Recap: Various people visit Tsuna at the hospital in the aftermath of the Recruitment Test. Tsuna meets Takeshi at a sushi store in his neighbourhood.
Chapter 7: Skiving
To the tenant of apartment 27A:
It has come to my attention, via complaints from several other tenants, that you frequently invite a number of very eccentric people to your apartment. Stop. They are a disturbance and are also disturbing. And sometimes outright terrifying.
Sincerely,
Your landlord
Dear landlord,
I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure whom you are referring to. I invite a number of people, you see, and I'd appreciate if I knew exactly which one of them would be considered a disturbance and/or disturbing and/or terrifying.
Thank you,
Tenant of apartment 27A, Sawada Tsunayoshi
To the tenant of apartment 27A:
The list of people that have been brought to my attention are detailed below.
Man in black suit.
There is a man in a black suit who frequently watches your house from the opposite building. The tenants living on your floor have noted that he has passed their corridor on his way to your apartment. This man falls under the category of being a disturbance. My daughter, who is fifteen, foolish and impressionable claims to have fallen in love with him. You are not to, under any circumstances, introduce him to her. I have been told that he is very suave and it is completely unacceptable. Also, a number of other tenants are creeped out by his chameleon.
Teen in cow print clothes.
A teenager in cow print clothing has been in the tree just outside your apartment. I do not know what he is doing there, or why, but please, make him stop. Not only is it dangerous to do so, everyone in the building is very weirded out. Especially since he seems to be talking to himself about grenades and bazookas and hit men while up the tree. The line for the nearest mental institution is available in a phone book. Also, he should stop wearing those awful cow print clothing. It burns the eyes of anybody with a fashion sense and is a menace to society. I recommend it be burned. Another tenant has noted that he went into your apartment for dinner last night and we have been told that he is also extremely noisy.
Yamamoto Takeshi.
Some of the tenants have spoken to a visitor of yours, who introduced himself as Yamamoto Takeshi. Apparently, he saw some children playing catch in front of the apartment building and joined them. Please do not let him near children playing catch. Or a ball. His idea of playing with kids has resulted in mental trauma, a broken window and two holes in walls. All from a single ball he threw.
Sincerely,
Your landlord
Dear landlord,
Unfortunately, I don't know any man in a black suit. I think you must be mistaken; he might be looking for another tenant.
Regarding Lambo (that is, the teen in the cow print clothing), I have persuaded in to stop camping in the tree. But he is affronted by what he perceives as the lack of fashion sense by the general populace and refuses to stop wearing cow print clothing. In fact, but bringing the matter up, I fear I have exacerbated the problem. As for his talking to himself, I don't think he realizes he does that, and thus, he cannot consciously stop it. If it is any comfort, I have never heard him speak of grenades or bazookas or hit men.
Yamamoto Takeshi had been informed that he is not allowed to play with children anymore. Or throw anything.
Sorry for the trouble,
Sawada Tsuna
To the tenant of apartment 27A:
Thank you for your consideration. If it is at all possible, please refrain from inviting people to your apartment.
Sincerely,
Your landlord
- Letters between Sawada Tsunayoshi from his landlord, dated 19th August 2017 to 30th August 2017
It was very odd, to see someone you've known for a long time and then suddenly get to know them. All your assumptions get tossed out the window and you are abruptly struck by how utterly blind you have been. That was how it was for Yamamoto Takeshi, with Tsuna and his dad.
"It's small and really messy, but make yourself at home," Tsuna directed him, scurrying to the tiny kitchen for a pot and tea leaves.
Takeshi grinned as he carelessly flopped onto Tsuna's bed. "It's much cleaner than mine," he confessed, thinking about his room with his clothes strewn over the floor in one corner and his textbooks, rarely opened, occupying the bulk of his poorly used desk. Then he abruptly remembered his room, the one he lived in now, with boxes stacked to the ceiling and the bare, barren expanse of it.
It was easy to talk to Tsuna. Easier to talk than it had been for years. Tsuna just sat there listening intently, asking questions here and there, knowing without saying that these were things that Takeshi needed to let out.
What had started out as a conversation about why Takeshi was in Italy quickly became a conversation about Takeshi himself. It started out with Takeshi talking about how his dad was covertly some kind of bodyguard for some secret heir, and when the heir moved out of Namimori, his dad decided to uproot their family of two to Italy instead.
"That sucks," Tsuna accurately summed up his feelings. "How did your friends take it?"
The conversation just escalated from there. Takeshi's friends didn't take it very well, but it was more along the lines of who they would rely on for baseball games in college or how would fail on math with someone-or-other. In fact, Takeshi had been in Italy for a week now and there were no calls or texts or emails from any of his friends.
When Tsuna asked why Takeshi didn't contact them himself, he hesitated with the answer. Voicing it out made it seem real, made it more concrete. That he didn't have real friends. That those friends of his were just people he hung out with and didn't really care about him. That their friendship was more about using and being used and Takeshi had, truthfully, known that for such a long time and it shouldn't have come as such a surprise. So Takeshi did as he always did and slapped on a smile. "I've been pretty busy lately, so maybe next week."
Tsuna looked at him doubtfully, but had thankfully steered the conversation away from that topic. "So how are you settling in?"
Takeshi paused, took one look at Tsuna's curious, open face and decided to go with the truth this time. "I'm not, actually. It just feels like unpacking and getting used to it would be admitting that I'm moving. It's stupid, since I'm already in Italy, I know-"
"It's not stupid," Tsuna told him. "It's normal. You didn't really want to move, so it makes sense that you don't really want to settle in."
The words eased him. Tsuna didn't tell him to buck up and get a life. He didn't judge Takeshi for not being able to move on. He accepted it; accepted him. It became easier to talk to Tsuna after that, no more hesitations before a patchwork of truths and lies.
"Green tea or coffee? I don't have much a selection," Tsuna called with his back turned to Takeshi.
Takeshi grinned. "Tea please! It feels more like Japan that way."
Tsuna laughed in response. "I know the feeling. That's probably why we were both in a Japanese restaurant with poor, inauthentic Japanese food."
Tsuna understood. Really, truly understood.
"Do you don't have plans yet?" Tsuna set the mug before Takeshi, cradling his own in his hands.
Takeshi took a careful sip before answering. "Nope. I was thinking about a baseball scholarship, but baseball isn't very big in Italy."
"It isn't. People here like soccer more," Tsuna admitted, taking a seat on his desk.
Shrugging, Takeshi took the news good naturedly. "Maybe I'll just take the year off or something." Tsuna gaped at his carefree attitude, but wasn't given enough time to say anything in response. "Enough about me though. What have you been up to?"
It was difficult for Tsuna to tell the story of what he had been up to while simultaneously omitting that he was in the mafia, so Tsuna settled for outright lies. "Nothing much," Tsuna answered quietly. "Just moving in, looking around, brushing up on Italian."
"Oh yeah," Takeshi laughed. "I've got trouble with that too." There was a brief moment of hesitation before Takeshi spoke again. "If you have the time, want to practice it with me?" His voice was a little tight, strained in a way the reminded Tsuna of his mother. And Tsuna had always been a huge mama's boy, without even trying to deny it.
"Sure."
Truth be told, Sawada Tsunayoshi had an unimpressive resume, though his essays were alright. But anything short of perfection was unacceptable. Reborn stared it down with silent dissatisfaction; as much as Reborn hated paperwork, it was a necessary part of picking up a new student. And he did lack people to torture.
Although, if Reborn were to be perfectly truthful with himself, he quite enjoyed teaching. It had all gone down five years ago, when he had requested work from the Ninth during his forced downtime ("it isn't healthy to overwork yourself," the old man had chided) and the Cavallone Boss' mounting debts had dissatisfaction mounting from within the Vongola Alliance.
Reborn now realized that the Ninth had stuck Cavallone's whiny adolescent heir on him to pay him back for the continuous nagging he had subjected the Nono ("the only people who need to watch their health are old men like you," he had retorted out of frustration at going stir crazy). It was a surprise that Reborn was actually good at it. (There had been betting pools on how long it would take for Reborn to kill Dino, or how long before Dino broke down.) It was an even greater shock that Reborn had actually enjoyed it.
Somewhere in the midst of setting up impossible tests and forcing Dino to wake up at ungodly hours for training, Reborn had grown fond of Dino. Somewhere in the midst of dodging rubber bullets and never ending grumblings, Dino had grown to admire Reborn. There was mutual respect, heavier on one side of the scale than the other, and there was trust. When Reborn had finally quit being Dino's home tutor, something that started out as a joke and an excuse to torture the boy every minute of the day, he had found his old job lacking.
But it wasn't as if there was an excess of mafia heirs to tutor. Nobody would go to Reborn and his sadistic methods if they had other ways of training their precious heirs. Even the Ninth carefully deflected Reborn's hints, though Reborn supposed that was just as well, since Enrico was coming along well enough, and was deathly afraid of Reborn. The hit man still maintained that a mafia boss should not cower in front of anyone.
So that left him with tutoring other mafiaoso instead. Reborn had already tried teaching at the Institute for Organized Crime, what basically amounted to a school for criminals, but hated the restrictions they put in place. Just listening to them was enough to bore him. Even so, the IOC had given him a teaching license (as if he needed such a thing) and volunteered their resources if he ever needed them. It helped that the Dean was from a criminal organization allied with the Vongola.
Trying to teach hit men was another headache of his own. Hit men practically begged to have the world's greatest tutor them, and Reborn wasn't really interested in fools that could only lick his shoes. No, Reborn wanted a real challenge. Hopeless ones like Dino were ideal, but people with potential that wanted to join the mafia rarely turned out to be as pathetic as Dino had been…
Reborn had intended to randomly pick somebody from this year's batch of new recruits, but last minute complications during the recruitment test meant that the Examining Committee had to dispatch an experienced hit man at the last moment. Reborn happened to be on base, wanting to take a look at any promising records so that he knew which interviews he wanted to look at when they conducted them. He had graciously volunteered his services, partially because Ranking Fuuta was an important figure in the Vongola Alliance, but mostly to show those fools how things were supposed to be done.
He had stumbled onto a completely unexpected goldmine.
Yes, he mused, Sawada Tsunayoshi would do very well indeed.
"Hey, you are getting a creepy look on your face," Colonello commented from where he lazed on the couch. "The kind of look you get when you are planning to do something evil."
"Shut up." Colonello frequently sought refuge in Reborn's apartment when Lal kicked him out; eventually Reborn had gotten sick of the blonde man's constant breaking and entering and simply resigned himself to the fact that Colonello was simply an annoyance he would never be rid of.
Colonello picked the sheaf of papers from Reborn's coffee table, still draped all over the couch. "What, so you are going to teach him to be a hit man? Eh, he doesn't seem very special."
Reborn shrugged. "I don't care, I want to teach him."
The blonde snorted. "Of course you don't. It seems wasted, considering his skill set, see? Hey, you sure he wants to work solo?"
This gave Reborn pause. While Reborn typically worked alone because he had few openings and generally possessed all the skills needed to carry out hits alone, the same might not be said of others.
"Hey, his essays don't look half bad," Colonello continued, not taking notice of Reborn's contemplations. "If you are going to enroll him in IOC , you are going to make him do his international law degree too? I mean, UniFl is in Vongola's pocket, but man, that'll be some killer workload."
"If I have to, I will pound the intelligence out of him," Reborn replied instinctively, still deep in thought. Though Tsunayoshi did seem to have considerable charisma, evidenced by his interaction with Gokudera and Chrome, he should be able to handle infiltration rather well.
"Wouldn't that make him less intelligent?"
Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He didn't need to teach the kid to be a hit man; after all, he didn't need to become a mafia boss in order to teach Dino how to be a mafia boss…
"Alright then, he won't be a hit man." Reborn decided out loud.
Colonello looked stunned. "Hey, this isn't about what I said, right?" The idea that Reborn was taking his opinion seriously was at once flattering and frightening, but Colonello was making a snap judgment by looking at the papers. Not exactly something that he wanted to dictate somebody's life upon.
"He'll just have to run a hit squad."
By this time Tsuna was rather sure he had failed the Vongola Recruitment Test and was wondering how he ought to answer to Byakuran. As it was, Reborn didn't care that his prospective student was having a small mental breakdown about his assumed failure.
Reborn had taken the week to get permission from the Ninth, which was informal until budgets and proposals were approved. Currently, he was busy going over candidates for the new hit squad. Truth be told, Reborn was wondering if he had made a mistake. Creating a hit squad was a lot harder than he thought.
It was very different from training Dino, where he had all of Cavallone's resources at his disposal and the go ahead from the Boss. Reborn now had to keep within budgets, make proposals and interview support staff, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. He suppressed a groan at the amount of paperwork that was still undone; this was why he preferred working solo and did fieldwork instead of desk jobs.
The Ninth's approval would probably be easy enough, but a proposal still needed to be submitted for record purposes. That meant that Reborn couldn't just wing it like he usually did.
The hit squad could mimic assassination squads like the Varia, or do more subtle, less contractual work, like the CEDEF. Reborn wasn't given leeway to interfere in Vongola politics, so he was leaning more towards the former. But that sort of contractual work often meant less loyalty; the Varia was getting increasingly rowdy and seemed more like Xanxus' subordinates than Vongola's. For now, Reborn supposed, he'd create a small, highly versatile group that would be mostly independent. Mostly because Reborn hated red tape, which was the reason he usually flew solo anyway.
The most important thing to settle was personnel. He couldn't have a hit squad with just one person and no pending candidates. It would defeat the purpose of having a hit squad instead of an individual hit man. That meant he had to determine what kind of people he wanted to include. Support staff was essential; Tsunayoshi and most front line combatants were unlikely to know essential skills like hacking or creating fake identities. Hell, even Reborn outsourced those jobs. Having those sorts of people on hand would definitely be useful. Logistics, technology, information… It would be nice to have medical staff too, but that might be difficult since mafia doctors were considered a rare and valuable commodity. Perhaps someone currently studying medicine or nursing would have to do.
Front line combatants would be needed as well. When the Varia was formed, they consisted strictly of traditional assassins rather than the loud bunch they were now, but for what Reborn had in mind, he'd probably need a few hit man who would be capable of confrontational combat. Now that he thought of it, an assassin would was a good idea too, so he listed it down as well. Or a spy. In fact, both might turn out useful. So would someone who could provide long range cover. Long range cover typically meant snipers, and snipers had him thinking of Colonello.
There was no way Reborn could teach such a huge group alone, he had to admit. Might as well make the blonde bastard useful. Come to think of it, Bianchi would join him if he so much as implied he had a vacancy for her. As much as it pained him to admit, Reborn couldn't actually do or teach everything. That led to a question of what needed to be taught.
Combat, for sure. From his essays, Tsunayoshi seemed reasonably well versed in mafia politics, but others might not, and it never hurt to reinforce it. Mafia Etiquette would go on the list too. If Bianchi was around, poisoning and poison resistance could easily be incorporated too. While it was awful to think about, resistance to torture was probably something he ought to teach at some point of time, considering information about the squad, when betrayed, could easily kill the lot of them.
The second most important issue was where to house all those people. If he were training an individual hit man, he wouldn't be having these problems, Reborn sighed. One of the most important aspects of training Dino was teaching him constant vigilance. And that meant Reborn had to have the ability to train - harass - him twenty-four seven. If he wanted to do that with an entire squad he had to give them some place to live.
Because it housed a hit squad, it had to be both large and secure. It needed to have training facilities and security features, and enough room to house them all. Individual rooms instead of sharing would probably be better, given the eccentricities and sex lives of people in the mafia.
Then there was the problem of if they were going to make it available for other people to go into. Reborn typically went to his client's office, but there was a reason the Varia typically conducted business from their mansion. Going into unknown territory was dangerous, especially since the squad Reborn was creating would mostly be inexperienced with the more vicious part of the mafia. They probably couldn't be too experienced if Reborn expected them to follow Tsunayoshi, a completely green mafiosi.
Which made reinforcing the building even more important, since their enemies would probably know of their location. Siege was entirely possible, especially people who might want to come after Reborn himself. It also meant that the building would have to look respectable enough for others to take them seriously. The list of conditions for the place grew longer and the places that Reborn could think of that met them shrunk. Reborn's own safe houses were too small and many of the larger Vongola safe houses were meant to house civilians and didn't have the facilities they needed. Damn, that meant having to find and buy a place.
He'd leave that for later, he decided. There were still many other things to be settled and further considerations would have to be taken into account depending on who was in the squad. That would apply to supplies as well, but he supposed he needed to get down a list of essentials first anyway.
Food was a given. The same went for furniture. Reborn hadn't yet decided if they would have a uniform. They provided a sense of identity and made them more presentable to potential employers, but also made them easy to recognize. That aside, there were weapons that needed to be ordered. Reborn was someone who firmly believed in maintaining your weapons yourself, but calling in someone to take a look at them and restock their ammo wouldn't require a live-in specialist. Then there was security to be installed, computers, routers, explosives…
Explosives immediately had him think of Gokudera Hayato, so he went back to his list of personnel and added the position and name. Hopefully no one had snatched him up yet; the Smokin' Bomb was a little too confrontational and politically connected for most Families' tastes, he was probably one of the best explosive experts around.
By the time Reborn settled on his list of things that needed to be done, he wondered how the Ninth got through the insane piles of paperwork he did every day. This was just planning to do things and he already wanted to stop. No wonder he complained to his subordinates.
Inspiration suddenly struck him. Tsunayoshi wasn't technically a subordinate since he would be his student, but this was his squad. Why should Reborn be doing the work for him?
Lambo stared at the summons in his hand, wondering if it was all some kind of practical joke. Knowing Reborn, he couldn't rule out the possibility.
As a child, Lambo had been asked by the Bovino Family to investigate Reborn in hopes that he would be able to glean secrets, relying on Reborn's reputation for mercy on women and children. Unfortunately, 'mercy' to Reborn meant something very different than for normal people.
It was a bit of a stretch to even call them acquaintances, given how Reborn studiously pretended Lambo didn't even exist. Lambo looked up to the guy, but was pretty sure that Reborn didn't consider him worthy to polish his shoes. It was an elitism that stemmed from an unshakable confidence in himself and perceived inferiority of others. Lambo wasn't sure anyone could disabuse that sort of mindset from Reborn, whose position was something that he attained by dragging himself through blood and war.
It was because Reborn attained his power that way that Lambo looked up to him.
But this was another thing altogether. The letter Lambo received was an invitation to join a as of yet unnamed hit squad. If Reborn was heading it, Lambo would have probably accepted by now. But the leader was presumably someone named Sawada Tsunayoshi.
The Bovino Family may not be huge in intelligence networks, but there wasn't anyone in the mafia named Sawada, which meant that this person was new blood. Lambo decided to figure out who exactly Reborn decided to teach.
He was a lot younger than Lambo expected. Average height, maybe a little shorter with all that hair he had. Definitely Asian, with slim limbs and an easy smile. Nothing like Reborn, who was all sly smirks and dark intimidation. Of course, if Reborn was trying to groom someone like him, he wouldn't establish a hit squad.
It was thirty minutes into watching the boy fumble around his kitchen that a knock came on the door. From his perch on a tree, Lambo could only see sneakers and jeans walk into the tiny apartment and sit by the chair at the desk, just adjacent to the door.
From the bugs planted on the window still of the apartment, Lambo heard a cheerful voice call out in what could possibly be Japanese. Another responded in the same tongue. Lambo turned his eyes from the window, laying back on a branch of the tree he was sitting in and pulled out Reborn's invitation to stare at it.
The most amiable ones in the mafia were often the most dangerous. Friendliness pulled people in and trapped them there, a mask that hid a colder heart. Then a large pair of brown eyes peered down at him.
"Argh!" With a cry of shock and terror, Lambo flung himself away, nearly managing to throw himself off the tree if not for a hand yanking at his shirt. It ended up with them being in a very odd position where Sawada Tsunayoshi was hugging the tree trunk with one hand and the other grabbing the back of his shirt and he dangled some ten feet from the ground.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," Sawada Tsunayoshi babbled, his eyes wide with panic. "I mean you've been watching me all day so I thought you might be hungry and I made way too much food-"
Lambo didn't know what compelled him to agree to the dinner invitation and sit through a perfectly cooked meal with two virtual strangers. He suspected that it was the same thing that made him send an affirmative reply to Reborn's invitation.