It takes a while before Tsuna recovers.

For several days, he lies in bed, his greying pallor rivaling those of the rotting corpses he feeds on. He is unnaturally still, the wound in his stomach not at all healing like he initially thought it would, and Kensuke worries but Nana smiles an unreadable smile, says that it was just a matter of time.

The thing is Kensuke thinks he understands. Tsunayoshi hadn't been himself since his father's unexpected visit and he knows it had something to do with the old man who came with him and the restrained heat that seemed to boil under his skin. Kensuke knew, to an extent, that whatever that man had done to Tsunayoshi led to the heated confrontation between him and his mother, and that Nana had known, too, because otherwise, she wouldn't have pushed him that far, wouldn't have threatened, much less driven a hole straight through his stomach.

So Kensuke patiently waited. Anxiously, with bated breath. There isn't much he can do.

When Tsuna awakens two weeks later, his eyes are both gold and the hole in his stomach had closed, leaving behind faint lines that resembled blooming thunder.

Something has changed.

"I saw a man who looked like me," he overhears him say to Nana that night and it's the Tsunayoshi that he knows, not the stranger with golden eyes and pure orange flames he'd seen hours earlier, "He said his name was Ieyasu."

Nana had laughed but that, too, was different. It sounded hollow.

"Was that man there?" she asks.

A pause. "Yes," Tsunayoshi says after a long moment of silence, "he was."

Something has changed, and Kensuke doesn't know what.