Chapter the third in which we get a look at how mother and son live now.
A few small villages sit on the east coast of Hokkaido, with nothing between them and the endless ocean as it drops into unfathomable depths away from the continental shelf. They're small enough not to appear on any map, and aside from paying their taxes in full and on time, they remain forgotten by both authorities and the world at large.
Maybe it is the thick, fickle mists rolling in from the ocean.
Ito Hajime grows up by the sea, the wide, fathomless ocean. His home is a small, traditional village, in a cluster of equally small, traditional villages. It suits his mother and him perfectly, better than their former home ever had. The people here are quiet and unassuming, save for running to vivid, jewel-toned eyes of every colour, indigo being by far the most common. Hajime's eyes, a vibrant amber, are among the rarest, though.
Hajime can vaguely remember that he and his mother used to live somewhere else, before. He didn't like it. Everything there was cold and hurt. Home is much better. He has friends here, and school isn't impossibly hard. He especially likes the extracurricular activities. Not everyone can join, and most kids only get to do a couple of things, three at the most – save for him, due to his harmonious aspect. He needs to understand them all.
Hajime's aspect is the warp that holds the weft of all the others together. To further that symbolism he gets to weave, and mend broken things. In the beginning he finds that part of the lessons boring, but now he is able to see the beauty in creation and the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Old lady Sora, who is one of his teachers, says it was like that for her too. She looks frail and ancient, but she burns like the fires of creation itself.
Of all the single element flames, Hajime like the mist the most. In this he is very much a child of his new home, where it is by far the most common primary. This concentration of mist flames gives the village a dreamlike feel, as the landscape is ever changing with the needs of its people. Guests might be hosted in a house that wasn't there the day before, or a leaking fishing boat mended while still on the water, or a temporary road put in… the possibilities are endless.
Most important, though, are the mists that shroud the villages from the outside. Nominally, the villages are a part of Japan, pay their taxes and fulfil their obligations as citizens – but they don't appear on any maps and records, while satellites and planes just… don't notice the unimportant, distant little patch of land. Surely, it's already been mapped ages ago, belongs to someone, is someone else's business? Maybe a wildlife preserve?
Hajime feels nothing but admiration for this subtle and skilful mist-work.
One afternoon Hajime finds his mother giggling at home. She is a happy person, but this is a bit much even for her.
The decoy mist constructs had finally come to an end, she explains, and shows him and illusion of the Vongola representative's gob-smacked face. It is funny, but clearly it means more to his mother than just a good laugh. To Ito Maki, it is a victory, and she is vindictively smug about it for days.
Hajime has left Namimori behind a long time ago, both physically and mentally, but he is still glad for his mother's sake.
The villages are insular, but not entirely isolationist. They keep abreast of the outside world. Some of the inhabitants work outside, and there is trade, and people who run businesses from home. (The rest of the world just doesn't… intrude.) To educate the children there are regular field-trips outside.
Those with wandering feet often leave, at least for a while. Young people would go out into the world, to university, to work, to travel and find spouses if no one from home catches their eye. This makes the villages sustainable – a quiet lagoon not entirely cut off from the sea's fresh water but shielded from the worst of its storms.
The villages' flame training lends itself well to certain professions. Those active in the wider world works in various Underworld organisations but are also spread out in no few government intelligence organisations. With time this has become policy – unstated at first, but then openly encouraged as a strategy. This way the villages can remain abreast of developments in the outside world and thus be able to remain hidden and independent of it.
Not long after the mist-clones' demises, intelligence about the Vongola Alliance begin to filter in. The World's Strongest Hitman is looking very hard for something. In Japan, at first, then in the Mafia and branching out from there. The Vongola heir has been lost, apparently.
The search turns up nothing but dead ends. The boy is years gone.
At home, Ito Maki remains smug.
/AN: So Nana is really misandristic in this. Er- whoops? I was having a bad day when I wrote this, I think.
Then again, I personally think that Iemitsu is kind of a crap human being who should not be in charge of anything, not even himself, let alone a family or an organisation, and the same goes for Timoteo...
Also - please let me know what you think!