Chapter Text
Of all Tsuna’s family, it’s Fuuta who acts closest to normal.
(Besides his mom, of course, who was being strong for the kids.)
Fuuta looked straight into the camera with quiet confidence. If he ever cried, he did it offscreen, though that might change in a different video. His eyes are older than they should be, so mature and yet so hopeful. Even in the future, with Tsuna stressed out of his mind and everyone training to get stronger faster, Fuuta was a ray of stability. He teased Tsuna about his height, babysat Lambo without complaint, and occasionally went out of the Merone base to gather crucial information.
He was so resilient. Where did he get it from?
“I went to Vongola HQ to help,” Fuuta began. ”It was incredible. This solid wall of orange, your flames, surrounding your room and protecting everyone outside… Which is what everyone thinks with the information Reborn gave us. Basil told me not to touch it because, apparently, inside is a highly dangerous environment that sucks dying will flames out of you. They’re trying to map it out with robots. That’s been hit or miss. They did get an internal temperature, which fluctuates from normal to extreme cold to back.
“We tried finding Byakuran to ask for his insight, but he, Uni and their guardians are missing. The Vongola took in the rest of Giglio Nero for questioning. Nobody wants to blame Uni and her famiglia.. but Byakuran.. He’s not so trusted.” Fuuta looks away, in a combination of shame and grief and worry. “It’s not looking good for them. I can’t find them and neither can Mammon.”
“I ranked you, Reborn-san, and your guardians, everyone who went in with special flame disconductive suits which Verde made. We haven’t heard from them yet. Most of my ranks were inconclusive,” Fuuta notes, carefully neutral, but the fact he’s trying to hide how worrying that is worries Tsuna greatly. Was it raining? What did inconclusive ranks mean in this situation? Was it Tsuna’s fault? Was it because of his barrier? Or was it because of that man?
Tsuna grits his teeth.
“Papan thinks it’s a bad sign,” Fuuta continues, “But I don’t know. Your ranks occasionally worked, so that’s good.
“They say the Vindice came out early on, to observe and judge, but Vongola Nono sited that Vongola had it handled, so they left. No laws were broken. There’s nothing to judge.
“I ranked for who has information linked to the attack at Vongola HQ.”
Fuuta shook his head, eyes shadowed.
“It didn’t work. The rank doesn’t exist. It’s likely that they cleaned up any loose ends before... Before.” Fuuta sighs, shoulders drooping. “I hope you’re being careful.”
“There’s too much of a foggy signal between you and the ranking planet, Tsuna-nii. I’m sorry I can’t clear it.”
On a dime, Fuuta’s expression turns from its serious mulling to a more hopeful smile.
“Luckily, I already ranked for mafia bosses most likely to survive catastrophic odds, from a magnitude 8 earthquake or half the world sinking, or a volcanic eruption of Sakurajima, or a zombie invasion, or an ice age. You consistently came out top ten!”
Tsuna sweat drops, laughing weakly and entirely helpless.
Fuuta planned for all sorts of weird scenarios, but even Fuuta’s great imagination could never phantom where Tsuna ended up.
..
..
That first evening Tsuna asked Skull to stay the night, both out of genuine care for his safety and politeness.
Skull ends up moving in.
Tsuna didn’t know when he did it but by the light of the morning, it’s like Skull had three entire closets filled to the brim, pet food for the still missing Oodako, and his own range of crazy expensive motorcycles parked in the garage.
And despite reiterating constantly yesterday about being insanely busy, Skull proceeds to follow Tsuna around.
Tsuna doesn’t bring up this inconsistency, he’s too inwardly relieved.
Reading through journals of the previous Vongola bosses gets boring fast (and depressing). Studying gets boring, frustrating and depressing. Even walking around the house by himself gets boring and depressing, if Natsu is gone without him. Oboro only comes at night after work, while Pogo, even with his numerous helpful mist clones, is busy doing his own things when he’s not teaching Tsuna.
But with Skull around, it’s still a little boring and frustrating, but no longer depressing.
Plus, Pogo could take longer shifts at the hospital. He’s been cutting back for Tsuna.
“I can’t believe Vongola Terzo had a mistress. Have you seen his hair? It wasn’t even in style,” Skull flippantly says, flitting through pages with ease. It took him a while to get started, then he read faster than Tsuna whose still using V.E.R.D.E. (Instead of orally translating, Skull made Tsuna take pictures, which magically translated itself.) Skull cringes, though his eyes won’t lift from a particularly absorbing line. “…Damn.” He reads further down, eyebrow raising higher and higher. ”Oh, damn.”
Tsuna flushes. He’s not going to ask, already guessing what it could be. These journals could be sources of insightful introspection, or they could be a true unfiltered emotional dump.
It’s both embarrassing and reassuring. He definitely feels better about his crush on Kyoko-chan.
(Kyoko-chan..)
Skull skims the rest of the book, then tosses it for another one in their unread pile. He cracks it open and begins reading.
“What are we looking for?” Skull asks again.
Tsuna shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
Skull whines, sinking low into his chair.
Tsuna doesn’t blame him.
It’s in another stretch of boredom half an hour later that Tsuna sates his curiosity.
“What’s going on between you and aniki?”
“Oboro?” Skull pauses before putting down his book. The air stills with solemnity and for a moment Tsuna wonders if it was even his place to ask, then Skull continues and Tsuna’s curiosity overtakes him. “At heart, he’s an optimistic kind of guy. There’s not much that can keep him down, but, because of that, he’s more willing to take risks.
“It was a few years ago—I forgot how many exactly cause they all clump together after a while—Oboro dropped in and he was so… radiant. He had this big plan and it was going to change everything and he thought he had it all in the bag.
“—He didn’t. Unfortunately, I was the only one who would pop his bubble, so we fought. He left and formed the Vertice.
“Our relationship never recovered.”
Skull shrugged as if to say, ‘And that’s that.’ That a disagreement was worth the lack of communication and one-sided degradation of trust between them. Maybe Skull didn’t see the big deal of it all, too used to counting times in years and decades now. But it must be to Shirakumo. The older looking man was a friendly sort of person, a true extrovert. He’s clearly still not over it.
“What did he want to do?” Tsuna asks.
Weirdly, Skull flicks his eyes away and back, struggling to maintain eye contact. His presence suddenly shrinks into himself, and it shrinks Tsuna’s heart a little.
“He wanted to get you out,” Skull mumbles finally.
“Huh?”
Skull sits up, surrendering his entire attention. He’s never looked closer to his age than when he sheds his loudmouth, vibrant personality for something heavier. The purple-haired man’s entire demeanour turns ..apologetic?
Grimacing all the while, the youthful immortal explains. “The Neo Vongola has a quirk user that can grant anything. She calls it wishes. It’s hands down one of the most powerful abilities in the world currently. In the wrong hands, you could rule the world with a quirk like that. Oboro wanted to wish you out.”
Tsuna blinks twice. “Then why..?”
“Because wishes aren’t free, Tsuna,” Skull emphasises, like Reborn does when he’s trying to explain a trick in a practice exam question. “Everyone pays to play. If it’s too good to be true, it is.”
“What do you mean? Would it have harmed aniki?”
“No, he would’ve been fine, but you...”
Tsuna points a confused finger to himself. “Me..?”
“You will never again use your dying will flames as you once did.”
So—That means.
“What does that mean..?” Tsuna asks.
Skull grimaces. “You won’t be able to wield your dying will flames. Essentially, you’ll be a civilian. You know how my Undead Body technique uses my cloud flames? I developed the bare bones of that without the mafia and became the stuntman even death hates.
“You wouldn’t be able to do even that,” Skull stresses. And then as if it’s a weight off his shoulders, Skull adds, almost spitefully, “If he was betting his own flames, it would be different—More understandable. But to bet yours? That’s just careless. I would not stand for it.”
This time, Tsuna quiets, as with slow but great inevitability, revelation dawns upon him.
“You were scared,” Tsuna says with surety.
Skull immediately flares up. “Of course I was! If you didn’t fight for Reborn, for the Arcobaleno—if you couldn’t anymore—where would I be? Where would any of us be?”
Skull’s eyes are wild, the white stark surrounding purple irises.
What is to be said to that?
Tsuna didn’t care about using his dying will flames to fight again. He doesn’t want to fight anyone. He doesn’t want to live fighting for his life. Being attacked just because of something everyone assumes he holds. The Vongola lineage, the Vongola rings, Vongola Sin, Reborn’s Boss watch, and now, the Mare rings…
So to wake up and never use his dying will flames again… He would be okay with that.
Skull scrambles, arms increasingly fierce in their movements. “It’s not that I didn’t want you out, Tsuna. You got to believe me! Retire! Do whatever! You think I care for this mafia shit? I say fuck ‘em—”
“It’s fine, Skull. I understand,” Tsuna cuts in, and immediately Skull deflates.
“..Really?”
“Yeah, no harm done.” Tsuna smiles, a small one, but it’s enough for Skull, who looks as if the weight of the world has lifted off his shoulders. Skull certainly seems even younger now.
Later that night before he went to sleep, Tsuna would revisit this conversation in the privacy of his mind and this large foreign bedroom.
Tsuna hopes they make up eventually.
Did it matter?
Tsuna’s out now. Even if he woke up ten years ago, or twenty, everyone, besides Skull, was already gone.
Something like that wasn’t worth having a grudge over.
..
..
If Tsuna was honest with himself, he never stood a chance.
It had been the middle of the night, long after he and Reborn has gone to bed in their assigned room in Vongola HQ.
Just that day Dino had business in Florence, and the rest of them were allowed to tag along and gawk as the tourists they were. Gokudera was their very knowledgeable tour guide, while Yamamoto held their mostly misused map. Ryohei kept picking fights with the birds who mistook his hair for a landing spot, while Chrome picked up countless souvenir keychains, one for Kyoko and Haru and Uni and anyone and everyone. They went from a cathedral to a historic bridge, from fresh seafood cuisine to authentic gelato. Mukuro either scammed, bargained, or traumatised anyone they needed to pay with the rest of the Kokuyo gang making fun of everything. Hibari was both with them and absolutely nowhere. Reborn turned out to be absolutely no help, as it fell to Tsuna to make sure they stayed in their group. Unsurprisingly, Tsuna got divided and lost (when all he wanted was the bathroom!), tripped into a skirmish (egged on by a disguised Reborn called Remario), only to be bailed out at the eleventh hour when his friends refound him.
Nevertheless, it was a good day.
Feet aching, Tsuna and his pseudo-family went to bed happy.
So nobody would have known, except Tsuna’s Hyper Intuition rang so loud and so thoroughly that it might as well as have physically shrieked Tsuna out of his dreams. He awoke with a gasp, eyes caught dead-on the depths of an abyss above him. There was a portal right above his sleeping form. It made no sound. Instead of casting shadow, it absorbed moonlight. So ominous, this consuming evil.
If he had time to think, he would have gone straight to ‘Vindice?’
But there wasn’t even that fraction of a second.
A sickening grin of razors and blazing orange eyes peer from the dark before black tendrils leap out with great speed.
It was well-trained reflexes and his pure gut-instinct to live that lit his Dying Will flames without his Dying Will pills. His Vongola Gear transforms and Natsu awakens. But like this, with barely a metre between them, Tsuna can’t dodge, but he can burn them to ash.
Simultaneously, two shots of pure Sun flame strike true: one at the side of the head and the other at the main tendril. Afterwards, Reborn’s enemies fall.
Neither happens.
Paradoxically, the attack strengthens, bulkier and darker, until it pierces Tsuna’s abdomen, slamming into him like all the force of a truck careening at full speed. Tsuna gasps out all the air from his lungs. It’s painful, don’t get him wrong, but it couldn’t stop Tsuna’s instant realisation:
This enemy has his own version of Zero Point Breakthrough: Revised. He took Reborn’s and Tsuna’s flames for his own by corrupting it.
That’s not the worst though, because Tsuna can feel—
It’s currently corrupting all the flames within his body.
That—
No.
Tsuna grits his teeth, fingers wrapped around the appendages sticking out of his body. Fractals of ice form under his gloved hands just to be broken down by his opponent. It’s a continuous cycle, happening rapidly.
“Sawada Tsunayoshi,” a voice uniquely masculine, amused and triumphed resonates in the air*.* A long tongue curls out between sharp teeth and leaves a slimy, cold trail down Tsuna’s cheek. “At last…”
The man’s eyes blaze a pure white, and Tsuna’s Hyper Intuition quivers.
More tendrils pour out from a dropped jaw. This time, veering sharply left.
Desperate, he calls, “Natsu—!”
In the corner of his eye, Natsu snatches Reborn out of the room, dodging attacks with perfect precision, just as darkness overtakes his vision with Tsuna helpless to fight it.
He comes to an illusionary landscape, instantly bombarded with stimuli. Ear-splitting screams come in all directions, indistinguishable from each other. It's a dark, endless void. Cold grasping hands clutched him tight. Each yanking with desperate intensity. They try to swallow him, tugging and dragging him to depths unknown.
But Tsuna is desperate too.
Tsuna doesn’t need to tell his body to move. He’s already fighting to keep his head above water. He absolutely can’t go under.
It is within this period that the wails clear up, becoming distinct voices in the cacophony.
Murderer, they shriek.
Salvation.
Monster.
Boss.
Demon.
Demon.
Tsunayoshi.
It’s Uni and Byakuran saying that, eyes inexplicably sorrowful, faces blank with grief. Tsuna finally recognises them from the sea of figures surrounding him. An ice spears his core, independent of illusions. Tsuna’s lip quivers reflexively. Their grips are indiscernible from any other. Any touch digs and twists and claws into him. Every hand has the weight of a soul clinging to his own.
Tsuna refuses to die like this.
In this second of eternity, with renewed vehemence, Tsuna yanks and kicks, grappling, brawling and crawling. Away and up, up, up. Amidst this sea of victims, Tsuna has a clear view of the dark, reflective sky. His face is alien: his eyes blaze orange in a malformed rectangle, his teeth sharpening to deadly points. Tears ran streams down his face, yet he can’t feel them.
It’s hard to breathe suddenly, as Tsuna has another epiphany:
Possession.
His opponent wants his body.
In distant cries, more a soul deep instinct, Tsuna can hear Natsu’s pained mewls. Valiantly, furiously, wrestling the tendrils away from anyone else, minimising the absorption of flames from anyone else. Tsuna can see in his mind’s eye Natsu writhing as his mane rapidly turns an indigo so dark it’s designated black.
The whole mansion should be awake by now. His friends waiting for him or waiting for an imposter masqueraded as him.
Deep chuckles mute the crowd. How eerie that Tsuna can feel his mouth move, yet have no control over it. With every sound, chills run down his spine, stealing all the warmth from his body.
“There will be no imposter, Sawada Tsunayoshi. Neither you nor me will survive this. Whatever man comes out the other side… For better or worse, they’ll be an amalgamation of both of us.”
No.
NO.
In his core, Tsuna tries to burn this virus out of him, met with an equal amount of opposing force converting his flame. All his attention is focused on battling this enemy and his horde of victims unintentionally impending his way.
In reality, Dying Will flames explode from Tsuna’s person, forming a Sky barrier, similar to the one Uni made once but better, infinitely stronger. Unique because inside is a whole different ecosystem to outside, cut off from absorbing more flames.
Reborn once said the instinct towards survival is the strongest force of humanity. Tsuna proved it at every terrible battle.
He’ll prove it again.
Nobody can leave but Tsuna.
Tsuna won’t leave with even a stain of this man.
His vow is pure and true, and with every shred of his will he will see it through. Before anyone else dies.
A man who absorbs souls to get stronger…
There’s no room for this parasite in his circle of friends.
There’s no reality Tsuna will ever allow that to pass.
..
..
Tsuna grips his mug tighter.
He should have used Zero Point Breakthrough: Revised instantly. The moment he woke up. Before Tsuna was even fighting in a battle of possession.
Or if he was faster at dodging, if he wasn’t still bleary from sleep.
Or maybe he should have made the barrier stronger. He should have made it impenetrable from the outside too. He just didn’t think…
He wasn’t thinking! And that was the problem!
Why did they follow? Why did Tsuna take so long!
How did he mess up so badly?
Maybe then he wouldn’t be sitting in the dark of the kitchen at who knows what time in the morning wondering how it all went so so wrong. His fingers are shaking, either the last dredges of his nightmare or pure helplessness, and he can only cup them around the mug to try to absorb stability that way.
Truly…
Tsuna didn’t blame his friends at all.
Tsuna himself would have gone in and tried to help, if he could. He knows he would. How long did he realistically think he could wait patiently outside a barrier while knowing one of his friends was fighting to the death inside? A year at most?
Tsuna’s nerves would never allow it.
Blazing cloud flames and the sounds of footsteps precede Skull’s entrance to the kitchen. Weird cause Pogo hasn’t started breakfast yet.
“Hey, you’re up early,” Skull says, taking in Tsuna’s seat at the island, “Psyched for your first day of school?”
It must be a talent of Skull’s to say sentences and change Tsuna’s entire mood.
Tsuna’s hands spasms. “School?” he shrieks, almost tumbling off his chair.
Skull grins. “Every kid needs to go to school.”
Oboro pokes his head in, before blocking the doorway. He must have arrived early too. He smiles, appropriately subdued for the earliness. “You can’t just send Tsuna off to learn about the mafia.”
“Who said anything about mafia school?” Skull says.
“Oh. Normal school?” Tsuna says, deflating instantly, before turning considering, ”Is my Italian good enough to pass? I can barely read…”
Skull waves him off. “Don’t sweat all that! V can translate. Can’t you, V?”
Tsuna’s watch, a gift from Skull, flashes. “Affirmative,” it says. “There are also numerous Italian-to-Japanese resources available.”
That sounds strangely specific…
“Oh, that’s not so bad… Wait, did you say today?” And then realising Skull is dead serious, Tsuna yells, standing up, “Why didn’t you mention this yesterday!” He rushes upstairs past Skull and Oboro, leaving the mug on the counter. It’s halfway up the stairs that he turns back around to the kitchen, but too quickly and ended up tumbling down the stairs, screeching all the while. By the time he picked himself up, single-mindedly reentering the kitchen, Oboro has started cooking and Skull takes Tsuna’s open place. “Skull! I’m not ready! I don’t have school books or a uniform! I don’t even know where I’m going!”
It’s true, and the more Tsuna thinks about it, the more nauseated he feels.
School.
Where did the summer holidays go? Is it already that time of the year?
It’s September, of course, but also somehow Tsuna’s been living in this space where time didn’t matter and the days passed by unacknowledged in their dates.
Usually in the week before school started, Tsuna would scramble to finish his summer homework.
To not have any warning was inconceivable.
“It’s fine. You do nothing on the first day of school, anyway. We’ll get the uniform right now, and nobody has textbooks anymore. We use this.” Skull brandishes a tablet. Tsuna has seen Pogo use it once or twice, but mostly it collects dust on some table. “This is your notebook, textbook and classroom disruption all at once. We still have time before school starts. Let’s get ready, yeah?”
With that, Skull shoos him off.
Surprisingly, Tsuna isn’t late for the first day of school.
That’s the only positive of the day.
Because somehow school, even in Italy, is everything he expected and less.
Which means, as the new kid, it is terrible.
Firstly, it’s a private school, which smells like the handiwork of Pogo. Oboro though promised that it’s only because it’s the closest school. All three adults dropped him off with an earnest good luck. Tsuna didn’t exactly like being treated like both a baby and a novel pet, but he also appreciated their physical showing of support.
Because Italian private school was scary.
Tsuna didn’t exactly know if it’s because of the culture or the times, but quirks are everywhere, right in Tsuna’s face, all the time.
One guy, ashen in complexion, after passing the vigilantly gated school, exchanged his legs for smoke and flew straight to the second floor.
Girls with horns and wings, meet up with high-pitched screams which momentarily caused the surrounding area to undulate like a heat wave.
Everyone dressed in a uniform and sometimes that’s the only way to know that they were around Tsuna’s age. Because a few of his schoolmates towered above the rest, usually paired with looking like a humanoid whale or large animal. A handful had entirely animal features, like a cat head or a pair of flamingo legs. Pogo said they were secondary quirk expressions. Tsuna was kind of stuck on how a quirk gene can do all that. That’s impossible. But apparently not.
Tsuna held himself in check, barely flinching, and might have convinced himself that this is the new normal if not for the moment anyone caught sight of Tsuna, they stopped and stared.
And they couldn’t help staring, as Tsuna passed by, clutching his school bag to his chest. And the moment Tsuna turned his back the whispers started.
“Who—?”
“He’s so..”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
“What do you think his quirk is?”
“He’s got to be new. I would have remembered him.”
Tsuna is given a wide berth by everyone, and though the teachers were slightly better they too were insatinably curious.
“Mr. Sawada, I hope you don’t mind me asking,” the bug-eyed receptionist began as Tsuna waited for his timetable. “What is your quirk?”
Tsuna is leery of answering. One because the stare of the receptionist is disconcerting, unblinking and intensely focused. Two because he doesn’t understand why everyone is making such a big deal out of it, and he doesn’t want to promote it. But he also can’t say nothing because that would be rude. “It’s, ah, V—Hyper Intuition. It’s like a sixth sense, I suppose?”
“It’s the ability to see through all,” Reborn once said, like it explains anything.
It doesn’t.
The receptionist tilts her head sideways as in a ‘huh.’
But luckily, Tsuna’s timetable is ready by then, and he’s off to find his class, and arriving just in time for the bell to ring and Tsuna to find a spare seat.
Except the staring doesn’t get better.
For the entire day, Tsuna is given a wide berth. They are more than happy to just watch and wait for Tsuna’s first move. Tough luck. Tsuna knows better than to approach the wrong people and accidentally step on the wrong toes. He can only hope that they get over the novelty and let him fade to the background in peace.
A peaceful high school experience. Please. Oh, please.
Despite it being the first day of school, everyone is already settled into groups of their own. Everyone is talking too easily to each other otherwise. In Japan, it would have been Tsuna’s third and final year in middle school. Tsuna has been kind of looking forward to being the senior. He would only have to look out for bullying from those of his own year or from the high school nearby. Unfortunately, in Italy, it’s Tsuna’s first year in high school. Bottom of the rung again. Curse his terrible luck.
Tsuna’s never had to change school before, and it’s quickly cementing itself as a terrible experience.
By the time lunch came around, everyone knows there's a new student, and everyone knows it him.
The hardest part is after receiving his lunch order, Tsuna turns to the colourful crowd, and realises there’s no one he could sit with.
No one he wants to sit with.
It hits harder than any blow Hibari has ever given him.
His heart drops. His appetite flees. It comes abruptly, the burning urge to cry, but not here. Not in front of everyone. Tsuna left so quickly he basically teleports out, tray clutched in hands and all.
He didn’t know how, but he found a quiet spot away with nobody around. He sat crouched there, tray on the ground, clutching tight to his knees.
“Ara, Tsu-kun, just because we can’t see Papa anymore doesn’t mean he’s not with us. We carry our loved ones in our hearts,” Nana once said on the anniversary of his father’s birthday. That was after his mother told him his father ‘became a star.’ Tsuna didn’t feel any grief then. Iemitsu wasn’t around enough for Tsuna to grieve for him.
Yet now, Tsuna is even crying for that useless father.
“Psst” a familiar voice hisses. “Tsuna.”
His nose is clogged. His gaze blurred by tears. His cheeks sticky and damp and soaking into both his collar and the sleeves of his forearms.
Yet Tsuna lifts his head, his sobbing tapering off, to meet the sight of a man dressed in a high school uniform wearing a very fake octopus head covering.
“Skull?” he shrieks, cause it is clearly Skull. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”
“Heh. Moron. I go wherever I want.”
Skull slumps beside Tsuna, commandearing Tsuna’s lunch tray. Tsuna watches mouth gaping as Skull lifts the bottom half of his mask so there’s an opening to eat.
“That’s mine!” Tsuna complains.
But Skull keeps eating, and eventually Tsuna had to swipe his own apple off the tray so he could eat something.
Halfway through his apple, the bell rings, and the distant shuffling of students returning to classes begin.
“Want to skip school? I brought my ride.” With his thumb, Skull gestures to the motorcycle parked just a little away on the school grounds. Crouched at the side of the building, with a wildly tucked in shirt and piercings on his face, Skull looks every bit like a real gangster. His octopus mask is pushed so high up it’s a makeshift headband.
Tsuna pauses, halfway to his feet.
He could… It’s not like Tsuna felt like going back to class, where he has to handle the embarrassment of people knowing you cried, and then trying to navigate things he has no or slim knowledge of.
He hasn’t skipped school in a while. Last got to be—the Arcobaleno Representative Battle where Tsuna yelled at Reborn.
Tsuna sighs.
“I c-can’t. R-Reborn would kill me.” He straightens up, taking the tray back from Skull. “Plus,” and here Tsuna tries to reassure Skull with a smile, “Pogo-san would be disappointed."