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Oh gosh, June was a week away. May had gone by so fast, perhaps due to how Pareo had fallen back into a good routine in Tokyo lately, or perhaps due to that one very special event that was coming up in the first week of the next month.
Pareo had never attended a Pride event before, which was an unfortunately a pretty obvious fact. She'd seen the festivities that took place in Tokyo each year very briefly on the news, and it was as she got older and began to learn things about herself when she started looking into what had exactly gone on at those colorful displays on TV. It was an annual celebration for people just like her, held officially by the city and attended by what looks like thousands of people. It was honestly the reassurance she was so desperately seeking out, a huge obvious sparkly sign that she wasn't alone and that one specific part of her that she believed for so long was shameful was actually worth celebrating. Just knowing that Pride events existed brought Pareo such a warm, giddy sense of joy, so when she realized that Tokyo Pride that year fell during a week she was off school she was beyond delighted. For weeks and weeks she had pestered Chu2 with lots of rambles and happy tears, but even though the young girl did get quite loud at times, Chu2 really didn't mind. She knew how much this sort of thing meant to Pareo by now.
Chu2 didn't exactly want to think too hard about why something seemingly so trivial meant so much to her girlfriend, to be fair she didn't want to think about that at all. She wished Pareo's parents and teachers and whatever weren't so obsessed with gender roles that should have expired in the 40s and that Pareo's experience with realizing her sexuality was as simple as realizing girls were just sooo much cooler than boys and that boys were pretty damn weird. But alas, she couldn't do anything about it. Thinking about it either left her feeling like someone scrunched up her heart like a napkin or left her with the desire to do some form of arson out of spite, both of which were feelings that were going to get her no where. And so, Chu2 decided to focus on the good. Pareo just got so giddy with joy over the small gay things, like the time she realized neko-chan didn't always refer to a kitten and pestered her poor tiny girlfriend with the gay slang for an entire month. Sure it was embarrassing, but oh god... the sparkly, gleeful look in her eyes whenever the much taller girl discovered her Next Gay Thing...
So Chu2 came up with an idea she was very proud of.
It was some time in the early evening, and Pareo was still hovering around an outfit she'd been planning for days now for an event that was still a week away. It didn't exactly look like an outfit yet, or at least it didn't to Chu2. Her girlfriend had an abundance of neatly-folded clothing items, mostly shirts and skirts, all in various shades of pinks and whites all placed together on the end of Chu2's bed in her room. To be fair, it was probably best to call it both Chu2 and Pareo's room; Chu2 only really used it to sleep in when Pareo insisted, and she nearly always slept in there with her. The left half of the room (corresponding with the side of the bed Pareo slept on) was also beginning to look very... well, Pareo. Her favourite clothes were in the drawers, gifts she thought were too risky to take back to Kamogawa occupied most surfaces, even Pastel*Palettes posters and other various pieces of merchandise that Pareo didn't have the room for were put up. Chu2 found it quite nice to have little reminders of Pareo around her home, though.
"Are you still messing around with that?" Chu2 had asked her as she shuffled onto a side of the bed that wasn't covered in clothes, putting her hands into her hoodie's pockets and beginning to fiddle with something she had in there.
"Yes!" Pareo's attention was on the two skirts she was holding out in front of her for inspection, one pink and the other white. "This outfit has to be comfortable but also so very cute, and I also have to settle on a shade of pink but.... oh, gosh I don't have any orange items of clothing that match at all!" She whined in disappointment yet still put down the two skirts very gently. "I was thinking.... ah... maybe some accessories like some bracelets! Oh but Chu2-sama, the orange needs to be one of the most prominent colors.... it's the first color on the flag!"
Chu2 didn't exactly get what all the fuss was about. "Pareo. You have an entire week to decide. Besides, we can just go shopping for more clothes or whatever before then. I'll..." Oh man, Pareo was looking at her now with those round, sparkly curious eyes. The tiny gay catgirl tried to act like her face wasn't getting all warm just from that. "I'll get you whatever you want."
The taller girl blinked at her for a second as if she was processing her girlfriend's words, but then very quickly gave her a delighted smile. "Ah...! T-Thank you so much, Chu2-sama~! But is Chu2-sama really sure- oh?" Just as Pareo was about go to into her usual instinctive spiel of apologies and asking if Chu2 really wanted to spend money on her (despite doing so... so.. often), the teeny DJ in question had pulled something out of her pocket and rather gingerly placed it down on the bed next to her. It was a teeny tiny little velvet gift bag, like one you would usually receive jewelry like necklaces in. "A-Ah, Chu2-sama....."
"You wanted accessories, right?" Chu2 had begun, trying to sound cool and smooth. "You may as well have this early then. Go on the, open it. It's yours, Pareo." Oh she thought she was so smooth. There was that small swell of pride as she watched her girlfriend fumble with the teeny bag in her flustered state of surprise at the unexpected gift. There was excitement there too, of course.
Pareo was at first a bit confused by such a sudden gesture, but without asking any further questions she tugged open the drawstring bag and fished out the contents ever so delicately with her thumb and finger. A light, unintentionally shaky gasp left her when she saw what she'd been given; now resting within the palm of her hand was a heart-shaped enamel pin, a little larger than regular pins of that sort, adorned with the undeniable colored stripes of the lesbian flag. Her flag. It was here, in her hands. Something she could touch and hold and wear. A item so small, yet it so proudly represented who she was.“C-Chu2-sama.... t-this is....”
”All yours, Pareo!” Chu2 encouraged her, the smile on her face proud but eyes full of sincerity. “You gawked at them online so much, you may as well....” Oh? Chu2 trailed off. Was... Pareo crying? She looked as if she was holding back tears as she cupped the pin in her hands after having dropped the bag on the bed. “Pareo...?”
As if on cue, Pareo sat down on the bed to wrap her arms around the teenier girl in a big hug. She couldn’t help but cry at least a tiny bit, there were so many happy feelings in her chest she felt as if it would burst and thus they spilled from her eyes as tears. “Chu2-samaaa~! Thank you so so so muuuch~!” Who knew something so small would bring her such joy, but honestly when you looked at the girl she was in love with that wouldn’t really be a surprise. But still, the symbol brought Pareo an intense sense of comfort. It was a symbol of validation, that she was worth celebrating despite what her upbringing had taught her. “It’s so perfect....!”
Chu2 always did have a smidge of panic whenever Pareo cried, but when they were happy tears it was always just due to her awkward nature. The hug was very squeezey, but alas Chu2 didn’t care. She could still breathe, after all, and this tall keyboardist who she loved a stupidly huge amount was happy. She did her best to return the hug, wrapping her arms around Pareo’s waist and leaning into her. “I’m... g-glad you like it.” Chu2’s smoothness had consequently evaporated at this point as her voice came out as a little mumble, but her confidence somewhat regained once their brief embrace was finally broken. “You should try it on, you know.” She spoke up eventually as Pareo sat back to return to inspecting her new gift.
“E-Eh? Now?” Pareo exclaimed with a little sniffle.
“You can wear things like that whenever. Not just June. Nobody’s gonna stop you.”
”A-Ah! Right...”
After wiping away the little remains of tears from her eyes with her index finger, Pareo fiddled with the back of the pin until the stopper came off and proceeded to pin it to her cardigan with a large amount of care. Almost immediately she got up to go look at herself with it on in the mirror on her dresser and... oh gosh, there she was. She stood there in a state of awe at herself. The pin was obviously small, but upon wearing it Pareo suddenly felt like everything was just right. There she was, wearing a label she used to be in denial about like a badge of honor. She gave it a small touch to make sure it was real, which sounded bizarre but everything felt so surreal at that moment. She finally felt at peace, like herself, and like herself was someone to be proud of.
“You look really cute.... Reona.”
Reona stifled a small surprised gasp as she heard her girlfriend call her by her name. The name she used to associate with having to be that perfect image of a girl that everyone in her life had wanted her to be, but here she was being anything but that. It felt.... well, she couldn’t describe it. But it was that moment that let her truly realize that there was no divide between her names. She was herself. She was a young lesbian still trying to figure out her confidence, who loved her girlfriend and dressed how she wanted to. Reona adjusted her pin with a happy smile before turning back to the tiny girl she adored.
“I... I love it so much....! Thank you!”