Chapter Text
大正 | TAISHO ERA (1912 - 1926) | 大正
Tsuna really, really hates the snow.
He especially hates waking up after an overnight blizzard. Everything around him resets – brought back to its basic, blank form of an empty canvas. All that he has come to know is gone, hidden underneath this thick white veil that he can’t remove, and it stretches for miles and miles, as far as the horizon or as high as the sky. If he steps on it, it’s still there, crunched under his shoes or flattened into the white earth. It intrudes his house as a rude, unwelcome guest that drips puddles onto his floor. If summer comes, it melts, but then days meld into months, and it’s back again to ruin his life.
All in all, it never really disappears.
Also, it makes everything look the same. Which is why Tsuna is lost.
Normally, he’s able to pick up a few indicators that tell him he’s heading the right direction home, like that one tree with blood-red sap, or that abandoned rabbit’s burrow underneath a grassy hill.
But as he turns around, oh look! A white-crusted tree. To his left, a white coating over a fill of land. Further ahead of him, nothing but white, crunchy ground. His footsteps disappear quickly underneath a new layer of falling snow, concealing all traces of his existence. The feeling of making no progress and walking in circles does little to ease the tremble in his body. A tremble that is only half due to the cold.
He should have been home a while ago. Approximately while the sun was still flaring her incessant rays across the endless blue. Now, now, the sun seems to be teetering on the edge of collapse over the horizon, which plunges everything around Tsuna into shadows and silhouettes. He’s constantly turning every five seconds to check his back, even though nothing dangerous would even try wiggle its way up this mountain without retreating due to the ridiculously thin air. Also, because literally no one lives up here. The other village boys have already gone down the mountain to arrogantly pursue more, while Tsuna begrudgingly remains part of this tiny village because he isn’t quite ready to leave the care of his mother.
Why did his mother choose to move even further from civilisation then, by living on the outskirts of the village? Why are they buried so thick in the woods? These are questions Tsuna should’ve asked his mother long ago, but just like his curfew, he never quite manages to muster the ability to make ends meet.
Ah, drat. The sun is down. Everything is black. Great – an unwelcome change in scenery is exactly what he needs to feel secured. The complete extraction of warmth sends his body into a tense, prolonged shiver that ends with his teeth chattering. Now that he can’t see where he’s going…how will he get home? He clasps his hands together, sends a quick prayer to his mother, who is no doubt warming the bamboo stew she promised for dinner, and swallows his fear. Unfortunately, not in its entirety, because it re-emerges in the form of anxious vomit. He can tell it’s mostly water – that’s because he dropped his lunch in the snow a while back. It consumed his food like a wild animal.
Ah, he’s hungry! He wants his mother’s cooking! He wants his house back! Snowy days are awful.
SNAP!
Tsuna’s mental cries plummet into silence. He draws in a sharp, noiseless inhale that infects his lungs with frost. His heart pounds a bruise against his ribcage.
That was absolutely not Tsuna.
He has not done as much as lift a leg after the sky became dark, so he can say with absolute certainty that the telling snap of a twig is not because of him. Unfortunately, behind that revelation lingers a question that Tsuna doesn’t want to confront.
If it wasn’t him, then who?
“You’re so useless, Dame-Tsuna. At this rate, you’ll get swallowed up by a demon for sure!” said Ryuji, twelve, and departing the village in two days. “One big gulp and you’ll disappear without a sound – no one will hear you and no one will miss you!”
Miko snickered in childish amusement. “Yeah! A boy who can’t chop wood or hunt is useless in this village! The demon should eat you! The air is thin enough without you inhaling all of our hard-earned oxygen!”
Tsuna rubbed his running nose in frustration. Tears prickled on the tips of his eyes, colder than the surface of a winter lake. His knees buckle and his teeth chatter, as the two children frolic around with the new haori his mother sewed him. If it wasn’t cold – if it wasn’t snowing, he’d let them take it and ask for another one. A croak tumbles from his throat, but all words are robbed by the wind. He wants to go home…
The sounds of roaring laughter and degenerative snarls fade from his ears, and Tsuna slips back to reality. Why did he remember that joke of an ordeal? The boys are gone already – their deluded wishes of his death long ago tucked into an untouched crevice of his mind.
Demon.
The word hisses across his skin like the graze of a cattle whip. His body ignites with a heat that simmers in the marrow of his bones. His heart pounds a war drum.
That’s ridiculous. Those were rumours the village humoured as a source of entertainment. The children picked it up and used it as threats to scare him. He’s too paranoid in the dark – there’s nothing behind him; he’ll prove it by turning around-
Tsuna almost shits himself.
RUN.
His knees buckle and his throat tears itself open in a soundless cry. He collapses backwards into the snow.
RUN.
The thing before him stares with blood-dripping fangs and eyes blacker than the night it embodies. It does nothing but stare silently; there’s a curve to its face, like it’s almost amused.
GET UP.
Tsuna scrambles to his feet and trips to his left as the animal swings an arm at him. Claws whistle and tear apart at the air where he previously was. He fumbles into a clumsy sprint. He dodges behind the nearest tree as the animal snarls at his escape. Its claw misses him by his lashes. His feet scurries towards further coverage. A desperate, choking plead rips out of his throat. He could lose it in the forest, he just needs to-
His toe catches the hidden root of a tree and he tumbles to the ground, knocking his teeth. The creature sees its chance and advances upon him. The thing creaks and groans as it clambers its crooked gait. Its fangs stretch across the expanse of its head, as its mouth is pulled back in unadulterated, ravenous glee.
“One big gulp.”
The animal is upon him. It snags his leg with a hasty claw and drags him from the ground.
Tsuna is going to die.
The clarity in which this thought hits him makes his blood run rabbit-fast. He’s going to die, right here, in the middle of nowhere. No one will know where he died. Everyone will forget his name. Except for his mother, though she so easily forgot his father that he’s sure she’ll forget him, too…
A guttural scream erupts from the throat of the animal.
Tsuna falls to the ground. Frost crunches beneath his back. A warm, viscous liquid splatters across his cheek. He scrambles to his knees, feet kicking away at the snow to enlarge the distance between him and his captor.
A flash. A blade.
A thump, and the animal’s head lays on the ground before his feet like an offer to a prayer. A tremor shakes the very skeleton of his body and lingers its welcome. The liquid on Tsuna’s cheek burns with unnatural heat. When he reaches to touch it, it’s gone.
The blade that cut the beast drips blood like a fang. With a quick flick, metal cuts the air. Blood from the blade is cast upon the snow and sinks with dangerous contamination, however, that, too, dissipates into the winter air, leaving no traces of its presence.
Tsuna traces the blade’s vector to its wielder. Ironically, it is the master of the sword that works his throat into a scream, not the animal.
Dressed in pitch black uniform is a beast with hooked fangs and a treacherous grin, the red of its skin darker than the blood it had drawn. The crooked half-moon of its horns leers an oath of death.
Tsuna slips on the snow as he struggles to stand. He yells a garbled mess that is half a prayer and half a cry for help.
With baleful leisure, the beast peels off its face and-
“The mountain will collapse if you continue screaming,” its true visage derides.
Tsuna staggers to his feet. His knees tremble. A man. There’s a man beneath the face, with unfathomable black eyes. His cheekbones are so accentuated he looks as if he has not eaten in a week. He pushes the red face back, and when Tsuna catches sight of its white underside, he realises it’s a mask.
The man tucks his oni mask atop of his hair. He raises a thin brow. “The demon has passed. Why are you still scared?"
Tsuna’s next exhale comes out ragged and visible. “D-Demon? Th-That was a demon?” His voice halfway through the sentence turns into an uncontrollable shriek.
The man scoffs bemusedly. “You have my welcome. Tell me, why are you out when it’s dark? Especially here, in isolation.”
Tsuna’s throat ripples in lieu of an answer. Tears dither on the surface of his eyes. Demons were a story used to scare mis-behaving children. They were an excuse for ruined crops; for bad luck. They weren’t meant to be real.
The man sighs. He pulls the mask back on, and uneasiness places a wintry hand on Tsuna’s back.
“Stay at home when the moon rises. For my sake and yours,” the man grumbles. He sheathes his sword with irritated movement. “Climbing this slope for one kill is not worth my time.” He turns, as softly and silently as the falling snow.
“Wait!” Tsuna cries. He doesn’t know the way home, what if he’s attacked again? By…by something? Something that is not a ‘demon’, because those things don’t exist!
Surprisingly, the man humours him by crooking a head. His hand rests on his sheathed blade – a warning. ‘Be quick,’ it demands.
“You need to help me get home!” Tsuna urges. His hands quiver for solid support. He clutches onto the trunk of a tree. “The-There’s no way I’m getting there by myself!”
Tsuna can’t see the man’s reaction, but the lock of his frame indicates that Tsuna misjudged his patience. Tsuna braces himself to prostrate upon the snow – if this man is wealthy enough for a uniform and blade of that quality, he must be from a respected background.
“What is that, on your neck?” the man asks instead.
Tsuna’s hand, without thought, moves to touch lightly at the blight beneath his ear. The skin there is coarse and dry – in the winter, it occasionally bleeds.
“I dropped mother’s boiling pot on my right side when I was young. I was trying to grab a spoon,” Tsuna recalls. It was so long ago – he can hardly remember the pain, just a persistent numbness that fouled even his brain. It’s faint and pink on normal days, but when his heart starts racing, the pigment grows darker.
“You have a mark,” the man states. He advances as if swept by a gale. “That’s a mark. Why do you have one?”
Tsuna scrambles backwards – the man’s presence all too looming and thick with disorientation. “I-I just told you. I dropped-”
The man snatches Tsuna’s arm and maintains a grip that isn’t painful and isn’t considerate. He stares intently at Tsuna’s neck. It’s set aflame by his concentrated gaze, even hidden behind the mask.
“A mark,” the man eventually finalises. He releases Tsuna’s arm, but his stance – one ready to draw his sword – stops Tsuna from escaping. “What luck. You’ll be my Tsuguko.”
Tsuna scans the darkness for a way out. This can’t be happening. The guy is crazy! First, he undauntingly and ruthlessly decapitates an…an animal, then he mocks Tsuna, then non-verbally threatens to kill him! What is a ‘Tsuguko’, anyways? This is too much. Tsuna wants to go home. He’s hungry, he’s tired, and he’ll never step outside again.
“N-No! I don’t want to associate with you! I just want to go home!” Tsuna gripes.
The man huffs. “So whiny…I’ll leave you be then.” His sword clicks back into its sheath, and he starts of towards the base of the mountain.
Tsuna scurries after him. “W-Wait! Wait, you have to help me get home!”
The man doesn’t turn, choosing to speak to the air instead. “I thought you said you didn’t want to associate with me.”
Tsuna scowls, but the man doesn’t see it, with his back turned. “I don’t!” he exclaims. His arms flail in frustration. “I don’t know you! But you h-helped me before, so I want you to help me once more!”
Tsuna digs his heels into the ground when the man turns languidly with irate forewarning. “I don’t do charity work, kid. I am the Pillar of Chaos; I’m worth more than you can pay with your life.”
As the man hisses ‘Pillar of Chaos’, the blood in Tsuna hums a waking call from a long slumber and his bones thrum in unanimous resonation, eliciting a response in him that is both foreign and familiar. His mind is both simultaneously plunged into oil and dipped into an icy lake – he feels everything with immense emotional clarity and rationale, to the extent where he’s almost blinded by the stimulus. Tsuna welcomes the unfamiliar presence and watches as it chases his fear away and replaces it with newfound irritation – irritation for the man before him.
“Do you say that to others as well? That their lives are worth less than your title?” Tsuna demands, propelled by a parochial force. “My life may mean nothing, but I can’t say the same for any other person. It’s a shameful mentality – if you believe the value of your title be so great that you would put it above a life, perhaps you don’t deserve it at all.”
In a blink the man’s hand snaps to the hilt of his sword. He takes a step forward, his foot-falls invisible and silent. The oni mask scowls as if it was its own wicked lifeform. “Do not dare be arrogant,” the man states, “when you are still selfish and young and stupid. You do not know a thing about the life you’re about to live. If I had not arrived when I did, your being would serve no purpose other than to fertilise the very ground I tread on. You would perish before the hands of a drunken ex-samurai or by the claws of a demon. You would be another casualty. Do not be arrogant with me if you are ignorant of your own flaws.”
The mark on Tsuna’s neck – a permanent flame stretching from his collarbone to ear flares in retort. His lips peel open, but the haze and heat of his mind retreat, cowering before the man’s shadow. Tsuna recoils, his warm calmness gone with the race of his blood. His pulse beats unsteadily in his ears, ‘obey’ it whispers, before fading into silence. Tsuna shivers, in fear and cold.
“You’re right! Sorry for troubling you!” Tsuna squeaks, the hidden gaze of the man like a dagger to his throat.
Without waiting to gauge the man’s reaction, as he fears the result, he stumbles up the slope. When he sneaks a glance back, the man is gone, not even a footstep or shadow left as a reminder of his existence.
Tsuna continues his trek. The man must’ve been a mirage or a winter-induced delusion of some kind. The animal as well. Tsuna fumbles up an unstable slope. Snow crumples beneath his feet and tumble down the mountain before he can properly catch his footing. He takes another two steps before he slips again. This is horrible; the ground moves as if opposed to being stepped on. He’ll never get home before dinner – possibly not even before the sun rises.
SNAP!
Tsuna did not hear that. He’ll continue on – without worry, because nothing makes its way willingly up the mountain. ‘The animal and man were visages,’ he hums happily to himself.
CRUNCH!
Tsuna bolts. It’s the fastest he’s ever ran – he clambers over roots, slips through the snow, ducks under low branches, guided by his relentless, fear-fuelled legs. He sneaks a peek over his shoulder…
…and nearly faints on his feet.
“Help me!” he yells, because he does not care who he wakes; he’s hoping he’ll wake himself up from this horrible nightmare and open his eyes to the comfort of his room.
The animal behind him snarls a fiendish echo.
He dashes around the snowy bed of a tree, consumed with lament and sobbing breath. From its shadow steps a man that Tsuna runs into.
The man grunts and his feet retreat unbalanced. In a second, Tsuna thinks they will tumble to the ground, but the man draws a steady stance and holds Tsuna tightly. When Tsuna looks up at his face, he realises that he is a boy, not a man. Something akin to surprise and familiarity flashes across his gaze, before he pushes Tsuna behind him.
The animal, frothing at the mouth, clambers with voracious desperation towards them. Tsuna cries out, reaching to pull the boy to a further distance, but the boy assumes a stance that pushes himself out of Tsuna’s reach.
He draws his sword with confidence in practice and exhales white mist.
“Breath of Water, First Style: Water Surface Slice.”
Released from its sheath, the blade scratches against the air, eliciting the sound of water pounding against rocks in a river. The air grows cold with the draw of the sword. The boy rushes forward, water slipping by the plentiful on the tip of his blade, and he strikes. The water, a blue, delicate ribbon, follows the blade quickly and collates with the attack.
In a fluid and smooth motion, the animal is decapitated and its torso body crumples to the ground. A second later its head follows, burying into the snow.
The water that is not merged with his blade sprinkles down from the slice, an illusion of gentle rain. The boy sheathes his sword, then he turns and smiles. It’s a small, unsure smile.
Tsuna finds his throat dry. He stumbles for stable footing. “Wh-What…” he starts but finds himself unsure of what to say.
The boy glides towards Tsuna, his steps as fluid and unbroken as a spring river. “Are you hurt?” he inquires, before stopping at an unnaturally far distance for conversation.
Tsuna is working his voice into something audible when a form drops from the tree he is under. He screeches uncontrollably, anxious and uneasy from the new introductions to his orthodox life, and the figure that fell from the tree stands to form the shape of a man – a man Tsuna has seen before.
“It-It’s you!” Tsuna yells with accusation.
The man brushes snow off his uniform, unperturbed. “So, your screaming did attract another one,” he states. “Usually, people learn their lessons after being attacked once by a demon. You look like you’re still failing to comprehend.”
Tsuna flushes, his skin burns against the unforgiving air of winter. “I thought I said that I didn’t want to associate with you!”
The man scoffs. He turns to stare at Tsuna directly, though his gaze is concealed by his mask. “I wanted to see what you were capable of. Apparently, I was too hopeful – you really are useless,” he states. Tsuna tenses, thinking of the village boys and his ruined haori, but the man continues speaking. “For now, that is. Unless you choose to become my Tsuguko, you’ll remain like this for the rest of your life – purposeless and dependent on the work of your parents.”
Tsuna recoils, as if the man holds a blade to his body. The boy watches their exchange with vague curiosity, though unprompted, he is silent.
Tsuna has a mother to return to. An unproblematic, modest life with the person he cares most about. Despite his complaints about the distance, their reclusive home provides a quiet shelter tucked away in the safety of the woods. Tsuna is comfortable – he’s content. Why, by a twist chance of fate, does everything have to change now? “I refuse,” he states.
“Yamamoto Takeshi is my student, temporarily,” the man says, ignoring Tsuna. He gestures towards the boy. Yamamoto waves in delayed greeting. “Therefore, his actions are an extension of mine. He saved your life as I did previously, which means I fought death for you twice. It is polite to offer your body and soul in return for what I have done, isn’t it, Takeshi?”
The boy grins unpleasantly, like a wolf. His flicks his sword from its sheath with his thumb. “Of course, Master. If he refuses, that means I can kill him, right?”
Tsuna flinches. Yamamoto’s blade – its screeching release from its sheath and its easy slice against bone and flesh pierce through his mind. Yamamoto’s form indicates months or years of practise. Even from this distance, if he runs, he’ll never make it. Tsuna trembles, unable to move. The situation is entirely unjust – he never wanted this. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time…
He wants to go home.
Tsuna doesn’t realise he’s crying until he sniffles. Tears blind him from vision of the two before him and chase away the hot indignance left in his cheeks.
“Fine,” he says, voice watery and broken. “I’ll do it. Just…let me go home.”
For once, there is silence. It prevails like miasma, thick and humid in the air.
Eventually, the man speaks, and there is a smile in his voice. “What is your name?”
Tsuna exhales shakily and roughly wipes the tears from his eyes. “Sawada. Sawada Tsunayoshi.”
The man faces Tsuna. His uniform is picked up by a passing gale. “I am Reborn.”