Chapter 13 – I Don’t Like It
Novel Title: 跨越千万星辰 (Across Thousands of Stars)
Author：御小凡 (Yu Xiaofan)
Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)
Protagonists: 泽田纲吉 (Sawada Tsunayoshi -MC), 六道骸 (Rokudo Mukuro -ML)
*Please read at Novels Space.space, the original site of translation. TQ*
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Tsuna, who had chatted with Ken and Chikusa, was in a happy mood beyond imagination. The two kids were talking about their matters all the way. On the contrary, Mukuro became even more depressed. After he said a few words to Tsuna, he was completely silent at the end. He was lightly tapping his feet on the floor repeatedly while waiting for the elevator. It made Tsuna become aware of his anxiety.
“Ding!”
The elevator door opened. There were several people waiting for the elevator with them. They entered the elevator together. After pressing the button for the 12th floor, Tsuna and Mukuro were pushed to the back. They were standing in a slightly dislocated position without any conversation.
The teenager has grown a lot taller, almost catching up to Tsuna’s height. He has a handsome frame and a slightly thin body. During the time of them getting along, they gradually got used to each other’s existence. It can even be said that they influenced each other’s moods. Now that Mukuro has become a close person to him, he suddenly realises that the other party doesn’t really want him to know much about himself. It was simply a blow to Tsuna.
The last person other than Tsuna and Mukuro got off the elevator on the 5th floor. There were only the two of them in the closed-space of the elevator now. Seeing Mukuro’s blurred expression reflected on the steel elevator door as he stood behind him, Tsuna suddenly felt extremely depressed.
The lights on the 12th floor flickered. The elevator door opened after a few seconds of delay. Mukuro walked out of the elevator first and Tsuna followed behind him. He thought of what kind of nerves this kid was having. But he didn’t open the door after hearing his rattling key on the door several times. After poking it open, Tsuna immediately softened his heart again. This kid has almost never lost his temper since he came to him. Maybe this temper is the result of previous depression. So he decided to take the initiative to bring up the topic again, “That tattoo on Chikusa’s face… …”
“Are you so interested in them?” Mukuro’s figure may look dull because of the position where he was standing. He just opened the door of the house and did not take off his shoes. He did not press the light switch in the living room next to the entrance as he strode forward and went into the dark living room.
“Muku?” Tsuna reached out to turn on the light and looked at Mukuro sitting on the sofa with no expression on his face. Tsuna changed his slippers with a headache and went to sit next to him, “What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s nothing.” Mukuro replied bluntly without blinking his eyes, “It’s just that I don’t want to talk about them with you.”
When Tsuna heard this, he also got a little angry, “What do you mean by that?”
Unexpectedly, Mukuro laughed instead at this time. The slightly raised corners of his lips made Tsuna feel that this kid was being mean, “Oh, do you need an explanation for this? Really?”
I’m an adult. He’s just a brat. I have to calm him down instead of letting him lose his temper whenever he wants. I have to resist being angry. I’m not angry. I’m not angry. I’m… really… not angry. Fuck! I’m angry!
Tsuna stretched out his hand swiftly and flicked Mukuro’s forehead cleanly with a strong force. He then had successfully calmed down the inexplicably awkward kid.
“Mind what you say.” Tsuna said seriously, “Listen, Muku. No matter how long we’ve been together, we can’t completely understand one another. Do you know what that means?”
Mukuro pressed his palm on his forehead and said nothing. But Tsuna knew he was listening to him.
“This means that we will never be able to understand each other as well as we understand ourselves. Therefore, if there is something we wanted to say to the other party, we must say it. If we do not say it in time, sometimes it will hurt the other party.” After a pause, Tsuna lowered his voice down, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to have any misunderstandings with Muku. I don’t want to have any regrets if I didn’t listen to you well. I’m very much unwilling to go through that.”
Gentle. Straightforward. Simple. Clear.
Mukuro felt that such a person called Tsunayoshi Sawada was very breathtaking.
In the past, he didn’t know how to describe this feeling of wanting to look at him but scared of looking at him all the time. Now he knows that the word that describes someone feeling both desire and fear is called ‘breathtaking’.
Compared to him, I was like a kid who could only play around and do nothing.
Every time I feel that this person is breathtaking, the anxiety that is stirring in my bones will be heightened.
But what on earth is he going to say to him? How could he tell him of such a thing that even he himself doesn’t know how to explain? He just doesn’t like Tsuna talking about or showing interest in other people in front of him.
I don’t like it very much.
Damn it! If I knew it’ll end up this way then, I wouldn’t be soft-hearted. Who cares if he is disappointed or not?
“It’s nothing.” Mukuro turned his head slightly and looked down to his left, “It’s really nothing.”
“You said it’s nothing but you’re throwing a tantrum?” How could the child say it’s nothing? Tsuna leaned over and got closer to him, “Don’t you want me to meet your friends?”
To be honest, Mukuro really didn’t want to.
The self he portrayed in front of Tsuna is not his true self. After the Ishibashi incident, Mukuro gradually came to this realisation.
Behind his one red-coloured eye, there must be some kind of beast lurking inside. This beast is violent and cruel. It has been wanting to jump out and tear the world apart at any moment. It wanted to eliminate all the things that are not pleasing to his eyes. Mukuro has no psychological barriers to this. On the contrary, it is a kind of enjoyment for him to use his mind to plan the most perfect steps with absolute violence in the process.
I am very different from everyone else.
Mukuro knew it very well. Even Ken and Chikusa knew of this. They knew each other long before middle school. In that institute, the pale complexion and the roar of the painful voices were the most familiar to them.
That period of deep-rooted experience is destined to make them traumatised no matter how they pretend to be fine. There is always a place hidden deep in their hearts that does not shine towards the world.
But this must not be known by Tsuna. So Mukuro never intended to introduce them to Tsuna. Ken and Chikusa both knew of his true side.
His anxiety hits again.
“Not really… I just think it’s nothing interesting. So I don’t want to talk about them…” He pursed his lips and added reluctantly, “Ken and Chikusa are also children from the research institute.”
“What?” Tsuna was taken aback, “Did you know each other from back then?”
“Hmm…” Mukuro lowered his eyes, unwilling to discuss this issue further. So he carefully tidied up his inner emotions. He knew Tsuna could be very persistent when he is curious. It would be better to push the boat along the way than to just resist by lying, “Also, when I’m with Tsuna, instead of talking about myself, I want to hear you talk about yourself more.”
He put on a smile and looked up at Tsuna. Mukuro has good control over his facial muscles. His brows are thin and the corners of his eyes are looking very delicate. His smile is like a flower blooming on his lips. No one can bear to refuse such a smile, “I really want to know more about you.”
… Huh huh huh huh huh?
Tsuna, who was still full of momentum just now, was stunned at this moment. He blinked his eyes a few times, feeling a little bit confused. He was like a rabbit who was suddenly told that there were a lot of carrots growing in front of his house.
It was really the first time that he heard the child say such words that indicated extreme intimacy. And he couldn’t digest it.
This reaction obviously pleased Mukuro. His acting skills with the display of his smile disappeared in an instant as he bent over to take the pocky under the coffee table. He opened the box and took out a chocolate stick. He then stuffed it into Tsuna’s mouth with a smile and ate one himself contentedly as he walked back to the entrance to change his slippers. He then returned to the bedroom with a victorious posture.
And Tsuna kept sitting there, thinking about the multiple-choice question of “Is this him showing that he cares about me or is he complaining that I don’t care enough for him?”
The original persistent before has been completely forgotten.
The change that this night brought about between the two of them is that Tsuna told Mukuro more in detail about what happened around him. He told him that he didn’t like to participate in after-work parties and that now he basically doesn’t participate at all. He went to work and got back from work on time. There is also a lunchbox with love at noon for him.
No one would believe that he didn’t have a cohabiting girlfriend.
Enma kept saying that he was being inconsiderate since they are so familiar with each other. But he didn’t introduce him to his girlfriend. This guy looked gloomy at first but he unexpectedly made Tsuna feel kindness from him. Tsuna decided to tell him the truth, “I am living with someone. But it’s not a girl.”
At noon, Tsuna accompanied Enma to the cafeteria with his lunchbox. A tempura fried shrimp was taken away by him after getting his consent.
“It’s not a girl? Then you made these lunchboxes yourself?” After biting off the first half of the fried shrimp, Enma pointed at the orange lunchbox with his chopsticks in doubt. The contents inside were not luxurious, but there was meat and vegetables. It can be seen that things are not mindlessly just stuffed into it.
“Occasionally, I do it. But you know how busy it is in the marketing department.” Tsuna slumped his shoulders, “So most of it is done by Muku.”
“Muku?”
“My adopted child.” Tsuna narrowed his eyes slightly and put on a gesture of reminiscing, “Do you remember when I asked for leave a lot before? It was around that time.”
“Adopted child?!” Enma was taken aback. He then looked at Tsuna up and down. No matter how he looked at him, he was indeed an aspiring young man in his twenties. So why did he decide to adopt a child? Is he planning to groom the child? But what’s the point of that if it’s a boy? “It can’t be that you got someone pregnant…”
Tsuna gave him a bewildered look, “What are you talking about? That kid is only ten years younger than me. No matter how you see it, I can’t be going around with women when I was ten years old, right?”
Besides, you don’t look like a player or someone with a fetish... Enma echoed silently in his heart. He took a bite of food from his own bowl. He put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed it as he thought about his wording. He then asked, “But raising a child is very troublesome. What were you thinking?”
“Well…the decision was made out of impulse at the time…” Tsuna casually bit the tip of the chopsticks and raised his head slightly as he looked up at the sky. He showed a childish expression on his face as he said, “but now I feel that it’s satisfying.”
Tsuna doesn’t have a lot of friends. It can be counted as less than ten. It was probably because there is an unknown part of depression in his personality or the impact of his childhood experience on him that had exceeded his own expectations for making friends.
He was educated by Nana to be a gentle child since he was a child. But his father’s absence for many years caused him to be ridiculed by children of the same age for not having a father. He was also excluded in various games. Of course, it’s just a matter between children. Adults would only laugh it off when they found out about it. But for the young Tsuna, the experience had enough lethality or maybe he was naturally sensitive. What happened in kindergarten caused him to have a wonderful inferiority complex in junior high school.
Reborn once told him that; you are a guy who looks easy to get along with. But you are actually difficult to get close to.
In short, Tsuna himself knows that sometimes he has a strange sense of distance from other people. He can’t refuse other people’s requests. He always treats people with a gentle attitude. He just hopes that the people around him can accept him. But this hope brought a deep sense of insecurity in his interpersonal conflicts.
If you know yourself better, will you find that you are not as good as you show yourself to the world?
So, there’s no need to make friends with others.
But Mukuro is different. His initial state will not make Tsuna feel the fear of interacting with others. On the contrary, it will make him uncharacteristically want to get close to this scarred child.
So he led him into his own life naturally.
It’s incredible to think about how it all happened so easily.
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*Translator’s Note: It’s called possessiveness, Mukuro… And Enma… that guy has messier thoughts that I expected hahaha -K
*GLOSSARY: 1. Bento – lunchbox. [I dunno if I changed them all so if I missed any, then you should know what it means.]
Next update: 2023.07.03
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