#ayz283

This time it’s I-Pin.

She looks like the future I-Pin, the version that would pop up whenever Lambo would misfire the Ten-Year-Bazooka, with her long hair and big eyes. The video date corroborates this. It’s been a decade for her. She looks healthy and happy. Her usually braided hair is wet and loose around her shoulders. She’s in pyjamas and the dim light around her means it’s closer to bed time than anything else. Most of the video is almost like a diary, an itinerary of her life and what she did that day. She complained about Lambo’s antics a lot. She talked about school a lot too. She’s going to Namimori Middle now.

Everything about it soothes some part of Tsuna’s soul. Her voice is light and lilting as she brushes her wet hair in long careful strokes. It seems she’s finally gotten her own room.

Towards the end, she gets a flash of introspection.

“I didn’t mean to be complaining this whole time, Sawada-san. You know, it would get kind of awkward if you came home to watch these? I’ve poured a lot of feelings into it over the years. But that’s fine. I watch some of the old videos sometimes, my own or maman’s. Fuuta claims his is Top Secret, and Lambo says I can watch his over his dead body.” I-Pin rolls her eyes. Tsuna can’t help but smile at her clear exasperation at her brothers. “They’re missing out. Personally, I think it’s nice to physically see how I’ve changed over time…” I-Pin gets quiet. “But maybe not for you, right?”

I-Pin shakes herself out of the sudden low mood. She’s resolute when she refocuses right at Tsuna. Her dark gray eyes resolutely piercing straight past the camera and into Tsuna’s own russet.

“Mistaking you as my mark was the best thing I had ever done. I am fortunate to have you as family.

“We miss you always. We’re still praying for everyone’s safe return.

“Until next time, Sawada-san.”

..

..

There’s a lot to be said about the current school experience.

Hands down the most embarrassing part is when the final bell rings.

Tsuna doesn’t linger, opting to stuff everything in his bag as quickly as he can, rushing out of the doors and downstairs to the gates as soon as the teacher gives the okay. It’s fruitless. Pogo always beats him there. Never mind that his class is never one of the earlier ones to be left out. There’s some sadistic con of the teachers to try to teach the high-schoolers patience. So by the time Tsuna is downstairs and ready to go, it’s always to a crowd.

A crowd who stops to gawk as Pogo rolls up in a heavily tinted limousine to pick Tsuna up from school. He’s wearing some heavy shades that blocks a lot of his face, but it doesn’t mask the heavy hands and his three-piece suit and the fact that Pogo is a chimp. He wears them even though the days have been cloudy and he’s fooling absolutely no one.

Tsuna’s ears burn full of the whispers and pointing of his schoolmates the whole trek to the passenger seat of the car.

The car door slams behind, Tsuna wears his seatbelt and only then do Pogo drive away. Kind of like a helicopter parent, he supposes. Tsuna’s heard stories like that from other student’s strict parents, but Nana was never like that.

“How was your day?” Pogo asks, his default question. It’s the last school day of the week, and Tsuna can’t wait for the weekend to do nothing. The first day was the worst, but by the third day it’s almost like he’s always gone to Italian school.

The level at which he understood his subjects was the same.

“It was terrible,” Tsuna began with relish. “I didn’t understand anything the teachers said,” and what parts of the language Tsuna could understand did not mean Tsuna followed along in class, “I think we have homework? And we had PE today.” And Tsuna showed everyone exactly how unathletic he is. Nobody laughed yet, but that’s only because they were too busy picking their jaws off the ground.

“What about your tablet? Did you get better at that?”

“No,” Tsuna moans, omitting all the times he accidentally dropped it, “V opened up everything for me.”

Well, the teachers tried to help, but no matter what they said, it wasn’t intuitive. Tsuna would know. Reborn is always crowing about trusting his intuition. No, using this age’s new technology is like learning to ride a bike. It’s a skill Tsuna didn’t have yet. It’s all made worse because Tsuna had to swallow down all the embarrassment to ask for help. The teachers called it a culture shock. VERDE flags it as being technologically unskilled.

“What about you? Are you okay? You look tired…” Tsuna says, though Tsuna can’t see Pogo’s eyes behind his shades, there’s this… lathergy to Pogo’s movements.

Pogo has been testing out taking more shifts at the hospital, straying from his routine of night shifts to whatever will fit while Tsuna’s in class. So that means sometimes he’s not there to send Tsuna to school, letting either Oboro or Skull do that, but he always comes early to pick him up. Even when Tsuna said it was okay. But that’s another story. No amount of cajoling or wheedling or outright begging will let Tsuna walk to and from school. (He’s tried everything.)

On the plus side, Tsuna has caught him sleeping (and confirming that he in fact sleeps). It’s a strange thing to notice, but Pogo seems lighter in his sleep.

After much reassurance of his health, there doesn’t seem to be much to Pogo’s day either. When he’s not at the hospital, he has a few friends he visits at the market or he does daily chores. He’s been thinking of remodeling the kitchen to something more modern to which Tsuna offers to help since weirdly enough he didn’t have any homework. Pogo also went to the bank and offers to go through Tsuna’s current bank balance together (which Tsuna declines, though not before asking if there’s enough for the rest of his education). It was a mistake because then Pogo lazered in on whether Tsuna had any dream schools he wanted to go to.

Tsuna laughs. Dream schools. The closest one that’ll have him is good enough.

It’s in one of these natural lulls of conversation, between sharing anecdotes, that Tsuna remembers.

“Something weird happened today… Some kids called me mafia… Is that normal?” Tsuna asks.

The students whispered it behind fingers, or joked about it among their friends. They were delighted or appalled or both to spread this completely unfounded rumour. Truthfully, it’s probably a cultural thing, like, back in Japan, Tsuna suspected a few people of being in the yakuza. But he couldn’t understand it. Tsuna didn’t look like a delinquent! At most, a slacker. Mafia is men in suits and guns and craziness. Tsuna is the most normal one at school! More than anything else that happened today, from being flayed open with his lack of athleticism or his poor grades or looking normal or being talentless, that irritated him. Tsuna didn’t hold on to his annoyance for long… Because they kind of had a point. Pogo is a very suspicious character. Plus, a limousine screamed too much money.

Tsuna would have accepted this rumour and moved on, except—

There were also the incredibly weird interactions.

His schoolmates were normal, for any measure of normal. They talked about famous people (Tsuna didn’t know) or about popular music (that Tsuna didn’t know). Then, occasionally, they would do the craziest things, like show off their quirks. It’s a bit like showing off in sports or showing off something they brought from home except… Quirks can include spitting fire out of their mouths, and gleefully creating a tower of mud one and a half stories tall. The teachers wouldn’t care as long as you didn’t disrupt learning period or break school property and clean up after yourself.

Tsuna’s the new school attraction, so everyone seems to be showing off in his vicinity.

And, you know, that would be fine, if only they didn’t expect Tsuna to show off too. Explaining the Vongola Intuition the first handful of times were nerve wrecking enough. Showing off? Out of the question. Despite how straight forward his ‘quirk’ is, usually they would ask him to repeat the explanation. Multiple times. With examples.

And a variation of this interaction kept happening.

But now, since they played football at PE, nobody believed him anymore. All because he couldn’t pass nor keep the ball.

(How does that make any sense?)

“Mafia? Relatively, I suppose, especially for someone of your stature,” Pogo says. Tsuna draws a blank. Is Pogo calling him short? “There’s a stereotype in Italy: People with no visible quirk expression are more likely to be involved in the mafia.”

“Oh.” Tsuna sits on that for a while, mind furiously spinning to catch up to this leap of logic. Ultimately, all he gains is a headache. “Why?”

Pogo switched lanes, eyes on the road. Tsuna isn’t sure if he’ll ever get used to watching Pogo drive. Pogo is fine, he’s very used to it, but Tsuna isn’t used to watching a chimp at the steering wheel.

It’s like if Reborn, the baby, were to drive a car. It’s nonsensical. Shouldn’t be allowed.

(Tsuna keeps waiting to be pulled aside by the police.)

“It is mostly heresy,” Pogo offers in that calm, lulling tone of his. ”An old wives’ tale, if you will.

“There is a common misconception that mutations that need to be expressed are more dangerous that the other two types. A man with no quirk expression is a blank slate.

“That’s often the reason mist users must hide, they usually take the basic pre-evolution form. A lot of current mafia dons have mutations that need to be expressed. Or when they go out they hide exaggerated quirk features.

“It’s an old country, Tsuna-sama. It comes with its fair share of superstition. Think nothing of it.“

So even slightly queasy, Tsuna resolves to shrug it off. If Pogo said so…

When they returned, Pogo heads off to sleep, and Tsuna to find everyone else.

He found everyone, minus Skull, lounging around the outside pool. Whose idea was it to swim in this weather? Natsu is already shivering, though he’s not yet in the water. Someone has thoughtfully let Natsu float around on a floatie. Jun, Oboro’s capybara box animal, and Amadeo, the albino elephant box animal, are with him—And Oodako, who arrived halfway through the week. In Tsuna’s bathtub. It was even a surprise for Skull, as the octopus came through the plumbing.

Oboro, the supervising adult, is lounging on the pool chair in his shades napping but wakes up as Tsuna nears. “Otouto, hey. Did you make any friends?” he asks, mid-yawn, to which Tsuna disheartenly grimaces. “It’s alright. It’s only the first week.”

Tsuna would feel better about it if that wasn’t the first question Oboro always asks.

“Mao,” Natsu calls shakily as his floatie rocks treacherously, eyes round and pleading.

Oboro smiles. “He’s having fun.”

Tsuna nervously chuckles along, even as a particularly big wave rocks Natsu’a floatie up and down. Between the four animals, Natsu is easily the smallest animal. Any movement is enough to potentially flip Natsu over.

Behind him, the bushes rustle, and Tsuna glances back just in time to see Skull stepping out of them.

“Tsuna!” Skull says, covered in dirt and leaves. “You’re back already? Are you still friendless?”

“It’s a work in progress!” Tsuna retorts near screech-y levels, before processing Skull’s appearance, “Are you okay? What happened?”

“This? I set traps around the forest.” Skull begins to dust off his jacket and pants, but misses the twigs in his hair. “How’s school?” Then he catches sight behind Tsuna. “Oodako, what are you doing?”

Tsuna turns just as Natsu flies into the air accidentally flicked up by Oodako’s tentacle when he clung to it and let go at an unfortunate moment.

“Gah—! Natsu!”

Tsuna trips into the pool trying to catch his partner.

...

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It's not officially on AO3 or FF yet, bcs I have a str for chapters. I still posted it tho bcs I'm experiment since 2k chaps help me write. If you have any thoughts or feelings, shout it out. If you have constructive feedback, would love to hear it.

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