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“Giorno Giovanna, huh? Sounds fake as hell.”
Buccellati had left the room to answer a call, and the quiet tension had been broken in an instant, jaded looks replacing silence. His gaze settled on the one who had spoken, a boy with unruly black hair poking out in all directions out from under an orange headband. He drew back an empty chair that scraped against the restaurant's wooden flooring, and smoothed an imaginary crease on his suit as he settled in. His lip twitched upwards in the barest hint of a smile, before he pulled his face back into a neutral expression.
“I suppose it does…”
Tokyo, Japan, is where Haruno Shiobana died. But not really.
There are some things in life that manage to worm their way into one’s memory, festering like an infected wound. Such things leave unseen marks that will never truly dissolve or disappear, quick to recall and impossible to forget.
Haruno Shiobana was something that ached when the weather was cold, something that remained hidden behind all other unfaded scars, a raised line of skin or a discolored blemish, and so was Japan.
Japan was a place of cold awakenings and useless fears, waking up to dead silence and being powerless against it. Japan was windows being left open in winter and screwed shut in blistering summers. Japan was crying and wailing, only to realize that it was all in vain, because crying wouldn’t make his mother return, and Japan was a resigned trembling beneath his blankets, and Japan was gnawing at his fingertips until copper coated his tongue, and Japan was where he abandoned tears.
Haruno remembered one night in particular, one such memory that had burned and seared itself into his brain. He had opened his eyes with a sense of urgency, and upon finding his limbs entangled in his blanket, opened his mouth to cry out.
He wanted nothing more than to scream and shout and let his fear rip from his throat, but he closed his mouth without a single noise. He knew, even if he howled until his voice ran raw and hoarse, that no long-haired figure would emerge to comfort him or hold him.
Because she never had.
He didn’t know how long he laid there in silence with dry eyes and a fearful grip on his pillow, but one moment it was pitch darkness and then it was twilight blue, covering everything in sight and returning Haruno’s vision. He turned, trying to find the source, and his eyes settled upon the small window in his room. His gaze was transfixed, unable to stray from the sight of it as that all-encompassing blue turned lighter and lighter until-
(Oh.)
Slowly, and then all at once, the light was everywhere, impossibly bright and sudden and real. Haruno wouldn’t dare to call it yellow, or white, or any color at all, because it was simply there and it’s shining ever so softly. The first drops of sunlight peeked out from behind the half-drawn curtains, and reached across the entire room in what his young mind could only describe as pretty.
Pretty was not the word he wanted to use, but he knew no other to express such a sight. Pretty was a word he used with full pink lips smeared with red and glitter and gloss, odd white powders being blended onto skin before going out, and short, bright dresses that made it hard to tell where the fabric ended and where his mother started.
Pretty was Haruno’s mother, and she had told him so, and pretty was the star on his shoulder but not the rest of him, and she had told him that too.
Haruno watched, as night turned to day, and felt his eyes slip closed while trying to hold on to even a sliver of that golden daylight.
Few things echoed in his mind like that first glimpse of the sun, but there was another burning mark in his mind, one that cracked and bled and bruised and hurt over his entire body. One Haruno Shiobana became Haruno Giovanna, and if possible, his life soured even more. If Japan was bitter and lonely and ice, then Italy was fire, scorching and smoldering with rage.
He did not have an image or sight to attribute to it, but he heard and felt and remembered it vividly.
The cracking sound as the belt soared through the air and came in contact with flesh, the way his stepfather’s grip would clutch the leather wrapped around his knuckles. How his short-lived squeaks of pain would escape him, muffled only by stuffing a fist into his mouth at the insistence of his tormentor. The bite of metal and the sharp sting it brought to his skin, saved for special occasions when his stepfather’s rage had peaked. The heavy scent of alcohol and how it mixed with grease and sweat, accompanied by an empty bottle and a swinging fist. The smell of burning flesh and a scream caught in his throat as the lit end of a cigarette was pressed into his cowering frame.
As time passed, he learned to discern his stepfather’s mood from the shape of his brows, the glint in his eyes, and the way his body screamed the danger that his face hid. His body healed and tore and splintered and bruised and repaired itself again. Scars were hidden first by clothes and then by his mother’s discarded makeup, piling up and fading away.
If Haruno knew how to cry, he would have, but such a useless thing had been forgotten by his murky eyes. He walked the streets each day with dread, and he knew that it was an unavoidable fate that he would end up the same as the rotten people all around him.
But as it had been before, as it had always been, the sun looked down on him as it rose. Even Haruno, who was the scum of the earth, could still look up to see it in all its blinding glory, and his gaze did not falter.
On the day he met his savior, it was raining. The sun was hidden behind the clouds, its light masked by the rainwater and the plinking sound of the drops hitting his umbrella. The sun was not within his reach, but when he looked into his savior’s eyes, he could find the same warmth.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the first rays of sunlight began to reach the sidewalk puddles when the seeds of his dream took root.
When Haruno was fifteen, he left his mother and stepfather’s apartment of over ten years without a sound. He gathered up his things and his stepfather’s wallet and left. His hair was still black and his eyes were still murky, but that heavy weight in his chest had lessened, and he had a dingy one-bedroom dorm to call his own. He registered for high school and took up an airport ‘job’, but there was still something holding him back, like a shackle cuffed around his ankle.
The feeling of unease followed him all the way to the first day of classes, and was at the forefront of his mind as he was crowded by other students introducing themselves. Their names rolled off of their tongues like second nature, not taking even a moment to identify who they were, and Haruno could not do the same.
This name, this person… wasn’t him. It couldn’t be, or all of his efforts to leave what was useless behind would have been for nothing.
Haruno Shiobana was a lonely child, abandoned and rejected and who held back tears. Haruno Giovanna was a weak child, who was pushed and pulled and never, ever snapped, who deemed tears worthless, pointless things.
Both of those people, who he was and who he was not, would never be able to move forward in life, to carry out his dream. With the afternoon sun casting light onto his desk he answered.
Months later, he found that golden, golden stand, with silver tear tracks and wings on its shoulders and ladybugs on its chest, and in that moment he saw the sun.
From night to twilight to day, he knew who he was, who he had to be.
“Giorno Giovanna.”
“I suppose it does, but…”
The group's eyes shifted to him, as his presence filled the secluded section of the restaurant. The sunlight from the open window behind him gleamed, casting shadows of his form and catching the golden hue of his hair.
“It’s my name.”