A/N

I was gonna do some writing today, but instead I spent the entire day watching Jacksepticeye play Night in the Woods. (A very good game,)

.:Chapter Seven: The Magic of Friendship:.

"You look Japanese." Hana randomly announced in the middle of PE class. They were currently playing soccer, 'they' meaning the rest of the class.

Hana had proven herself to be too uncooperative, either standing around aimlessly or half-heartedly walking after the ball. Thus was switched out by an annoyed coach. Tsuna, on the other hand, valiantly took a ball to the face less than two minutes into the game, and had actually blacked out for a few seconds there!

The coach was a 'just walk it off' kind of guy so she wasn't sent to the infirmary. She has a major headache though (hopefully not a concussion…), hence why she was currently seated with her back against a tree, hands massaging her temples. Hana was sprawled out beside her, idly fiddling with her phone.

Tsuna lifted her head to stare at her friend, quirking an eyebrow as she did so, "Really? Wao, thanks for that! I never would have known that unless you told me."

"That's not what I meant, dumbass." Hana huffed with an eye roll of her own, "You said you were part Italian, yet you look entirely Japanese, except for your eyes maybe."

"The keyword there was 'part' Italian." Tsuna reminded her plainly. "I have a distant ancestor on my father's side that's Italian. I just happen to take after my lovely, one hundred percent Japanese Mother."

Hana gave her a look before rolling her eyes and sighing dramatically, "Ahh, and here I thought I'd get to meet some handsome Italian cousins or something."

Tsuna's artfully raised a single eyebrow, "I thought all boys were monkeys?"

"But they'd be Italian monkeys!" She insisted like that explained everything (but to her it probably did). Tsuna held the very serious gaze of her friend for a several minutes before they both burst into giggles.

While her Kurokawa Hana shared many traits with the one from the anime (her "all men are stupid monkeys" policy and hatred of small children being the same), she was pretty unique to this world.

Her Hana adored romance novels and was a rabid Harry Potter fan (which she denied vehemently). She deeply disliked Disney songs, utterly loathing songs from Frozen in particular, and hated flower puns with a passion. Naturally, Tsuna took every opportunity to hum or sing Frozen songs, as well as learning as many flower puns as possible~.

Hana had only moved to Namimori last year, thus only knew Tsuna through her (or rather, his) dame reputation. As it turns out, her father is a cop, meaning she knew more details behind Nana's case and didn't get swept up in any stupid rumours. Although, she did feel a tad concerned about how their father's respective career choices may affect their friendship in the long term…

Well, she supposed she'd just have to cross that bridge when they get to it.

She did quite enjoy having a mutual friend at school and not just someone you could work relatively well together on group projects in class. Even if some of the idiots at this school thought a boy befriending a girl automatically made them a couple for some reason.

Sometimes Tsuna couldn't help but wonder if Hana even saw her as a boy. And honestly, she had mixed feeling about that. After all, she didn't think of herself as male despite being in a boy's body for more than a year now. But still, she couldn't help but feel a little miffed about it… Perhaps she'd begun to develop some masculine pride…?

Or maybe these were just Real Tsuna's feelings slipping through her defences again…

Lately she was having trouble remembering things from her past life. She didn't forget the KHR storyline or that it had been a manga/anime in her previous world. Nor did she forget who she had been and the kind of life she lead. No, it was other, smaller things; the finer details that made those memories more intimate.

She could not recall her parent's names, or what had looked like all that clearly. Sometimes she even forgot what she had looked like, just recalling basic details.

Like the fact she'd been tall, skinny, and had long dark hair, which had lead to her developing a little habit of playing with her bangs. Said habit was still in effect now, even though Tsuna had short bangs; a fact which irked her whenever she reached up and missed her hair, her hand brushing skin instead.

She'd already decided to keep her hair short, it suited Tsuna better this way and she wanted to be different from her previous self anyways. But she was definitely working on growing out her fringe. She fancied it'd make her look more like Vongola Primo, and he was a damn sexy beast~.

Hey, if she was stuck in this body, then she was gonna look fucking good!

…

Tsuna had been letting her guard down around people lately. She wasn't really blaming her new found friendship with Hana for that though. It was just that nothing particularly bad had happened to her recently. But the universe just couldn't give her a break now, could it?

Actually, she had a little theory about that...

She spent a considerable amount of time thinking about Real Tsuna (which probably wasn't particularly healthy, but who wouldn't in her situation?) and came to realise that he had been a startlingly normal person. Sure, he had a reputation for being the worst at everything, but even then it wasn't like that made him stand out as anything other than an easy target.

There were plenty of other kids that sucked at sports and/or academics, so really there was no reason for Sawada Tsunayoshi to stand out as much as he did. As a person in general, he was unassuming and ordinary in a way that made him blend into the background, yet people just couldn't ignore him.

It had to be because of his Sky flame. People were drawn to him, would take notice of him, whether they wanted to or not. Even if he was ordinary or "dame", they would at least notice he existed, even if no one actually bothered to know him.

Just like the trio of idiot boys that currently had Tsuna cornered behind the school. (This particular scenario is getting quite cliché and startlingly predictable though...)

It was Tsuna's turn to help clean up the classroom. She didn't mind being the one to take out the trash because it meant she got to use the incinerator. (She'll never pass up a chance to burn things~) Unfortunately, she'd spent a little too long a time daydreaming as she watched wads of scrunched up paper dissolve into ash and didn't notice the bullies until it was too late.

It was almost funny how similar the run in with these random punks was to that time with the Fucktard Gang. They sneered at her, the leader tried to loom over her threateningly and they clearly expected her to cower and/or whimper at the mere sight of them. And like before, Tsuna just stared boredly at them.

She had better things to be doing right now. Hana was waiting for her, and Nana was surely going to start her unnecessary worrying if she arrived late.

The scenario began to play out scarily similar to that time with Fucktard gang too. When the leader grew irritated by her lack of fear, he seized her by the front of her shirt. Except, this time instead of kicking the asshole in the nuts, Tsuna just reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter she'd swiped from the teacher's smoking lounge.

Complete and utter chaos ensued as, clearly, no one had expected her to light the jerk's sleeve on fire.

The guy screamed and flailed around stupidly (which only served to help the flames spread), while his two lackeys shouted random nonsense joined him in flailing around like headless chickens.

Their panic gave Tsuna ample opportunity to rifle through their discarded bags. To be honest, she was kinda banking on the fact that most idiots like them thought smoking was cool, but her gamble paid off when dummy number two produced the goods. The pack of cigarettes was unopened, and the lighter new as well. It was a much nicer lighter than the one she had; no sense in wasting it on this.

She slipped the new lighter in her pocket and ripped open the packet, pulling out a few cigs and lighting them with the half empty lighter she'd stolen beforehand. She stared at the glowing ends in fascination for a brief moment before tossing them at the flailing trio. Most landed around their feet, but one bounced off flailing dummy number three's arm setting it alight remarkable quickly.

Tsuna frowned, wondering how his clothes managed to be so incredibly flammable, but then reasoned it was likely due to anime logic as things in anime tended to get wildly out of hand phenomenally quickly.

Discarding the cigarette packet and stolen lighter, she picked up the empty bin and headed back to her classroom. When she rounded the corner though, she broke out into a run, trying to look frantic. Because of this, she almost collided with a teacher in the hall.

Tsuna didn't know this one by name, but she looked very annoyed and snapped at her for running in the halls. Perfect. She immediately turned on the watery puppy dog eyes and tried to sound scared, "Sensei! Sensei! Some boys were playing with a lighter outside near the incinerator! I think they set themselves on fire!"

The woman's face turned purple with fury. "Thank you for informing me Sawada." She ground out through her teeth and strode off, anger rolling off her with every step.

As soon as she was out of sight Tsuna face morphed into a pleased smirk. It was highly unlikely anyone would believe that Tsuna had been the one to set the fire. She was the one to report it, and the existence of the cigarettes was incriminating enough as is. Ah, deception worthy of a future Mafioso. Reborn would be so proud~.

Hana was waiting next to the door by the time she returned, holding Tsuna's bag and scrolling through her phone as usual. "What took you so long?" She drawled, her aura practically oozing with boredom.

"Oh, nothing much. Taking out the trash, setting some idiot monkeys on fire, you know, stuff like that." Tsuna replied with a shrug, as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Hana merely raised an eyebrow, "Uh huh, sure you did. Can we go now?"

Tsuna hummed, not particularly bothered on whether or not Hana believed her. They were just passing the front gate when a fire truck and ambulance came tearing down the street towards them. While Nana and Hana's parents looked on curiously with everyone else, Hana's head snapped around to look at her, eyes wide and mouth agape.

"Oh my fucking god! You actually set someone on fire!?" She hissed, having the sense to keep her voice down.

Tsuna just grinned. "The fools were asking for it."

Hana shook her head, looking caught between exasperated, amused and mildly horrified. "You're crazy, you know that right?"

"I'm not crazy, I'm special. And a pyromaniac." She added just to see the reaction.

"Of course you are." Came Hana's dry response, apparently far more amused now than anything else.

In the end the bullies were suspended, no one believing their flimsy story, and they got away with only minor burns. All in all, Tsuna was feeling pretty darn good about how the year was turning out so far.

...

These idle days passed by in a blur of boring classes, tests, and homework. Between karate classes and her friendship with Hana though, things weren't nearly as boring as they could be.

She got to experience all sorts of things she never would have hoped for, or even knew to hope for, in her previous life. Like having sleepovers (always at Tsuna's house since Nana's overprotective streak was still going strong), or meeting up to play outside of school time, or heck, just sitting around talking about all kinds of nonsense. It's no wonder the Tsuna from the anime/manga cared so deeply about his friends, to the point that protecting them became the fuel for his resolve.

Tsuna still enjoyed her own company though, and it wasn't like she was with Hana all the time. Hana had other friends too, namely one Sasagawa Kyoko (surprise, surprise), who had been in her class last year apparently. But it was a pretty great to be able to say Hana was her best friend and to know the feeling was mutual.

The real Sawada Tsunayoshi deserved to have had a friend like Hana too…

He deserved a lot of things he'll never get the chance to have now…

Sometimes she felt guilty for all the good times and happy memories she'd made. Sometimes she felt like an outsider, a ghost, sneaking in to take things that didn't belong to her; things that rightfully belonged to Real Tsuna.

She has to remind herself she never asked for this. She only ended up here by accident and she had every right to be happy, just like everyone else. Not to mention, she has to live out his portion too. Sawada Tsunayoshi will live a long happy life! The world, the mafia, they aren't going to know what hit them!

She owes it to him after all, for having given her this second chance at life…

This chapter ended up being shorter than I had initially planned, but it had also been sitting half finished for a really, really long time so... I had some new ideas, and it got cut shorter with some stuff getting put in the next chapter instead.

Kay, replies to reviews!

Frozen Teen: Hello again! Imma reply to you here, coz I feel this is kinda important. (For both a look into Nana's character and as a PSA.)

I think you're forgetting one major detail here: Nana loves Iemitsu. Furthermore, it takes a lot of courage to look at you're life and say to yourself, "I'm not okay." And even more courage to actually do something about it. I've lived with anxiety and depression for so long, I don't even know what it's like not to feel this way, I can't tell when I am feeling anxious because that's pretty much how I always feel. And there's no easy fix for this kind of thing either, that's why most people would rather give up, or not do anything altogether, or end up abusing substances (alcohol or drugs) in a desperate attempt to find that non-existent easy fix.

All Nana wanted was an easy fix, go to sleep and never wake up again, that way she'll never have to feel the terrible things she does ever again. Personally, I've never thought about suicide, because frankly, death scares me. But I think that those people that do contemplate suicide, for them it's not about "having nothing left to live for", it's more like...the thought of living, having to go on like this forever, is just so much scarier than death. Well, that's what I think anyways.

Human: Hello guest reviewer! Mental health is a serious thing for me, so it ends being major themes within my characters and stories.

Anyway, hope you're all having a great 2019 so far!

Lots of love, NyanNyan-suru