Sawada Nana knows there is something wrong with her baby when she hears his first gasp of breath.

She knows it as she hears his first wails piercing through the air.

And she knows it as the other occupants of the room breathe in gasps of shock and awe.

She's feeling light-headed, but she looks around, searching out her son. She needs to see him.

There's too much going on though, and she can't get a good look at him.

The nurses are rushing this way and that, cleaning out his mouth and nose of mucus and fluids, and giving him his shots.

Some of the nurses are whispering intensely to each other as they work, shooting looks first at Nana, and then at her baby.

But no one will tell Nana what's wrong, and then she's delivering the placenta and they're taking her baby out to weigh him and clean him up.

In the end, one full hour passes before Nana is able to finally hold her son.

And the moment he's in her arms, she can see what's had everyone else absolutely captivated.

His arms are folded up against his body, but she can see dark, writhing smudges all over his right arm.

She takes the tiny appendage in gentle hands and stretches it out.

And all the air is knocked out of her body as her suspicions are confirmed.

She looks up at the doctor, a question on her lips.

"Seven," she replies, her voice full of awe.

Nana looks back down at her baby, at the tufts of soft brown baby hair sticking this way and that, and she feels her heart clench. She doesn't think she's ever been this happy before.

She drops a gentle kiss on his forehead, holding him closer, and looks back down at is right arm.

The numbers are still too tiny to make out, but she can see that they've already started to count down.

But then, her eye catches on the topmost one, right in the crook of his elbow.

The numbers aren't moving, and despite how small they are, it isn't that hard to make out a neat little line of perfect zeroes.

And suddenly, she feels all the joy sucked right out of her and replaced with cold, hard dread.

She looks up at the doctor, tears already gathering in her eyes, and the older woman shakes her head sympathetically.

Nana can't keep back the sobs then, her heart breaking for her little baby - her little baby who should have been so blessed, her little baby with a heart big enough to hold seven soulmates.

"You shouldn't lose hope yet," says the doctor, her voice soft as she sits on the edge of Nana's bed. "There's still a chance his timer will start up later in life, once he gets older."

Nana hiccoughs once more, then nods, forcing herself to think positively. It isn't unheard of for a child born with a zeroed timer to to wake up one day and find that it had started up over night.

This usually happens within the first five or so years of life, but there have been stories of thirty-year-olds who'd had zeroed timers all their life looking down one day and seeing that their timer had started counting down while they hadn't been paying attention.

But there were even more stories of children with zeroed timers going their whole lives without ever meeting a soulmate.

The most popular theory is that these children's soulmates had died before they'd been born.

Nana refuses to believe that her baby is doomed to such a fate.

Of course there are many zero-born people who grow up to lead happy lives, but Nana knows, first hand, what it's like to be separated from the one she loves for any period of time, and she had always hoped that her baby wouldn't have to know that pain.

She wipes her tears away and looks down at the child, who's been sleeping all this time.

She looks at his other numbers, and her lips curl into a smile. At least he has six others to help make up for his one zero.

Multiple timer babies are quite rare, and even then, they usually have only two or three timers.

As far as Nana knows, there have only been two other cases in recorded history where a child was born with seven timers.

And there was even one case where a girl was born with nine. But that had all been centuries ago.

Her little baby is, quite possibly, the only living person with seven timers.

SkyGem: That's it for this chapter! I've been wanting to do this particular soulmate AU for quite a while now, but it took me forever to actually figure out how it would work with Tsuna and his band of misfits. But now I have a plan in mind, and with school starting soon and me having a more regular schedule, I'm hoping it'll mean I get more updates out. I'll be exploring the timers more in future chapters, and the effects they have on Tsuna's life. So please do leave a review and let me know what you thought! Whose timer do you think the zeroes could be? Is there anything in particular you want to learn about this world? Let me know!