When Sawada Tsunayoshi was little, he had often thought himself lucky.

In a world where meeting your soulmate was literally as easy as waiting for a timer to be zeroed, why shouldn't he? While most people only had one or two, he had twenty. It was shocking to everyone present at his birth, but Nana, of course, had been ecstatic and had burst into tears when she saw how many timers her baby had.

"He's special. I always knew my baby would be special."

Iemitsu, on the other hand, had been proud and crying. "He is going to be our perfect little baby boy," he'd said. "So much love to give, just like his mother."

And he had. So much love to give, that is. But the only problem was that not many people around him had picked up on that concept when he was growing up, and what a damn shame that was because they had all taken one look at his timers and immediately labelled him a freak, some even going as far as to call him a 'fluke', a mistake made in the mysterious structure called the gene pool.

"Look! It's Freaky-Tsuna!"

"I bet his mom's really ashamed of him."

"Hmph! I bet that he's just saying that he has more timers than us to gain attention! Who has twenty timers, anyway? What a fake."

"He's really…Dame-Tsuna."

So, Tsuna, who didn't really owe much to these people, had gained the belief that he was indeed a fluke, and the once prided timers he had was hidden away. In retrospect, no one had bothered to correct the poor boy (to tell him that as long as the numbers continued ticking, he was no fake) while Nana was as oblivious as ever.

"Don't worry, Tsu-kun! You just have to be patient."

"Oh, just have faith, won't you, Tsu-kun?"

And Iemitsu... he was never there anyway.

"Maybe his dad thought he was a freak, too."

"Even his dad doesn't want him... what a loser."

In truth, Tsuna had not wanted to pay attention to any of the rumours or nasty things said about him, but one can only hold out for so long before they become convinced of what people said of them. So, in the end, this fear and depression ate at him for years, and he'd never once dared to check underneath the armbands that covered his timers, in fear that he'd see timers that suddenly turned zero, confirming what other people had said about him all this time.

But that was until he'd reached middle school.

Tsuna didn't know what had come over him that morning, exactly, and what had prompted him, had pushed him, to gather the courage and finally peek into one of the armbands that had covered his timers for years now. But boy, was he glad he did.

Trying to describe what he'd felt the moment he saw his timers again was impossible, but Tsuna thinks it's a good feeling. However, it took him a few minutes to actually register that none of his timers had turned zero, which meant that he wasn't a fluke.

(Wasn't a failure)

And it took him a few more minutes to register that some of his timers had actually less than a few days' time before they turned zero. To the time for him to meet his soulmates. He didn't really know how he felt about that, but the emotions almost had sent him reeling to the bathroom floor. Resisting the urge to tear off the entire armband, he slowly shifted it downwards and tried to distract himself by taking the band off completely before really looking at the numerous timers that decorated his right arm.

Tsuna really didn't know how to feel when again, he realised that none of his timers had turned zero. He was floored, ecstatic, excited, and he wanted to vomit. But again, he thought that maybe, just maybe, this was a good thing to be feeling. Tsuna inspected them one by one and noted that again, most of them were almost down to a few weeks' time before they turned zero. The last one, however, made him freeze in his tracks. Truth be told, he didn't want to believe what he was seeing, what was there.

But Tsuna had less than three hours before meeting his first soulmate.

"Oh, fuck," he whispered.

So indeed, today was turning out to be quite an interesting day for Sawada Tsunayoshi.