Cafe Munio

Tsuna lay facedown on the ground and contemplated entering a meditative state when the tinkling of bells signaled the entrance of a possible customer, and he was about to get up when he heard the low humming that Colonello liked to do.

That was promptly followed by an horrified, unintelligible squawk when when said man spotted the prone form lying on the floor. "Tsuna!"

There were a few moments of tense silence until Tsuna allowed himself to release a hopeless sigh. "No… just leave me here to die…" he said weakly.

"I will not abandon my friend in times of need," Colonello declared, his voice sounding far away and heroic from his standing point far above Tsuna. Then he knelt down on the ground. "Unless an angry Lal is involved," he added in a whisper. Tsuna accepted that. "What ails you, my friend?"

"Don't talk like that," Tsuna grumbled, "It adds to my headache. And it muddles my brain, which is already mangled enough from finals."

"Ah… finals," Colonello said. He stood and backed away. "I'm afraid Lal is calling," he said hurriedly, and Tsuna could tell from his tone that he was wishing he could erase his earlier words of helping a friend.

"Lal is in Italy at the moment," Tsuna said, not being in the mood for playing along. "But sure, leave me to suffer. I don't want to look at anything physics related, ever again."

"I could burn the textbook," Colonello said, trying to be helpful, but when Tsuna sprung up in a sudden fit of desperate anxiety and clutched said book like a lifeline, he made a quick escape through the door.

Tsuna stayed for another half hour before it was time for the store to close, and as he locked the doors and began trudging slowly home with his backpack resting as a dead weight on his shoulders, he once again entertained the though of becoming a meditative expert and retiring to the mountains.

Reborn was proving to be more helpful than expected when it came to helping Tsuna study — he knew he probably shouldn't be using text as a method of study since it was bound to distract him somewhere, but —

He dived off his bed to snatch up his phone from where it was lying on the floor, unlocking it to reveal a new text.

if you mess the basic laws up I will fly over there and throw you off a bridge

Why a bridge?

so you have a chance of surviving

That's strangely thoughtful. And kind of sweet, in a morbid way.

what the hell I can kill you with my pinky

I did not need to know that.

hey, who else do you talk to now

Um, Hibari.

tell him I can kill him with my pinky

The rest of the night passed by uneventfully.

This week has been overly sunny and cheerful for a week of doom, Tsuna thought, as he stood with Colonello behind the counter during a slow-moving afternoon.

"Hey, I just realized," Colonello said, turning to look at the sleep-deprived student next to him. "This is your last year of high school, right?"

Tsuna nodded from where he was trying to fall asleep with his eyes open.

"So…you're graduating," Colonello said. "Graduating, which means…"

"I'm going to go to some college in Italy. For 'training,' as my dad put it, but it's probably just one of his exaggerated, overdone metaphors again," Tsuna laid his head on the counter. "Wake me up if someone enters."

Colonello doubted Tsuna's dad was using a metaphor. "Aw, Italy is far away," he said instead, "Update us on your life and happenings every once in a while, won't you?"

"Of course," Tsuna said tiredly.

"Are you gonna work at the shop over in Italy?" Colonello asked, his eyelids drooping as Tsuna's exhaustion began to affect him as well. He laid his head on the table.

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," Tsuna said. Then he thought of Reborn. "No."

Colonello, having correctly guessed the reason for Tsuna's answer, closed his eyes, and they stayed hunched over on the table until Viper entered the cafe and, upon seeing them, mercilessly slapped them awake.

"Your friends don't come over often now, do they," Colonello said the next day, as they wiped tables.

"No, they're busy studying for finals," Tsuna answered. "As I should be," he muttered under his breath. "I'll find a box for the cake order," he said, and hurried away into the safety of the back room.

Once there, he spent a long time mulling over something that he wasn't sure he should say. Then he exited to say, "Actually, I'm not sure whether they're actually studying or using it as an excuse to go to each other's houses."

Colonello raised his eyebrows at this. "Do you want to join them?"

Tsuna shuddered at the thought, remembering the last encounter he'd had that resulted in a lot of flustered apologies. "I don't want to worry about them doing… things behind my back while I'm busy, in addition to some other problems. I caught them quite a few times," he said in response to Colonello's questioning look, "And they're not being very subtle about it, either."

"Speaking of being subtle," he continued, "There's also the looming problem of me needing to accept Hibari's offers of his tutoring services, but I cringe to think of what that may be…"

"You might want to think twice on that one," Colonello said carefully. Then Lal slammed open the glass door to announce her return from her trip to Italy, and he was too preoccupied with attempting to help move the boxes of exotic ingredients to further participate in the solutions to Tsuna's many problems.

So preoccupied, that when Hibari showed up to drag Tsuna away, four textbooks cradled casually in one arm, he failed to notice.

As Tsuna stumbled down the street, ignoring the piercing pain from where his shirt collar was pulled against his throat, he casually said, "Reborn wants me to tell you that he can kill you with his pinky."

Hibari answered with a noncommittal grunt, but Tsuna thought he saw something previously dormant flare up in his eyes, and shivered.

"Here," Hibari said, stopping in front of a rather large traditional Japanese home to unlock the gate. "What do you need help with?" he said gruffly.

"Um," Tsuna said, his mind lost in thoughts of how really freaking capable Hibari must be to walk fifteen minutes with four extremely heavy textbooks in one hand and dragging Tsuna in the other— "If I want to pass, not as much as before, I guess."

"I see."

Maybe it was just Tsuna, but he did think Hibari looked ever so slightly disappointed.

Then there was blooming pain in the back of his head. Hibari set the broom down and walked ahead of him, turning into a doorway. "Hurry up."

Tsuna learned a lot that day.

An 85, at least, he said to Reborn afterwards.

so you'll come to Italy

Probably.

Oh, and I told Hibari you could kill him with your pinky.

did you now

He just kind of shrugged.

hmph

When exams came, Tsuna blazed through them fairly easily and thanked both his tutors for their help with his frantic cramming.

"Really, I can't thank you enough," he said to both of them through their respective methods of communication, "I'm positive I can get into my university now. I don't know how to thank you enough."

Then they took on a frighteningly similar attitude of smugness, giving Tsuna the unnerving feeling that he probably shouldn't have said that.

The staff of Cafe Munio, Namimori, threw him a farewell party. Gokudera and Yamamoto, astonishingly, were going to join Tsuna in his university — "Oh, it suited our needs as well," they said when questioned — and Tsuna received a mysterious letter with an unknown insignia on it that Colonello later told him belonged to Belphegor's group.

"The knife guy," was Tsuna's only answer, but he didn't say anything further because Colonello looked increasingly displeased.

And, of course, there was Reborn.

you'd better apply for a job here

It isn't as if I would be able to do anything else, he thought resignedly. If he even did try to apply for another job Reborn would surely sabotage it and he'd end up with only one option in the end.

see you

Tsuna promised to regularly inform Colonello on his 'important milestones' and spent a week rushing about the house, planning, packing, and comforting his mother when she suddenly burst into happy tears.

Hibari was suitably annoyed at this. When he told Tsuna that he'd found a spot at the same university, well, Tsuna should probably have expected it.

At the airport, Lal ruffled his hair with more force than usual, then his mother wrapped him in a hug and nearly strangled him with the amount of strength she put into it.

Tsuna found himself looking forward to the journey, and as he boarded the plane, he found himself impossibly contented with his life as it was. He was surrounded by people who'd made him happier than he'd ever been, and they'd been the ones who made this period of his life the most fulfilling of all.

When the plane started its engines to begin its breathtaking ascent into the air, Tsuna couldn't help but feel like it had only been the beginning. He settled in his seat, glanced at Gokudera and Yamamoto bickering across the aisle, then over at Hibari who was taking a nap beside him, and vowed to enjoy whatever came the best he could.

A/N: and that's the end! thank you so much for reading it all! I hope I did the ending okay ;-;