kyoya stands off in a corner, preferring to be situated in a part of the room where he can see everything clearly.

That evening, as the crew attempts to help Ryohei study for an upcoming test, Kazue can't help but think elementary school might not be that bad. If her sun could benefit from a couple more years of slower paced learning, she'll grit her teeth and smile through it just for him.

The summer before their first year of middle school, Kazue can't help but wish to go back to simpler times.

Like, yeah, she wanted some action, but nothing could have possibly prepared her for these shenanigans.

Note: OH YEAH! TIME SKIP NEXT CHAPTER! MIDDLE SCHOOL SHENANIGANS!

Did anybody catch my JOJO reference?

Cute fun fact! You had a little sneak peek at it. Tsuna's group has cute nicknames for each other! Tsutsu, Taketake, Hanana, and Koko!