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This morning, mother gave him a homemade bento, a kiss on the forehead and a request not to get into trouble as usual, and his father gave him a ruined mood for the whole day simply by showing up at their house. In fact, of course, this was also his home, or rather, only his, because at one time it was Iemitsu who pulled Nana out of Japan and brought her to Italy, to his home, and then naive little Tsunayoshi sincerely thought that now he would see dad more than once every six months, drunk, while mom enthusiastically coos around him and his made-up stories about work. For some reason, even then he had no doubt that there was more fantasy there than reality. In fact, it turned out that they moved, stayed together for exactly a week, and Iemitsu wandered off somewhere again, leaving them in an unfamiliar country (thanks for the money), and did not appear for the next six months. Nothing has changed except the climate and language.
Making friends in Italy was just as difficult as in Japan, but he dealt with it. It was also easier to get along with his distant cousin Dino, because in Italy he lived literally an hour away, and in Japan he lived on another timezone. Languages were easy for him, his mother clapped happily that her Stupid Tsuna had finally come to his senses, although he chose the simplest thing that was possible and built his personality on it. All in all, moving to Italy was actually the best thing Iemitsu could do for them.
They just never got along, and Tsunayoshi was in no hurry to change the situation. It’s not at the age of twenty to establish a relationship with a father who not only doesn’t remember when his son’s birthday is, but also thinks that he remains his age in elementary school. FYI: Tsuna is supposed to go to college. No junior classes. Iemitsu actually moved them when he was in middle school!
— Ku-fu-fu, Tsunayoshi, what happened? — Mukuro, who ended up in Italy in ways that are not discussed in decent society, grabs him by the shoulders, when he is near the slums. Mukuro could also speak Japanese and English, they did their homework together, but for some reason he never wanted to improve his skills in this. Mukuro was talented, —Tsunayoshi isn't blind, — and he would have entered every university he wanted, but, as it turned out, all Mukuro wanted was to stay in the southern regions of Italy, live in the upper apartment of a low yellow house they had furnished and dream of goals, which Tsuna personally seemed unattainable. Perhaps because he was Mukuro Rokudo and he was Sawada Tsunayoshi, they were completely different, but Tsunayoshi never said that he would not achieve anything. Believing in powers of his friends is something he understood after Yamamoto flew to him from Japan for the holidays with his father because he missed him. His friends are capable of the impossible, even if Tsuna himself doubts.
— Father is back, — Tsunayoshi sighs, dodging an attempt to pull his cheek, but not dodging a pinch on his thigh. — Hey!
— Don’t be sad, or you’ll be short all your future life, — Mukuro dramatically spreads his arms and pulls himself up, climbing onto the stone fence. This was the disadvantage of living on the upper floors of godforsaken buildings: either you make your way through a garden that has been taken over by weeds, or like this. For some reason, in all the years, none of them had the common sense to weed this area.Tsunayoshi sighs and pulls himself up after him to cross the isthmus between the windows and get into the one that has been functioning as a door for years.
— If you dare to break the frame, you will enter through the first floor! — a woman’s scream is heard as soon as Mukuro pokes his head in
— Dear M.M., I fix this frame every time! — he responds, placing his foot on the windowsill, and the woman’s scream becomes more hysterical and higher. Tsunayoshi snorts under his breath and, not wanting to test her patience, climbs inside, without touching the window with his feet, where M.M. deliberately throws a pillow at Rokudo — a pillow is landing on him with a sound of brick.
— Good afternoon, M.M., — Tsuna waves his hand, moving towards a low table with even lower round soft poufs, on which exactly half of his body can fit lying down. — How are you?
— Working, — the girl responds, kicking the courier bag with the logo towards the far wall. — You better ask how Chikusa is doing.
— How is Chikusa? — He turns to Kakimoto, who is sitting on another huge pouf, and receives a disapproving look:
— I went to church today.
In general, it’s not a new statement, going to religious places and pretending to be good and miserable (miserable, yes, but there were no good ones here (Mukuro always argued with this, because Tsunayoshi was good in his eyes)) is a useful skill, sometimes you could get a box of juice, or soda, or warmer clothes, otherwise it was somehow indecently cold in the rains lately.
— What's wrong with that?
— He went to church for confession, — M.M. interjects. — And tried to communicate with the students of the church school. How, I wonder, did you pick up them? Jesus died for our sins, and what have you achieved?
— You can get punched in the face for words like that, — grumbles Ken, previously unnoticed, from the hammock. Tsuna gives him a sympathetic look: being in love with an absolutely impenetrable person must be hard. And then he corrects his view of the judgmental one. What a sympathy? At first he would confess it directly, and then he would grumble that he was not understood and would be offended by situations like this.
— I didn’t pick up them, they accidentally dragged me there, — Chikusa pulls his hat over his eyes. — At first I thought that maybe they wanted to give me Cahors? Or candles? And they push me into the confessional, and it’s dark, scary, and behind the wall they ask, “Are you sexually active?” Whoever begins to confess like this, — in the end the hat is pulled almost to the nose.
— It seems like you’ve been to confessions often! — M.M. snorts. — There the next question is “Are you working for the mafia?”
— What, were you there?
— No, stupid, I'm being dramatic.
For some reason Mukuro makes gasping sounds, Tsunayoshi turns around at him, well, throws his head back from a lying position and watches Rokudo bend over backwards.
— What's wrong with you, Mukuro?
— I imagined Chikusa approaching the holy father and saying that he was promised Cahors here, — he squeezes it out of himself. — And this bread is for a snack, apparently. Sorry, Holy Father, I just live a very unhappy life, so I can’t drink it pure, but I can drink a lot of it.
Kakimoto makes a pained sound, turning his face into the pouf. He doesn't look at them while Mukuro fights for a seat on the pouf with Tsunayoshi ("You have yours!") while M.M. jokes that next time he should say something in confession (“No, but I really want to”) and puts the salad in front of them, but still gets hit on the head for muffled giggling:
— That's not dog hair on it! — M.M. is indignant, while Tsunayoshi carefully removes unknown fluff from her culinary creation.
— It’s Ken’s hair, yes, — Mukuro snorts, hiding behind Tsuna while they try to reach him. — Okay, okay, it's not his! Maybe it's cat hair?
— We don’t have cats?
— We don’t have dogs either?
— It’s a guinea pig, — Tsunayoshi nods confidently and the room falls into silence. Until Chikusa finally turns to them:
— No, it's too rich.
— Why rich ?.. — Joshima turns to him, puzzled, giving up his attempts to reach Mukuro’s hair.
— Well, seafood?
MM. wheezes as she hands each a spoon, because the amount of water they drank from the common throat and ate from each other's plates had long instilled in them sufficient immunity to diseases to eat from the same salad bowl. This has no connection to do with dishes left in the sink because no one has time to wash them in the morning, and in the afternoon everyone is already lazy and wants to wait until the evening to wash everything at once.
The day passes slowly and pleasantly, everything is as his mother asked, now he is with friends, in the morning he brought documents to the language college — and at this moment the problems begin.It is a mistake to say that he took the documents there, because Tsunayoshi is tactful and polite to other people's dreams and aspirations:
— How can you submit documents to such a compound? — Ken grins.
But not his friends.
— That's a good choice, — Tsuna crosses his arms over chest. —Languages come easy to me. Why not? When I graduate, I’ll go help visiting Japanese to Italy or teach Japanese as a native speaker. Sounds like a pretty good plan.
— This is a good plan, if you wanted it, Tsunayoshi, — Mukuro sat down next to him, apparently in order to more effectively get on his nerves and get on his brains. — And that’s not what you want.
— You don't know what I want.
— I’ve known you since you were fourteen, and now you’re nineteen, five years isn’t enough to know your friend? — He angles his eyebrows, but multi-colored eyes look too impudent to believe in an attempt to press pity. — Tsunayoshi, everyone here knows you don’t want this. Do not pretend. You are now choosing what your family approves of, not you. This is a mistake. We save you with all our might, — Rokudo falls into his lap so Tsuna can't stare at them while he is lectured.
— I don’t choose what my family approves of, if that were the case, we wouldn’t be sitting here, — Tsunayoshi responds offendedly and hears a sigh and footsteps, and as a result, his attempt to turn away from everyone is stopped by M.M., who kneels down right in front of his face:
— Well, we know you're making some serious progress in resisting the urge to be a good kid, — she pokes him in the forehead, and Tsuna drops his head tragically, as if he had been shot. — It's just that now you choose your... Profession? And knowing you, you won’t go anywhere until you finish your studies.
Tsuna couldn't stop eating until the plate was empty, he definitely couldn't go anywhere until he finished his studies. He purses his lips because, in general, he is being told the right things, but he has been struggling with trying to be a good child for his mother, who already has a stupid husband, and only with a lot of time wasted on each shift towards choosing where he wants to be.
— M. M. says that you will fuck up the choice and then you will go done to every meeting we have.
— Ken! That's not what M. M. says!
— M. M. can speak for herself! — the girl is indignant. These two fall silent. She shakes her head and sighs. Mukuro decides to give his two cents:
— By the way, I didn’t tell you, but I was accepted into the dance college.
About those very unattainable dreams that Mukuro confidently pursues while Tsunayoshi doubts: dancing — to connect his life and earnings, and, apparently, his soul with it. Tsunayoshi did not see dancers who were completely unhappy, but he heard how his family felt sorry for everyone with creative professions, because there was no work, no opportunities, and, apparently, he unwittingly adopted this position. Well, where will he go? Okay, Mukuro. Mukuro has such a charm that if he dances in a shopping mall, he will immediately be invited to some SuperCrew. Tsuna didn’t see such charm in himself (his friends constantly argued with him), he didn’t see a future in dancing for himself either (as if he hadn’t studied it since childhood just for fun and didn’t spend his weekends on it) and therefore actively distanced himself from it.
Yes, actively.
Mukuro is now dragging him by the hand to an underground club, where you can dance without being looked at sideways by people for whom dancing is jumping to the bass, and Tsunayoshi makes an unhappy face.
True, he is making it unhappy because, while he was being dragged, his knee flew into a parking post, but it can also be perceived as the fact that he does not want to be there at all. And never did. And in general, as soon as his documents are accepted, he will get bogged down in homework and will go to dances once a month after the session — for a couple of hours, and then go home to sleep. Tsuna had heard such stories from students: it looked very realistic for those whose sleep during study is reduced from nine normal to five killer hours.
— Hello, little animal, — greets him at the entrance, where he, of course, has never appeared before, and it gives him goosebumps. For the first time, seeing his cousin’s boyfriend here was scary, then funny, because the boyfriend turned out to be a boyfriend only in Dino’s dreams, he called him a horse to his face and did not hesitate to raise his hand... At the same time, Dino swore that they were simply at the stage of developing a relationship, and Tsunayoshi did not try to bring him over. Everyone has their own entertainment in life. Someone should be a masochist. — And you, — Kyoya turns his gaze to Rokudo, as if he is to blame for all the sins of this world.
— We didn’t do anything wrong today, so don’t keep us here, okay? — Mukuro smiles so much that Sawada understands why Kyoya might want to punch him in the face.
— For now, you haven’t done anything bad, — Hibari corrects him. — If you try to pour yourself a free beer at a bar again while the bartender’s back is turned, I’ll bite you to death.
— Make drinks cheaper so they don’t make us broke, — Rokudo smiles ingratiatingly. Hibari's teeth grind. Tsunayoshi hastily drags Mukuro further, they change places, and drags him without support, because M.M., and Chikusa, and Ken are standing at a distance and... They are filming, seriously? A moment worth capturing on camera, indeed.
— I told you: a good plan is to drink at home, and not spend money on high prices and low degrees, let’s go, we weren’t going to drink today at all...
— Listen to the little animal, herbivore, — this is the worst possible insult from Hibari. Mukuro squints dangerously, Tsunayoshi sighs and stands between them, pushing everyone who managed to take an involuntary step forward into the chest away from each other:
— Calm down, — he lowers his voice, and it works as it worked before — in a completely unknown way, Tsunayoshi himself doesn’t understand how it happens that they are separated by his one change of tone, but he prays that it will always be like this, otherwise they will fight several times more often, and they, damn it, only see each other a couple of times a week at most!
— Have a nice evening, — Hibari says goodbye to them, walking away towards the concrete blocks where they can sit, Mukuro making an ugly face at him. Tsuna hisses something about leaving the peacocking here and going inside decent, Ken laughs at this phrase as if he had never heard anything more hilarious, practically sliding down the stairs.Tsunayoshi makes sure that Rokudo is not going to crawl back out, taking advantage of the moment of distraction, and chase after Hibari, who is probably just waiting for this. Naughty. And when he wants to go down inside, he feels a very attentive gaze on himself. He doesn’t know this man, but he definitely saw him somewhere, he can’t remember.
— Is there something wrong? — Tsuna asks, and he sees, literally sees, how the tall brunette's gaze focuses on him instead of looking somewhere over his head. Maybe he should have worn a clown costume today. Or just a red nose with an elastic band.
— Something must be wrong? — ask him back, and as if the situation wasn't awkward enough, that voice sounds so good that Tsunayoshi feels goosebumps. Perhaps this is just a sign to run. He read about it, they say, don’t trust your body, butterflies in the stomach and cold on the skin — this is not delight, but anxiety and you need to get out, and all that.
— No, I thought... I’m sorry, — Tsuna raises his hands in a surrendering gesture. — Do you come here often?
— Even my colleagues are not so ludicrous, — he wants to sink into the ground from these words. — No, as work allows. And now I'm here more for work purposes.
Sawada can't help but look at his face, or rather, his mouth, and it should be indecent, but he just likes the voice too much and waits for it to say something else. Then the gaze, because it becomes awkward, slides lower, to the fingers holding the tin can by the neck:
— Drink at work?
The man raises the jar to his eye level, showing zero percent marked in red, and raises his eyebrows. Before burning with shame, Tsunayoshi hastily apologizes again and shamefully runs downstairs, definitely hearing laughter behind him. Well, he would have laughed too. It takes effort to convey so much cringe in one dialogue, and he didn’t even try...
— Why was you there for so long? — Chikusa asks him, sitting near the bar. The music thunders so loudly that half the words are drowned out, and the crowd has gathered in a circle and enthusiastically encourages the dancers. Did you have a battle? For what? The newcomers, perhaps, wanted to prove themselves somehow?
— Disgrace myself, — Tsuna replies, shouting in his ear, and Chikusa smiles cheerfully. Neither Mukuro nor M.M. are not visible, but what’s more surprising is the absence of Ken, where did he manage to go, aren’t he and Kakimoto like lovebirds?
Chikusa, the traitor, stays with him for a short time and also disappears, and Tsunayoshi already knows from experience that looking for someone in a dancing crowd, where everyone is distributed on the dance floor, is a lost cause; during the search, they will already lose you, and you will get at least one blow to the face, and it’s good if it’s not a kick. So Tsuna simply spreads out across the bar, and Lussuria, their most comfortable bartender in the world, sympathetically moves closer:
— Did the girl dump you? — he nods knowingly. Tsuna shakes his head. — The boy? — and shakes again. — Someone died?.. — his voice is filled with sincere horror, and Tsunayoshi involuntarily smiles:
— No, I... I’m quitting dancing, — Lussuria presses his palms to his face, his eyes widen behind dark glasses:
— Babe, but why? What could hinder it so much?
«It hinders nothing, I’ll just always think about how to come back here and how much I’ll miss», the conversation with Mukuro is still stirring something inside, but he doesn’t want to upset Lussuria with his own uncertainty. So he just smiles awkwardly. Luss looks at him long and carefully, then pats him on the shoulder, saying:
— I will support any choice you make, babe, just don’t be sad, — and then his name is called from the other end of the counter, and Tsunayoshi is left alone in the chair. For some reason he thinks that he doesn’t need support right now. It would be nice if there was someone nearby who could simply knock all doubts out of him with a couple of phrases.
— I overheard, — says the same voice in his ear, and Tsunayoshi almost jumps on the spot. The brunette, in front of whom he had already disgraced himself, sits down on the next bar stool, and, apparently, life considered this insufficient and gave him a chance to disgrace himself even more. — You quit dancing. That is, you’re not just in Mukuro’s company, you’re dancing, — he states the fact.
— You know Mukuro? — Tsuna would try to move away, but there’s nowhere to go.
— And Mukuro knows me.
«And I don’t know you in this situation, and I will personally strangle Mukuro for this», Tsunayoshi swallows.
Lussuria shines next to the stranger, so he is clearly not a hallucination, but why can’t he remember who it is? A familiar and unfamiliar face at the same time. For work here. Non-alcoholic — again — drink. Tsunayoshi's gaze lingers on his hands because something doesn't seem right, and then he notices the blackwork running from his wrist somewhere higher up under his shirt.
He hates meeting people of his type like this, please, not when he is in the most miserable state possible.
— Yes, I'm quitting. I think I’ll come in sometimes, but in my free time from studying...
The man on the next chair takes a sip, and then looks at him point-blank:
— You don't look inspired. Is this really what you want?
— Why is everyone asking this... — he drops his head into his elbows and freezes again, hearing low laughter, now very close, despite the blaring music.
— People usually ask this because they are worried about someone else’s future. Not me, — Tsuna’s face twists from this clarification. — I’m here for work, — the stranger turns to face the dance floor and points his finger into the crowd. The missing Mukuro is in an empty spot right in the middle of all the people — did Tsuna mention that he's great at attracting attention? — Can you do the same? No embellishment, just a confident yes or no.
Mukuro falls to his knees, arching in a graceful bridge, running his fingers from his groin to his chest.
— Yes, — Tsuna says, frowning. — It's simple.
— I didn’t ask for comments.
— But you will get them. I can dance. /That comes from the line I quit, — Tsuna snaps, and when his displeasure is met with calm acceptance rather than retaliatory aggression, something makes his cheeks warm.
— Flip? — The man asks, his eyes still following Rokudo. Tsunayoshi turns around with an "Hm?". — Can you do flips? Simple? Through your hands? Side?
— And front, — Tsuna nods, not yet understanding what he wants from him. — If you ask now if I can do the splits, I will be offended.
The man has a white, white and sharp smile, it’s almost scary, this time it’s definitely not those exciting goosebumps from someone's voice. He takes a sip from a tall glass of some bright mocktail and nods towards the dance floor:
— Prove it?
— Why do I need to prove this? — Tsunayoshi is indignant. — You won’t be able to catch me shallow!
— What a pity, — the man says, not at all disappointed. The crowd applauds the performance, the music fades out for a couple of moments, and Tsunayoshi shamelessly melts into his voice until he can be clearly heard. — What if the deal is: you surprise me, I surprise you?
— That sound like a pick-up line? — Tsuna's face stretches in amazement.
— Unfortunately, I'm at work.
Unfortunately?!
A long awareness of the situation prevents him from understanding that an answer is expected from him, but the stranger looks calm, drinking his mocktail, so Tsuna does not feel particularly ashamed of the delay. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans his body to the side:
— How exactly can a person surprise me at his own work? Will you pay me? I don’t need money, — everyone needs money, but he doesn’t want to dance for it for his pleasure.
— Find a use for your talents, if you have them, — forget that Tsunayoshi said that he cannot be caught shallow. Right now he is being caught very, very successfully, because he jumps off the bar stool, although he was going to sit on it all evening, dives into the crowd without even receiving a single nudge in the ribs and jumps out onto the spot right in front of an already familiar face:
— Belphegor, I beg you, give me one song, and then I’ll leave right away, — he pushes the stunned Cavalini towards the outstretched hands at the beginning of the song, catches the gaze of the man who remained at the bar, but this time incessantly watching him, and not at Rokudou or someone else in the club. He comes across a remix, something that sounds like Mariah Carey, but there is no time to think — the beat is in a hurry, and his heart is in a hurry along with the beat.
His knees spring up as usual, taking a more comfortable position, he sees how hands rise around him, in support of the vibe of the beginning music, — and when a woman’s voice sounds, singing about a meeting in a bar, which is now discussed in all blogs, Tsunayoshi closes his eyes: so much so that seeing the limit where he could crash into someone, and enough to lose sight of others' views, his legs moving of their own accord in a shuffle motion. Right — left, a movement learned a long time ago, which they simply called “fir-tree”. Robotic body movements learned long ago. Learned a long time ago and having fought off so many bruises on his back, bend back in the lower back, when it seems that it is not your knees and abs that are holding you above the floor, but God’s will.
The hands move freely, pointing to a part of the body that is performing another movement that, if he were younger, could cost him a dislocation. But Tsuna is no younger now, and, most importantly, he was catched shallow, and he cannot show himself badly. Even if thoughts about the stranger at the bar and all the promises gradually fly away with the music, it frees the head — and frees the body from constraint.
The rhythmic movements of his wrists and shoulders as the melody hurries, as if trying to catch his breath, are replaced by equally rhythmic movements of his hips, and he can hear the buzz of the crowd, but it is so distant and completely unimportant now. It is completely unimportant, because when moments of slowdown are given, he can make a circle with his head, shaking off the tension, and fall into the slide forward, erasing the already dead knees on these pants. It doesn't matter, because the crowd starts buzzing the moment he rises from the slide on his arm, makes several movements with his groin, like in Indian videos, and then throws himself into the wheel over one hand. He knows that the crowd here is buzzing only to express approval, and no one here will judge you for what moves, from whom and from where you stole. Dancing is something we have in common and should be shared.
They asked him about what he could do on the dance floor, but the pace picked up so quickly that he could only manage to make a few popping moves, pinching his clothes and his own hair.
The movements become wavy, he himself becomes flexible and undulating when the first tempo returns.
The tempo is interrupted by a woman's high-pitched voice — and Tsunayoshi falls on his hands, doing a classic wave off the floor, and returns back to his feet, into an even more classic hip-hop screed. The pace is interrupted again, a woman's voice screams indignation about obsession — and he goes into a handstand, stolen from those who practice breaking, lowers himself onto his elbow, apparently hearing a click, oops, this will hurt later, and spins the wheel through this elbow.
Even if it hurts, he is not going to be distracted while the music is playing.
M.M. will kill him.
Okay, when he returns to the first pace, his arm doesn’t seem to hurt, maybe his joint just fell back into place?
The melody becomes familiar: the first tempo develops into a slowdown, in which he can roll over the neck, and then again into a rhythm so fast that it is only enough for short movements, while every muscle in the body tenses.
It takes enough time for him to again find himself upside down in a cross split and spinning on his palms, so that the people around turn into a black spot through which laser colored lines break through. Feeling like falling on a roller coaster, glowing reddish and greenish flashes looming before his eyes, imprinted on the back of his eyelids, Tsunayoshi jumps back to his feet, an electric guitar makes its way into the music, he hears someone's cry of approval when he doesn't break from the dance, but simply picks up a change in mood.
Other people's movements around you seem slow, as if edited, when you yourself are in a hurry so that your heart can jump out of your chest.
The woman's voice stops mid-sentence, once, twice, three times, changing posture with each attempt to utter a delulu confession, clearly reminiscent of someone from Jo-Jo (at least he hopes so) — and finally... the music fades out and he can give a deep bow, almost with his forehead to the ground. Belphegor pats him on the back and pushes him away into the crowd as well, avenging how he was pushed away a few minutes ago. Tsunayoshi has no right to be offended by this — so he laughs, gratefully accepts the outstretched bottle of water from Fran, who seems to be telling what Mukuro managed to get himself into, but now his brain is too fuzzy to clearly perceive his speech.
His gaze slides over the crowd, over well-known and more or less familiar faces, and when he does not notice the man near the bar, the mood spoils at that very second. He could at least watch it out of respect.
Since when is he upset by the opinion of some smug dude — that, of course, is another question.
— That’s enough, go get your water, — Fran reaches out to him with his hand, trying to take it away, Tsunayoshi dodges to take another sip — and accidentally bumps into someone. He thanks all the Japanese gods that he didn't screw up more today and instead of snorting the water in his mouth, he simply swallowed it with such effort that his heart ached. Fran, noticing the situation, pulls the bottle out of his hands and dumps it away, the green hair was just there — and now it’s gone, only a small space between Tsuna and the person he crashed into. A person whose blackwork comes from his wrists can see this if he stares for a long time in shame somewhere at stomach.
— It was terrible handwork, — says the stranger, and Tsuna, although he said to himself that he shouldn’t be upset by some dude’s opinion, he still gets upset. — What is your name?
— Sawada Tsunayoshi, — he grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest. Never in his life has he regretted his height so much as at this moment, when he has to look up with a frown at someone who outwardly gives him goosebumps, but in character managed to both infuriate and upset him in a way that only his father could. Special magic of older people?
— Tomorrow, come to the college where your friend, Sawada, was admitted, and consider yourself accepted too. If, of course, there is a desire, — the man in front of him says the most sudden thing of all. Tsuna opens his mouth like a fish. — I’m going to work on your crooked hands personally.
Towards his silent opening of his mouth, Tsuna also blushes in a completely un-fishy way.
— Who are you?.. — asks Tsunayoshi in a shrunken voice, and he shouldn’t be heard in this crowd, in this music, but the man definitely hear him, since he smiles sharply again and move his shoulders.
— The tutor who decided to pick you up. You can be proud of your luck. Or bad luck.
Tsunayoshi does not remember what happened after, except that the stranger dissolves in the crowd, he tries to catch up with him, receiving those same sudden elbow blows to the forehead or to the liver, but does not catch up. Does not find. He has neither a number nor a name, only words that he must come to class tomorrow? For admission? What should he do? Maybe someone smoked weed, and Tsuna accidentally inhaled the vapor into himself, and his consciousness began to split from this? In the crowd, or rather, near the exit, completely confused and looking into emptiness, Ken finds him, Mukuro comes for Ken, and Chikusa comes for Mukuro, dragging the intoxicated, but clearly happy with life M.M., who is extremely unhappy with the fact that Tsuna didn't really have fun ("Dancing once doesn't count!"). All the way to their house, while they drag her upstairs, unsteady and unable to pull herself up, she manages to lament that Tsunayoshi is acting like an old man, and in general they need to go again later: she will personally control how he will have fun. Mukuro gives him a final wave, already yawning and saying that it’s too early for him to go to school tomorrow, he didn’t even get up for work at that time.
Tsunayoshi doesn't tell him what happened, he just smiles sympathetically and waves back.
He comes home like a decent person: even if he jumped over the fence in the garden and didn’t come in from the main street, it doesn’t matter, his father still exists in the kitchen, which means all his mother’s attention is focused on him, so he simply reports about returning home and rushing upstairs: to fall into bed, think about what is happening, check its reality. In fact, he doesn’t know how to check reality, because he doesn’t have the skills to search for people on social networks after one meeting on the street, so the proof for him is one unfortunate bruise, which nevertheless began to turn black on his elbow — the very consequences of an unpleasant click, which Tsuna decided to ignore. Well, the hand doesn't crunch or swell, so it's probably not a broken arm.
In addition to the reality of what is happening, he is trying to think whether to believe that he needs to go somewhere tomorrow, or he will look ridiculous (much more ridiculous than today, of course, if it is possible), and from these thoughts he is interrupted by a notification in the middle of the night, when he can no longer hear steps of parents and even racers outside the window. The world plunges into the silence of the night — and he looks dubiously at the lit up screen.
And his eyes widen when he sees that this is a notification about being added to some chat:
«Don't forget to come to tomorrow's class, otherwise I will regret inviting you personally» is the message right after the inscription «Sawada Tsunayoshi joins the group», and this message has the avatar of the same man he saw today.
— Reborn... — Tsuna reads his name in an incredulous tone.
«Where did you meet if you add him here at this time?)» comes the message immediately after.
«Bianchi, there's no need to go into details you don't want to know.»
«Oooh~.»
It's so awkward and it's so real and it's so awkward, he's going to die. Tsunayoshi drops his head into the pillow and groans.
«Sawada, I see you're reading this, so don't you dare disappoint me.»
«I already said that I would personally correct your handwork, it was terrible.»
«SAWADA?» — Mukuro, who definitely should have been sleeping at this time, bursts into the chat. «Tsunayoshi, in what sense were you invited and you didn't inform about it?»
«Mukuro, by the way, if I see you with such a crooked batman again, you’ll fly the hell out of the group.»
«Where were you all this night?!»
Tsunayoshi ignores the messages that start pouring in from Mukuro in private at the speed of five stickers full of shock per second, and clicks on the Reborn icon, and then on “Add as friend”. And lets out another groan of embarrassment when his application is accepted. Not a dream. Really not a dream. If he wakes up tomorrow and this chat and everything that's happening doesn't exist, he won't survive it.
«Good evening everyone, it will be a pleasure to work with you,» he writes in the chat, while Mukuro spams him with messages that he must look in the PM, and Reborn sends an eye-rolling sticker.
About the fact that tomorrow he will destroy all family expectations about admission in languages Tsuna will think in the morning.