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“Tsuna?”
Tsuna looked away from the railing he was leaning against and turned around to face his friend. Takeshi looked at him with his usual benevolent smile, but there was a sharpness in his eyes.
“Hibari's men ran a background check on the thief who tried to break into your house.”
The brown-eyed boy nodded, showing he was listening.
The morning before, he had a run-in with a robber in his house. It wasn't the first time something like that happened – Namimori was chaotic like that- but it was the first time Tsuna killed one of them. Usually, it was Kyouya who had the pleasure of dealing with the pests.
It's not that Tsuna couldn't defend himself, no. It's just that he was almost never alone, always in the presence of one of his friends, and his friends were really protective of him. It was funny, because looking at them, you'd think he was the weakest or the one to look out for, but all of his friends were well aware that Tsuna could defend himself. Even Hayato, who still tended to use his own body to shield Tsuna, knew that the boy was no weakling. Sure, he was clumsy – a condition that had reared its ugly head not long after his deadbeat dad's penultimate visit home.
Yes, he knew those facts were related.
Tsuna knew the guy wasn't dead. His mum might have told him that he 'joined the stars', but Tsuna couldn't recall his mother grieving or attending mourning rites as they had done when his grandparents had died. Tsuna had been really small when his grandpa and grandma joined the sky, but he remembered. He remembered how his mum had been sad despite trying to hide the sadness from him.
His mum had not grieved his father. It might have been because he was almost never present, not much of a parent, and even less as a husband.
It wasn't because of that.
It was because Iemitsu Sawada wasn't dead. Unfortunately, they didn't have the resources at the time to access his full file, but the guy was alive. Once they did have the resources, though, Tsuna had lost the motivation to look through it. The guy wasn't interested in being a dad or a husband, so he could stay away. Tsuna and Mama were doing just fine on their own. They had friends looking out for them. They didn't need him.
“What did you find?”
Takeshi didn't wince, but Tsuna could tell it was a near thing.
Oh, boy.
“The man you shot was Sawada Iemitsu.”
Tsuna didn't immediately react. In fact, he didn't even immediately process the newfound piece of information.
When he did, his eyes widened slightly in disbelief, the only outward sign of his stupefaction.
“Could you repeat that, please?”
“The guy you caught was your deadbeat dad.”
He could tell it cost Takeshi to call Iemitsu a 'dad' in any capacity, because, for all intents and purposes, his old man, Tsuyoshi, had been the father figure Tsuna had desperately needed and wanted.
Oh, shit.
“What am I going to tell Mum?”
She wouldn't be mad. She had heard of the robber who had tried to empty their house, after all, but... She had also missed her husband, no matter how bad he was at being a husband. Sure, he provided for their family. Whoopie. He just... wasn't there. See, Tsuna didn't even recognise him and mistook him for a robber!
The guy didn't even try to convince him of who he was.
Tsuna sighed and reclined in his seat on the balcony.
The situation... had just grown from bad to worse in the space of a few seconds. It was all because Iemitsu Sawada couldn't announce his presence like a normal person!
Look, Tsuna was all for a surprise homecoming. He had watched tons of 'soldiers homecoming' videos on YouTube before, but there was a difference there. Iemitsu had told his mum to tell that he had 'joined the stars'!
See. He wasn't some hero coming back from war, no. He was a criminal, coming back to crash on their couch and eat their food (Tsuna knew his mum stopped receiving money from her husband, because he knew she had to take a job). Tsuna couldn't really talk about the criminal parts. They all (Namimori citizen) did things they weren't necessarily proud of, in the name of protecting themselves or their loved ones.
See, the thing was that Namimori tended to attract all sorts of crazies out there. There was the occasional circus kid showing up out of the blue, looking for a temporary home among them, but then, there were also retired criminals (who were welcome here as long as they didn't bring home work or trouble), and the kind of Problems you knew to get rid of. Iemitsu Sawada had, unfortunately, been one of the latter cases.
Had Tsuna known who the guy who had broken in (actually broken in, didn't he have a key?) was, he wouldn't have shot him. Did he feel bad about it? Only a little bit, but mostly because he had to call his friends to help him get rid of the body. It was fine. It wasn't the first time they met up to get rid of a body, but still...
“Get Kyouya on the line,” he told Takeshi, who immediately nodded.
Despite his general nonchalance, Takeshi could be serious. He also knew just how much trouble Sawada Iemitsu could bring them. They didn't have much time, maybe a couple of hours, to make sure everyone knew not to make mention of a dishelved blond man wandering the streets of Namimori. Someone had to have seen him. They had to make sure they knew not to blab out.
They needed to make sure no one knew Sawada Iemitsu had set foot inside Namimori.
If that particular piece of information was found out, they would have to deal with the Vongolas, and that? Thanks, but no.
Eight hours later, Tsuna was in a room full of trusted friends and allies.
“So, here's everything,” Tsuna concluded, hands splayed, palms resting on the table.
Hibari hmphed from his position further away from the crowded table. Tsuna knew the man had already gotten rid of the body thanks to his men, but there was still much work to do before anyone thought to investigate Sawada Iemitsu's disappearance.
“What are we going to do about... him?” Muramata Toji asked.
He was one of their neighbours and a shop owner down the street. He was also a former street fighter who had once been part of the Yakuza before quietly retiring, where no one knew him.
“Well, nobody knows he set foot in the house. For everyone, he just disappeared. We'll call it a divorce.” Takeshi said simply.
He was grinning lazily. Tsuna sweatdropped, but, actually, the plan wasn't even half-bad. Well, it had been very simplified and straightforward, but apart from that...
“... I don't think it's quite that simple,” someone muttered while Hayato slapped his own face in frustration.
“Of course it is, silly.”
“I hate to agree with the baseball freak, but... It's so simple that it might actually work,” Hayato said.
“See? We just have to make it look like the divorce papers were dropped before the guy's disappearance.”
“We just have to convince mum to sign those, you mean,” Tsuna cut in, looking both amused and fondly exasperated.
It wouldn't be too hard, but he knew getting his mom to sign those would be the easy part. The hard part would be making sure no one came to investigate Namimori and that, if they did, they didn't find anything.
“Leave that to us, kid,” an older man in his late fifties, early sixties, told him when Tsuna relayed his worry.
That was Toshi. He was the school janitor but had once been part of a group of robbers. He never went to jail for all the robberies because he was never caught, but he was sentenced to a couple of months, a decade ago, for a bar fight. Ever since, he had been an 'angel' as told by his wife, who made sure her husband wouldn't leave their home like that ever again.
Toshi was nice, if a bit rough, but was nicer than he appeared to be at first. He was also good at reading the room and somehow always knew when one of them was feeling down. Even Tsuna, who had gotten rather good at hiding his mood, had been comforted, more than once, by the old man.
Tsuna nodded and straightened.
“Alright. Call me or the others if you have any trouble.”
“Will do.”
Tsuna wasn't sure he believed that. Toshi never hid things from them, but if he thought the adults could handle some trouble heading their without dragging the kids out of school or outings, they would. They would talk to them afterwards, but they didn't want to stop them from being kids.
“Alright. Then let's be done for the night,” Tsuna told the room.
Instantly, the tensed atmosphere shifted to something softer, more relaxed, and Tsuna rolled his shoulders. Hibari strode out of the room, eager to get away from the crowd. Some followed him out of the Sawada residence; others stayed a bit longer.
Takeshi grinned as he grabbed the bag at his feet.
“If I remember correctly, I was promised a sleepover, Tsuna.”
Hayato rolled his eyes, but for once, he didn't try to shut Takeshi up.
Tsuna snickered.
“Yes, yes, that's right. Let's go,” he said as he led them towards the stairs.
It was useless to worry so much. There wasn't anything more they could do at the moment that they hadn't done earlier. They had to trust their allies that they would manage whatever tasks they had been given.
They would meet up with the others the next day for a debrief and catch up on the plan, but until then, they shouldn't worry so much.
“Mom and I made some onigiri earlier. Are you guys hungry?”
