Chapter 9

Mist-san comes the next day as an old lady. And the day after that as a male teenager. After that, a couple of the shady people who stayed don't come anymore, and Tsuna learns later that day the police found a group of people in a dark alley not far from the hotel, killed by gunshots. Tsuna is not sure if Mist-san had some hand in their deaths. His intuition is silent when he prods it, but at the same time oddly reassuring.

The day after that, Mist-san doesn't come and there's a sudden influx of police officers around the place instead. They visit the hotel to ask questions and Tsuna gets a free day because of it, which he spends it thinking about the mafia and flames, feeling a bit odd because he wasn't pulled into anything too crazy. The current patrons left are still shady, yes, but he honestly thought something was going to happen with him in the middle of it.

He immediately knocks on something made of wood. After all, the patrons are still there to cause him trouble so it's not as if he's safe yet.

Probably nothing will happen until the police leave though. Everyone seems cautious with them around. However, aside from the trigger-happy feelings he gets from some of them, everything seems the same.

Oh well, what's done is done. He'll ignore the whole thing that happened and will continue spending his afternoons with Stranger-san and his nights sleeping next to Huo-san since he has taken his demand of sleeping over whenever he does a massacre-y type of mission as a suggestion to sleep every night on his couch/bed with him.

Tsuna stops walking as he realizes how strange his life is turning. And sociable. There's almost no time in which he's alone. Either he's working around others or at home, accompanied. It's been so long since he just had some alone time.

It's… nice. But also tiring. He's now kind of glad he left the bike at the hotel so he could walk back home. Some time alone enjoying his surroundings seems like the perfect way of spending his morning. Who knows when the chance will come again?

Just in case as he takes a turn onto a street he doesn't know, wanting to get lost for a bit. He always looks around, cautious that some ramen store will appear from out of nowhere and take advantage of his alone status.

Luckily, no one tries to kidnap him this time.

Not so luckily, his intuition is leading him someplace.

He even has to take the train and stay there for two stops before his intuition nudges him to stand up from his seat and move. A new unfamiliar street and two turns later, he's standing in front of a tall, green building. He can't see what was inside even with the glass doors because of the second set of metal doors circling the building and a small garden in front of it. The stairs leading to the glass doors and his height don't help him any either.

Tsuna hovers outside for a bit, looking around. It's obvious he's in the residential area; the sign advertising the apartments available is too big a clue. With a deja-vu feeling hovering over his shoulders, he presses the button among many his intuition signals him to and a couple of seconds is what it takes for the front doors to open with a click.

Whoever opened the door was clearly waiting for another person and not him. Still. If he doesn't go inside his intuition will give him a headache.

With a last glance around, Tsuna pushes the door open, goes in, and sees what looks like a reception room. Though it seems more like a boot with only glass to separate the clients from the receptionist. The counter behind the glass is small and empty, but homey. There's a door behind the small chair that probably leads to a room or the person in charge's apartment.

He looks left and right, but other than closed doors (probably apartments), there's nothing else.

His intuition tells him to take the stairs up so he follows it. There are no windows or some other opening in the walls like the building he rents his apartment in, but he can see lamps in the corners so it probably isn't as scary at night as it can be.

On the fifth floor, he stops. It's early morning and the sun rays light everything enough to make it look innocent, almost cozy. But Tsuna still can't shake out the ominous mood the first door to the left gives off. It's slightly ajar, pieces of a thin white duct tape on the edges, not like the kind one sees in criminal soaps but similar, clearly broken and, while not old-looking, Tsuna gets the feeling that someone put it there to stop others from entering, and as soon as they could, someone tried very hard to take it all off.

He approaches until he can hear a scrub-like sound coming from inside, shaky pants, and sometimes nothing more than deep breaths accompanying it.

The whole horror movie setup is making him more nervous than he normally would be.

"Go to my pocket," he murmurs as he takes a deep breath, preparing for a fight, just in case. The necklace warms slightly, metal turning into something more alive, and with a hissing sound that sounds more like a scoff, it slithers down his chest until it reaches the ground and goes inside the apartment, fiery-like scales looking very noticeable on top of the pale floor.

Tsuna blinks rapidly until the surprise wears off. He sighs because of course, this is happening to him. He crosses his fingers, hopes there's no serial killer with an ax or some other weird pointy object inside, and enters.

It seems luck is on his side because there's no person wearing a hockey mask on the other side of the door. There's an old lady cleaning instead.

"Hi?" he says when she looks up from where she's kneeling on the ground. There's a thin sheen of sweat between her eyebrows and a tired vibe coming from her as she fixes her thin brown glasses with the back of her palm.

"Good morning. What can I do for you, young man?" she asks in typical upbeat Italian fashion as if the words have been rehearsed many times. Because it's clear her face doesn't match her tone at all.

"Eh…"

Tsuna glances at the brownish spot she's cleaning, and the bucket with water next to her, before his gaze move to her red-stained hands. The smell hovering in the air is heavy but easy to recognize after so many fights and having lived in close quarters with women with not enough resources to buy pads for their monthly needs.

A second sniff makes him sure it's blood. What she's scrubbing is blood from the floor. It doesn't take a genius to realize it's not caused by a monthly misfortune.

She seems to notice his staring as she looks briefly down to her hands and the dirty, wet cloth. When she looks up again, there's a sad, self-deprecating smile on her lips, deepening the lines around her eyes and making her incredibly older. "There was an accident."

It must have been a really awful accident, Tsuna thinks as he looks at the trail that clearly goes from the room next to the kitchen to the one they're in.

"Do you need some help?" he asks because the old lady's eyes are slightly red and shiny. There's also a weight on her shoulders that looks too heavy for someone so old to carry.

She looks unsure, but Tsuna kneels in front of her and uses some of his flames around him to calm her. He smiles. "My name's Natsu. I clean rooms in a hotel so I've got experience."

"I'm Ornella," she says answering back with a weak smile, light blue eyes softening. "What a nice young man you are."

Tsuna nods and moves to grab the mop he can see on one corner. "I will start over there and we can meet in the middle, okay?"

Some doubt enters her features before she stands up, too. "It's better if I clean the bathroom. You can help me with the floor here?"

"Sure," he says, but he's already in a perfect position to see the bathroom from his peripheral view. There are pieces of glass on the ground, next to the sink, a bigger one close to the tub where the bloody fingertips on it are too clear to be confused as something else.

Involuntarily, his flames, no longer controlled by the help of mist flames, expand and reach the room. Imprints of what happened are processed through his brain until he can get a mental picture just by the locations of the things sprawled around and the damages done overall.

Suicide, his intuition tells him, but it feels wrong in a way.

Tsuna moves away from the bathroom and receives the cloth Ornella-san gives him as he continues exuding more flames around the apartment. There are Mist flames, it adds and Tsuna's grip tightens because now he has identified them, it's hard to ignore because they're strong.

He starts cleaning, one eye looking for the locations his companion may be hiding as he tries to ignore the foreboding feeling forming deep in his gut.