Sunset Hue (KHR Fanfiction)

Making Friends

When lunch break rolled around, Mia immediately dragged him out the room by the sleeve of his uniform while holding a small bag. They were out of the school and at the field before she let him go. The field was mostly empty, save for a few people but it was just them at the moment under a tree. There were no windows nearby that anyone would use to spy on them and it was nicely shaded from the sun, Tsuna wondered if Mia intentionally brought him here for privacy.

"What's up with class?" she asked, frowning. "What does 'dame' mean and why do they call you that?"

"Er... um..." he looked away, his cheeks flaming.

"Spill." She commanded.

"Dame means... useless. Around here I'm called useless," he said lowly,unable to look her in the eye.

He couldn't see it, bit her stare was felt heavy. "How can you be useless?" she said, disbelief evident on her expression.

That was a little bit harder to explain. He felt his face growing steadily hotter as he told her of his - quote, unquote - reputation to be a failure. As he went on, he caught a glimpse of her face. It was an increasing mix between disbelief, exasperation and laughter. When he was done, after giving a detailed explanation of how hazardous his clumsiness is to others and himself, he risked sneaking another glance at her and found she was shaking her head at him.

"Mi stai prendendo in giro," she said, looking like in all the word that it was the stupidest thing she ever heard ("You've got to be kidding me"). Tsuna wished he understood Italian.

But she didn't seem deterred by his reputation and that threw him off guard. Didn't she realize that he would cause nothing but trouble for her? Why didn't she understand? Why was he trying so hard to convince her of that? He didn't understand it himself. It was so backwards that it made his head hurt.

"Do you get it?" he asked her.

She frowned at him, clearly displeased. "I get it but that doesn't mean I agree with it."

"But what they say is true!" he argued.

She walked up to him, firmly placed her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. She hadn't said anything het but Tsuna could practically feel her disapproval radiating from her. Her gaze unnerved him and despite being the same height, Mia felt taller than he was.

"Listen to me Tsuna. You're not useless. You may be bad at some things but your not useless. What they say is called an opinion. Not the truth," she said.

There was a stone lodged into his throat when he tried to swallow. "What happens then?" he asked, voice thick. "What if I really am what they say?"

One of her eyebrows rose. "So what? There are tons of people who suck at studying. That's why tutoring and summer classes were invented."

"I'm bad at physical classes too!"

"Obviously you're just not the sporty type."

Frustrated, Tsuna blurted out "I'm clumsy!"

The corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "So am I." He gaped.

"You? Clumsy?" he could hardly believe it. She smiled this time.

"Very." She assured him. The lilt in her voice sounded like there must have been a story behind that. He suddenly felt like knowing. Mia's facial expressions were very expressive - whatever it was that happened, it must have been pretty bad.