I
Kyouya meets Sanae during a school board meeting in which each middle school sends a representative or two to discuss upcoming school events and current issues. While most of the others are afraid to so much as meet his eyes, she asks him if the seat next to him is taken. He is surprised; she is polite but firm, and when he tells her no, she even smiles at him. She is not loud or obnoxious at any point during the meeting, articulating her disagreements with the poise of a dignitary, and when she leaves, Kyouya wonders how to get in touch with her school, or at least, when the next meeting will be.

II
The change in the Disciplinary Committee's head are noticed immediately by the entire student body. No longer does he perform weekly uniform inspections or wander the halls in search of stragglers after the bell. Instead, he retreats to the roof and sulks, and though they miss his productivity, the staff of Namimori Middle don't dare bother him.

"What's wrong with him?" Tsuna asks his other guardians, whom watch the reclusive Cloud from their spot in the schoolyard during lunch.

"Who knows?" Gokudera scoffs, "At least he's not such a hard-ass anymore."

Reborn is thoughtful. "Love, maybe." It falls silent after that before a collective yell of disbelief.

"Love?" Tsuna repeats incredulously. "Hibari, in love?"

Gokudera is similarly shocked. "Is he even capable of loving another human being?" "

I think it could be love," Reborn says distantly, "But there's no way to be sure yet. We'll just have to keep an eye on him."

III
Conclusive evidence appears in a matter of weeks during a collaborated sports festival, when their schools are among the competitors. Tsuna hasn't seen Kyouya so invested in school sports since the bo-taoshi fiasco, but every participant from Namimori is threatened with death if they don't perform at their best. Before the end, however, he disappears somewhere. The guardians find him with the students from another school, scaring off all the first years, and are surprised to see him conversing normally with a girl.

"Ah, didn't we meet at the school board meeting?" she asks.

The prefect nods."Hibari, Kyouya. I'm head of Namimori's Disciplinary Committee."

"I'm Kochiya, Sanae, and I'm also head of my school's Disciplinary Committee."

The wheels start to turn in Tsuna's head, but it still doesn't click. "But she's so...normal," he says, "Not what I was expecting, I guess." Reborn, however, only smiles as he watches them.

IV
Dino is ecstatic to hear about Sanae and enlists various contacts to get pictures of her. Tsuna almost feels bad for her-the guardians weren't the only ones to witness them talking and, overnight, Sanae had become the talk of the town. "Oh, she is rather pretty," Dino says, smiling at the candid snapshots of the unaware prefect enjoying her lunch. "She even has lunch all by herself, like Kyouya. Maybe she's the independent type?"

"What are you herbivores doing up here?" comes a growl from the stairwell, and the guardians take up refuge behind Dino. "You know I hate crowding."

"We were just looking at pictures of Miss Kochiya," the Chiavarone boss says smoothly and without any sense of self-preservation. But Kyouya doesn't lash out. Instead, he silently draws closer, taking the photo from Dino's hands, and retreating to a corner of the roof.

"He's acting lovelorn," Yamamoto notes, and Gokudera mumbles something about it being too weird for him.

"It's obvious what we have to do, right?" Dino asks, "Tsuna, as Kyouya's boss, you must help him and Sanae get together!"

V
The matchmaking ordeal eventually leads the group to Moriya Shrine, where-according to Dino's sources-Sanae disappears to frequently. After a nearly hour-long trek spearheaded by an eager Kyouya that Reborn refers to as "training," they arrive at the shrine steps. Sanae is there-in fact, she wears a shrine maiden's uniform. Her surprise seems almost as great as theirs. "Oh, Hibari," she says shyly, "I didn't know you came to this shrine."

"Only recently," he replies, and his breathless tone isn't from their long journey.

VI
It takes almost a year for Kyouya to finally make his feelings known, responding to Sanae's homemade Valentine's Day chocolate with a beautiful skylark figurine that his mother had picked up upon first hearing Sanae's name. She accepts it as gracefully as someone so overwhelmed can, and doesn't bat a lash when Kyouya refers to her as his wife rather than his girlfriend, though she's hesitant to return the favor.

After being together for so long, the other guardians suppose it's only a matter of time before Sanae picks up on all of the mafia weirdness happening around her. When Kyouya vanishes to save the future from the Millefiore, she respects his privacy and doesn't ask after him, although she does welcome him back with a tearful hug as though she somehow knows.

They're enjoying a mild summer afternoon as a group at the shrine, and Tsuna is trying to figure out whether telling her that they're in the mafia is his duty or Kyouya's, when a youkai, an honest-to-god, red-eyed, webbed-footed suiko, comes snarling out of the woods. Sanae is the first to her feet and throws herself at the creature, and in a flurry of wind and quick movements, the suiko falls dead at her feet. Kyouya approaches, the first one of the group to overcome his shock, and she bows her head to him in shame.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes, "I'm not actually a normal person, and I'm not the Yamato Nadeshiko I wanted you to think I was."

"If you think that disappoints me, you're wrong," he tells her, and their first kiss goes unnoticed as Tsuna has fainted at the sight of the youkai and the others are trying frantically to revive him.