Chapter Three : No Survival Instincts


The fact of the matter is that Tsunayoshi has been a sickly child for some time - only it's not the kind of illness that anyone takes a person to the doctor for. There's nothing brewing inside his lungs or growing in his bones or weakening his muscles… or at least there hadn't been, until Tsunayoshi had done That, but even those things aren't the sort that a doctor can fix, he's pretty sure.

He's been a sickly kid all this time, sitting in his room and being clumsy, with some kind of heavy, suffocating weight on him that he can't ever seem to shrug off. It's heavy. It's like being covered in a wet blanket, or encase in ice. His blood circulation must be poor, since his feet and fingers are always cold. Although his heart beats just fine in his chest, somehow something is wrong, probably.

So it doesn't come as a large surprise that Nana is pleased that Tsunayoshi is up and out of the house at all hours of the day after school. It starts when she takes him to the self-defense classes, and by the time he starts to get comfortable with Hayashi-sensei and the things that he's learning there, Nana his clasping her hands together with bright eyes and saying, "My, my, but Tsu-kun is so active now! Tsu-kun must really love his martial arts classes!"

Tsunayoshi's head feels stuffed full of cotton, somehow sluggish despite the way he's seen the world move so fast, but he tries to grimace a smile for Nana's sake.

The classes don't have anything to do with it at all. Tsunayoshi is under the lash of his own instincts.

-0-

Those instincts of his are annoying, tiresome things. They drive him to tail after Hibari and his thugs, the Disciplinary Committee. Those guys tend to object to an interloping outsider rather strenuously. He thinks that most of all, somehow they're trying to stand between Hibari and himself, and for Hibari's sake.

Isn't that a weird thought? What possible danger could Tsunayoshi ever present to the Demon of Nami Middle?

And in any case, it's not as if Hibari is grateful for it, either. He mostly ignores the antics of his underlings up until Tsunayoshi starts to be able to apply what he's learned in Hayashi's dojo despite not having any particular desire to hurt any of those underlings. When he starts to hold his own is more or less when Hibari's temper seems to snap. Every, every, every time, he comes around and bites everyone to death, including his own men.

Well. It's pathetic when you can't even beat up Dame-Tsuna, probably, he thinks. Up until now, no one has really bothered to try after discovering that he either runs away and hides, or just ducks down and covers his head with his arms until it's all over no matter what. It must not be fun to bully a kid who passively accepts his fate.

But those beatings that Hibari gives to his own men don't ever seem to hinder their loyalty in the least. It's truly some bizarre pecking order. Has he brainwashed them so thoroughly that they'll accept any amount of abuse as their due? Honestly, Hibari barely seems to tolerate them on a good day nevermind when Tsunayoshi is around - he's always snapping about being crowded, and sneering about 'pretend-carnivores.' If you can't even handle one brazen herbivore, he says, and then sometimes: 'small animal.'

Talk like that lends the thought that Hibari Kyoya must fancy himself as some kind of apex predator. He's a little like a wolf, Tsunayoshi thinks, only no: wolves are pack animals after all, and Kyoya doesn't suffer the company of others willingly. So maybe Hibari is more like a tiger instead, with his tonfa playing the part of prosthetic fangs.

And like a tiger, his hunting range is much wider than just that place lair he guards the most diligently.

Out in the streets of Namimori, there people who are much less friendly than the average adult going about their life. Over the years of walking himself to his school campus since he was a little kid who first lost all his friends to his own clumsiness, Tsunayoshi has become well acquainted with this fact. None of them had ever tried to lay a hand on him until a month ago when they'd taken Nana first, but he's learned in his own way how to spot and avoid them, doing his best to blend into the background.

There's nothing particular that stands out about these people. They don't carry weapons, and they don't have a lot of tattoos, or jewelry, or wear any particular suits. It's not like in the movies, where they have a sort of uniform so the people watching can pick them out immediately. Tsunayoshi can't point out any one thing that makes him realize that he's dealing with one of these back alley thugs, but he gets good at it, and at avoiding them, or at least being beneath their notice. And being beneath their notice is a worthy endeavor, after all. They keep causing so many problems. It's because of them that kids drop out of school.

Tsunayoshi vaguely remembers Iemitsu visiting when he was a child. He'd been seven, at that time, and it was the first visit after Tsunayoshi's fifth birthday and that scary stranger that had come home with him, and it's after this visit that Iemitsu will tell Nana to say that he'd 'become a star.' Iemitsu had seemed distracted for that entire trip, and then he'd taken Tsunayoshi out for ice cream. He'd put Tsunayoshi up on his shoulders, and he can vaguely remember being a child and impressed with the mountain of strength that his father had seemed to be-

(although, part of him had been tight and anxious the entire time. Quiet and wary. Iemitsu has never- so why had he-)

And on their way to the ice cream shop, they'd met a woman. Tsunayoshi remembers that her hair had been beautiful: black as the darkest night, and with a slight wave. Her skin pale. Her eyes darker still. The look on her face had been kind, but something about her gaze had made Tsunayoshi grasp at Iemitsu's jaw and wish that his feet were properly on the ground so that he could duck behind his father's leg.

Iemitsu, his hands loose around Tsunayoshi's ankles, said something like: "I really love this peaceful town that's been created here."

"Of course," she'd replied. "Other than the occasional idiot, we all know to look after it well." And then she'd glanced up at Tsunayoshi and smiled, and Tsunayoshi's heart had thumped unpleasantly, and she'd said: "That one as well, one day. Perhaps."

Iemitsu laughed then, and though it sounded relaxed, something about it made Tsunayoshi glance down at him with concern. "No way," he'd said, "my little Tunafish takes after his papa's family too much for that."

But the woman had just tilted her head, her eyes hidden beneath a curtain of lashes, and said, "is that so? Well, I guess you never know."

It's such a small thing to remember so clearly. It isn't much. But just as they had that time, the adults keep talking over the heads of children without thinking about it, underestimating how much those kids will remember even if they don't understand it all at the time. Tsunayoshi remembers this particular incident now as he trails along behind Hibari and watches someone whose age is closer to his own than adulthood bare those metal fangs against the dodgy people who roam the streets.

More than just the individuals or two or three adults who would sometimes corner Tsunayoshi and tease him in strange, adult ways, there are plenty of small time operations running on the street, and Hibari Kyoya seems to hate these the most. It's not like they're hidden at all, but the men in the police uniforms don't lift a finger no matter what.

There's no way a teenager with a pair of tonfa should be able to wander into a building and cow the adults inside to the point that plenty of them are more interested in running away. Where are the guns? Where are the knives? Tsunayoshi lingers outside, out of reach of the small crew that Hibari brought with him to such an endevor and left hidden in the streets, and wonders. Why won't these men fight back?

Tsunayoshi doesn't understand it at all. It's not funny to watch in the first place. For what reason did men like these take first Nana and them himself, and hold them for three days and tell them to call Iemitsu? For what reason is it that now they run away from a kid not that much older than Tsunayoshi without even firing back. It's not like the guns are fake, or the knives, or the chains or the bats.

It's not funny, but some part of him is satisfied to watch it anyway. Whatever their reason for not fighting back against Hibari Kyoya, they won't have time to hold anyone else hostage if they're too busy running and screaming with bruises and blood and broken teeth. Isn't it more fair this way? Scum like that should be running and screaming for their lives.

He just doesn't get why it has to be from a teenager when aren't there other adults who should be cleaning this mess up?

-0-

"You're so easy to fool," his peers tell him when he falls for it again and again and again. Then Tsunayoshi starts telling people "No way," no matter if he believes them or not, and suddenly gets some kind of weird nickname - being 'no good' for anything, not even a laugh.

Despite being wary about, Tsunayoshi is still an idiot who comes to believe in the certainty that if Hibari is on the case, there's no way the small time scum can kidnap anyone. It's almost a relief to think that. Although he already knows that Hibari is only a little older than him and just one person aside since he won't like the Committee get involved, and that the Namimori that Hibari seems passionate about is much too large for just one person to guard even if they are as crazy and as terrifying as Hibari. No, even if Hibari Kyoya was an adult, there's no way just one person could do it themselves.

There's no particular reason that Tsunayoshi decides to take the long way home from school. The one he already takes wanders quite a bit in respect to wanting to avoid the paths that students from other districts take home, and the weird adults who don't have tattoos. It's familiar enough to him that he could take it with a blindfolded and with headphones on.

There normally wouldn't be a lot of overlap from Nami Middle and the other nearby schools, but they've reached the age where instead of going straight home, the students want to hang out and have a snack and have a little fun. It's enough of an overlap that Tsunayoshi realized a long time ago that he gets enough harassment from his fellow students of Nami Middle, he doesn't need any additional hassle from the 'elite' school nearby. Bad enough that he gets teased about his grades by kids of average intelligence.

Still, that day, there's something appealing about taking the long way home. There are a few yen in his pocket, and for some reason it occurs to him that maybe bringing home some kind of sweet snack for Nana would be nice. Even if he's not sure what to make of the fact that she claims to want to protect him, she's been looking happier these days. For some reason, he thinks she doesn't usually look happy enough.

In either case, the urge comes upon him to go down by the sweets shop. He doesn't have much of a sweet tooth himself, but he's not against eating sweet things either. It feels more like a reward.

He doesn't have a lot of allowance money, so it's one of the cheaper shops he steps into for a treat. There's some girls from the nearby all-girls school - a few of them notice him and turn toward each other with voices turning a little clippy the way it does when they're saying unkind things. Words have long since lost their sting, honestly, but the reaction still manages to make Tsunayoshi feel a little heavy - a little cold, a little remote. The difference between himself and the people his own age seems to keep increasing.

Maybe he should have thought it through before he exposed himself to this kind of atmosphere. Tsunayoshi isn't cool or smart enough to show his face by himself in this kind of popular place without having his status rubbed in his face.

(Usually it'd feel a bit like staring at them through some kind of impenetrable wall of glass. Hearing a party going on next door through paper walls, but unable to join in. Ever since That though, something sits strange inside his chest. He touches his cold fingertips to the heel of his palm and keeps expecting the skin to stick.)

Ducking his head and rounding his shoulders, Tsunayoshi ignores it with the long skill of someone who is often greeted with this kind of reaction.

A bit later, he leaves the shop alone with a paper bag in hand, focusing instead on the slice of cake inside it and the expression that Nana will probably make when he gives it to her. It's not exactly a 'good mood' but that awful feeling from the sweet shop is falling behind him - and then, Tsunayoshi hears something off the main street. Coming to a halt, he looks down the sidestreet. It's not a residential neighborhood, and-

He has a bad feeling. It's the kind of bad feeling that won't leave him alone unless he goes and checks it out. He glances down at the paperbag dangling from his hands and after a second moves to keep walking.

The sound is distant. Words. The high spike of a girl's voice over the flatter, rounder tones of grown men. They're too far for him to hear individual words, but the tones- the roll and clatter of a certain way of speaking that Tsunayoshi had listened to for three days. That's the sound that reaches his ears, like the party next door suddenly cut through with a terrified scream.

He's rounding the corner before the cold chill can fully go down his back.

It's clear that the girl, about Tsunayoshi's own age and dressed in one of those cute all-girl school's uniforms, hasn't gone with them entirely willingly. One of the three has her caught tightly by the shoulder, even as she leans away, pulling away from the car and its open door. Her cheeks are bright and her eyes sharp. She's by far not strong enough to struggle against three fully grown men, but with a twist, she manages to shake loose from her blazer.

It's not a senseless move, as her arm slithers free, because she lifts her hands up and there's a modest noise as paper confetti explodes from poppers in her hands. It's enough to startle the men that she manages to scoop her bag up and run-

All of two meters, and then the men catch her, and one raises his hand and-

It's not like Tsunayoshi had been standing around gaping at the scene. They really were that far from the main road. But the man raises his hand and Tsunayoshi's heart ignites, and his brain begins to burn. That burn surges down his back, down his thighs and into his calves and feet, and suddenly he's moving faster than the rest of the world, or at least it feels that way.

His fighting instincts are uncommonly good. Tsunayoshi scrambles up the hood of the car, climbs up without losing the speed of his dash, and jumps. No part of this is kickboxing, but Tsunayoshi drives both heels into the closest man's shoulders, just below his neck. The landing is messy, but he doesn't let that stop him from shifting into his next attack, staggering to a stop and bending while turning to the man that is letting go of the girl.

"Run!" Tsunayoshi snaps at her, then throws everything he has into the strike he aims up into the man's belly. It's a good, hard strike; he hears the man's breath go out with a grunt. Then the man's elbow crashes down on the back of his neck and he can't breathe himself.

A hand fists into his hair, shoving him slightly back, and he sees the knee coming at his face; it's all he can do to block, getting both of his arms in place so they catch most of the blow. The girl is shouting, and the men are yelling, and the leg next moves to kick Tsunayoshi in the gut.

The way he's bent over, for the kick to connect, Tsunayoshi will be practically laid over the leg. He doesn't precisely let it hit, but catches it, and digs his fingers into the tendons in the back of the man's leg and then savagely bites him.

In situations of life or death, no attack is 'dirty.' There are two grown men, and a thirteen year old boy, and a girl.

Tsunayoshi is tossed aside with a curse. He hits the road hard, rocks and broken glass and breathless. "You stupid kid," the man says, gravel crunching under his shoes, and Tsunayoshi scrambles.

"Let go of me!" the girl shouts, sounding less afraid and now a bit furious.

Right, Tsunayoshi has no time to be laying around trying to catch his breath. He heaves himself to his knees and palms, and then to his feet, and tries to open his awareness to the situation. The man he first attacked is still down - he can see blood - but there's still two more, and he can't rely on the girl distracting the man. She'll just end up -

Tsunayoshi comes up swinging, because that ferocious burning is eating through his muscles and hollowing him out, clearing his nerves of pain and his brain of all the nasty cluttering things. Things like the blood on the man's forehead, and that bloodied room and his sticky clothes, and his mother's wide, bloodshot eyes and the way her lip split open. All of that is consumed to make the flames burn brighter, and what's left is calmness. Clarity of purpose.

What Tsunayoshi lacks in height, he makes up for in kicking the man's footing out from under him, then half-climbing him and grabbing him by the ears and kneeing him in the face. Much like the man had once tried to do to him.

Seeing his buddy go down, the man who has been trying to restrain the girl without getting entirely battered by her bookbag lets go of her. She stumbles back, clear, and Tsunayoshi sweeps into his next move: two steps forward, then duck and put his momentum into the heel that slams into the man's knee.

The man curses and goes down, and the girl winds up big time, and slams her book bag into his head with all her might. Tsunayoshi is caught enough by surprise by her finishing move that he just kind of stares at her for a second, during when she grabs his wrist and then begins to actively drag him away.

"Come on!" she shouts, "before they get back up!"

It's not a bad idea, so Tsunayoshi eventually gets his priorities rearranged and runs after her. She's clearly familiar with the area, a little bit more than Tsunayoshi himself, and after a few twists and turns down the smaller streets, they emerge back into a heavily trafficked mainstreet.

Only at that point does she stumble to a stop, bending in half with her hands on her knees and panting heavily. Tsunayoshi, slightly more athletic than her and also not scared for his life, isn't quite so bad off.

"That," she says, sucking for air, "was amazing!"

Tsunayoshi startles and stares at her. "What," he says.

With effort, she straightens. She's completely flushed and wet and sticky with sweat, but - it's kind of like she's glowing? And her eyes? Look a bit like? They're? Sparkling? "You just! Wham! And pow! You!" She launches herself into the air, coming down on her heels. "Bang!"

Tsunayoshi vaguely realizes he's watching a bastardization of the move he'd entered on. "Um," he says.

"I thought things like that only happened in movies!" she cries, energetically thrusting her arms to the sky, practically shouting into it. Her recovery period and stamina are frankly astounding.

If only. Tsunayoshi looks around and figures he's got his heading right, and will be able to make his way home. Glancing over at her, he says, "in real life, real people actually get hurt."

It's only after the girl freezes a bit and turns her head to stare at him that Tsunayoshi realizes that he's still speaking in that flat kind of way that happens when he's under total calm. It seems to drain the flushed excitement out of her, and she slowly lowers her arms to fold them against her chest.

After a second, she musters herself a bit, her smile coming back but a little twisted and uncertain. "I know that," she says, and giggles a bit fictitiously. "That's not the first time I've been kidnapped, you know."

And even though it's a bit rude, Tsunayoshi stares at her and says, "Why?"

Self-consciously, she drops her gaze with that same insincere smile, and picks her bookbag up. She slings it over her shoulder and says, "because. Mom's no good at making friends."

It's a good, dramatic departure line, if this were a movie, Tsunayoshi thinks inanely. But the girl just stands there, fiddling with her book bag strap and smiling in a way that really makes him uncomfortable. It's the same as when Nana smiles because she's trying not to cry, honestly. He knows about how much to fix it in this situation as he does in any other, which is to say: no clue at all.

He's vaguely aware of being hollow - that the fire has consumed everything and burnt itself out - as he looks at her standing beside him, the flush of exertion still in her cheeks but the gleam of her eyes dimmed and her smile ... it's the worst kind of smile Tsunayoshi has ever seen.

"Um," he says, "Your leg is hurt. If it's okay with you, you can come to my house and we can bandage it?"

The smile drops off her face and she glances at him, following his gaze down. He doesn't think it happened during the altercation in the alley, but there's a sizable scrape on the outside of her leg, just above her knee. At least it hasn't bled too badly; Tsunayoshi isn't sure he could have handled that. The girl reaches down automatically to prod the edges of the wound, and winces.

Tsunayoshi understands the urge, but what did she really expect? "My house isn't far from here," he adds, somewhat absent-mindedly. He hates bothersome things, and the girl is weird and a bit scary with her reaction just after they escaped, but - but he'll feel better if he can at least see her in his home, with his mother. Nana will worry over her a bit and maybe they'll both smile a real smile, and his uneasy heart can rest.

Her head stays ducked for a moment, but then she lunges for him. It's not like he couldn't dodge it, but he doesn't out of some strange instinct. She's taller than him, but she bends over, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and squealing into his neck.

"You're so gallant!" she says excitedly, but the way her fingers press into his back feels much too much like the way his mother gripped him. She wiggles, which has the side effect of twisting him on his feet as well, and her ponytail hits him in the face a lot and he's getting a bit dizzy. "This is like a dream! I've surely met my prince charming!"

"No way!" Tsunayoshi yelps in something of a panic. "I'm no good for that kind of thing!"

-0-

The girl's name, by the way, turns out to be Miura Haru. She tends towards loud and extravagant behavior, and she and Nana get along famously. They've also both decided that she's Tsunayoshi's girlfriend, which is plainly not true. It's not that Tsunayoshi doesn't like girls or even that he dislikes Haru - she's weird, putting it mildly, but it's not like it's bad, and besides: Tsunayoshi's gut feeling is that she's good to have around. It's just that he…

It's just no good when Tsunayoshi likes someone. It's not a good or kind feeling. It scares him, if he's being honest. He doesn't know how other people handle it the way that they do, although he guesses the fairy tale of of being soft and gentle about it has a certain charm. But for people like him? They don't have the right to be interested in anyone that way, it's just that he hadn't realized until his heart ignited and the fire hollowed him out and left him covered with sticky wetness.

Be someone's boyfriend? In the first place, Tsunayoshi is no good. He never has been. Now that he's actually done something with that part of him, there's no way he could ever even dream of looking Kyoko in the eye.

In either case, along with having decided that she's his girlfriend, Haru also takes to showing up at his house of her own accord and following him everywhere.

"This really isn't the kind of thing that you take your girlfriend to," Kusakabe Tetsuya says the first time Haru follows Tsunayoshi out on his normal 'following Hibari and the Committee' rounds.

"She's not my girlfriend," Tsunayoshi says plainly. He's been saying this to anyone who will listen once he realized that Haru seems completely unaffected by his protests. He actually had tried his hardest to shake her off before this weird need to see Hibari had driven him completely up a wall, but Haru is smarter than he is and scarily determined.

Haru, for her part, is cutting the Committee a sharp look. Everyone knows about the Demon of Namimori Middle, since Hibari is driven as always to enforce order upon the entire town as he sees fit. "My, my," she says, clinging onto Tsunayoshi's arm, "What a scary bunch of thugs."

Sometimes, Tsunayoshi thinks that Haru has no self-preservation instinct whatsoever. He himself has only barely gotten to be on neutral ground with Hibari's Committee - largely because he can finally hold his own and because he's smart enough to hang back the twenty meters it takes not to get on Hibari's nerves. A distance he himself discovered, since the Committee themselves seem to be unable to hang far enough back to avoid Hibari's wrath completely.

Kusakabe looks flatly at Haru, but he largely seems resigned more than irritated. The fact that Kusakabe is even talking to him suggests there won't be a fight about it, but in his own twisted way, Tsunayoshi had thought that maybe this would convince Haru to give him some breathing space.

As it is, only during her own classes does Haru leave him be. She always immediately seeks him out after her school lets out, and even insists on doing homework with him. Tsunayoshi was perhaps a bit idealistic to think that mere thugs would drive Haru away when his own dense brain and weird mother hadn't been enough.

"Haru-chan," he says, "this is Nami Middle's Discipline Committee... please try to get along..."

"I know who they are," Haru says, placing her free hand on her hip. "One time, they stopped my kidnappers."

What the- "How many times are you getting kidnapped?" Tsunayoshi demands, a little aghast.

"I said Mom is bad at making friends," Haru says, still giving the Committee a narrow look. "And their leader gave me a black eye."

Kusakabe sighs lightly, crossing his arms, but he doesn't seem unmoved. Looking to Tsunayoshi, he says, "She touched Hibari."

Tsunayoshi's mouth hangs open in an appalled way, turning to look at Haru with wide eyes. "And you're alive," he says, "he didn't bite you to death?"

Haru flushes and then tries to mask her embarrassment with a snort and tilting her face away. "That scruffy beast considers me too much of an herbivore to eat, apparently," she says crossly, as if this is something that would obviously make anyone unhappy.

Tsunayoshi looks helplessly toward Kusakabe, but the Committee Second in Command just shuts his eyes in a resigned way. Apparently Haru has a bit of a thing for white knight types, even if she can't really tell the difference between who is holding the shiny sword.

After all, a mad dog can keep just as nice of a sword as a prince type. Tsunayoshi probably should have realized that Haru is weak where it comes to understanding others when she declared him her 'prince charming' - Tsunayoshi isn't the same kind of mad dog that Hibari is, but his instincts still drive him to fight and kill people who put their hands on his family. Surely on some level, people should be able to tell these things about others?

Tsunayoshi can, or at least he thinks he's starting to be able to. He's certainly learned more and more just who in the kickboxing class he wants to spar with (or more precisely: who he doesn't want to spar with), and who he should stay away from on the streets. It's not entirely fair to use Hibari as a measuring stick or anything, seeing that Tsunayoshi knew that guy was crazy long before his heart had ever ignited.

"In either case," Kusakabe says, looking at Tsunayoshi, "this is Committee business. It's bad enough we tolerate you being around. A girl from some other school entirely has no business being here."

Haru snorts. "I have as much right as you have functionality off Nami Middle grounds," she points out. "Besides, my place is at Tsunayoshi-san's side! Where he goes, so do I." The fire in her eyes and the firmness of her chin suggests that she's not going to give up easily.

"Sawada himself has no right to be involved in Committee matters," Kusakabe points out, and Tsunayoshi grimaces; he can't rightfully explain why he wants to hang out with delinquents after school, but-

"Wrong," Haru says, her voice loud and clear like a ringing bell, one finger in the air, her poise that of a strict and disappointed teacher. Peering at Kusakabe with one narrow eye, she says, "Did you forget? It can't be Committee matters off school grounds." Kusakabe tsks, and when he doesn't argue, she smirks and sticks the pink tip of her tongue out.

She really has no kind of self-preservation instincts at all.

-0-

But guts get you places with delinquents, even if the Committee is more like an organization than a gang - more yakuza than yankii, although truthfully they're something completely unique of their own. Hibari is cranky about the addition of Haru for three straight weeks and everyone feels his wrath - Tsunayoshi and Haru most of all - and yet this intimidates Haru not at all.

"I don't know what you're doing getting so close with thugs like them," Haru says with a huff, "but clearly we're going to need to keep up! That Hibari guy..." She pounds her fist into her palm. "If we can get as strong as him, there's no way he can turn us away!"

Tsunayoshi feels like he definitely bit off more than he could chew the day that he got involved with Miura Haru.

-0-


NOTES: in the original version, Tsuna was 10 when he encounters that woman with Iemitsu, but I aged him down to seven for no particular reason other than it suits Iemitsu's side of the story better. I mean, I don't like him, but if you've read a lot of my works, you know me not liking a character won't stop me from giving them a side of the story lmao.

* Here's Haru! She'll play an important role from here on out as Tsunayoshi's right hand. They aren't actually a pair, it's just that Haru hasn't really been socialized to hang out with boys… if you like a boy at all, obviously it's a romantic like and you date him. No! No, Haru! That's just having feelings of friendship!