The grass was wet.
That was the first thing he noticed—cool and damp beneath his palms, pressing into the skin of trembling fingers. Then came the acid burn at the back of his throat, and a violent heave wracked his entire body. He gasped, choking, as his stomach convulsed again, bile and half-dissolved pills spilling out onto the earth.
It took him a full minute to realize he was alive.
His eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. Above him, soft light filtered through branches, dancing in gold-tinted rays against the dark green canopy. A wind stirred the leaves gently, carrying the faint scent of moss and something floral—sweet, bitter, wrong.
Tsuna blinked. His fingers curled into the grass.
But... I died?
Or at least, he remembered dying. A clean shot to the chest—Reborn's expression frozen, Mukuro's scream, Hibari lunging too late. Blood spreading under his ribs like liquid fire.
But now… he was breathing. Weakly, shallowly. And not in pain.
Not the pain he'd known, at least.
A flicker of light caught his eye.
Around him, the air shimmered with Sky Flames—not quite his. They flickered low and unsteady, like dying coals, but pulsed with warmth that didn't belong to him. Not completely. The hue was close to his own: a brilliant orange, tinged now with pale undertones of silver-blue. Sorrow and regret made manifest.
They clung to the earth like fog, soaking into the grass, dancing slowly around his shivering form. He didn't command them—they moved on their own, like grief with nowhere left to go.
Sky Flames. But not mine.
And that's when he felt it. Not just the sickness in his gut or the trembling in his limbs. But someone else's sorrow, lodged deep in the bones of this borrowed body.
Pain.
Long-term pain.
Memory fragments flared in his mind like splintered glass:
Hands shoving him into a locker, echoing laughter. Silent dinners where no one asked how school went. The only warm presence—an older twin, kind eyes, gentle voice—leaving without a backward glance. The slow choking loneliness of a house that smiled but never saw him. A bottle. A plan. A prayer that didn't feel like one. And then—"I don't want to die."
"Please—I don't want to—"
Tsuna clutched his chest, breath catching. That voice hadn't been his, but it echoed inside him, raw and terrified. It was a soul that had folded inward, cracked open only in its last moment.
He didn't want to die. Not really. Not when it came down to it.
But no one had come. No one had known. Not until it was too late.
And now… he was here.
Tsuna swallowed hard, vision swimming.
"I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely, to the air, to the body he wore, to the soul that had reached out with its final spark. "You didn't deserve this."
The flames flickered once, soft and mournful, and then began to fade. They didn't vanish completely—but they stilled. Quiet. As if granting him permission to breathe.
Tsuna lay there for a long while, heart still uneven, thoughts spinning like loose thread. Then, slowly, he sat up—bones aching, stomach hollow. He pressed a hand to his ribs, feeling the unfamiliar curve of them. Lighter. Shorter. Sixteen or seventeen, maybe.
Not his body.
Not his world.
But he was here. And somewhere, deep inside these bones and broken memories, a second chance had been carved out by Sky Flames that refused to vanish alone.
After long minutes, Tsuna's breathing finally steadied, though each inhale still scraped against his throat like gravel. The Sky Flames had quieted, settling into a low, mournful shimmer beneath his skin. The memories weren't his, but they lingered—soft edges of sorrow, bruised thoughts pressed into the walls of a soul.
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, swallowing down the lingering taste of bile. Then, slowly, he closed his eyes and reached out—not with his body, but with his Flames. The forest around him felt still, but Tsuna knew better.
A flicker. A presence wrapped in gentle distortion. Familiar.
"I know you're there," he said softly, voice still hoarse but steady.
The clearing remained silent for a heartbeat longer.
Then the world peeled itself open, and Mist Flames—light and quiet—unfurled like petals of a dream shedding its skin. The air shimmered, bent, and then collapsed back into focus, revealing the figure standing at the edge of the clearing.
He looked the same as Tsuna remembered him: silver-haired, with round glasses perched on a narrow nose, dressed as if he were a man playing at normalcy. But his eyes—those ageless eyes—watched Tsuna with the weight of galaxies behind them.
"You're not supposed to be here," Kawahira said, voice mild, curiosity rippling underneath.
Tsuna blinked. He hadn't expected him to be the one watching. His mouth opened before he could stop himself.
"Kawahira-san?"
That got a reaction.
Kawahira tilted his head slightly. "You shouldn't know me either."
He stepped forward, crossing the edge of the clearing without a sound at all. His gaze sharpened as he examined Tsuna more closely, murmuring to himself.
"What kind of world did you live in for you to know me? Were you an Arcobaleno there? No, no…"
"You were part of the Tri-ni-sette, yes, but not cursed…"
Tsuna tried to shift into a sitting position. The cramps in his gut protested, and his throat burned from more than just vomiting. Still, he looked up and met Kawahira's eyes without flinching.
"I was the Vongola Decimo of my world," he said. "We knew each other because my tutor was the Sun Arcobaleno. I helped break the curse."
Now, that made Kawahira pause.
He hummed, intrigued, Mist Flames curling faintly around his shoulders like the edge of a deeper veil.
"Is that why you're here?" he asked. "Your world collapsed because you broke the curse?"
Tsuna shook his head slowly. "No. I died a couple of years later… in battle. The curse was already broken by then. We found an alternative that let them live."
Kawahira fell quiet. His eyes narrowed—not in suspicion, but in contemplation. He looked down at Tsuna as if he were staring at a rare seed trying to sprout in foreign soil.
"Fascinating," he murmured. "Truly."
Kawahira's gaze drifted across the clearing, past Tsuna's slumped figure, lingering briefly on the fading Sky Flames still licking faintly at the ground.
He didn't ask how the curse had been broken.
Of course he didn't.
He was still wearing that look of aloof detachment, the one that said: This doesn't concern me. I merely observe the imbalance. But Tsuna could see the faint curl of curiosity in the corner of his mouth, the flicker behind his lenses—he recognized it.
If Tsuna wasn't so drained, he might've smiled.
He's the same, Tsuna thought with a quiet ache. Or at least close enough.
In his world, Kawahira had carried the burden of the Tri-ni-sette like a chain of glass and fire, one he hadn't forged but was condemned to maintain. He had been exhausted—numb, even—as the centuries stacked loss upon loss.
He had been so quietly grateful when the Arcobaleno were freed. And so stunned, that first time when Tsuna had invited him to dinner without an agenda. He'd tried to vanish after, fade into peaceful obscurity, but Tsuna had never let him. They'd made it a weekly thing. Casual conversation. Real food. No titles, no pressure. Just tea and dessert.
But… that was not this Kawahira.
This man did not know him.
And so, Tsuna didn't push.
Instead, he gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright with shaking arms. His muscles burned from strain and emptiness, but he refused to stay crumpled on the ground like a discarded thought.
Kawahira watched him with no move to assist. Only curiosity. Like he was waiting to see what shape Tsuna would take now.
Tsuna swayed, then caught his breath.
"I can tell you how to break the curse," he said, voice low and scraped thin by bile and pain.
Kawahira's eyes narrowed slightly—not surprised, but appraising.
Tsuna didn't stop.
"But I know you wouldn't accept that freely. So… all I want in return is to be owed a favor."
That made Kawahira still.
The wind tugged gently at the trees again; the moment held like glass between them. The last of the Sky Flames vanished into the earth, silent as breath.
"Just a favor," Tsuna repeated. "For the future. It doesn't have to be now."
He let the words hang there, not begging, not bargaining. Just offering. Because he understood that Kawahira—any Kawahira—couldn't bring himself to believe that someone would help him out of kindness alone. That he was worth saving without a price.
So Tsuna gave him one.
"I'll think about it," Kawahira had said, in that vague, unhurried way of his—like even decision-making was optional for someone who existed outside of time.
Then he vanished, dissolving into Mist as if he had never been there to begin with.
Tsuna didn't fight it. He didn't have the strength to call out, or to hope, or to try to convince him.
Instead, he stood in the clearing alone, his knees barely holding steady beneath him. The Sky Flames had vanished. The silence returned. All that remained was the messy grass where he'd thrown up, the ghost of sorrow lingering like smoke behind his ribs.
He recognized the terrain well enough. Namimori. One of the forests that curled lazily around the edge of the town, like a green border no one looked past anymore. Somewhere out there was the Sawada household.
His home. Or, this body's home.
He took a breath, bracing himself—and began walking.
The first few steps were rough. His balance was off. His limbs felt both too light and too unfamiliar, like he was wearing someone else's shoes and skin. And maybe he was.
But the rhythm of walking—one step, one breath, one stubborn push forward—helped. His feet stopped catching on roots. His arms steadied. He started to walk like himself again.
That was when he noticed the scent.
It clung faintly to his clothes, just beneath the acrid tang of bile and sweat. Sweet. Soft. Almost floral, but dim, like a forgotten flower pressed between two pages.
And he remembered—"Scentless omega."
The memory hit like a stone.
Words flung at the other Tsuna in sharp, hissing voices. Hallways filled with laughter that never reached kindness. That awful nickname echoing again and again: Dame-Tsuna. Scentless freak. No one's ever going to want someone like you.
Not even your brother stuck around, huh?
His breath hitched, and a flash of memory bubbled up from the corners of the soul he'd inherited—not his, but painfully clear.
The way people looked through him. The fear of gym class locker rooms.
The day he turned sixteen and presented… and nothing happened.
No scent. No heat. No change.
Just… emptiness.
And then the way the jeers had changed from mocking to cruel. From dismissive to pitying.
Tsuna swallowed against the bile crawling up again. His throat still burned.
He remembered dimly, from that fragment of memory, how this world worked. How this Tsuna had lived in a society divided by secondary genders. Dominated by scents that defined compatibility, relationships, status. Where not having one was like being declared soulless. Unloveable.
The original Tsuna had presented as an omega—a year ago. But a scentless one. Something unnatural. Unwanted.
He stumbled slightly but caught himself, the path winding now into the quiet suburbs near the edge of Namimori.
This world is crueler than I thought, he realized.
And it hadn't helped that the boy—his twin, and wasn't that a jarring realization? A brother? An older twin?—had left, dragged to Italy by Iemitsu as soon as he'd presented as an alpha.
Three months later, this Tsuna had presented too. But by then, Ieyasu was gone.
Tsuna remembered the emails: warm at first, daily updates, little jokes.
Then weekly.
Then once a month.
Then... silence.
He wondered if the boy who had lived this life had stopped checking his inbox in the end. Maybe it hurt too much to keep hoping.
Tsuna exhaled shakily and pressed a hand to his chest. The heartbeat beneath wasn't quite his—but it was alive. He would honor that.
As the house came into view, he squared his shoulders despite the ache, despite the world pressing down with all its invisible rules.
After all, he wasn't weak.
And he won't be alone anymore.
Not if he could help it.