Chapter 10 : absolutely (story of a boy)

At seven years old, Tsunayoshi had been well known as a 'fragile child.' Already very shy by nature, it wasn't immediately apparent when he developed strange issues with his stomach and his head - but eventually his teachers took notice of the way he persistently avoided his peers in the classroom and was prone to senseless tears there were no explanations for. The solution seemed to be to send him to the nurse's office, which they often did - at first with sympathy for a 'fragile' child.

When it became obvious that Tsunayoshi's issues disappeared once there, it became a problem. 'Fragile' became 'spoiled.'

Nana couldn't have noticed the behavior herself despite the way that Tsunayoshi clung to her apron strings, but became concerned about it all the same when the subject was raised with her by his less patient teachers. She couldn't really argue with the results, and when they wouldn't let it rest at 'then send him to the office' as a solution, she eventually was convinced to take him to a doctor.

That doctor pronounced Tsunayoshi to be a more or less healthy boy. He was a bit behind his peers developmentally - his reflexes weren't very sharp, and his motor skills weren't up to par, but it was hardly enough to cripple him. Besides, his eyes were keen, and he was able to identify the solutions to simple problems and read on his grade level. Physically, there was nothing wrong with him that the doctor could uncover.

The only answer left was that his behavior was the result of a bad personality.

Since the fault lay with him and not something left to chance or his parents' sins, even his teachers felt no compunction at all in calling him Dame-Tsuna.

And Tsunayoshi? Well, he was told often enough that he began to believe it.

-0-

Although it isn't every time that Tsunayoshi trains with Shioya and Ryohei that Tsunayoshi is left unable to walk, it happens often enough to become a pattern. It happens enough that Nana begins to have snacks and drinks already on the table by the time Shioya drags Tsunayoshi's limp body home, and they sit in the living room while Tsunayoshi recuperates in a hot bath.

At first he lurks at the top of the stairs, or near the doorway or in the kitchen, warily listening in on Shioya and Nana talking. She sounds happy. While Nana was never the sort of person that Tsunayoshi can ever remember actually being sad on a usual day - Nana isn't the sort that lingers on unhappy things like that; she'll hug onto Tsunayoshi more than usual before she'll hide and cry about it - even more than having dinner with the Miuras, having tea with Shioya seems to brighten her up. She laughs more honestly. She smiles more widely.

It isn't really Tsunayoshi's place to tell Shioya to leave his mother alone, no matter how anxious or uncomfortable it makes him, so with one lingering, flat look that Shioya arches his brows at, Tsunayoshi never says anything about it at all.

It's not like it's really any of his business, anyway.

Before that, though, Tsunayoshi makes the mistake of trying to call Haru to complain to her about it; he's completely forgotten what kind of life it is that Haru lives. She listens to his complaints diligently, and then says, "That's great, Tsunayoshi-san!"

"Some day you'll have to start calling me 'kun,'" Tsunayoshi says, mostly on reflex while he tries to grapple with the idea of Ryohei's uncle Shioya being a good thing and not some new strange torture for him. He gives it up as another one of those Haru things he can't properly understand without shouting a bit, first, and so gets directly to it: "What could possibly be good about having to spend an hour in the bath just to be able to walk afterwards?"

"Isn't that just because you've allowed your condition to slip?" Haru wonders. "Haru had that same probably when she went back to her clubs, after all. Even working hard with Tsunayoshi-san, it's different muscles, after all."

"How could my condition possibly have slipped," he wants to know. "It's not like I've been sitting around playing video games!"

At least not for more than one day, and there's no way Haru knows about that.

Haru sighs into the phone. "Regardless of the games you play with that shaggy beast, it's not to the level of fighting the tiresome brats that follow his lead," she explains, as if there's anything at all normal with how she sees the situation; Tsunayoshi is glad none of those 'brats' are around to hear her opinion of them. "Haru noticed it herself, that our abilities had plateaued - there's no way to be recognized by Hibari-san if we stay at this level. That's why it's great that you've gotten a home tutor!"

Is that really what it's like?

"I don't know, Haru," Tsunayoshi says uncomfortably. "I mean, I've never had a tutor before, but something about that description is a little off, I think."

"Mama sure is lax on you," Haru says; something about her tone brings to mind the kind of pinched brow look that makes him feel about two inches tall. "I thought it myself, but Tsunayoshi-san is the kind that especially benefits from the home tutor approach! Only good things will come of having this Shioya-san's diligent attention!"

She's kind of missed the point of his concerns entirely, he thinks.

"After all, Haru understands things more and more when she works with a home tutor! Everyday the tutor works hard to make sure I understand the things that were taught that day and keep my grades on top! That aside, at school, I have study groups that I'm a part of during free period, and even lunch!"

Hearing that, Tsunayoshi wonders again when she has times for clubs let alone coming and tagging along with him. It really does seem to speak the essence of going 'overboard.' "Isn't studying during lunch taking it too far?" he wonders.

"Ah - please, this much is easy for me," she demurs, tittering in a way alarmingly the same as Nana. "With my father's support and my tutor, it sounds harder than it is, you know. If someone believes in you and supports you, pretty much anything is possible, right?"

It must be amazing to be raised that way, so Haru thinks nothing of trying to do that for other people herself. Tsunayoshi is just glad to have further context for her bizarre behavior.

"I guess 'anything' probably depends on a person's moral codes," Tsunayoshi says uncertainly, because of all the many things that Haru is capable of, he knows without considering it deeply at all that Haru isn't at the same level he is.

What does that say, exactly, about his moral code anyway? Trying to resolve it by saying that it's their own fault Tsunayoshi murdered them is bit dishonest. He really is a special kind of advanced scum that he thinks: all other avenue of action was unacceptable.

Well, he's scum that kills lower, worse kinds of scum, so he can probably live with that.

"Hahi? Haru was talking about winning the district championships…?"

Ah! Had he said that out loud? Tsunayoshi laughs a bit too loudly and harshly, waving one hand despite the fact that they're on the phone and Haru can't even see him at the moment. "Sorry, sorry, it's nothing," he excuses.

Haru hums briefly for a moment while she considers the matter, then drops it; Tsunayoshi is getting the feeling that as much as he lets things go on account of them probably just being 'Haru things' - Haru might also sometimes let things go as being 'Tsunayoshi things,' too. "I'm so jealous, though," she frets. "I'll have to ask Papa if I can get a coach to home tutor me, too!"

"Haru," he says, the name coming out with a strange hush of admonishment; the moment passes, and he continues with, "seeing as how Hibari-senpai will be moving up this next year, I don't know that there's a point."

"Hmph! Would you really be okay with a wallflower as a wife?" Haru demands heatedly. "If I don't meet you honestly at every level, I could never live with myself!"

"Aside from the fact that there are certain things that I'd rest easier knowing you didn't have to face," Tsunayoshi says with a sigh, "... exactly when we were supposed to be getting married?!"

Especially considering they aren't even dating in the first place!

"Well - definitely after I finish college, and then-! A June wedding would be the most ideal!"

It must be nice having your own life planned out so far. Tsunayoshi was probably going to go on in life to become a street sweeper or a homeless person, if Nana was too impatient with him to tolerate him as a NEET. Then That incident happened, and there's no way that Tsunayoshi can be that relaxed about it, since he needs Haru and Hibari if he wants to live.

"Thanks for your support," he sighs wearily into the telephone in defeat. A June wedding after Haru graduates from college it is, then.

-0-

Although the break between school years isn't long in the first place, it seems to be over faster than ever even though Tsunayoshi hadn't been strongly dreading it as usual. The changes around their household, mostly the addition of Shioya, leave Tsunayoshi with so little free time that he feels like he blinks and then Nana is waking him to go attend school. He's started to be in the habit of soaking in a hot bath every morning just to loosen up his wobbling, aching limbs - and that morning is no different in that manner. He soaks until he can tolerate the usual stretches he does to work the rest of the soreness from his limbs so that he doesn't tear something on accident, and then he has breakfast, and then at some point Nana looks at him and says, "Oh, Tsu-kun, you'll be late for the morning assembly, won't you?"

It's a question that's met with a fair amount of frantic screaming.

It isn't easy to force himself into a run, but Tsunayoshi is already accustomed to forcing himself to do things that are difficult in various ways - 'physically' is honestly the least troubling of those ways. It's amazing how well Hibari has trained the entire campus in just a few years; even though Tsunayoshi knows better than most that the Committee won't be headed by him this year, instinct still forces his sore body to move as quickly as it can.

Honestly, Tsunayoshi suspects that Ryohei's enthusiasm is a self-defense mechanism for just how unrelenting Shioya can be about training. Maybe at one point he'd actually been a normal kid, but being raised by Shioya in some fashion had encouraged him to grow that way. Maybe that was even the cause of his white hair?! What a terrifying concept.

He gives a vague thought to the hope that Ryohei and Hibari haven't gone to the same higher secondary school.

Even though a part of Tsunayoshi reasons that there's really no need to hurry as much as he is, since surely even if he's late his peers in the Committee will be forgiving - and if they're not, then he'll just run away. Even Hibari has a hard time catching up when Tsunayoshi really puts his mind to it, and even if his body is sore already, he can definitely do that much. So there's no real need to hurry, but - ah. It feels like his sixth sense for Hibari Kyoya has been going off for a while now?

It's like there's a part of Hibari that lives somewhere under his ribs - the incredibly sore one under his right arm that's cracked, probably.

Certainly Shioya had promised him it was bruised at worst, but it was enough to make Tsunayoshi want to cry. "So protect it," Shioya had said in that scary, reasonable way of his, and taught Tsunayoshi some more about how to tuck his elbow in just so.

A sixth sense for Hibari might instead just be a general idea of who the biggest predator on campus was, Tsunayoshi rationalizes. And he's missed morning assembly, so naturally he's in danger -

"Ah."

Naturally they notice each other at the same time, Tsunayoshi digging his heels into the sidewalk and stumbling to a halt as Hibari Kyoya glances over. For a pathetic few confused seconds, Tsunayoshi thinks that maybe Hibari is going his own way again, making sure the first day at the campus he put so much work into was going smoothly.

It's just, he shouldn't be wearing the Nami Middle uniform, if that was so.

"B-but you're a third year!" Tsunayoshi yelps.

Hibari narrows his slanted eyes; he's looking incredibly Hibari today. That is, the way Hibari always looks - long and dark and dangerous with those narrow gray eyes that look purple in the wrong light. Sharp white teeth in the slash of his smirk. Tsunayoshi spares a thought for the fact that he didn't used to notice these kinds of things about Hibari until Hibari broke into his bedroom. It makes him feel itchy and weirdly nervous.

"The same as you," Hibari says, his mouth pulling back into a long slash that only a fool or maybe a serial killer would mistake as a smile.

It's a mixture of that strange tension and the fact that Tsunayoshi has somehow already read his doom and has been preparing for it since he left his house somehow, which gives him the recklessness to answer: "I meant last year! Go be a first year at some other school!"

What exactly is Hibari finding pleasing about that? But he does, it's clear from the way he bares his teeth more like an animal than a man. "Oh?" he says. His hands flicker down around his belt, reaching up under the uniform's sweater vest; no doubt that's where his tonfa are secreted away. "This place is my territory. Are you expecting me to leave it in incompetent hands?"

As if the picking for next year's Committee president will be any better!

Tsunayoshi is distracted enough by his bizarre delusions of Hibari as a fully grown man in a middle school uniform - it's a difficult thing to process, so it's just Hibari with grey hair and wrinkles around his sneer - that he almost gets his head taken off. Thankfully, Shioya was on to something there, and his wry remarks about Tsunayoshi being a quick learner weren't misplaced. The squeal that escapes Tsunayoshi is equally in surprise about being attacked as it is surprised about his own reaction when reflex kicks in and he ducks, pivots, and promptly tries to take Hibari's feet out from under him.

It doesn't work, of course. The only thing that does is make Hibari annoyed and try to break his leg.

If Tsunayoshi gets his leg broken in the street, it's going to cause problems, he thinks, and promptly launches a feint. They'd never covered feints in Hayashi's class, so Tsunayoshi has never used one before; Hibari obviously knows how to counter one, but he doesn't expect one from Tsunayoshi. Ducking under a tonfa moving so fast it feels like it should 'pop' from breaking the sound barrier, Tsunayoshi makes a desperate attempt for the school.

He trips over nothing, which coincidentally allows a tonfa to go sailing, spinning end over end, right over his head, barely brushing his unruly hair. The fact that it hits the school building and chips the bricks before bouncing off wrings a noise better suited to a rubber duck, or chicken maybe, than a kid. Hibari had never thrown his tonfa before! Tsunayoshi is clearly not the only person learning new tricks.

Tsunayoshi manages to bleat out one more desperate "senpai!" before Hibari catches up to him and firmly stomps him into the ground.

The sudden unplanned dodge he'd had to make when the rebounding tonfa nearly hit him on his way back had left Tsunayoshi wide open to taking the one Hibari still had in hand to the back of his knee. He then took a foot to his back, right between the shoulderblades, and before he could even scramble, he was laid flat with an 'omph!' by that exact same.

Some weird part of his brain bemoans the fact that his perfectly washed and carefully pressed school uniform has just been utterly ruined by Hibari before he can even get through the school's front doors. Nana had been so happy to do it for him, too. A 'good impression' for his third year, she'd said.

Hibari steps on him a bit, like he senses his wandering thoughts. "If that's all the effort you're willing to put into it, I should save myself some time and bite you to death, Sawada Tsunayoshi," he says, much sharper than the almost friendly exchange before. Hibari grinds his heel into the bone of Tsunayoshi's spine, enough to be painful as he adds, darkly: "A few months ago, you were willing to die for it."

Is it really Tsunayoshi's fault if his resolve is weak? He honestly hadn't thought it was, but if Ryohei thinks so and so does Hibari, then it must be true.

Even after Hibari lifts his shoe and retrieves his stray tonfa, Tsunayoshi stays laying on the ground for a while after that.

-0-

Seeing as how he missed the school assembly first thing this year, Tsunayoshi goes to the Nami Middle school administration office to get his affairs settled. There he encounters one of the Committee members, Nakamoto who had invited Tsunayoshi and Haru to step on thugs again with them someday; it doesn't take more than a glance to determine that while Nakamoto had been a rookie last year, this year he's taken on new duties.

Although Tsunayoshi has always more or less gotten along with Nakamoto, he's grown slightly since the last time they saw each other, and his new responsibilities sit on him like a badge of honor. He actually manages to look somewhat intimidating in a way, the frown on his face and his folded arms managing not to look silly as he looks down on the school's administrators and says, "Hibari-san will see to it."

After having become the Committee's gofer last year and his encounter with Hibari just a few minutes ago, Tsunayoshi can't really take it seriously. "Nakamoto-kun," he calls out in a friendly way, coming to a stop near the other boy. He blinks. He has the vague feeling that when he first started chasing the Committee around, Nakamoto had been shorter than him… it's no longer the case now.

Nakamoto turns the same severe look on Tsunayoshi that he'd pinned on the adult woman working the desk; the same thought seems to register with him, and Nakamoto straightens just a little - and then he seems to flinch a bit.

"S-sawada," Nakamoto greets a bit stiffly.

Tsunayoshi blinks at him again. It's not quite the stiffness he would expect out of being too friendly with someone while they're attending business. Nakamoto has tensed too much for that - is leaning just slightly away, with his folded arms shifted just so, like there's a rib he's trying to protect; only he has no injuries and Tsunayoshi has no reason to attack him in the first place.

Maybe Hibari staying back a year is causing more problems for other people than it is for Tsunayoshi.

Despite the dirt smudges on his clothes that he wasn't able to shake out, Tsunayoshi does his best to look friendly and harmless and inviting and not at all like someone who would do harm or cruelty. "Do you mind waiting up for me, Nakamoto-kun? It'll only be a moment."

He doesn't have time to get an answer before the woman behind the desk, eager to move on from whatever business Hibari has with the administration - possibly his staying behind a year? - calls Tsunayoshi over. It only takes a few minutes for him to get his papers from her as she's being uncommonly helpful for an adult having to deal with Dame-Tsuna.

It's not like the adults in his life really go out of their way to target him or anything, but it's certainly not as if they've gone out of their way to keep his peers from it. It's always been something about 'developing methods to deal with the unfairness of real life.' He's unfairly a bit pleased that Hibari seems to be turning that right back on them.

After that's sorted and he steps outside the office, Tsunayoshi is pleasantly surprised to see that Nakamoto has listened to his request; the delusion that they might be friends immediately evaporates when he notices that Nakamoto is still guarding his soft belly.

"Sawada," Nakamoto says, uncertain beneath his stiff tone, "you have business with the Committee?"

Tsunayoshi sighs. "Can't I have other reasons for wanting to talk to you than just the Committee?" he asks, although Nakamoto isn't wrong; they haven't gone out of their way to speak to one another if it's not on patrol. This level of tension is kind of weird, though; Nakamoto's hands seem restless somehow, and the sound of his swallow is kind of loud.

Tsunayoshi knows what that means, he just doesn't get why it's being aimed at him.

Trying to soften further, to remind Nakamoto that he's just a useless kid who can't be depended on for anything that Nakamoto would know about, Tsunayoshi offers him a smile. "We're friends, right?" he says, although it's blatantly obvious they're really not.

Nakamoto more or less looks like he's on the same page as Tsunayoshi about that, but strangely enough, his resolve clearly wavers all the same.

"And as friends," Tsunayoshi pushes, doing his best to look completely useless, not even good enough to be the butt of a joke, "you know that I was met at the gate by Hibari-senpai, right?"

That much should be obvious in a glance, even if Tsunayoshi isn't displaying any of the more common signs of such a thing - but if anyone else had roughed him up, then Hibari would have done a lot worse than just stepping on him a bit. The question only seems to make Nakamoto even more nervous though.

"Of course," he says. "But it - isn't it your own fault for putting yourself in that position? On the first day of school? Sa-Sawada-san."

"No, no, no! I know that much," he says, making an effort to lighten his voice more, to open his hands and wave them and to speak wryly. Clearly he isn't being friendly enough to set Nakamoto at ease, with the way he's stuttering. It's a bit frustrating to have someone trying to guard their soft belly from Tsunayoshi when he's not even interested in that in the first place. "I'm not arguing about that at all! It's been like that for a while now - before even coming to Hibari-san's school!"

No one was quite sure what school Hibari had attended before Nami Middle, but he'd made an impression that has turned into a legend almost immediately. Nami had been quite the prestigious school before he'd come and suddenly the requests to attend had dried up. A kid like Tsunayoshi would have never made the cut, before.

Nakamoto looks like he likes the idea of this not being about the tardiness beating even less, and Tsunayoshi runs a hand through his hair, glancing up at his taller peer askance and through his lashes as if the indirectness might somehow reassure Nakamoto. It only serves to make him break out into a weird sweat.

"It's weird, right? Hibari-san was a third year last year already."

"O-oh?" Nakamoto stutters, as if both of them haven't already suffered through two years under Hibari - although Tsunayoshi has always been beneath his senpai's notice until recently. He meets Tsunayoshi's gaze for a split second and inhales sharply before averting his eyes. He looks pale and vaguely terrorized, saying stiffly, "I can neither confirm nor deny any information regarding Hibari-taichou's activities!"

Tsunayoshi stares, wondering just what kind of threats Hibari holds over his men's heads to make them act like this. That aside -

"'Hibari-...taichou?'"

Just what exactly had Hibari been up to over the school break?! Certainly Tsunayoshi learned a lot from Shioya during that time, but this is a much bigger change than could easily be overlooked! Nakamoto had been in the Committee for all of last year, more or less, but to come to think of Hibari in a way as to call him 'taichou' to Tsunayoshi?!

Even worse, Nakamoto looks like he regrets the slip up. Tsunayoshi eyes him with concern for a few moments longer before he ends up taking pity. There's no point in pushing it if Hibari's threats are so impressive that Nakamoto is clamming up like Tsunayoshi has killed five men in front of him. He's never really understood how it was that the Committee worked at all, let alone internally.

"Well - if you can't say, I guess you can't say," Tsunayoshi relents; as important as he feels his question is, there's no real reason for Nakamoto to know anyway. He glances around and then down at the paper in his hand. "Ah, I have to go this way for my class. Maybe we'll talk after school?"

"Y-yes! I understand!" Nakamoto says, clipped. There's something kind of implied in his tone that makes Tsunayoshi look back at him, blinking, but Nakamoto just wrangles out something more of a grimace than a smile, looks mildly horrified by that, and then beats a hasty and not-at-all suspicious retreat.

Left standing in the hallway, blinking after him, Tsunayoshi wonders if Nakamoto is sleeping alright at night. The two of them have a rather anxious personality in common, and the stress of whatever strange threats Hibari has over his Committee might be getting to him.

There isn't a lot of reasons for Nakamoto acting like his life was in danger the entire time they talked.

With a sigh, Tsunayoshi turns back around and heads for his class; it seems unlikely that Nakamoto actually will talk with him after school, if he has to guess about it. Well, if it were just Hibari, then Tsunayoshi thinks that he could try something to ease the pressure, but - what if it wasn't Hibari or Hibari's threats that had been scaring Nakamoto the entire time anyway? Sure, the DC members were scared of Hibari, but never for the sake of their lives. Maybe someone else is putting that pressure on them, waltzing in while Tsunayoshi had been distracted recently? Maybe that gofer job was to keep him out from under foot.

Ahh, if that's true, then Tsunayoshi feels like he'll be really troubled by it.

Generally speaking, Tsunayoshi doesn't worry about Hibari Kyoya; anyone who has known him for one minute gets the feeling that more than any of the other kids his age, Hibari takes care of himself. But a weird feeling settles inside of Tsunayoshi's chest that makes him squint his eyes just a little bit.

Makes his mouth taste like ash. Makes his thoughts settle down, just slightly - go entirely placid, like various bodies of water with something that lurks beneath.

There's no way that Tsunayoshi can rest easy if someone has been poking around where they don't belong.

-0-

(Of course he can't rest easy. His life isn't the sort where 'resting easy' is a thing that he really knows how to do. When one starts life as a shy child, and then gets bullied and other people decide for him that he's useless, there's nothing to relax about.

Ahh, but it's unusual in that Tsunayoshi thinks: 'I can't rest easy' and that thought is followed by 'so what should I do?' He has to be the sort of person that people won't want to leave, because he'll die if he's left alone, but also they have to feel like they're allowed to want to not leave him.

If other people try to pressure them against their will, then they'll leave anyway, right? Tsunayoshi is familiar with that feeling: with 'although I want friends' and 'although I want to be with others,' because of the actions of some people, he's been made to make himself small and unnoticeable, and to remove himself from the ones he wants to spend time with.

If Tsunayoshi wants to survive, then he has to be a person people want to be with, and he also has to make being with him possible. So what should he do? Ahh, being 'capable of anything' isn't a good thing, but if they want to be with him in the first place, can he answer that less honestly? With less than his full heart?

He's already the kind of scum that can't stand up for himself but will turn around and kill people over it.

Wouldn't doing nothing make him even worse?)

-0-

If it's not bad enough that Hibari is sticking back a grade - somehow: if it were possible to do in an easy way, Tsunayoshi would have been held back at least once for being the kind of loser who can't even understand lessons - then Tsunayoshi arrives to homeroom only to find out that this year he'll be sharing it with Kyoko. It could be worse - almost certainly would have been if Kyoko and Ryohei hadn't come over to his house to do 'reparations,' although Tsunayoshi still feels twitchy about that.

As it is, Kyoko smiles at him when he comes in - not unlike the unrelenting glare of the early morning sun - and the taller girl with seaweed hair standing next to her desk gifts Tsunayoshi with a kind of look that would be less shocking coming from a yankii.

Somehow, Tsunayoshi immediately identifies her as the 'Hana' person that Kyoko mentioned, who is 'a bit like Hibari-senpai.' The resemblance is uncanny. Tsunayoshi wonders which of her parents fell that far from the Hibari family tree.

Nervously, Tsunayoshi manages a kind of wave at the two of them, wilting slightly as the death stare he's getting from Hana immediately cranked up into a fully fledged glower. He'd like to tell her that he agrees completely and won't be bothering them anyway, but the angle of Hana's elbows is convincing enough that he's better off just staying away.

"Oh! Tsuna! There's an empty seat here!"

Tsunayoshi probably shouldn't be surprised, considering the way Yamamoto had been behaving last year - it's just that, well, Yamamoto is pretty popular, based on his work with the Baseball Club alone, but he's also tall and good looking and nice. The fact that there's an open seat anywhere in his vicinity is - unusual.

"Oh! Um," Tsunayoshi says, catching sight of Yamamoto's neighbors, who are giving him something of an incredulous look, "That's - thanks but, I should just -" He looks around the classroom, but without people being in their seats before class started, it was hard to tell where he could sit.

"Haha! Don't be like that." Yamamoto radiates good will and good things and sunshine and happiness in a way that distinctly reminds Tsunayoshi of Kyoko before she recognized him - well, not quite. Tsunayoshi is reminded in that he reacts the same way to this as he did to Kyoko before That happened. "Come on! Sit down. You're an interesting kind of guy, Tsuna!"

Sit down and die! at least a few of the faces around Yamamoto seem to say, but Tsunayoshi is kind of helpless in the face of Yamamoto's grin and before he can blink twice or protest it, he finds himself in the desk to Yamamoto's left. Just outside the bubble of Yamamoto's benevolent aura is one full of murder and death.

Ahh. If they try, no one will be happy with the out come of that. Tsunayoshi is good at knowing when he doesn't want to tangle with someone, and these kids are - well. Kids. They're not even at the level of the DC members who cluster around Hibari. He can only hope that they don't come after him with a sincere intent to kill.

"It's Tsunayoshi," Tsunayoshi says under his breath, the only form of rebellion against Yamamoto's overwhelming charisma that he can manage.

"I always heard it as 'Tsuna," Yamamoto says brightly, apparently having the ears of a bat. "Tsunayoshi is kind of a heavy name, isn't it?"

Tsunayoshi wonders if he's being bullied. He hadn't thought so, as Yamamoto had always seemed too kind for that, and it's certainly not a joke that Yamamoto's friends are in on if so. "Yeah, a bit," he agrees, reaching up to tug at his hair. He's heard it all before, even if it's mostly from the adults and not his own peers.

"Guess that means you have a lot to grow into, right? Tsuna," Yamamoto says. "Hey, if it happens while we're friends, I'll call you that way, too!"

"I'll never amount to anything like that!" Tsunayoshi blurts, aghast.

"Haha, so you're saying that you're not worthy of it?"

This is met with wild flailing and sputtering. It sounds like bullying, it really does, but - there's nothing malicious or condescending about the way Yamamoto looks at him or asks the question. As if he doesn't really believe it himself, even though he's asking Tsunayoshi about it. And that's not - Tsunayoshi had never looked at his aspirations that way before. Wanting to be known by his entire first name, while at the same time never foreseeing himself as someone who could comfortably carry such a weighty thing - that's kind of hypocritical, isn't it?

"That's not it either," Tsunayoshi argues, although he's not sure what it is. Yamamoto doesn't seem to mind though, mostly looking entertained and happy to be entertained, and - and the murderous air from earlier is gone. A quick glance shows that Yamamoto's friends now just look fondly exasperated with Yamamoto, as if he's doing something foolish but ultimately harmless. Apparently his Yamamoto-ness cancels out Tsunayoshi's dame-ness.

It's foolish to think back to what could have been before That incident, since no one had given him the time of day back then, but Tsunayoshi still does, just a bit.

Even though the attention coming from the boys around Yamamoto has stopped being murderous, it still feels pointed and resentful. There isn't even any time to let Yamamoto's strange influence work on his friends further, given that class starts then. It's rough. The constant attention ties a knot into Tsunayoshi's back and makes him uneasy. It makes his head begin to ache.

Ahh. They must have really wanted to sit right next to Yamamoto, but instead that kid went out of his way to keep that seat empty and then call Tsunayoshi over, even though he hadn't been at the beginning of the year assembly. They must know about his connections to the Committee. They have to have heard about Ryohei's efforts.

And now he's butting into their space and distracting their star player.

It makes sense why they'd resent him even if he weren't Dame-Tsuna, so he can hardly hold it against them. It still feels like the ticking of the clock begin to slow and grow incredibly loud, like a banging drum. Every scratch of a pencil, every squeak of a chair, every shift where cloth rubs against cloth against skin - it creates a kind of pointed pain that seems to drive itself right through the center of Tsunayoshi's skull. The chalk against the board, scraping and tapping, and every word the teacher says bangs against his eardrums like tiny bombs.

Tsunayoshi had honestly thought he was past these kinds of episodes. He hasn't had one in years - how long has it been since the last one? So many days he'd stayed home miserably from school, not because of the bullying, but because he'd come down with throbbing headaches and develop strange rashes along his arms and shoulders and legs. Across his belly. It hadn't exactly made him a lot of friends when he preferred to sit fretfully in corners instead of interacting with the class.

He's had two unaffected years at this school, so the chances of it being somehow related to the location is unlikely at best.

Tsunayoshi is really starting to think it's not a strange health issue after all. It's a bit hellish for the episodes that plagued him as a child to make a sudden return just as he's turning his life around. It's difficult to focus on the teacher when his head feels like it might split in halves, and when the pain begins to churn his stomach into sick knots.

Still, he tries to follow along, and glances often to Yamamoto's book to tell where he's supposed to be in it. Yamamoto takes no notice of his wandering glances - or doesn't indicate that he notices, anyway - but his friends do. His stomach clenches and churns unpleasantly as Tsunayoshi tries to focus better on what the teacher is doing at the front of the class, rubbing at his eyes.

Because of that, he's unaware of Kyoko putting her hand in the air, but even so, he can't miss the sound of his own name.

"No problem! Sensei, I'll take him to the nurse!" Yamamoto calls out beside him, which - that's not exactly helpful to the things that Tsunayoshi's head is doing, and he clasps a hand to his mouth, coughing wetly.

"No way! Yamamoto, you can't start skipping class on the first day of school," one of the boys around them says, reproachful.

"It's not skipping. It's not like I'm class president or anything, but I'd do the same for you!" he argues back.

"It's different when it's not your club, Yamamoto-kun," the teacher argues. It's not Nezu, that's true, but Tsunayoshi thinks he's probably seen this man talking to him. "If you start off slacking on the first day, then your school career is only bound to get worse!"

"You think so? Maa - but it's the first day and this feels a bit like a civic responsibility, doesn't it?"

Somewhere behind and to the side, someone scoffs about 'Dame-Tsuna' being something as troublesome as that, unable to take care of his own problems and his own self, and the class breaks into laughter. Tsunayoshi lurches to his feet, his stomach tightening and heaving upward dangerously. It feels like there are shards of ice digging through his brain at the same time as it's being consumed by fire.

Their teacher takes one look at his face and, horrified, shouts at Yamamoto to get him out of the classroom. The noise the other students make, laughing and jeering, has Tsunayoshi's head ringing and his vision goes black and spinning red.

He doesn't actually vomit, but it seems like a close thing, standing in the hallway and bent over with one hand braced on his knee and gagging on all the saliva filling his mouth and throat. The way the muscles spasm. He shakes and shivers.

"You're really not doing well at all," Yamamoto says with surprise from beside him, as if Tsunayoshi would fake something like this and draw attention to himself. Tsunayoshi can't even startle, can't defend himself as a hand settles over the back of his neck, and practically swallows the entire stretch of it from hairline to shoulder.

If that's supposed to help, it really doesn't - at least not immediately, anyway. The sounds from the closed classroom door behind them continue to pierce straight through Tsunayoshi's eardrums, and the unfriendly regard with which Yamamoto's friends are surely paying him. The teacher's voice, as he tries to call the class to order, feel like angry drums mushing what's left of his brain that isn't shredded and frying. The space behind his eyes pinches and throbs.

It takes several long moments more before the raw awareness of the long, echoing hallways, the students and teacher behind them in the room, and every last scraping noise of Yamamoto's shirt as he breathes stops shooting through Tsunayoshi's skull. It gentles, eventually, to cold concrete and brick and tile, warm glass, and soft, steady breaths and the squeeze of a calloused hand on the back of his neck.

"Thanks, Yamamoto," Tsunayoshi manages, swallowing a fresh flood of saliva and taking a few deep breaths. It feels safe enough for him to lower his hand, like he might not actually vomit anymore, and he braces both on his knees and just breathes a bit.

"No problem," Yamamoto says, "but we should probably get to the nurse's office. You up to walking?"

"It's - that's not necessary," he says, inhaling and holding it for a second. Yamamoto pulls his hand back and Tsunayoshi straightens, reaching up to brush his collar back into place. He glances up at Yamamoto, and - "Thanks for the save. Sorry for always being a burden."

Yamamoto blinks rapidly, a bit like he's taken a splash of water to the face. A smile settles on it, but it looks more like a reflex to fall back on the way Tsunayoshi does when he starts flailing around. "It's not a burden at all?" he says, almost uncertainly.

There's a look on his face a bit as if he's walked into a game of laser tag unexpectedly when he thought he was joining a baseball game.

Tsunayoshi feels wrung out and twisted up into knots and carelessly pulled apart. He would have rather have gone another ten rounds with Ryohei under Shioya's 'tender mercies' than have another episode like he'd had in his primary schools. "But you've always been looking out for me recently," and framing it that way makes something in him go unexpectedly gentle and soft, the way he always feels about it when it comes to Haru.

Yamamoto's habitual smile quirks at one corner, odd and uneasy. "Haha, have I really?"

Well, Tsunayoshi can't be the only one who acts on instinct without consulting his conscious decisions. He hates being confronted over that as well, so it's obvious Yamamoto would be uneasy about it.

"Well - you saved me, but it's fine now," he says kindly. "I was like this a lot as a kid. There's no point in going to the nurse's office."

Tsunayoshi would honestly rather skip and get bitten to death than revive his reputation of being 'spoiled.' Or maybe he should seek Hibari out on purpose and beg for discipline or something equally weird. Although he wants to live a quiet life, somehow being known as the Committee's gofer, or whatever strange thing Haru was labeling him with when she said 'M' would be better than going back to being 'spoiled' Dame-Tsuna.

"Oh?" Yamamoto looks a bit grateful at the subject change, but now he looks way too engaged. "Is that why you're 'Dame'?"

There's nothing mean or malicious about the question, but it kind of makes Tsunayoshi wilt all the same. He's really too worn out to be coping with Yamamoto's baseline level of energy, he thinks. "I was 'Dame' and then I got sick," he says all the same, maybe specifically because Yamamoto had tried on occasion to save him from Hibari in his own way, and because he's nice, and willingly put his hand on Tsunayoshi without even hurting him.

"Oh," Yamamoto says again, but like this makes perfect sense to him. He looks at Tsunayoshi with big brown eyes, adds "huh," and then says, "maybe you should come over to my house and meet my dad? He's really good at anatomy!"

Tsunayoshi blinks. "Your dad… is a doctor?" That doesn't -

Yamamoto laughs. "He's a chef!"

What kind of meat is he cooking?!

"I have a human's anatomy!" Tsunayoshi yelps, even as Yamamoto takes him by the shoulder and starts guiding him down the hall. Toward the nurse's office, he notices absently, still too horrified by Yamamoto's logic to really worry about that.

"That, too," he agrees. "Well, he runs the restaurant to make a living, but on the side, Dad is actually the master of a martial art or something like that? He understands well how a body works, you know. He's made sure that I'm healthy all these years, and he's helped some of my teammates, too!"

Right - now that Yamamoto mentions it, Tsunayoshi is pretty sure he's heard about his dad being a chef before, or at least running a restaurant. It was - something like sushi, right? Actually, the whole thing sounds like an amazing dream - Yamamoto's father who owned an entire restaurant with his star athlete son, giving them some place to go to celebrate. And to be able to doctor them on top of that?

Some people get all the luck.

"Thanks," Tsunayoshi says, "but there's no point in it. Mom already took me to a doctor. He didn't find anything. It's just me."

"You really should take me up on that, Dad's pretty smart you know. He always seems to see to the heart of the matter-" Yamamoto seems to make himself nervous with all this, rubbing at the back of his head with an awkward expression. "He sure sees through me a lot. It's rough having a parent who notices these kinds of things!"

Well - but, Tsunayoshi has one parent who convincingly played dead for years at a time, that's how little he's around or in contact, and another who he can't understand or empathize with even though they live together. None of which Yamamoto is responsible for, and somehow Tsunayoshi can't even feel jealous of the edges of the expression on his face, where 'having an attentive parent' becomes 'troublesome.'

It's kind of nice, actually, the same way that Haru loves her troublesome mother. Whatever feeling that invokes in him, he thinks it's happiness. He doesn't understand the things they're going through, but somehow it's a relief that they experience them all the same.

So when he says, "I wouldn't know," it comes out gentle rather than wry.

Yamamoto blinks at him. Something goes strange and sharp in his eyes, and the hair on the back of Tsunayoshi's neck goes up to see it - but his heart doesn't so much as thump. Whatever smolders in the core of him doesn't so much as glimmer in response. He blinks back.

Even if Yamamoto doesn't seem likely to find a reason to attack him, Tsunayoshi suddenly realizes that he'd very much rather not face him like that if it can at all be helped.

Looking away first, Yamamoto says, brightly, "well, someday come experience it first hand at TakeSushi, okay?"

It's weird to think that Yamamoto suddenly sounds like an advertisement for the place, Tsunayoshi thinks, although the weirdest bit is how well it matches his usual way of speaking. Or no, maybe that's not weird at all?

Those keen eyes, not unfamiliar for all that Tsunayoshi has never seen them in Yamamoto's face before, disappeared much too easily for Yamamoto not to be practiced at it.

"Well, if it's alright, I'll tell my Mom we've been invited and come see you sometime," Tsunayoshi says. It'll probably make her happy to go out to eat - well, to hear that Tsunayoshi was invited by someone anyway, since she actually seems to enjoy cooking, or finds something good about it either way. As happy as it makes her to visit with the Miuras, and to have tea with Shioya, just the two of them going to a restaurant would probably make her happy, too.

"That's great! You should invite your friends, too - or, ha ha! Don't invite Hibari," Yamamoto says, swiveling slightly to clasp his hands together and bend over them a bit with apologetic smile. "Even if you two are close, I don't think it's the kind of thing he'd like."

"We're not as close as that!" Tsunayoshi yelps, warding Yamamoto off frantically. The idea that Hibari would tolerate him outside of school - or no, it's true that Hibari is still here this year, but that has nothing to do with Tsunayoshi!

"If you say so," Yamamoto says happily, as if his request has been taken seriously. He loops his arm around Tsunayoshi's shoulders, easily dwarfing him, and - he might be no Ryohei or even a Hibari, but the muscles pressed against Tsunayoshi's shoulder and back are kind of excessive for a baseball player, he thinks.

It's hard to panic with the ribs and soft belly that Yamamoto has left wide open, snuggled up to Tsunayoshi's elbow.

It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Yamamoto, careless as he seems, would do by accident.

"How come Sasagawa Ryohei never tried to fight you?" Tsunayoshi wonders aloud, and then blinks. Because surely it would have happened, unless Yamamoto was just that good at smiling with his eyes shut. And Tsunayoshi would have heard about that no matter how self-absorbed he'd been before That.

Yamamoto laughs, a bit too loud and strangely stilted. "He did! We just went to a school together before this," he says.

It wasn't long ago for himself, but Tsunayoshi thinks about two elementary school kids like Ryohei and Yamamoto fighting and even though it's a bit funny, he doesn't laugh about it to Yamamoto's face. After all, Yamamoto is no Ryohei and baseball isn't boxing, so the conclusion is a bit forgone.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since he's older than us, too," he says sympathetically, "but Ryohei-san really will fight anyone. That's rough."

Yamamoto coughs.

Tsunayoshi blinks up at the distinctly uneasy look on his face as Yamamoto inexpertly attempts to avoid his eyes and - "No way! You beat Ryohei back then!"

Pulling back, it's Yamamoto's turn to wave his hands around. "Now, now, Oniisan was fighting everyone back then, especially if his sister was around," he says, "there were certain circumstances, and she was small and cute, and-"

Well, Tsunayoshi shouldn't be surprised that even Yamamoto would fall prey to Kyoko's Kyoko-ness. Come to think of it, with their respective popularity, they could probably be king and queen of the campus if they wanted to be - which is - well, that aside, he's never really noticed them even being aware of one another, so -

Yamamoto has given up on trying to defend himself, like he realizes that Tsunayoshi isn't really paying attention to that part. Rubbing the back of his head with one awkward hand, he says, "anyway, I guess Oniisan is kind of terrifying as an opponent, but - anyone goes down if you hit them hard enough in the head."

Forgetting his weird preoccupation with the idea of Yamamoto and Kyoko, Tsunayoshi stares at him. Yamamoto winces, avoiding his eyes some more. His smile is tight and a bit unhappy, pulled shut over the edges of his teeth so they won't show.

"Kyoko isn't the kind that forgives it when you leave a scar on her brother, haha. I got into a lot of trouble with my old man, back then," he says apologetically. Since when was there more than an arms length of space between them?

Tsunayoshi had never really wondered where the scar that goes through Ryohei's eyebrow came from, but he never would have guessed that someone like Yamamoto would have done it during a schoolyard scrape -

No. That's not right.

Even if he's inclined to think that way, it hadn't been as simple as a 'schoolyard scarpe.' Yamamoto more or less said so himself when he'd casually talked about hitting hard enough.

He must have felt desperate.

"I guess I can't blame her for being worried about him all the time with a story like that," Tsunayoshi says. "I've been facing him myself recently, and he's kind of scary. I could see how in a fight without a coach or anything, it'd get like that."

"Yeah," Yamamoto says, but he's still sounding a too strained. "Only-" he adds, his face turned away, "I didn't think it was scary. It wasn't like that. Oniisan wasn't scary at all." The laugh he gives suddenly is sharp. It sounds like it's painful. "You know? This is the first time I've ever told anyone? No one but us three kids and our parents know about it."

Tsunayoshi stops walking, watching him. It's not exactly the feeling of 'but something scared Yamamoto about it,' but it's not exactly not. Something unpleasant happened, or something Yamamoto didn't like, anyway. Some kind of realization that still makes him uncomfortable to this day.

It's not the same thing at all. No one died. Although Ryohei was hurt, the way it sounds nothing worst than a scar came from it, although even Tsunayoshi knows that head wounds are dangerous.

But even if it wasn't killing anyone, Tsunayoshi can see how having an event like that in his past would stress Yamamoto out. The same kids that crowd around him now that Tsunayoshi is concerned about if they try anything - that story would definitely change how they saw Yamamoto.

If they can decide that Dame-Tsuna is suddenly a dangerous delinquent with their own perceptions on plain facts in front of their face, without even any evidence in favor of it, then it's not a leap. With Yamamoto, a baseball star who scores more home runs than anyone in Namimori records - they'd hear a story about 'hit them in the head hard enough' and they'd remember Ryohei's scar and they'd look at Kyoko, flowering idol that she is, and suddenly the popular Yamamoto who always has someone begging for his attention: that Yamamoto would be standing alone.

Just like he is now, a handful of meters from Tsunayoshi since he hadn't stopped at first. Neither has he turned to see how Tsunayoshi has taken his story, looking instead to the windows that illuminate the hallway with bright mid-morning sun. The edges of his expression are tight and anxious, the sunlight turning the corner of his eye into gold. He doesn't look like the confident, popular baseball star at all.

No wonder talking like an advertisement comes naturally to him, Tsunayoshi thinks. He would never have suspected such a dark past out of him at all.

And then Tsunayoshi heaves a sigh. "TakeSushi," he says, "where is it? It's just that me and my mom never go out to eat, so we don't know our way around the eatery district."

"It's on Fifth," Yamamoto says, turning to look at him with wide eyes. He looks like a startled deer.

"Then sometime soon we'll come intrude." That's not as specific as Tsunayoshi would have liked, and most people would have given Dame-Tsuna a more precise address, but it's close enough. It'll make Nana happy to look around a bit, probably. She so rarely gets a chance to leave the house.

When Yamamoto reflexively smiles, too startled to be honest about anything, Tsunayoshi feels his own mouth quirk back. It's not like he's happy to have met someone like this, but -

"It's an awful thing to have happened," he says, "but from what I can tell, ever since you've gone out of your way not to hurt anyone. Haven't you?"

Yamamoto blinks at him, seemingly astonished. "Well, yeah," he says, rubbing at the back of his head, "baseball injuries are almost entirely self-inflicted... it's really not a violent sport at all, but - somehow swinging a bat felt natural, so-"

"So," Tsunayoshi says, "try to be a little more forgiving toward yourself, Yamamoto-kun. It'll bother me if you're troubled, even if you don't show it. Okay?"

Later, Tsunayoshi will have to come to terms with this - Yamamoto Takeshi suddenly opening up to him and acting like Tsunayoshi's opinion matters: smiling like that just because Tsunayoshi has said he's concerned. Later he'll wonder what kind of weird, parallel universe he's fallen into - and then remember that ever since That incident, nothing about his life has been entirely sane at all. There are still troublesome things that he'll have to deal with, like the return of his fits, and his concerns about being spoiled, and the fact that Haru and Shioya and Ryohei and Hibari all think that his resolve is lacking, but -

Well, for now, he's capable of fixing one small thing. If Yamamoto is suffering in a similar way to him, then at least they'll have each other.

NOTES:

*Katekyo Homewrecker Shioya~!

Despite Tsunayoshi suspecting that something romantic is going on between Shioya and Nana and being like "I GUESS! :\" they're actually just making friends hahaha! He's still at the same stage as Haru where you mistake flame attraction for 'like-like'

* I cracked up for nine years when I read the manga and Kyoya held himself back a grade just to continue tormenting Tsuna lmao.

* Obviously in CanonVerse, Yamamoto didn't give Ryohei that scar, but he's still the same kind of person that could have. It seemed to me that the only way Yamamoto could get people to be close to him was to join the baseball team, and so he got super intense about baseball as the only way to connect with others (thus his 'life being over' when he hurts his arm). He's apparently a 'natural born hitman' which I've taken to mean 'someone with the killer instinct' - a person whose reflex is to kill. I supposed this trait of his was somehow recognized and so in canon, he was ostracized. However, in ChromaVerse, everyone has a family member like that so it doesn't really register and Yamamoto gets to enjoy the idol trope treatment. For a given value of 'enjoy' anyway.

* Yamamoto "Let me immediately tell you my dark past" Takeshi will never call Tsunayoshi by his full name, he's a dirty fucking liar and he knows it. Smiley fox bastard.