Chapter 10

It's not until it's almost one that they're done. Ornella-san seems more relaxed but it may be thanks to his flames than because of the company. She offers him to lunch in her apartment and Tsuna is ready to deny her politely as he hasn't found his companion but at that moment he feels something slither up his leg. It makes him want to shiver. He doesn't and instead nods at Ornella-san.

"That would be nice."

Leaving eases more of the tension of her frame. Tsuna takes the opportunity she's giving him her back to place the current snake between his hands. She doesn't seem to want to return to being a necklace, so Tsuna places her inside the pocket of his jacket. Though, who knows? Kawahira-san told him as long as he thought of her as a necklace she will stay a necklace. Maybe the Mist-flames of the apartment unsettled him more than he thought for her to return in her companion form. She still shields him from being sensed by others, but now any flame active can tell he's a Sky.

The faint tint of orange in his eyes that's been present since he came to Italy is a big giveaway.

"Natsu?"

Tsuna looks up from the bowl filled with peanuts he's been eating from, slightly embarrassed he hasn't been paying attention to what she's saying. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"It's fine. I was just asking if you came to visit someone. Anna told me his cousin was going to come, but you don't look like her."

"Oh, uh, no. I was—" A sudden image of the doors of the building appears in his mind, filled with papers of the apartments available. "—looking for a new apartment?"

What.

She doesn't seem to notice how his answer came out as a question or the shocked expression he wears afterward, she merely nods. "There are only two-bedroom apartments, I'm afraid. Unless you were planning to share with someone?"

He thinks of the two people constantly visiting him as he internally sobs at all the trouble he will endure by moving out. "No, just me."

"Well, the residential building next to this one has a couple, I think."

No, no, his intuition chants in a way that sends chills down the back of his head. Even after long months; he still feels apprehension whenever his intuition acts in a way that's too aware to be normal. It's connected to him, he's sure. He knows it only acts on his wishes and needs, but hearing a small voice repeating the words 'here, here' over and over makes him think he's going crazy.

Just in case he curls the fingers of his right hand where the bandage is and almost lets out a sigh of relief when he realizes his palm is not feeling like burning.

"What about the one we just cleaned?" he asks with only a slight frown to show his forming headache. The pleased purr he receives doesn't make him any better.

Her eyebrows go up, some of her tension returning. "You realize someone… died there. Right?"

"I know," he says. He could add how his current apartment was obtained in a similar way or how he's sadly used to living among misfortune because of those days living with too many people in a too-small room. He could say how Napoli has made him used to things he hadn't wanted to ever get used to, but he doesn't as she nods with a small sad smile that says 'I understand'.

She most likely does. She's old and must have lived harder times than him.

As she explains the payment, Tsuna only feels guilty that the documents he will have to give her are kind of false.