Target 52: Tsuna's Insecurities

Throughout his school life, Tsuna had always been nearly repeating a year due to his abysmal grades. The only factors that helped him pass were the pity he'd receive from his teachers and the make-up tests he would study for, since he didn't want to lag behind Kyoko. Back then, he knew the make-up tests were easier than the norm, so he felt no surprise from barely passing. Now, however, Tsuna was someone who was improving.

The current Tsunayoshi Sawada had people who had expectations of him. They saw Tsuna as someone who could become better with time if only he tried. Whether that was true, Tsuna could not admit it yet, but he was sure his past self would have been elated seeing the number '54' written in red on the corner of his test sheet.

His present self was locking eyes with Squalo, and frowning in disappointment. "I'll try harder next time," Tsuna said, though part of him was still doubting his own words.

"You better!" Squalo exclaimed in turn while looking over Tsuna's test sheet, his gaze cold, almost unreadable. "I'm not bothering with you for no reason, damn it! You know you still gotta do the make-up tests, right?! This weak grade isn't gonna compensate for the rest of it!"

"I know..." Tsuna muttered with his head low. "I'm sorry. I can manage with you, but then it's like I forget everything on the tests." Then, however, he couldn't help but blankly gaze upon the ground, reminiscing because of a reflexive understanding he hadn't been entirely honest: "Then again, you... Kind of get carried away a lot because you go in without any plans, so I get lost in the explanations sometimes..."

"Carried away?! As if I get carried away! I explain everything to you like it is! You spout any more baseless excuses and I'll slash you in three, damn it! You're lucky I'm even bothering to tell you anything! Back in my day, I'd study it all myself, and I never complained about my stupid tutors not teaching me properly!" Even now you're getting carried away...!

"Okay, I get it. I said I'd try harder the next time around," Tsuna said if only to appease Squalo.

"Then don't make up crap about my teaching methods!" Squalo countered, and Tsuna was looking towards him again to note a fitting scowl. "And voooooiii, don't interrupt me! You think I'm the bad teacher?! You're the one who's gotta learn to pay attention! If you don't get through adversity yourself, you'll sink to the bottom like any loser!"

"Then, in a way," Tsuna said, also without little thought because of the impact Squalo's assertions had on his aching chest, "if it weren't for you, wouldn't I have stayed a loser?"

Squalo took a moment to ponder Tsuna's words, much to his surprise. He then glanced towards Tsuna's test before eyeing vacantly Tsuna himself, only to say: "You only figured that now?" That hurts more than his regular insults...! "But what about it?! If you keep thinking about it instead of just dealing with it, you're really gonna become a hopeless case! You wanna get better, right?!"

"Y-yeah, I guess..."

"Voi, you 'guess'?! Then what the hell am I training and tutoring you for?!"

"Well..." Tsuna's fisted hands trembled, uncertainty prevailing in his thoughts. "Squalo, do you really think I can do it?"

"Don't go asking me like you can't live without my opinion! What do YOU think?! Do you wanna get better or not?!"

"I, I do!" Tsuna exclaimed, and paused with widened eyes processing his own sudden statement, indicative of his true will. Still in awe, he continued, albeit slowly: "For a while now, I thought... I thought that I might just make it if I tried, and if I really can, I don't want it to go to waste. I want to live up to people's expectations for once."

"Hmph, you wanna live up to people's expectations? People couldn't care less about what you're feeling! If you're doing anything, you're doing it for yourself!"

"For myself..." Tsuna muttered, as though the set of words were foreign to him. Why did he even care so much about people's expectations? He was starting to have a feeling all he wanted was to avoid the responsibility of thinking for himself, and to seek validation; typical No-Good Tsuna. He was too lazy to even act for his own sake... "Well, it's not like this isn't for myself, either," he answered in a low and bitter voice, "Lately, I've been noticing all the changes that've happened just because I got better and, to be honest... I don't want it to end."

"So that's the true reason, huh?" Seeing Squalo smirk, as if finding in Tsuna's intent something more amusing than his uncertainty, Tsuna blinked, questioning his self-criticism. Squalo looked towards the table of the bedroom, and placed Tsuna's test sheet over it with needless intensity. "Then sit down already! We gotta go through everything you did wrong, and you're gonna listen to all of it, no matter what! You're gonna regret criticizing me of all people for not doing a good job, you brat!" Squalo's words, however, were clear enough that Tsuna perceived nothing to conclude from the topic; nothing to judge or condemn. He nodded, noticing already that he would smile despite himself, and complied, because, for all the arguments the two had, Tsuna never could stop respecting Squalo deep down.

To Squalo, meanwhile, Tsuna's lax demeanor was another indicator of his disrespect, and the supposed source of all arguments to begin with. He had refuted Tsuna's nonsense, at least, so he did not hear any cheeky comebacks or insecure babbling that would disturb his tutoring. After all, Squalo had already wasted too much time on Tsuna to back down, or even notice that he was far too deep in the challenge of having something good to proudly write on his reports about Tsuna.

Author's Notes:

Since the last target, this story got 6 favorites and 4 followers; thank you very much! I missed December because of real life reasons and because I also had to update my other story, but to compensate, I'm gonna upload 4 targets for January (I always think this but years later nobody's really gonna understand the timeline of these notes lol) so that's hopefully neat! This time around, not only did the word limit not cooperate with me, but the editing process was a pain because I kept re-writing the dialogue and re-watching the anime for reference until I actually just chose to keep most of the original in the end, because Tsuna is conceivably at a point he's pretty honest with Squalo. Squalo, meanwhile, is slow-burning harder than all fanfiction romances combined, because he's still too busy thinking about Tsuna's performance rather than Tsuna himself, hahaha. I swear this is all going somewhere?