Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is the property of Amano Akira, the author of Skywards is just a humble fanfic author...
~8~
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Hide smacked the alarm clock next to his bedside table and it turned off…five minutes later he did the same thing. Five minutes after that, twenty alarm clocks went off.
"GAAH! MY EARS!" the boy screamed and fell out of his bed. As he blinked in and out of consciousness he saw an upside down version of Reborn looking down at him.
"A Boss should wake up in time for lessons," the infant stated.
"It's Summer Vacation, though!" Hide argued as he sat upright and looked up at one of the hundreds of alarm clocks that were now surrounding him, "And it's 7am! I don't have anywhere to be until eleven and I was going to go work for Gramps!"
"Really? Then you can start your first assignment today," Reborn responded while holding a suspicious looking file in one hand.
"Not that Grandfather!" he yelled, "The other one! He owns a sushi restaurant on the other side of Namimori, and an old friend of mine works there too!"
"A Sushi Restaurant, huh?" someone remarked. The door to Hide's closet slid open and revealed that Anna was inside it, "Is that a fun place?"
"Is that where you've been sleeping!" he gawked at the sight, something suddenly dawned on him and he asked cautiously, "W-Where's your brother…?"
"Right here," answered a voice from somewhere underneath his bed.
"Why are you under my bed! ?" Hide gaped and added after a second of thought, "In fact, why are you two even in my room?"
"We need to make sure that nobody is going to kill you in your sleep," Adam explained as he came out from under the bed, "And this is best way to do it!"
Watching the assassin crawl out from under the bed did not ease the young Boss at all, "H-How long have you guys been there?"
"Ever since we moved in," Anna stated.
"You've been there for four days?" Hide gawked, he was pretty sure that keeping a girl in his closet and a guy underneath his bed would not only raise unwanted questions but also get him arrested.
"Why are you mad, Boss? Reborn said that you were fine with it," Adam claimed.
"He did, did he?" the Japanese boy asked and turned to Reborn, he nearly fell over when he saw the baby in his bed.
He just wanted to sleep in my bed!
"Well, I'm gonna go now," Anna suddenly announced as she jumped out of the closet and pulled out a backpack from within.
"Huh? Where are you going?" Hide asked.
Anna looked at him and then over to where her brother was, who quickly shook his head at her.
"I need to check on something that's around here," she answered.
"Uh, okay?" the boy raised a confused eyebrow but was kicked in the back of the head by Reborn before he could ask any more questions.
"While Anna's away, you and Adam are going to be under my instruction," Reborn stated.
"Adam too?"
"Yup!" the American grinned, "Reborn's given me the honor of teaching me alongside you! You're so lucky to have such an awesome tutor, Boss!"
"I am, huh?" Hide muttered with dread, he then shook the thought from his head and told them, "I have work in downtown Namimori in a few hours."
"Can I come with?"
"No."
~8~
"I said you couldn't come with me!" he yelled at Adam and Reborn.
"But Boss, I'm here to protect you," the foreigner responded innocently.
"And I'm here to tutor you," stated the hitman.
"Somehow, you both aren't making very good arguments…" Hide sighed.
"What? Hide?" Hide turned around and saw his childhood friend, Suzuki Kouhei holding a wooden tub filled with fish and ice.
"Suzuki!" he brightened immediately.
"Hide, I didn't think you were coming until eleven, why so early?" Suzuki asked.
The blonde-haired Japanese grimaced and jerked a thumb at the group he had come with, "Because of them…"
"Hm?" he raised an eyebrow and saw Reborn and Adam standing a few feet away behind Hide, "Are they friends of yours, Hide?"
"Not even close."
"I'm Hide's tutor, Reborn."
"I'm Hide's bodyguard, Adam."
"Don't say it so bluntly!" Hide yelled.
"Ku…" Suzuki chuckled and tried holding back the laughter until he couldn't anymore, "Kahahahaha! Oh geez, Hide, you're hilarious! You got the foreign kid from school to be your bodyguard? Hahahah!"
"Geez, Suzuki…" the boy sighed and shook his head, "I don't think you fully understand the situation…"
"C-come on in," he chuckled and ignored the comment his friend had just made, he then gestured for the group to come into the old, Japanese-style restaurant, "Just pick a table and make yourselves at home since you guys are the first ones here."
They went inside and found that the inside was just like the outside: old and battered. The tables and the chairs were new and so was the sushi bar, but the floors, the paper screen windows, the creaky sliding doors, and the dim lights made the place look abandoned. As soon as they went in, Suzuki headed straight for the kitchen behind the bar.
"Suzuki, where's gramps?" Hide asked.
"He went out to the sea to get some more fish and won't come back till sundown," he hollered from inside the kitchen.
"Eh? Is that why he asked me to come?" the boy sighed, "I can't even make sushi as well as he does…"
"Don't worry, Hide," Suzuki said cheerfully as he walked out of the kitchen, "Just leave everything to me and wait on tables."
Hide looked at him doubtfully for a few seconds, but smiled helplessly. That was Suzuki for you, maybe it was his raven black hair or his calming dark eyes but Suzuki had this strange way of calming Hide and keeping him from stressing out too much. They had both gone to the same elementary school and were in the same classes up until their second year of elementary school. This, however, didn't stop their long-running friendship.
Due to the influence that Hide's grandfather had on him, Suzuki was also on the baseball team and was probably the team's best player despite being a first-year. Well-liked, respected by all his teammates and the students, not to mention he was pretty popular also, Suzuki was pretty much everything that Hide had wanted to be; cool, normal, popular, athletic, normal, nice, normal, normal…But Hide never had the stamina to be athletic nor the charisma to be cool and popular, so he had just stuck with not being outstanding in general.
"Hey Hide, I heard that you ran around town half-naked on the first day of school," Suzuki began conversationally from behind the bar, "And I saw you running around the school, too. I was in tutorials for math at the time though, so I couldn't yell out for you."
"Y-You saw me do that huh?" Hide muttered with dread.
"Yeah, I didn't know that you could even have the guts to do that!" he laughed cheerfully, "To think that you would run around anywhere naked is something that I couldn't even believe! Why didn't you tell me you were going to do it? I would've cheered you on!"
"Um, it was something that just came up suddenly…" Yeah, Reborn shot me.
"Oh yeah, Hide, we aren't really going to open up shop for another hour," Suzuki began while shaking his head, "And I woke up early this morning to get the fish and ice ready, I even sharpened the knives too. So there's not really anything for you to do right now."
"It's okay, I'll just hang around here then," Hide shrugged.
"It's going to be busy around lunch though right?" Reborn asked.
"Hm? Well not really," Suzuki shrugged also as he wiped the counter, "The shop is old and the owner didn't reopen it until ten years ago, by then most of the regular customers were either gone or…well you know, gone."
"Yeah, it looks like this place hasn't been refurbished in a while," Adam observed.
"That's why we always send out flyers and coupons and stuff…" he sighed disappointedly, "But it seems that nothing will really help this place."
"Can I see one?" Reborn asked.
"Huh? Uh, sure, little guy," he nodded and handed Reborn a piece of yellow paper that came out from underneath the sushi bar.
The infant read it in silence until he finally said, "I see what the problem is, your paper is yellow."
"No-duh," Hide dead-panned.
"No, look at the shade of the yellow," Reborn pointed out, "It's almost a green color, who would want to eat from a sushi restaurant that reminds you of puke?"
"I see your point little guy!" Suzuki noted, wide-eyed as he took back the flyer, "This makes a whole lot more sense now! Can you guys help me pick out a new color for the flyer?"
They all agreed and he got out a box full of different colored paper. He took out one piece of paper that was a different color for all of them to examine.
"What about red?"
"That gives off a powerful vibe, but for a restaurant, you don't want people to think of blood."
"Purple?" He pulled another sheet from the box.
"Purple's too moody."
"White?"
"White blends in too much, it doesn't stand out." Reborn dismissed.
"Green and yellow are out of the question, so what about orange?" Suzuki suggested while holding a bright orange paper.
"Orange is an idiot's color."
"Uh, okay…what about blue?"
"Blue…" Reborn thought about it, "Blue can remind people of sadness, but a light blue should be fine, especially for a sushi restaurant."
"Perfect, then!" Suzuki exclaimed happily, "Thanks...uh, Reborn, right? You guys can have some sushi then, on the house! You guys just have to wait until opening time okay?"
"Okay," both Adam and Reborn nodded.
~8~
"Th-they ate all the sushi twenty minutes after opening…" Hide paled as he stared at the massive amount of empty plates with amazement.
"Wow, Hide. Your friends sure have large appetites," Suzuki spoke while trying to maintain his calm demeanor.
"The sushi was okay," Reborn shrugged as he cleaned his teeth almost comically with a toothpick and burped.
"You ate most of it!" his student yelled.
"I'm gonna go and look for some more fish in the freezer, it won't be as fresh but it'll do for today," Suzuki announced before walking back into the kitchen.
Hide turned to Reborn and Adam and groaned, "Geez, what am I supposed to do with you guys? You could've at least stopped when you ate the first three portions!"
"Boss, you need to know something about me," Adam began; he abruptly stood up, rested his hands on Hide's shoulder and with a completely serious face stated, "I can't help myself."
"That's a ridiculous excuse!"
"It might be, but it's true," he shrugged and sat back down in his chair to resume picking his teeth with a toothpick.
"Don't worry you guys. Luckily, the old man remembered to plug the freezer in last night," Suzuki announced cheerfully as he came back from the kitchen, "We'll have to wait for them to thaw, but we'll have enough sushi for the end of the day. As long as your friends don't eat it all, hahaha!"
The boy laughed this off and went back into the kitchen to prepare the fish. Meanwhile, Hide stayed in his spot and waited for Suzuki to go before eyeing Reborn and Adam carefully and suspiciously.
"Did you guys hear that?" he asked them but they were both too busy looking through the menu again, "Did you guys just come here to eat then?"
"Hm?" Adam looked up from his menu and warned, "Believe it or not Boss, your life is actually in danger."
"Don't start up with stupid excuses!" he hissed.
"It's not stupid, Hide," Reborn looked up from behind his own menu and affirmed, "You are the heir to the Vongola Family. It would not be strange if people want you dead."
"Exactly, take that guy who hired me and my sister," Adam plained, "If you didn't offer that whole Vongola Protection plan for us, you would be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by now."
"Does that mean that the person who hired Hide was male?" the infant asked.
"I never said that."
"Can't we do the same with other assassins then?" Hide wondered as he felt the subject at hand was slipping away.
"That probably won't work, we Grandharts have our own circumstances for joining you," the foreigner answered, "Plus we think you're a pretty nice guy and we're the type of assassins that listen to our victims first, as long as they don't try to kill us back. Point is, if the person who had hired us had hired anyone else first then you would have been killed without even knowing it."
Hide's mouth hung open at what Adam said while the foreigner looked calmly back to his menu.
So this is hell now, huh? he thought.
~8~
The day passed by fairly quickly since there were only five actual customers that had come into the restaurant. Hide was stuck with waiting on tables, busing them, and also making sure Reborn and Adam didn't eat the restaurant out of business.
"You can go home now, Hide," Suzuki told him from the kitchen as he wiped the bar counter clean for what could have been the eightieth time that day.
"I can? Aren't there gonna be anymore customers?" the boy asked.
"Nah, most of the customers only come around the afternoon and lunch, so I'm gonna close up early and wait for the old man to come back."
"Okay then." Hide nodded and looked over to Adam and Reborn to tell them to get ready to leave, they were both rubbing their stomachs contently.
"Now we'll be home in time for dinner," Reborn noted.
"You both already ate!" Hide yelled at them and followed them as they left.
Suzuki chuckled at the display and to himself as resumed the task of cleaning the bar and places where Hide had failed to get at. As night fell, Suzuki found himself watching sports on the small tv on the bar when the door slid open, he looked up and smiled brightly at the newcomer.
"Welcome back Mr. Yamamoto!" he said, "What kind of fish did you get today?"
An old, fit Japanese man had entered the restaurant. He had a bright grin on his face and was wearing blue work pants, a dirty apron, and an equally dirty long sleeved shirt, his head was covered with a grey hat, the kind of hat that old men wear when they are going to work in a dirty place early in the morning. Wrinkles edged his eyes and creased his forehead, more of them were at the corners of his grinning face decorating a thin and almost faded scar on his chin. The man had slung over his shoulder a hoard of fish and under another arm a large tuna.
"Got some tuna and a good deal on some fish that were caught this afternoon!" he laughed heartily, "What's up with you? Did my grandson come today?"
Suzuki nodded cheerfully and said, "Hide came. He came with a friend from school and some baby dressed in a suit. Oh, and get this; he said that the baby was his tutor! Isn't that hilarious?"
"Tutor, huh?" Yamamoto mumbled thoughtfully as he walked to the back of the kitchen to put the fish away, "Looks like something is gonna happen…"
"What'd you say old man?" Suzuki asked.
"Nothing, nothing," the man shook his head as he hauled the fish into the freezer and grinned widely, "Just remembering old times! Hahah!"
~8~
"Quit eating my food!" Hide yelled as Adam and Reborn stole his food off of the plate, "Didn't you guys eat enough at Gramps' restaurant?"
"Oh my, Hide-kun, I'll get you another plate," said his mother as she got up to get more food, "How was work at Takesushi?"
"It was okay," he shrugged, "We ran out of fish, but there was more in the freezer."
"Oh my, was dad there at least?" she asked.
"Nope, gramps was out by the sea today."
"Geez, that dad of mine is so selfish sometimes, sending kids out to handle a restaurant all on their own!" she huffed as she handed her son the plate, "You know, ever since I was little he would always take off and go who knows where and come back who knows when without telling me or mom! Just up and disappear, oh my, and then he would come back all smiling and stuff like nothing every happened! I don't know why mom stayed married to that guy for so long!"
"You know, Hide," said Reborn, "That Suzuki Kouhei seemed like a very capable candidate as a member of your family."
"Whatever you're thinking about, stop right now!" the boy instantly shot the idea down.