Hello there!
I proofread this for several hours, yet still I'm not confident that I wrote Hibari's character well enough ugh.
I'm so tired.
BUT WAIT IT'S GOKUDERA'S BDAY TODAY YA'LL... IT'S 12 AM IN CALIFORNIA RIGHT NOW SO IMMA HAVE TO CELEBRATE WHEN I WAKE UP, DERA NEEDS SOME LOVE 3
Ok forreals, here yah go!
Please review?
It was Ayano's first day as the official secretary of the disciplinary committee. She had zero knowledge on what her job entailed to, but she hoped that Kusakabe would be the one to "train" her instead of the certain chairman.
She waited in the empty disciplinary room after school, listening to the eerie, yet calming sound of the ticking clock displayed on the wall. She kept replaying these past few weeks in her head: how initially she didn't plan to be actively involved in school, how she naively thought that she could extract friendliness from a crowd-hating person, and in an unprecedented twist of her fate, she now held a prominent position in a committee feared by most students.
Ten minutes later, Kusakabe arrived.
"Nicolaou-san, thank you for waiting."
"It was nothing. So, how do I start with this secretarial job?"
The long-haired girl patiently remained on the couch with both her hands on her lap. Her gaze followed the vice-chairman as he walked across the room and placed some documents on Hibari's desk. He then walked toward a small rectangular table situated by the door. He lifted both the table and its paired chair and positioned them adjacent to his senior's desk, forming a right angle. He then spoke.
"This will be your desk."
Ayano widened her eyes. She stared at her supposedly desk then back at the male. "You are kidding, right? I will be working right next to Hibari-san?"
"Indeed."
"Why can't my desk just stay where it originally was at? As far away from his desk as possible?" she inquired.
"I don't know. Kyoya-san just ordered me to do so," he replied. "Don't worry. He's not that difficult to work with once you get to know him."
"Wouldn't this be considered as crowding?" the long-haired girl sighed.
"You'll be fine," Kusakabe reassured.
On cue, the door opened and the subject of the conversation entered the room. He walked toward his desk and sat down. He then broke the silence.
"You are dismissed, vice-chairman. Continue patrolling the hallways."
"Yes, Kyoya-san," Kusakabe bowed and marched out.
The Nicolaou teenager adamantly faced the head of the disciplinary committee. There were no regrets about her decision, only doubts. Doubts if she would be able to figure him out.
"So, Hibari-san, what do I do?"
The male pondered on what his new secretary needed to work on. He then pointed at the desk adjacent to his.
"First, sit down there."
She didn't react to his command; she instead sought for another confirmation that her presence was absolutely desired.
"Are you deaf?" he reiterated when he noticed the female didn't move an inch from her spot.
She exhaled a breath and then followed his order. She sat down and folded both her arms on the table while leaning forward.
"There. Now what?"
They held an eye contact for a solid three seconds—his metallic gaze upon her cloudy, cool-toned gray eyes—before the female slightly tilted her head and frowned.
"Am I supposed to play a staring contest with you?"
"No, but your work will if you don't start with it soon."
"I don't even know where to start. Please enlighten me, Hibari-san," she sarcastically said as she leaned back and folded her arms across her chest.
"Your remarks suggest to me that you are untamed. Should I tame you?" he smirked.
The female teenager felt her spine lightly shudder at such a suggestive statement. "That's not necessary. Just tell me what to do already," she softly smiled, hoping that his weird threat just now would be dismissed.
The chairman of the disciplinary committee responded with a bored expression. He then handed her a folder.
"Read this. Summarize each requests and documents."
The new female secretary sighed and accepted the folder. She estimated the content of the folder to be about fifty pages long based on its thickness.
"How long do I have to stay?"
"Until you finished your task," he nonchalantly answered.
Forty minutes flew by, and the fearless girl mused over the stillness of the surrounding. Her proximity to a fierce person felt very bizarre, but oddly enough, there was a sense of serenity. The Nicolaou girl utilized the peace as an opportunity to secretly glance at her chairman.
For the first time, she witnessed a peaceful and soft image which she had never seen the boy express. Furthermore, she also noted other attributes such as the well-defined, manly jaw of his, as if puberty did him right. His metallic sharp eyes that used to exhibit viciousness were now relaxed, like some cozy clouds.
Suddenly, from the corner of her eyes, Ayano saw the phone in the pocket of her bag lit up. Her aunt texted her a photo. She opened the text and it said: I found an old pic of your mom when she was at your age. Hopefully this brightened up your mood. Good luck working with him. The teenager opened the second text which was a picture of her mother.
The exact resemblance was bewildering.
It was as if her aunt took a picture of the teenager, slapped some sepia and vintage filters, put a dot on the right cheekbone, and claimed it as Yoshino in her teenage years.
There was no doubt that they were mirror images of each other.
Or twins.
Or doppelgangers.
The long-haired girl quietly chuckled upon that idea. Hibari noticed the distracted girl smiling at whatever was on the screen of her phone.
"Woman, don't get sidetracked or else you will be here until night," he hissed.
The Nicolaou girl looked up and immediately met the gaze of the male.
"Hibari-san, don't you think my twin is cute?"
She showed him the screen of her phone which displayed a photo of her mother. He glimpsed at it, then at his enthusiastic secretary. He raised his eyebrow.
The herbivore has a sibling? he mused. "This is irrelevant to your work."
"I know. But it reminded me of the doppelganger myth. Apparently, encountering your doppelganger was considered as bad omen: a sign of your imminent death." She put her phone back in her bag and continued with her explanation.
"Other version of the myth suggests that your doppelganger is supposed to be your evil version of yourself, and that you are not supposed to meet with them because they will replace you and no one will notice. I wonder if you are you, or a doppelganger of the real Hibari Kyoya?" she teased.
Hibari was slightly entertained. He was not familiar with such myth. However, he also realized at the same time, that the girl just indirectly called him evil.
"A myth that I don't care about. Nevertheless, you just questioned my existence, herbivore. If you were trying to be funny, then your sense of humor was very dry."
"Ouch. I was just kidding," she softly laughed, a sound that for some reason, pleased the male in the room. She tugged a few hair strands behind her left ear: a trivial act but somehow profound enough for the male to spot a mole on her earlobe, which he found inexplicably, endearing?
"What?" The female caught him staring.
"That mole," he unconsciously blurted out, which made Ayano raise her eyebrow and trace the outline of her earlobe.
"Oh." Her eyes slightly widened as she realized how attentive the male was that he even noticed such a minor detail of an underrated beauty mark.
Hibari might have caught a very little hint of crimson on her face, but he quickly dismissed his thoughts and averted his gaze back to his paperwork.
"Well then. I'm going to buy a drink," the long-haired girl announced as she stood from her seat. For some reason, she felt the immediate need to get some fresh air due to a weird sensation in her stomach. It wasn't ache. It was similar to adrenaline rush, but it was sharp and short-lived. She might have also felt her temperature slightly heat up. Butterflies in her stomach? She wasn't quite sure.
"Hn."
Ayano calmly walked toward the door. Before she completely disappeared from the male's sight, she clarified one last thing.
"By the way. the picture I showed you on my phone? I don't have a sibling. She's actually my mom, when she was my age."
It was now the Nicolaou girl's second day as the secretary of the disciplinary committee. Fortunately, she didn't have to work side by side with Hibari as he was patrolling today. Her task was to sign the paperwork in his place. The papers were academic probation applications that needed to be approved.
One application stood out. It was Sawada Tsunayoshi's paper. Mina informed her before that Tsuna was the dullest bulb in their graduating class. However, Ayano has exchanged few friendly conversation with him and found him to be kind and caring. She thought that they actually got along pretty well. Even though he was an "idiot", he exuded an uncanny charisma that a great leader would display. Too bad he was struggling academically, which earned him her sympathy.
The long-haired girl headed toward the nearest vending machine to purchase some snacks. She happened to encounter and bump onto Tsuna on her way back to the disciplinary office.
"I'm sorry—Oh, Ayano-san!"
"What a weird deja-vu, this was exactly how we first met," Ayano chuckled. "Why are you still on campus at this time? Hibari-san is patrolling, just to let you know."
"Oh, I'm actually looking for him to talk to him about… uh… stuff," Tsuna sweated. He couldn't possibly reveal that he wanted to talk to his cloud guardian to inquire about some Vongola business.
"If you want, you can relay the message to me and I'll let him know?" she offered.
"No, it's fine, thank you for—wait, you'll… what?"
"I'm his new secretary, unfortunately." The teenage girl shrugged.
"... What?!" Tsuna gasped in shock.
"Yup… by the way, you are going to be on academic probation for your very low grades, just a heads up," she revealed in order to change the subject.
"Ughhh. I know, like I've always been," sighed Tsuna.
"You know that you are not going to graduate if you don't pass a certain grade point average, right?"
"I know, and I am working hard."
"That's good to hear! Do you have a tutor?" wondered Ayano.
"I actually have had a home tutor for three years," Tsuna responded with a hint of distaste.
"Three years? You probably need to get a new one if you think you're not improving."
Suddenly, the long-haired girl immediately noticed an unsettling presence behind her. Acting on her gut feeling, she ducked down. She looked above, and she saw a green hammer being held by a baby flying across her head. It was a good thing that she followed her instinct as she almost got smacked on her head by a flying hammer.
"Hm. Nice reflex."
"Reborn! Why did you do that?!" Tsuna shrieked.
"She insulted me."
The baby in the fedora hat landed on Tsuna's shoulder and stared down at the female student who was still on the ground, obviously shocked.
"What is a child, who almost hit me with a… toy hammer, doing here?" Ayano slowly stood up.
"He's uhhhmm… my co—cousin," Tsuna stuttered.
"Nicolaou Ayano, is it? What is your relationship with Hibari?" the baby asked.
Relationship? Who is this kid? she thought. "I'm just his secretary. That's all." she shrugged her shoulders.
"It's unusual to have a female member in the disciplinary committee. Why did you apply there?"
"I didn't apply. Hibari-san offered it to me."
"Interesting," Reborn smirked.
"Reborn, what are you planning?" Tsuna sweated.
"Nothing, well it is nice to meet you Ayano-chan. Call me Reborn," and with that the infant disappeared like a magic trick.
"Okay?... Your cousin is very perceptive at such an early age, Tsuna-san," Ayano was impressed. "Also, what did he mean when he said that I insulted him?"
Tsuna evidently became flustered. "Ah, uhmmm… He's just weird like that, don't mind the things that come out of his mouth." The boss of Vongola couldn't possibly tell her that Reborn was his home tutor; he knew it sounded crazy.
"If you say so," shrugged Ayano.
Meanwhile, Reborn searched the whole campus to look for the cloud guardian. He finally located the skylark by the soccer field.
"Hibari. Long time no see. I see that you just finished with dealing some troublemakers."
"Infant. What makes you visit?"
"Just checking up on the guardians. I just heard some weird news. I didn't think you would open your committee to females."
Hibari glared at him. "I did not. And there is only one female in my committee. Why do you question?"
"No reason. I was just interested. Well, I will be on my way," and with that he disappeared again.
Good, I might possibly have a leverage to further pull him in the family, Reborn smirked.
Two weeks passed after the Nicolaou teenager signed up at GM. Her first day was terrifying; she kept recoiling every time she pulled the trigger, making her paranoid about losing her balance next time and accidentally point the gun the wrong way. However, with a supportive coach, she quickly learned how to properly balance her stance at the end of the day.
On her second day, she learned how to get used to the sound of the propelling bullet. She was now able to hit the center of a circular target. The owner of the place was astonished by her fast improvement.
"You know, you adapted so fast you reminded me of a notable customer of mine. She started learning how to use a handgun at such an early age, as encouraged by her dad."
That alarmed the teenager. What GM just said sounded too familiar. He had to be talking about my mom and grandfather, she thought.
"Oh really? Does your notable customer still go here?"
"Not anymore. It has been like more than two decades since I the last time I saw them. They said they were going to keep in touch. I'm glad I never heard from them since then."
"I see."
"I usually don't talk about my customers to another customer. I keep their identity confidential. But just for this time, I really just want to say how you remind me so much of her."
"Is it because of how fast I learned, or do I look like her by any chance?" she pushed further discreetly.
GM lowered his glasses and squinted his eyes to scrutinize the teenager thoroughly. "Hm. Now that I'm looking at you, you do resemble her. How cool. It's almost as if you are her daughter." He adjusted his glasses back. "To be honest, if you were indeed her daughter, I would probably ban you here for life."
"Aw, how cruel. Why?" the teenage girl forced a fake chuckle.
"Because those Nicolaous almost ruined my business and put my family in danger."
GM suddenly facepalmed as he accidentally revealed such a private information about the subject of the conversation. "Whoops, so much for keeping confidentiality." He then peeked at the teenager, who seemed to be unaffected by it.
But in reality, Ayano was trying very hard not to express fear upon hearing her real surname.
"You're not related with a family named Nicolaou, hopefully, right?"
The long-haired girl, who used a fake last name, had no choice but to lie. "I'm not. I have never heard of such a name. It sounds very foreign."
"Good. Let's change the subject. Since you are a fast learner, sooner I'll be able to teach you how to disassemble the gun that you are using, or maybe some self-defense techniques."
"Sounds good, GM-san. But I'm afraid that my session is over, so I will see you next week." The teenager quickly dismissed herself which left the older adult scratching his head.
"Ok then. Be safe out there!"
On her way home, she let out a huge exhale, thankful that she used a fake identity. She assessed the situation, whether or not it was safe for her to continue her investigation.
"I guess I'll have to consult with aunt Agatha first," she murmured to herself.
So uhm, I just finished outlining Yoshino's (Ayano's mom) backstory, and holy shit its so long. I probably won't put her whole story in this fanfic, maybe just small parts that I'll deem crucial for Ayano's development. Besides, I think Ayano might... drastically change if she learned the whole story, so I won't make her learn everything.
If I did write Yoshino's full backstory, I'm only posting it in my tumblr sideblog and not here.
I also have a feeling that my readers aren't really interested at mommy Nicolaou's story.
Nevertheless, Please review!
...
Preview to next chapter: the date is May 26, which is Ayano's birthday! but something about the weather seemed to mock her. I wonder why?