The guest reviewer, 83, suggested that Basil, Fuuta, and I-Pin can now be introduced to Tsuna, and it's around (part of) that that I built this chapter!
Unfortunately, my current top priority is not failing math, so updates will be unpredictable from now on.
Remember, this fic doesn't have a specific plot (it's just crack, I guess?), but if you have an idea for something you'd like to happen in the future (I dunno, a rival café arc? ^^ It doesn't have to be café-related, it just has to be somehow connected to this fic) you're free to review and I'll consider. As usual, you're free to request scenes and characters (no lemons though, I can't and won't)!
Apologies for not updating!
And if anyone was insulted or indignant or thought that I copied their idea, I meant absolutely no harm and if you take offense to this story, I'm just going to apologize. However, if you want me to take this story down, it's up to the readers. I promise that I didn't purposely copy anyone's work – in fact, I've seen a few stories with this same idea, and I'm unsure who started it in the first place.
If you recognized any quotes or references, those belong to their various owners. This is the longest author's note I've ever made.
And now I'll stop babbling after my
Disclaimer: KHR does not belong to me.
Café Munio: Chapter Nine
"Work at a café, she said," Tsuna grumbled, wiping down the counter with a cloth, "It will be fun, she said."
Tsuna loved his mother, he really did, but she did have the most outrageous ideas at times. Such as the time she thought it'd be a good idea to send him to a DIY backpack-decorating event, where there were only little girls and all the possible decorations were sparkly and disgustingly pastel colored stickers.
He shuddered.
"Slacking off, Sawada!" Using a menu, Lal smacked him firmly on the back of his head.
Tsuna yelped. Lal could hit really hard! "I'm sorry, ma'am!" he apologized, quickly returning to scrubbing the counter until it gleamed. "Ah… I'm done. What do I need to do now?"
"Hmm," Lal inspected the counter, then nodded her head in approval. "Well, since you asked…"
Two hours of window-scrubbing, floor sweeping, light bulb changing, and 8 trips to the grocery store later, Tsuna thoroughly regretted asking that question as he plodded down the street with four bags of groceries hanging off his tired arms.
He pushed open the café door with his back and noticed the chipping sound coming from the back. "Er… What are you doing, Colonello?"
The blonde stood back from where he was hunched over the counter and displayed his work proudly to Tsuna. "So? What do you think of it, hey?"
Tsuna blanched. "Colonello!" he yelped desperately, rushing over to the counter, "What are you doing?!"
"It looks rather nice, don't you think?" Colonello offered, standing back to admire his work.
"Lal's going to kill you for damaging the counter!"
"I think she'll like it, hey," Colonello argued, setting his carving knife down on one of the shop tables.
"I-I mean, it's pretty," Tsuna said, almost hyperventilating—because the diamond-shaped patterns cut into the sides of the marble counter, so that the previously sharp edges turned more round, glinted in the light and were quite pretty if he did say so himself—"but did Lal give you permission?"
"Er, no," Colonello said, sitting onto a table and examining one of the corners. "Don't you think this looks like something you'd see in a hotel, hey?"
"Colonello, there are shavings of marble on the floor," Tsuna decided with the practical approach, "A customer might hurt themselves on that."
"I'll pick that up," Colonello said absentmindedly.
The tinkle of chimes alerted the two to the entrance of someone into the shop.
"Lal!" Colonello said delightedly, as he spun around, "Just in time!"
"What did you d—" Lal began, and Tsuna took the way her words suddenly cut off to mean that she had seen it.
"Do you like the counter?" Colonello said eagerly, and Tsuna pitied the poor man.
Lal later confided in the brunette that she did, in fact, like the counter, but Colonello should've asked for permission first anyway!
Tsuna took this to mean she didn't like surprises.
"Welcome!" Tsuna said brightly, looking up as the chimes tinkled.
The customer answered with a meek "Er, hello," and Tsuna looked up in surprise at how soft and innocent the voice sounded.
Well, a customer was a customer. Tsuna supposed that he shouldn't treat someone differently just because they were young. With a slight wince, he remembered all the times that shopkeepers had mistaken him for a child and asked him 'Where's your mother?' and worn (admittedly satisfying) expressions of surprise when he brought his school supplies and textbooks to the counter and paid for them.
Did he really look that young?
"Where would you like to sit?" Tsuna inquired as he hurried around the counter.
The light brown haired boy glanced around the café and pointed at one of the inner tables. "Can anyone see me from the street if I sit there?"
"I doubt so," Tsuna said with a shrug, trying to appear friendly as he took a menu off the shelf and guided the young boy to his table, "If they press their faces up against the glass, they might be able to."
"Then I'll sit there," the boy decided, accepting the menu with a cheery, "Thank you!"
"No problem." Tsuna smiled at the boy and was about to walk back to the counter when the boy called out.
"A-ah, I'd like to order one chocolate frappe, please!"
"Sure, it's coming right up," Tsuna said happily. "That's my favorite drink," he added, feeling like the boy looked slightly communication-deprived.
"Chocolate frappe helps me focus!" the boy declared, not seeming to dislike Tsuna's attempt at conversation. "You don't seem very scary," he added, tilting his head.
Tsuna sweat-dropped, unsure whether it was a compliment or something to be disappointed about. "Well," he said, "I guess that's a good thing! That way I don't scare away people," the brunette smiled at the younger boy.
"I wish I could scare people with looks," the boy commented wistfully. "That way, no one would—" he broke off suddenly, eyes darting in Tsuna's direction. "Can I have my frappe?"
"Uh, yes, sure," Tsuna said, wondering if this was one of the people like—he shuddered – the people on the day of the storm. He would never look at glow sticks the same way again.
When Tsuna returned again with the frappe in his hands, the boy looked decidedly more relaxed.
"My name's Fuuta de Stella," he introduced cheerfully before taking a long sip of his frappe. "I'm Italian!"
"I'm Tsuna," said brunette replied, wondering when the boy got so chatty. "And you can probably tell, but I'm Japanese."
"I'm meeting my friend here!" Fuuta bounced up and down on his seat, "Her name's I-Pin, and she's Chinese. She's very good at martial arts!"
"That's cool," Tsuna said, a little interested. "Martial arts are pretty awesome, aren't they?"
"Plus she can do this strange controlling thing," Fuuta informed him. "I've decided that I can trust Tsuna-nii!"
I'm a brother now? Tsuna thought, bewildered. Oh, well. Weirder things had happened.
"So, when's your friend I-Pin coming?" Tsuna asked kindly as the boy gripped the frappe in pale hands.
"It should be around now," Fuuta answered as he eyed Tsuna with a strangely calculating look on his face.
"Er… is there something on my face?" Tsuna checked a mirror and shrugged slightly.
"Nothing! But Tsuna-nii certainly does have very interesting rankings," Fuuta mused with a faraway look in his eyes.
Again, Tsuna wasn't sure whether this was a compliment or an insult. "Ah, do you need—" he began, when he noticed something odd from the corner of his eye. "YarGH!" Tsuna squeaked, his voice going an octave higher than usual as he watched the vase of flowers begin to float off the table.
Tsuna watched with wide eyes as the nearby menu started to levitate off the table and managed to regain his senses enough to slap it back down onto the table.
"Ah, good, that's no longer floating," Tsuna sighed in relief, only to squeak and dive for the slowly tipping frappe. "Watch out!" he warned as he began to reorganize the twirling things on the table, "Fuuta, are you okay…?" Tsuna ended with a strangled noise of fright as he found himself floating up off the floor.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Tsuna hollered, frantically kicking his legs in an effort to get back to the floor. He clawed at the nearest wall and was in the middle of using the mirror as a fixed point when there was the sound of a creaking door.
"My, what in interesting situation," Reborn announced as he glided into the area from the back room, "You're floating, Tsuna."
"So is everything else!" Tsuna wailed in panic, "Help me, Reborn!"
"E-eh? Reborn-san?" Fuuta, who Tsuna had temporarily forgotten about in his scrambled haste to get everything back in order, said—and there was split second where time froze, and then Tsuna crashed to the ground in a jumbled heap.
"Yeow," the brunette groaned, only to be hit on the head with multiple falling menus and tissue boxes. "Ow, ow, ow—OW!" he complained as the ceramic toothpick holder fell on his arm and rolled off, landing on the ground with a soft clink.
"Good job, Tsuna," Reborn deadpanned, "You stopped everything from falling and shattering."
"E-eh?! But they hit me instead!" Tsuna whined slightly, wincing at his bruised head. "That menu weighs a ton."
"At least Lal won't kill you for breaking anything, Tsuna," Reborn pointed out as he crossed the room and began tossing menus to the shelf.
"L-Lal?" Tsuna shivered slightly. "Right…"
"Ah, but if anything broke, it'd be my fault!" Fuuta apologized from where he was holding his frappe.
"Well, we couldn't blame a customer, now could we? The blame would be on the waiter who was on duty," Reborn explained, "And pick up those things, Tsuna."
Tsuna grumbled as he set the fallen cutlery and such onto their respective tables. "My head hurts."
The chimes tinkled.
"A-ah… Fuuta?" an accented voice came from the front door, and the small boy jumped up with a delighted exclamation of 'I-Pin!'
Tsuna noticed that the girl had a single plait on the top of her head and was wearing traditional red Chinese costume.
"Now, Tsuna," Reborn smirked at the brunette's back, "Let's get your wounds treated."
"But I don't have any wounds," Tsuna protested as Reborn not-so-subtly urged him onto the patient's bed.
"Weren't you complaining about how much the bruises hurt just a minute ago?" Reborn raised a mocking eyebrow and Tsuna spluttered. "Besides, you might have a concussion."
"A concussion?" Tsuna said in alarm. "I hope not!" He quickly corrected himself. "I mean, I don't have a concussion."
"You wouldn't know, would you?" Reborn sat down on the really-fun-stool-with-wheels-and-all, then pushed off smoothly from a wall and swiveled to the bedside. "Now, Tsuna, can you remember the relationship that we used to share?"
"W-what?" Tsuna yelped, "I'm very sure we never shared any relationship!"
"Are you sure you don't remember anything? Not even the time when I took you to the zoo and paid so you could pet a baby lion?" Reborn asked, looking completely serious.
"A baby lion?" Tsuna perked up at that. "Wait… how do I know you're not tricking me?" He send a deeply suspicious look at Reborn.
"Ah, it's so nostalgic to have you behave the same way you did the first time we met," Reborn sighed dramatically, "I missed this attitude slightly."
"W-What?" Tsuna said, bewildered, "Did I change?"
"Oh, of course," Reborn sent a sultry smirk in Tsuna's direction, "I never realized how different you were in bed compared to real life."
"I don't understand," Tsuna gasped in horror, "When did I…?"
"You're quite like a kitten, you know," Reborn commented offhandedly, "I think we've even role—"
Tsuna cut him off with an embarrassed squeak and a flaming red face.
"…Actually," Reborn continued as if Tsuna had never interrupted, "We've even become more—I think public is a better word to use here—since then," he gave Tsuna an absolutely unsettling wink.
"Bullshit," a commanding female voice snorted, crossing her arms, "Really, Reborn."
"L-Lal?!" Tsuna's breath hitched slightly and you could see the major inner turmoil that the poor boy was experiencing.
"Aw, Lal," Reborn sulked with an amused glint in his eyes, "And I was so close to convincing him too."
"Sawada, you're too gullible for your own good," Lal reprimanded as she strode briskly into the room and picked up a file. "Workday's over. Leave," she instructed.
"And be careful next time, Sawada," the blue-haired woman added as Tsuna shakily got up and left the room on wobbly legs. He nodded faintly and pushed open the glass door, hearing the cheerful "Bye, Tsuna-nii!" as if it was a thousand miles away.