Chapter Text
On Layla’s 6th birthday her parents threw her a birthday party and most of her classmates attended it. Layla was a happy popular girl and she made easy friends with everyone. There was a pinata and presents and a yellow funfetti cake covered in buttercream. Everyone sang her happy birthday - her father sang her happy birthday - and everything was perfect.
One year later, Layla’s 7th birthday her entire life was turned upside down. She lived in Japan, in a country she barely spoke the language of. She didn’t have any friends other than Takumi. Her father was dead.
All Layla wanted for her birthday was a sense of familiarity for the home she’d left behind. But the birthday cake her mom had bought her was spongecake and the frosting was whipped cream - sweet and creamy but nothing like the thick and fluffy buttercream Layla was used to. Layla was lucky to even have Takumi come to her birthday party - if it even could be called that because he was her only guest and reluctantly at that. His older sister had made him come and she’d passed him off to Layla’s mom with a split lip.
Her heart bottomed out when, with no candles on her cake, Layla’s mom and Takumi prepared to sing to her. She expected to hear more language she barely understands, but instead she heard the familiar melody with familiar words.
“Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Layla,
Happy birthday to you”
Layla’s eyes welled up and spilled over by the end of the song, a smile beaming from her face.
Takumi sings with his usual scowl on his face, but when Layla leans over her cake to make a wish on non-existant candles a smile quirks at the corner of his lips.
Layla wished that she’ll have Takumi to sing her happy birthday every year for her birthday for the rest of her life.
The same moment Layla blew on her nonexistent candles a boy was born and named Shin.
Layla’s wish comes true most of the time for the next ten years - though sometimes Takumi thinks he’s too cool to sing her happy birthday but he always makes it up to her the following year.
On Layla’s 18th birthday Naoki and some guitarist she no longer remembers the name of sang her happy birthday after a concert. They called her Reira as everyone has given up trying to pronounce her name. Except… when Takumi sings her happy birthday he sings ‘Dear Layla.’ It was the only time he did it, but it made her think about her dad naming her after Eric Clapton’s Layla and how the Japanese copy of the CD titled the song ‘Dearest Layla.’ It makes her feel loved.
Her 19th birthday and Trapnest was booming with popularity. Her 20th, 21st, 22nd… Every year that passes there are more and more fans that sing her happy birthday accompanied by Ren’s guitar. They all call her, “dear Reira.”
Reira dreaded her 23rd birthday until she discovers she shares the date with Shin. He never sang her happy birthday, but if she’d known that Shin didn’t know the words… that no one had ever sung him a happy birthday… she’d have taught him the words. Reira likes to think he’d have called her, “dear Layla.”
The years that follow aren’t worth mentioning, lost in grief and loss and guilt. Takumi has a family to spend her birthday with instead and Ren isn’t there.
But on Reira’s 30th birthday a young boy called Ren strums his guitar to a familiar song and Reira feels like Layla for the first time in years.