~ III. ~
He woke up the next morning, three hours before his alarm was meant to go off; but, alas, his alarm being broken, it somehow decided that three hours early was functional.
He groaned as he threw the clock across the room and then settled back into his bed. As he turned over, his face hit something… something hard and yet feathery.
His eyelids fluttered open to gaze at the foreign object in sleepy subjection. "HIIIIEEE!" He fell off the side of the bed, surprise ripping a scream from him and widening his previously tired eyes.
There in the bed next to him was the package; now, however, it had some wet spots on it as well as what looked like a few burn marks. Lying on top of it was the note, its previous creamy white form charred a burnt yellow and brown.
With a trembling hand, he lifted the note to eye level.
*When the seed shell falls off to reveal a mass of roots, place in a container full of notes handwritten by you, preferably love notes or educational preferences.
Oh god… it wasn't over, Tsuna realized with a gaping jaw.
* Fill the container with at least 2 inches of water and keep water level at such; a little more or less is acceptable. Keep in a sunny place.
* When the lotus roots break out of the container and begin spreading across the surface it rests on, do not be frightened; the lotus is ready to mature. When this happens, remove the lotus from the sun and place in a pitch black area.
* Leave the lotus to itself until you hear it calling your name.
The lotus would be calling his name? He didn't even want to think about that!
* How you raise and care for him is your choice.
The direction ended there.
Wait, no… He squinted his eyes at the last few words smudged by the fire. It looked like a child's handwriting; difficult to read with thickly written letters and misspelled terms…
Maek a wIsh, bIg brOther!
His heart clenched in his chest and the letter therefore crumbled in his fisted hand. Lambo…
He looked from the tattered note to the box. He gulped as he looked inside of it; there laid, in all innocence, the single lotus seed… that would require his blood, his words, and his dreams to grow.
He looked back at the letter; was it a sign that heaven did exist? Was his little brother trying to tell him something?
… Should he grow the lotus?
He swallowed thickly; well, there was only one way to find out.
A half hour later, he held the smooth seed over a cup of warm water; indeed, the seed's shell was indigo, and it seemed to become a darker shade of indigo the more he stared at it. His hand shook from being suspended for so long; but he couldn't make up his mind! Was he really going to follow such demented directions to grow a flower that was supposedly going to talk to him just because of a letter that might have been written by his dead brother?
He pondered it for a very long moment, said moment stretching over 15 minutes. When the end of that time came, he arrived at a decision: yes. Yes, he was.
He dropped the seed into the water. With the small 'plunk' that came from the resulting splash, he almost felt as if his fate had been sealed. Was he making a big mistake?
He looked back at the note, the childish little demand.
Maybe; but was he going to regret it? Who knew? He would just have to wait and find out.
He stared at the seed until his eyelids began to droop, stinging tiredly. If this was a bad idea, at least it had been an easy one to follow through… after all, didn't it take seeds a long time to grow roots?
With all said and done, he crawled right back into bed, planning to get at least 2 hours more of rest… only to catch a glimpse of his watch – that had sat innocently next to his alarm clock before the latter's untimely demise – and the time.
How long had he stared at that damn seed?
"I'm late!"