~IV.I~
"Hibari beat you up pretty hard this time!" Yamamoto lightly pointed out, staring at Tsuna's swollen and bruised body.
"That fucking bastard!" Gokudera went off on a blue streak. "I'm gonna stick his head right up his ass for hurting you, Tenth!"
Looking at the silverette, Tsuna could care less for how Gokudera planned to take care of Hibari; there was a more pressing question he had.
"Gokudera…" He began hesitantly; after all, how did one ask 'hey, did you really get rid of the package? 'Cause I woke up this morning and it was right there.' It just couldn't be done…
"Yes, Tenth?" Gokudera turned to him, whipping out a liquid ice pack and placing it gently to Tsuna's one swollen cheek – like a mother; the very mother he no longer had. "What is it?" He looked so earnest.
Tsuna stole a deep breath and took a jab at it. "T-the package that I had yesterday… Uumm… What exactly did you… umm… do… with it?" He looked inquisitively up at his friend.
Gokudera grinned proudly. "Ah! That nuisance! I burned it till there were only ashes, Tenth! I watched it until the fire went out!" That would explain the bags under his bloodshot eyes, Tsuna realized. "And then I took the ashes threw them in the creek!"
"Mah mah, Gokudera; don't you think that was going a little overboard just to get rid of a box with only a seed and a note inside of it?" Yamamoto pondered.
"Idiot! Didn't you see how much that 'box' upset the Tenth? It deserved what it got!"
Tsuna tuned out their argument; Gokudera would never lie to him… not in a million years unless it was something regarding his own life that he didn't want them concerned about. So he wouldn't lie about burning the box to a crisp and then throwing the ashes in a creek… However, if that was so, than how had that very box ended up on his bed?
There was something not right about this… well, aside from the propagation technique for the lotus, but he had already figured out that much…
"Do either of you to know how to grow a lotus flower?" He enquired softly into their he-man war.
Gokudera paused with his fist raised up as if he planned to strike Yamamoto down. Yamamoto looked over at Tsuna, dropping his 'I'm innocent' act to cock his head curiously at him.
"I do not, Tenth." Gokudera admitted, a flame igniting in his spring green eyes. "But I'll find out for you!" With that said, he ran off the roof back into the building.
Yamamoto watched him leave before laughing softly at his friend's energy. And then he turned his probing gaze onto Tsuna. "Why would you want to know, Tsuna?" He questioned in an airy tone.
Tsuna shifted uncomfortably. "Uuuh… Well, I'm, uuuhh… growing one…?" Well, it was true… At least. But could he have made it sound any more awkward?
Yamamoto grinned. "Hah hah! That's neat! Are you growing it from a seed?"
Tsuna nodded, not quite sure why that mattered.
"Alright, so here's what you do." Yamamoto sat up straight. "So you soak it in water first, like ssssshhhh~" He made vague motions like falling water. "And when the seed cracks open" here a gesture of something breaking apart "to reveal roots," a show of roots wiggling using his fingers "you put the seed in a nice, moist soil and then put two inches of water over it, like ssssshhh~" again, the watering motion. "Oh! And you always have to keep it in a sunny place!" He mimicked a smiling sun.
Tsuna was… well, amazed. He blinked. "Umm… Yamamoto?"
"Yeah?"
"How do you know that?" And why did he have to act out his words?
A soft, sad smile overcame the baseball player's face. "My mom loved them…" There was a heavy, yet content silence; they both knew what it was like to lose a loved one.
Yamamoto was the first to shake out of his thoughts. "Yeah, but it's pretty sad too."
"Huh?"
"Lotuses stay dormant for a year before blooming."
"A-A year?"
"Yep! And then it only lives for about 5, 6 years."
Tsuna's heart sank into his belly and rested there on a nest of quivering nerves.
His brother's scribbled words gave him a headache: Maek a wIsh, bIg brOther!
Why did he suddenly feel so hopeless?
Yamamoto was watching him, as if waiting for something.
"Uuhh… Thanks, Yamamoto." The other teen broke out into a proud grin. "Ah, I think I'll go home now." When Yamamoto opened his mouth to ask if he was okay, Tsuna quickly waved a hand in dismissal. "My stomach's starting to act up… And I really don't want to have to go the nurse's, so I'll just sneak out while everyone's switching classes."
Yamamoto frowned but then smiled. "Gotcha! Well, good luck! And don't worry about Hibari; I'll distract him." Yamamoto winked at him as he stood up off the cement floor and made his way back into school.
The bell went off and lunch was officially over.
() ()
His mother wasn't home when he got there. Then again, she could have been; but he didn't call out for her and she didn't welcome him home, so he couldn't be certain.
Frankly, he had gotten used to not being certain if he was alone or not; sometimes it was nice to pretend that there was someone else in the house with him and other times it made him glad to know he was alone. Maybe his mom felt the same way; he liked to think that she did.
It was better than thinking that she ignored his existence whenever she was given the chance.
He went silently to his room, holding his groan of the day's wearies until he had his door shut safely behind him.
Yamamoto had managed to do as he had said and had (somehow) distracted Hibari, meaning that Tsuna had gotten to leave the building with no more bruises than what he had received by entering it.
He threw his schoolbag down on the floor next to his bed and then tossed himself into the mass of pillows and blankets. He was so tired…
Ah, but that purple color was keeping him awake, now that he was finally in bed – wait…
He peeked one eye open.
The seed had cracked to reveal a tangle of roots. "What the hell?" He pressed himself to the wall away from the seed, upper lip trembling from the shock.
Did that mean that… he had to give it blood now? But he didn't want to!
Nonetheless, he looked from the crumbled note at his low writing desk to the seed. Maek a wIsh, bIg brOther!
He gulped and tried to find something sharp in the room to cut himself with; damn, that was a sad way to put it…
He managed to find a safety pin. Biting his bottom lip, he pricked his finger and watched with a slight wince as a fat drop of blood welled up from his skin.
Turning his head away, he dipped the finger into the water.
When he looked back, stealing his hand away and holding it to his chest, he jerked in surprise. The water was changing color! At first a muddy brown and then it refined itself to a transparent cobalt blue. And even then, the color continued to change until the water became crystal white again. As he watched, he could see the roots absorbing the changes in color until they were the same cobalt blue – if not solid instead of transparent – the water had been before becoming clear.
He gulped and backed away. Was this really what he wanted to do? Did he really want to give his blood to a plant?
Maek a wIsh, bIg brOther! Yes; yes he did.
What if it cost him his life? It wasn't like his life was that bad! He had his best friends there for him: Gokudera, Yamamoto, Haru, Kyoko, Ryohei, Dino…
Lambo looked up at him with his huge emerald green eyes, a large grin flashing across his chubby cheeks. "You gotta wish for something when there's a shooting star, big brother!" He pointed at the trail the streak of light had traveled only moments ago. "You gotta!"
He never had made a wish…
He slapped himself across the face; why was he remembering that? What did that have to do with this? There was a plant on his windowsill that drank his blood! In only hours, it had created roots! He didn't know much about plants, but he felt pretty confident in the knowledge that plants were not meant to grow that fast! And they most definitely weren't supposed to absorb his blood!
He looked at the offending specimen before turning his back on it.
Could it get any weirder?
Author's Note: Something I forgot to mention… this story was inspired by Katy Perry's 'E.T.'. I was watching the music video, thinking to myself that it was actually pretty awesome except for the fact that most people still don't believe in aliens (hey, I'm a believer. You don't honestly think that in this huge, freaking galaxy that we're the only things living, do you? If you do, take an astrology class, please) and so the song didn't make much sense. Sooo~ I thought to myself 'well, I'll make it make sense!'