~V.~
Five months passed by without any new happenings; Gokudera continued to be mean to everyone but him, Yamamoto continued to be a star baseball player, the boxing team was extreme as usual, and the girls still liked to drag him out for cakes every once in a while.
Even Dino had come for a short get-together before returning to Italy after only a few hours.
Really, it had been uneventful; even the beatings he received from Hibari had felt repeated, as if he had been falling into a rut.
But, no more!
After the initial reaction of the seed, Tsuna had thought that the lotus would continue to grow at an unusual rate; instead, it had seemed to stop growing altogether.
That was, until Tsuna had walked into his bedroom after school that day.
The roots looked freakishly like hands; the roots were knotted, fashioning palms – and from the 'palms' were five lone roots to each mass (and, yes, two of the hand-lookalikes), differentiating in thickness and length much like human hands.
He jerked away from the cup, eyes widening; had they just moved?
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to reach into the cup, withdrawing the seed and then placing it delicately beneath his pillow. By accident, his finger brushed one of the 'hands'.
"HHHHIIIIEEE!" The eerie mass of roots twined around his fingertip, an inescapable grasp that made him collapse onto the floor behind him. Quickly, shock turned to pain. The roots were burrowing into his skin! "S-stop!" He grabbed it by the seed shell and pulled; surprisingly, there was no fight put up against him.
He ripped the roots off of his finger and threw the seed beneath his pillow again, shuddering as he turned away from his bed.
He looked at the damage; it wasn't too bad… but it hurt like a bitch! He grimaced and went into the bathroom, cleaning the wound off and then stepping into the shower.
When he came back out, he went to do his homework, despite not understanding at all how to do it. After a half hour of fruitless attempts, he threw the book back in his schoolbag and played his video games. He tried his hardest not to think about what rested beneath his pillow.
Close to midnight, he got ready for bed.
Standing at the foot of his mattress, he wasn't completely sure if he wanted to get into bed. After all, what if he woke up and the 'hands' were digging into his face? Not a very comforting thought.
Nonetheless, he forced himself into bed. He was careful, however, to not reach beneath his pillow to cuddle down like he usually did.
He thought he wouldn't catch a wink of sleep that night.
He shifted around in his bed, trying to think of a more comfortable position while being perfectly aware of what lie beneath his pillow. He sighed as he ultimately failed, feeling just too awkward to succeed. He turned his head towards the window, hoping to catch sight of something to relieve his boredom.
"HIIIIEEE!" Why was there a boy on his windowsill? "Who the hell are you?" He yelped as he twisted around in his blankets, ultimately knotting them around his legs so that he fell painfully off the side of the bed and onto his back, slapping his skull against the ground with a long, pained groan. "Ow – ow – ow…" He rubbed the abused flesh tenderly.
The boy in the window stared at him, moonlight gleaming off his iris blue hair and his cold little grin shadowed; his eyes were duo-colored, one scarlet red and the other cobalt blue – both of them were focused on Tsuna with emotionless regard, as if the boy could see through him to the bugs that infested the earth and was subtly disgusted by it. And, yet, for such a cold little child, he wore a startling white robe that appeared bigger than he was, fluffing around his shoulders and pooling around him to even lavish the floor.
Tsuna noted that he couldn't have been any older than 10; maybe even younger, but certainly not older. How could a child look so… so… evil? He gulped nervously.
"Who the hell am I?" The boy repeated with a mocking purr. "Why do you care?"
"F-for one… You're in my room!" Tsuna somehow managed to squeal.
The boy looked around him with disinterest. "So?"
"… You're in my room!" Tsuna waited to see if the kid could make the connection. When the boy offered no apparent recognition, he whined in frustration. "What are you doing in my room?"
"I live here." The boy simply stated, as if it was the most obvious thing; he even gave Tsuna a narrow one-over, as if he believed he should have already known that. "You let me live here." His smirk curled a little more dangerously and he gazed at Tsuna as if he offered sadistic amusement. "Kufufufu~ you should already know this, Tsunayoshi. After all, you're the one giving me life."
As Tsuna watched with horror and awe, the boy changed. Veins of sickly purple travelled across his skin, his flesh splotching the same shade. His hair began to fall out and the robes fell away to reveal a mass of roots shaped into a human body.
"Are you going to let me die, now that you know the truth?" The plant-boy went on to murmur as his head popped off his body and was lifted towards the moon by a long, curling stem that arose from his neck.
And, before he could scream, he woke up.