Greetings, readers:
Thank you for reading this fan-made work...
"I hope you enjoy today's chapter." I, Wissumi Wizaki, wish you a happy reading
...
Year 1048 B.N. – January 26th
The Seed of Rain rested somewhere within the folds of his consciousness like a promise yet to be fulfilled, and that was enough for now. All that remained was to wait for the longest rainy day of the year to meet its activation requirement.
What was not enough was G.
Not because G was a poor training partner. Quite the opposite. He was the best Giotto had ever had in any of his lives: precise, relentless, with a level of combat awareness that very few could ever attain. The problem was precisely that. G's loyalty toward him was so deep, so fundamental to who he was, that no matter how much he tried, no matter how many times Giotto instructed him to fight without restraint, something inside him always held back at the crucial moment, stopping short of delivering a truly injuring blow. It was not cowardice. It was the exact opposite: the inability to truly harm the person he had chosen to protect across two different lifetimes.
Giotto understood.
He could not blame him for it.
But he also could not continue training against a padded wall.
One morning, beneath a gray sky and cold air, he left G in the courtyard with a single instruction: oversee the recruits' training for the entire day. Then he ventured alone into the forest.
...
He walked for a while without any particular destination, allowing the sounds of the mansion to fade among the trees until they disappeared completely. Once the silence was deep enough, he reflected on the progress of his training.
Until recently, the Dying Will Mode had been a problem of two simultaneous variables: physical consumption and mental consumption. What he had discovered after weeks of solitary practice in that very forest was something no manual could ever have taught him, because it depended on a unique combination that only he possessed: two consciousnesses operating in parallel, capable of distributing the burden in ways a single mind never could.
The key discovery had been purpose.
Whenever he entered Dying Will Mode without a clear objective, the transformation consumed energy in every possible direction, like water spilling across flat stone. But when he fixed a specific goal before activating it, the energy became focused. It turned efficient. His mind no longer resisted in the same way his body did, because it had somewhere to direct the energy it released. As shown in the anime, the transformation required a goal to serve as the driving force behind one's resolve.
Two months of systematic practice with that variable had produced measurable results: five continuous minutes with a fixed objective—such as running a certain distance or carrying a heavy object—instead of the mere seconds he could endure before collapsing.
Another month spent regulating the transformation's intensity added an entirely new layer of control. More power meant less duration. The equation was simple once he understood it. At only ten percent of the transformation's full output, he could maintain the state for up to thirty minutes. He sacrificed raw strength, speed, and impact resistance. In exchange, he gained mental clarity—a sharpness of thought that higher percentages crushed beneath the burden of sustaining overwhelming power.
It isn't a weakness, Luciano had concluded from his corner of their shared consciousness, with the analytical coldness of someone who had evaluated battlefields for decades. It's a different tool.
Exactly, Giotto had agreed.
But a tool without testing remained nothing more than theory.
This time, his walk had a purpose. His senses remained open to his surroundings with the disciplined awareness that the forest demanded from anyone who truly intended to surpass their limits.
He found it sooner than expected.
Three meters tall. Dark fur whose faint highlights the filtered sunlight between the branches turned almost completely black. Small yellow eyes calmly assessing the intrusion with the confidence of a creature that had never needed to flee from anything in its life. The bear had its back turned when Giotto stepped into the clearing, but it slowly turned around—not out of sluggishness, but with the complete confidence that nothing within that forest posed any real threat to it.
Until it saw the child.
Giotto studied it with the same attention he had once devoted, across two separate lifetimes, to men who wanted him dead.
But this was different.
A man lies with his body when he is afraid.
An animal never lies.
The bear was young... its energy gave it away, as did the effortless precision with which it conserved every movement, the particular tension of a creature still exploring the limits of its own strength without fully knowing where those limits lay. Yet it possessed something young animals rarely combined: a territory of its own and the fully developed instinct to defend it. This was not a beast reacting out of panic.
It was one that protected because it believed it had something worth protecting.
Ambition, the part of him that was Luciano recognized, with something close to respect. Even in a bear.
This was not a creature to be looked down upon. It was an opponent with something inside it that had yet to be fully tested.
Perfect.
He smiled.
The bear lowered its head. The roar that came from it was not shrill but deep—the kind of depth that is not heard so much as felt in the sternum, like a thick string plucked by someone who knows exactly how much force to apply. Its claws carved four parallel lines into the earth. Its eyes never left the tiny intruder who, against all logic, had not retreated a single step.
Giotto allowed the transformation to begin.
It was no longer an explosive surge like before. It was a gradual opening, like a floodgate slowly lifting to control the current. A tiny flame ignited on his forehead, small and precise, while the Sky Aura enveloped his body with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the immense power it contained.
Ten percent.
His muscles responded before his mind had even finished processing the command, exactly as weeks of practice had intended: his body had learned to anticipate. His shirt, deliberately made one size larger, tightened across his torso without tearing. His trousers barely held together, but the percentage was low enough to keep them intact.
Enough to begin, the analytical side of his consciousness noted.
The other side—the one that had spent decades fighting in alleys, mansions, and forests across different worlds—was already fully awake.
"Let's see what you've got," Giotto said.
He shouted it with his arms spread wide, somewhere between a genuine challenge and the satisfaction of finally standing before an opponent who would not hold back out of loyalty. The bear charged immediately, without hesitation, striking with the straightforward ferocity of a predator that never negotiated with its prey.
Giotto dodged the first swipe. He met the next charge with his shoulder, planted his feet, and slid back only a few centimeters across the ground.
He felt no pain. Only heat, the orange Sky Aura coursing through every muscle like electricity.
I have been reborn, he thought, answering with a shoulder strike that made the beast recoil psychologically for the first time in its life.
A few minutes away, Sana and Reijiro were patrolling the forest's edge with the ease of people whose bodies had long since memorized the routine. G had sent them to look for Giotto with the characteristic urgency of someone who had gone far too long without hearing from the person he considered his personal responsibility. They both knew it. They also knew better than to say it to G in those exact words.
Their conversation was quiet and intermittent, the kind shared by two people who knew each other well enough not to fear silence.
Then the roar came.
Deep. Resonant. A vibration that reached the chest before it reached the ears.
"What was that?" Sana asked.
"A bear," Reijiro answered, already changing direction. "But that roar sounded... different."
They ran toward its source.
What they found brought them to an abrupt halt at the edge of the clearing.
Their seven-year-old leader, the Sky Flame blazing on his forehead, was fighting hand-to-hand against a three-meter-tall black bear with the expression of someone standing exactly where he wanted to be. The transformation had stretched his clothes to their absolute limit. His shirt was barely surviving.
His trousers...
His trousers had not been so fortunate when Giotto raised the output to thirty percent to absorb a charge that would have flattened a grown man.
"What the hell...?" Reijiro stumbled over his own feet.
"H-His... his pants..." Sana covered her face with both hands as a deep blush climbed from her neck to her cheeks.
Giotto never heard them.
He was completely immersed in the fight, in that state of absolute concentration where the outside world ceased to exist and only movement and response remained. The Vongola Hyper Intuition granted him a fraction of a second's advantage in every exchange: he did not think about dodging—he simply dodged. He did not calculate each block—it happened instinctively.
But thirty percent came at the cost of mental clarity. He felt it like fog gathering around the edges of his thoughts, his focus thinning as his power increased. So, in the middle of the battle, he developed a strategy that Luciano recognized immediately as familiar: maintain a base output of five percent to keep his mind sharp, then spike it to thirty-five percent only when he needed genuine speed or decisive impact, lowering it again before the cost accumulated.
Like Son Goku against the Ginyu Force while manipulating his battle power, he thought somewhere between a dodge and a counterattack, with the faint spark of humor that only Luciano would have considered appropriate at such a moment. Power up to 35% in fractions of a second. Power down to a sustained 5%. Resource management.
The bear was stronger.
It was tougher.
Every blow Giotto landed sank into muscle that recovered with a speed impossible for any human. But the beast could not keep up with him, and over time, that imbalance began to weigh heavily against it.
...
After twenty minutes of watching, Reijiro grew bored with the efficiency of someone who had better things to do and went to fetch reinforcements.
When he returned, there were no longer two spectators, but six.
G stood with his arms crossed, wearing an expression that blended professional analysis with something he preferred not to name. Takeshi watched with the gaze of someone memorizing every movement to study it later. Daiki frowned, unwilling to admit he was impressed. Reijiro had already processed his initial shock and shifted into evaluation mode. Sana had lowered her hands from her face, though she kept her eyes strategically fixed on the upper half of the fight.
And Haru was clapping.
"That's amazing, Boss! That's the way!"
"It's been going on for three hours," G said in the tone of someone who had accepted the unacceptable. "How much longer?"
"Hard to tell," Reijiro replied. "The bear has great endurance. But it's getting tired."
As though the forest itself had heard him, the rhythm of the battle changed.
The bear began to show signs of exhaustion in a way Giotto noticed before any of the spectators did. Its charges came a second farther apart, its roars carried less resonance, and the pauses between exchanges grew longer. The beast was still dangerous, but it was reaching the limit of what it could sustain.
Giotto sensed it and increased the pressure.
His strikes became faster and more precise, targeting the places where each impact would matter most: the joints, the snout, the base of the neck. Not with cruelty, but with the precision of someone who had fought enough battles to know where pain multiplied and where fatigue simply accumulated.
Finally, he gathered what remained of his mental clarity and available energy into a single movement.
The spinning kick landed cleanly, carrying the full weight of his body behind it, crashing squarely into the beast's snout.
The bear fell.
The sound of its body striking the ground was final.
It panted heavily. Its flanks rose and fell with every labored breath. Its yellow eyes looked up at him with an expression Giotto understood without needing words:
Finish it.
The surrender of one who had fought well and knew it.
But Giotto approached slowly, the Dying Will Mode still active and the Sky Flame flickering upon his forehead. He knelt before the fallen beast and looked into its eyes for a long moment.
There was nothing here to kill.
There was something here to acknowledge.
The bear did not move.
It breathed with difficulty, its sides rising and falling from the effort of giving everything it had. Its yellow eyes stared upward with the same expression Giotto recognized without translation:
Finish it.
The honest surrender of one who had fought well and accepted the outcome.
Giotto knelt before it.
The Sky Flame still burned upon his forehead, but lower now, calmer, like a candle nearing the end of the night. He gazed at the beast in silence, allowing the quiet to accomplish what words sometimes could not.
I could, he thought. Right now, I could.
He did not.
"From this day onward," he said firmly, though without harshness, "you will be my rival. My training partner. I will return, and we will continue fighting. And every day, both of us will become stronger." He paused. "What do you think?"
The language barrier existed.
It was an objective and undeniable fact.
Even so, the bear nodded.
Slowly. Wearily. Its head seemed heavier than before.
But it nodded.
Giotto blinked.
The Luciano side of him processed that more slowly than usual, which in itself revealed just how much it had surprised him.
This world, he thought as he stood, may be different from everything I have ever known. Neither the world of the Tri-ni-sette nor Luciano's world. Something of its own. Something that still has no name to me.
He turned his back on the bear and walked toward the edge of the clearing.
The beast did not move.
The midday sunlight filtered through the leaves with that distinctive golden quality that belongs only to the hours following something intense. Giotto reached the first large tree and leaned against it, finally surrendering to the exhaustion that the Dying Will Mode had postponed for three full hours and was now collecting all at once.
"That was a great fight," he murmured, eyes closed, wearing a satisfaction that needed no audience.
The flame upon his forehead went out.
And then—
"From this day onward, you will be my rival and my training partner!"
The voice was unmistakable, even in mockery.
Giotto opened his eyes.
Daiki.
Wearing that particular grin of his that appeared whenever he found material he had no intention of wasting.
Behind him stood the others: G with his arms crossed. Takeshi wearing an expression so neutral that it fooled no one. Reijiro with one eyebrow slightly raised. Haru with eyes shining as brightly as someone who had just witnessed a story they would tell for years to come. And Sana, who had been deliberately looking away for several minutes.
Heat reached Giotto's cheeks before he could do anything about it.
Luciano took over in an instant.
The bloodlust emerged effortlessly—without flames, without movement. Pure presence. The kind of pressure in the air that precedes irreversible decisions, a presence Luciano had perfected in the alleyways of Italy, and which, inside this small child's body, was somehow even more unsettling because of the contrast.
Daiki fell silent halfway through his next syllable.
Those who had been about to laugh swallowed the sound with remarkable efficiency.
Everyone except three.
G, who simply snorted while looking at the sky like someone who had seen this pattern far too many times to pretend otherwise.
Haru, who continued staring at Giotto with eyes burning with something far closer to admiration than mockery.
And Sana, who chose that exact moment to look up and fully process the situation.
"C-Cover yourself!" she shouted, her voice coming out much louder than she intended. "You're not wearing any pants!"
Giotto looked down.
The Giotto side of their shared consciousness, which had survived three hours of combat against a three-meter bear with remarkable composure, did not survive that.
He covered himself with his hands. The blush reached all the way to his ears.
—I'll never use Dying Will Mode again without bringing a spare set of clothes! —he declared with the dignity of someone making a solemn vow while his dignity was, technically, lying on the ground.
Luciano, from somewhere deep within, said nothing. But the silence carried the unmistakable feeling of someone deciding whether this qualified as the most embarrassing moment across their combined three lifetimes.
It probably did.
Haru improvised a cloak for him using broad leaves and a piece of emergency cloth that someone had either wisely brought along or simply happened to have tucked away in a pocket. Every time she looked at him, she let out a little giggle that she failed to suppress with any real success.
The group began walking back.
—We should put a mannequin at the mansion entrance —Daiki said, in the tone of someone who had calculated exactly how far he could push his luck—. Posing just like the boss. Wearing that exact outfit.
—Whoever laughs tonight sleeps with the bear —Giotto replied with complete composure.
Silence. Immediate and highly productive.
—Hey, Boss —Haru chimed in, changing the subject with her usual lack of warning—. Shouldn't you give it a name?
—It's not a pet, Haru. It's a warrior. It earned its place through its own strength. —He paused, one hand resting on his chin while the other held his improvised covering in place.— But you're right. It deserves a name.
The forest stretched around them as he thought.
—Shōgan —he finally said.— Like the title of the ancient commanders.
—Shōgan! —Sana repeated, making no attempt to hide her excitement.
—Perfect —G said in his usual dry tone.— Now we've got a samurai bear on the payroll.
This time, laughter came freely, with no one trying to hold it back.
Giotto let it happen. He walked among them, wrapped in leaves and makeshift cloth, his body exhausted and the Sky Flame extinguished, and felt something that had no more fitting name than this.
This was what he was building.
Not power. Not the organization. Not the three intelligence divisions or the maps spread across the stone table.
This.
The sound of his people laughing together as they walked home.
...
Year 1048 B.N. – July 30th
The rain would not stop.
For five days, the sky had remained colorless, a continuous, uniform gray that neither threatened nor promised anything—it simply persisted. Like a long breath the world had decided not to interrupt. The earth smelled of soaked roots and ancient stone. The air carried the unmistakable weight of moisture that no longer surprised anyone because it had been the only thing that existed for far too long.
On the third day, the seed had begun to glow.
Not brightly. Not urgently. Just with a faint blue light, like the phosphorescence of something breathing beneath the water. Giotto had spent hours watching it that night without saying a word to anyone, sitting beside it with his knees drawn to his chest, listening to the rain drumming against the roof and thinking about the man he was about to call back into this world.
On the fifth day, he gathered everyone in the clearing outside.
The seed floated just above the muddy ground, at knee height, wrapped in a glow that neither burned nor pulsed. It simply existed, as though it were listening to something the others still could not perceive.
—This kind of rain only falls once a year, —Reijiro murmured, his arms crossed beneath his cloak.— But this time... it doesn't seem like it's going to stop. It feels different.
—It is, —Giotto replied quietly, taking a step toward the seed.— More for us than for anyone else.
G stepped forward until he stood beside him. His hands were tucked into his pockets, his gaze fixed on the sky with the expression of someone processing information that did not come through his eyes.
—I can feel it on my skin, —he said without turning around.— This moisture isn't just the weather.
Behind them, the five administrators stood in a silent semicircle. Haru squinted against the damp cold, watching the seed with unwavering attention. Sana held her arms close to her body, her hair plastered to her forehead by the endless rain. Daiki wore the expression of someone who was confused and struggling to understand what was happening.
—Is it another Guardian? —Daiki finally asked.— Like G?
—Exactly, Daiki. It's something like that... But this time, you'll be able to witness the spectacle, —Giotto said.— This Guardian is different from G. He is Rain, not Storm.
—Rain? —Sana asked.
Giotto nodded.
—The storm is relentless and furious. Rain falls without hatred. Without pride. Only with passion, and with that, it quiets everything else. But... —He paused.— It represents tranquility. Acceptance. Not the end of movement, but its most honest form.
Takeshi and Reijiro silently absorbed Giotto's words. They understood that G embodied the Storm, while this new Guardian would be like the Rain that gently falls.
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was the kind of stillness that settles in when something important is about to happen and everyone knows it without anyone needing to say so.
A gust of wind swept across the clearing. The seed rose a few more inches into the air, and for a brief instant, every raindrop seemed to fall more slowly, as if time itself had stepped aside for something greater.
—The time has come, —Giotto said.
The six of them formed a wide circle around the seed. Giotto extended both hands, closed his eyes, and allowed his consciousness to settle until Luciano and Giotto ceased to be two separate voices and became a single will.
System:Condition fulfilled. The longest rainfall of the year. Initiating summoning sequence. Rain Seed: Ready.
A blue radiance emerged from the earth beneath their feet, spreading in every direction like ink dissolving into still water. It was not an aggressive light. It resembled bioluminescence instead—soft, profound, like the bottom of a lake beneath a moonlit night.
G looked up with an expression Giotto rarely saw on his face.
—Was my summoning like this? —G murmured.
Giotto did not answer. He kept his eyes closed and his arms extended, feeling the seed respond: first with warmth, then with movement, rising until it floated suspended between heaven and earth while absorbing every raindrop that fell upon it, as though it had been waiting for this exact moment all this time.
It grew slowly.
Not with violence or brilliant flashes. It grew the way rain does when a drizzle becomes a downpour: gradually, inevitably, until you could no longer remember what the moment before had been like.
Then it burst.
Gently.
Like a great raindrop striking the ground and spreading in every direction without breaking anything.
The light did not blind anyone. It spread like a pale blue mist, gradually taking shape with the patience of something that had no need to hurry: first an outline, then a form, then a presence that the clearing itself seemed to recognize before anyone present could fully comprehend what they were seeing.
The bond, Giotto thought as he stepped forward, was only just beginning.
Watching the Rain Guardian take shape in this world was the closest thing to the sacred Haru had ever experienced in her short life.
She didn't have enough words for it. The seed glowing, the rain gathering around it as though obeying a command no one had spoken aloud, and then that figure slowly emerging from the blue light with the naturalness of something simply returning to where it had always belonged. It wasn't like G's summoning, which had arrived wrapped in storms, lightning, and an intensity that made you want to take a step back, even if your feet refused to move. This was different. Quieter. Deeper.
The Boss, Haru thought as Ugetsu's figure finished materializing beneath the clouds, isn't someone ordinary.
She had known that from the beginning, of course. But there was a difference between knowing it as a fact and feeling it as the truth, and at that moment, with the rain falling over all of them and a Guardian making his way into this world from somewhere with no geographical name, Haru truly felt it.
—He really is... —she whispered, not realizing she had spoken aloud.
A boy with sky-blue hair tied into a loose ponytail that shimmered beneath the rain. A simple yukata layered in shades of blue, like the strata of a river at dawn. Gray eyes with that faint bluish hue of the sky after a storm, watching them all with a calmness that was not detachment, but something far more difficult to define.
Like the rain itself.
The silence lasted several long seconds.
—You... —His voice reached them clearly through the sound of the rain, without needing to rise above it.— It has been a long time, children. You have called me. After so much time in the other world.
—Welcome, Asari Ugetsu. Guardian of the Rain.
Giotto said, his voice filled with nostalgia for the past.
Ugetsu stepped forward. He inclined his head slightly, with the particular respect of someone acknowledging a person worthy of recognition.
Ugetsu observed them one by one with that tranquil gaze. Then he looked at G and gave a small nod.
—I have slept for a very long time. —A brief pause.— But the rain whispered your name once again. Lesuya Sawada. —Another pause, heavier than the first.— Or rather... Giotto.
—It's strange hearing you call me Giotto. You always addressed me as Lesuya.
Sana felt a sense of familiarity, since she called Giotto "Luci" because it was the only part she had remembered the first time she heard his name, Luciano.
Ugetsu's presence had a very particular effect. It did not paralyze or intimidate; instead, it brought stillness, like stepping into a place where noise simply could not exist. Sana watched him with her eyes slightly widened, taking in a beauty that was not merely physical but something beyond that—a serenity capable of loosening the tension in one's chest without conscious effort.
At last, his gaze settled on Giotto.
—And you. The one who bears the Sky... and chooses to uphold it instead of merely wielding it.
The rain began to soften with the quiet gentleness of rainfall that announces nothing, but simply falls because it is in its nature to fall.
—Will you fully accept your place this time, Ugetsu? —Giotto asked.— Will you walk beside us as the Guardian of the Rain?
Ugetsu raised one hand, palm open toward the sky. The fine drizzle landed upon it one drop at a time, and he did not even blink.
—I will not follow the Sky out of duty, —he said.— I will follow it because my rain still seeks the river that has yet to find its course.
He slowly closed his hand, allowing the rain to slip away.
The Rain Flame emerged without warning, without explosion. A gentle blue light that did not burn, but instead moistened the air around it like a long, controlled sigh, as though it had always been there, patiently waiting for the moment to reveal itself.
—From this day forward, —he declared with the solemnity of someone who had spoken these words before and now spoke them again with the same conviction,— I shall walk by your side. With my Flame, I shall cleanse the battlefield. A Requiem of Rain... all for the Vongola Family.
The aura faded with the same calmness with which it had appeared. What remained was the damp earth vibrating faintly beneath their feet, the air filled with a peace that was not the absence of tension but its most mature form, and the respectful silence of six people who had just witnessed something they still lacked the words to define.
Ugetsu took a step toward Giotto. He moved the way water moves: without visible effort, without unnecessary sound.
Then they embraced.
—Let's return to the mansion, —Giotto ordered.
The group began making their way back toward the mansion. The rain continued to fall with the same steady rhythm it had maintained over the past five days, but something about it was different now. Less lonely. As though it had finally found someone who truly understood it.
They walked together beneath the rain that seemed ready to end, yet never quite did.
Haru remained near the back of the line, as she usually did whenever she wanted to observe without being noticed. From there she could see everyone: Giotto at the front with Ugetsu beside him, speaking in voices too low for her to hear. G a few steps behind, his arms crossed and wearing that posture of his that always said I'm processing this rather than I'm uncomfortable, though the two were probably the same. Reijiro and Sana flanking the group. Takeshi carrying that overflowing energy of his even when he wasn't saying a word.
And Daiki, walking close beside her for no apparent reason, which was exactly how Daiki did most things.
What Haru could not stop looking at was Ugetsu.
It wasn't just his appearance, though the rain-soaked blue hair and the layered blue yukata had the kind of image that etched itself into memory without permission. It was the way he moved. His footsteps made no sound. None at all. Across the muddy ground and the fallen leaves that crunched beneath everyone else's feet, Ugetsu walked as though the earth itself had decided not to disturb him.
Haru found herself remembering G's arrival. G's presence had been like a blazing flame: intense, immediate, impossible to ignore even if you weren't looking at him. Ugetsu was the opposite. He was the room after the flame had gone out, when the warmth still lingered but the noise had already disappeared.
Special in different ways, she thought. The Boss chooses them well.
Then Ugetsu looked at her.
Not directly. Just from the corner of his eye, a slight turn of his head that lasted less than a second. But Haru felt it in her chest before her eyes could fully process it—that sudden awareness of being seen when she had believed herself invisible.
A shiver ran down her spine.
It wasn't fear. It was something much harder to name: the feeling that the question Ugetsu had never spoken aloud had reached her anyway.
Why are you watching me so closely?
She lowered her gaze to the ground.
How disrespectful, she thought, warmth rising to her cheeks despite the cold rain. He's the Boss's friend. I need to be more careful.
—Did you say something, Haru?
It was Daiki. He looked at her from the corner of his eye without slowing his pace, wearing that familiar expression that pretended he wasn't paying attention while, in reality, he noticed everything.
—No, nothing. Just thinking out loud.
Daiki studied her for a few seconds longer than necessary. Then he smiled ever so slightly, with that rare gentleness that surfaced from time to time and always made him seem, if only for a moment, like an entirely different person.
He said nothing else.
Ugetsu continued walking without looking at her again. But his silence had texture. Like everything about him, it conveyed something without using words.
—How do you do it, Boss? —Reijiro asked, catching up to Giotto with his usual decisiveness.— The Guardians. The summoning.
—They're powers I can't explain with complete precision, —Giotto replied without stopping.— He came because I called him. Each Guardian will appear when their time comes.
—And why now? —Sana asked from the other side.— Was it the seed? The rain?
—Because after the storm, calm must arrive, —Ugetsu answered, even though no one had directed the question to him.
Sana looked at him for a moment.
—That's an interesting way of putting it.
—It's more than poetry, —Giotto added.— It's balance. Each of them represents something essential. Without that, power is nothing but noise.
Haru remained silent.
Yet something inside her chest quietly settled into place with the gentle certainty of things finally finding where they belong.
Haru walked and thought, something she did far more often than the others realized.
She remembered what the Boss had explained about the Rain Flame: its ability to calm, to slow things down, that gentleness that embraced everything it touched. An energy that did not destroy, but enveloped. That did not accelerate, but brought stillness.
And she admitted to herself with a honesty she shared with no one:
That's not me.
She was more like G. Like the Storm. Like the flame that disintegrated whatever it touched, that neither negotiated nor circled around obstacles, but pierced straight through them. She had felt it during training, in those moments when something inside her ignited with an urgency she couldn't decide whether to call strength or the fear of losing the people she cared about.
Is it wrong to feel this way?
It was an old question, yet it had never worn out.
To want to erase anything that threatens this family?
She found no answer.
Only the sight of Ugetsu walking silently ahead of her, his footsteps making no sound even across the rain-soaked leaves, and the sudden realization that they were opposites in something fundamental.
And perhaps, she thought, that was alright.
Perhaps it was exactly what was needed.
—Hey, Haru, —Daiki called from beside her.— What are you thinking about so much?
—How he walks without making a sound, —she answered with complete sincerity.— I've been trying to figure it out for a while now, but I can't find any logical explanation.
—It fascinates me too! —Daiki laughed with his usual ease.— Though, speaking of speed... when you get scared, you run like lightning. That's pretty impressive too.
—Daiki! —she protested.
But she laughed anyway.
She couldn't help it.
Up ahead, G let out something that, coming from anyone else, would have been a laugh. From him, it was nothing more than a barely audible snort through his nose.
It was enough for everyone to notice.
It was enough for no one to comment on it.
The vegetation grew denser the farther they walked. Low branches released the rainwater they had collected onto their heads in uneven showers, and the ground became softer beneath their feet, darker, carrying the scent of earth that had endured centuries of rain without ever complaining.
Then, through the trees, the mansion appeared.
It stood nestled among trunks that had witnessed far too many seasons to bother counting them anymore. Its stone walls had darkened from constant moisture, while ivy climbed along the sides with the particular patience of things that never hurried because time had always belonged to them.
—We're almost there, —Reijiro said, pointing toward the moss-covered slope leading down to the gate.
—Yes... —Giotto murmured, his eyes fixed ahead, something in his voice that wasn't quite nostalgia, yet came very close to it.— Here, Ugetsu will forge the bond once again. The Vongola have taken root once more.
Ugetsu did not answer aloud. But Haru, who was walking close enough, heard him whisper something to himself, so quietly that the words faded away before reaching her in full. What did reach her was the tone: recognition. Like someone looking at something new and finding in it something better than he had expected to find.
They stopped before the gate.
Rusted iron. Ivy woven through the bars as if nature had decided to reclaim what time had abandoned. Imposing despite everything, or perhaps precisely because of everything.
The boss stepped forward and placed his hand against the cold metal.
...
A grand dinner was laid out on the table at the center of the mansion's great hall.
Everyone ate and spoke with Ugetsu.
From the other side of the circle, Daiki stepped forward, speaking with the straightforward energy that characterized him.
—Are you going to live with us too? Like G?
—If you'll have me—Ugetsu replied, inclining his head slightly.—I have no intention of imposing myself on something that has already found its own shape.
His humility was not feigned, and that was what unsettled me the most; he possessed the dangerous elegance of a hidden blade concealed among flowers.
—Of course!—Takeshi's voice burst through the hall, dissolving the tension with one of his broad smiles, so free of calculation or malice.—It'd be great to have another mentor with so much knowledge. Your etiquette and manners are incredible... I'd really like you to teach me how to move like that.
—Of course, Takeshi—Ugetsu replied, and for the first time a spark of genuine warmth softened his eyes.—It may be a difficult path, but I believe you'll come to appreciate the discipline of both body and spirit. I gladly accept.
From his shadowed corner, G let out a snort. His arms remained firmly crossed over his chest, his jaw tense and his eyes narrowed, as though deciding whether it was worth unleashing a storm.
—As long as you don't talk too much and pollute the atmosphere with your useless delicacy—G spat, his rough tone dragging every syllable.
Ugetsu did not even bother looking at him. His hands remained calmly on the utensils beside his plate.
—Don't worry—he replied with a serenity that bordered on indifference.—I only say what is necessary. Excessive words are like excessive rain: they do not nourish. They flood.
Sana and Reijiro exchanged a sidelong glance. Neither of them said a word, but that single exchange carried everything: the realization that something had changed in what they had become, that the space within the family had grown in a way that simply felt right, even if they could not fully explain why.
On the balcony, Ugetsu and Giotto remained alone to talk.
—I hope this land won't be scarred by sorrow as our previous life was—he said, his voice calm yet direct.—The Flames of the Sky, the Storm, and now the Rain. That is a great deal of fire and a great deal of water for a single place.
—Whatever must happen will happen—Giotto replied.—But look at it for what it is: an unfinished mission that has now been given a second chance. Between G's intensity and the stability I wish to build, your place has always been at the center.
Ugetsu considered those words for a moment. Then a faint smile appeared, barely noticeable at the corners of his lips.
—Typical of the Sky. Always finding a way to make everything seem broader so that it fits within its hands.
...
To be continued...
Until the next chapter!