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Kabru stood at the door with a gift bag in his hand. The other one was raised, reaching for the door, fingertips curling slightly. He shook his head and withdrew his hand, reaching into his jacket pocket instead. He let out a sigh of relief when his fingers found the house key Laios had given him the other day. He wasn't going to use it right now. It wouldn't feel appropriate to do so. It would presumably not feel appropriate for a while. Nonetheless, it was good to make sure that it was still there – a reminder that he was always welcome to come here, whether he was invited or not.
He glanced at the gift in his hand and looked inside for the fiftieth time. He always considered himself a good, thoughtful gift-giver, but for once he lacked that confidence. He only had two days to prepare, after all. Kabru shook his head and knitted his eyebrows. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself anymore. He reached out his hand once again, and this time he knocked on the door. Knock-knock-knock. It was a matter of courtesy, more for his own sake than the Toudens’ who, he was almost certain, would be delighted if he appeared out of thin air, unannounced. That he knew he could get away with it didn't mean that he would, though. If there was no response, perhaps he would let himself in. The courtesy knock was still a necessary first step, though.
The door opened immediately, as if whoever was on the other side stood guard on the other side, awaiting his arrival. Startled, Kabru instinctively took a step back and, positioning his arm as naturally as possible so as not to draw attention to it, he hid the gift bag behind his back. This turned out to be a good call, as it was Falin herself that opened the door, and was currently staring at him wide-eyed. Clasping her hands together in front of her chest with a soft clap, she took a deep breath and bounced on her feet. Kabru raised his free hand in a friendly greeting but, just for a moment, Falin tilted her head and her twinkling eyes zeroed in on the hidden hand instead, and Kabru could easily be convinced that she could see right through him and inside the bag. Subconsciously tightening his grip, Kabru waved his hand and sent her his warmest smile.
“Happy birthday, Miss Falin!” he chirped, while she stepped aside to let him in. “I made it just in time, I hope?” He had no doubts about the matter. He timed his journey perfectly, accounting for the two times he would have to cross the street. His moment of hesitation at the door wouldn't have made a difference. Indeed, it may have prevented him from coming just a moment too early. Falin nodded enthusiastically, closing the door behind him. Neither Laios nor Marcille were anywhere in sight, but he heard their hushed voices from the kitchen. Kabru smirked to himself. They must have been preparing everything for the party. From the sound of it, as far as he could tell without making out the words, they were in the middle of a heated discussion, if not an argument. Kabru wouldn't be surprised if they had radically different ideas about something trivial like, say, the arrangement of snacks on the table.
Gently tugging on his sleeve, Falin leaned towards Kabru as she poked her lips with her index finger. “Laios and Marcille,” she said in a soft whisper, “are still figuring out something with the cake. They'll let us know when they're done, so we can eat it.” Kabru raised his eyebrows. Did she read his mind? He was just debating whether it was a good idea to pop into the kitchen and let them know that he was there. Evidently, Falin was suggesting that it was better to leave them be for now, which, admittedly, sounded reasonable to him, too. The last time he tried to walk into the kitchen while Marcille was making preparations, she all but pushed him out with a good scolding. Even still, he was tempted to at least wave at Laios while he passed by the kitchen. Then again, it was probably best not to distract him even for a moment, if only to avoid drawing Marcille’s ire towards him. “In the meantime,” Falin said, putting up hands balled into fists, shaking them excitedly, “do you want to see the presents I got from them?”
For one, awful moment, Kabru found himself panicking. Falin had already received her presents before he came. Did they get tired of waiting for him to show up? He wasn’t late. This was the time Laios told him to show up. He didn’t consult it with Falin in advance, sure, but at no point did anybody get in touch with him to let him know that he should come earlier. He was in the clear, then. There was nothing he could have reasonably been expected to do differently. Then again, it was probably not something they could predict. A matter of Falin and Marcille coming home earlier than expected, for example, and growing impatient. The cake could wait until Kabru was there, but perhaps the two of them couldn’t help themselves when it came to giving Falin her gifts as soon as possible.
Falin once again seemed to read his mind. Without prompting, she explained, in a hushed but audibly excited voice: “Laios asked me if I wanted to wait, and I didn’t, so he gave me his present in the morning.” Kabru could see it clearly in his mind’s eye. Laios, his hair sticking out in all directions, not yet having had the time to settle, rubbing his eye as he let out a big yawn, scratching his stomach through his shirt. He would ask, bluntly as ever, what Falin wanted to do. It probably made no difference to him, so long as Falin was happy with her gift. Of course, given the choice, very few people would choose to wait. Falin, however patient she seemed otherwise, demanded to receive her gift first thing in the morning, presumably staring at him and pushing him lightly so that he would get it faster. “He made chocolate pancakes for breakfast,” Falin added, blissfully sticking out her tongue. “With chocolate chips and whipped cream. They were good!”
Kabru cracked a smile. “I imagine that they would be,” he said softly. Falin had a good birthday right from the start, it seemed.
“Then Marcille took me shopping,” Falin went on, absent-mindedly chewing on her thumbnail as she spoke, “and bought me a lot of stuff. She said that she’d get me whatever I wanted,” Falin explained, closing her eyes, “and whenever I looked at something, she asked if I wanted it, and if I didn’t say no, she’d buy it.” Huh. Kabru noted this strategy in the back of his head. It could come in handy one day. “By the end, we had a lot of bags,” Falin went on. “I’m glad Marcille was with me. I couldn’t carry it all on my own.”
“It’s delightful to be spoiled for a change, isn’t it?” Kabru mused, smiling softly at her. “I’m excited to see what you got. My own offering is humble in comparison, I’m sure,” he said apologetically, handing her the gift bag, “but I hope it won’t disappoint you.” Now that both of his hands were free, he could take off his jacket and shoes. He glanced at Falin from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her reaction as she looked inside the bag.
“Ooh!” Falin’s eyes twinkled as she took the first gift out of the bag. A relatively large metal container in the shape of a cube, with a lid that took little effort to pry off. A practical gift, Kabru reasoned when he picked it out, was almost always a good gift, even if something flashy may have made more of an impression. He cleared his throat.
“Technically, this is a tea tin, and there is tea inside,” he explained, watching Falin examine the container from every angle. When she heard the keyword tea, her eyes lit up and she attempted to pry the lid off with one hand, as she still held the gift bag in the other. “Will you allow me…? Here you are,” Kabru hummed, taking the tin out of her hands. The smell of tea filled the hall as soon as he lifted the lid. “I know you like tea, so you might feel inclined to use it as intended. However, as an artist, you might have a different idea. I suspect it might be a convenient place to store supplies,” he suggested. With her mouth agape, Falin nodded. “You don’t have to take my suggestion, either. It’s the only idea I had,” Kabru added with an awkward smile, “and I’m sure whatever you come up with will, in the end, be the perfect use for it.” Kabru snickered to himself. He didn’t intend to reference Winnie-the-Pooh, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he recognised the resemblance. “It looks rather plain right now,” he added, handing her back the tin, “but you can decorate it as you please.”
Falin nodded eagerly, putting the container back in the gift bag. She took out the second gift, and her eyes grew large. It was a porcelain figure of an elephant. The main reason why Kabru preferred not to put the gifts in his bag, for fear that it would shatter and he wouldn’t realise until the time came to give it to Falin. He checked on it obsessively, every few steps, as if the motion could be enough to break it.
“I thought,” he said, trying to curb his anxiety as he watched Fali weigh the figure in her hand, “that it would fit into your collection.” Falin’s knick-knack made quite an impression on him. On the surface, it seemed like nearly anything would fit on her shelves, thanks to the variety of items that made up her collection. Clay figures, ragdolls, wooden toys, little plushies… She didn’t have anything like this, though, and he couldn’t quite tell if that was a point in his favour or not. Falin seemed happy with it, though. Her face lit up as she petted the top of the elephant’s head. “Please be careful,” Kabru said, putting his hands up, feeling his face contort into something only vaguely resembling a smile, “it’s quite fragile.”
Momentarily, Falin froze, as if she too was now worried that any movement, no matter how small, could instantly shatter the elephant into a thousand pieces. She inhaled sharply and knitted her eyebrows, narrowing her eyes at the elephant. Moving as slowly and carefully as possible, she put the figure back in the bag. Once she made sure it safely made it in one piece, she carefully set the bag aside and pulled Kabru into a hug instead. “Thanks!” she said directly into his ear as she bounced excitedly on her feet. She let go of him and carefully picked up the bag again, puffing out her cheeks. She gestured at him to follow her.
They passed by the kitchen undetected and headed towards Falin’s bedroom. How long had it been since he last visited her? The first time he stayed the night and didn’t leave after breakfast. It had only been a few weeks, but it felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened since then, but Falin’s bedroom remained largely the same, save for the multiple shopping bags on the floor, and a few additions to her collection. She kneeled on the floor and put Kabru’s bag next to the others. After a moment of hesitation, he crouched beside her.
Falin picked up the one bag that looked different from the others. It was smaller, and far less colourful. This must have been Laios’ gift. He wasn’t exactly one for aesthetics. He only bothered to get a bag for the sake of convenience. This didn’t seem to bother Falin at all, though, as she reverently put it in her lap and took something out of it. Two transparents containers with something inside. Once he was able to take a closer look, he could identify the contents. A large spider in one (he subconsciously shuddered), and a moth in the other. Falin held them gently and with obvious fondness. Fighting his instinctual uneasiness, Kabru gulped and forced a smile. “Oh, that’s impressive! They almost look real.”
From the way Falin looked at him, he knew what she would say before the words left her mouth. “They’re real!” she informed cheerfully. “They’ve been injected with something that makes them keep their shape after they died!” Oh, thank god. They were dead. Kabru released a breath of relief. If they suddenly started moving, he may not have been able to control his reactions. He wasn’t necessarily scared of insects as such. It was the uncertainty that made him uneasy. Now only one question remained: where on earth did Laios get these from? Was this something that was sold in stores? No, right? Did he capture them himself? Kabru decided that ultimately, it may have been better not to know.
Having put the containers back in the bag, Falin instead took out a rolled up piece of paper. It unraveled in front of Kabru’s eyes, revealing a large poster depicting dozens of species of moths and butterflies. “We have these back home,” Falin said, poking one of the butterflies, a bright yellow one. “And these. And these.” She went on pointing them out. “I wish I could see all of the other ones too,” she added softly as she rolled the poster up. “He promised that he’d help me put it up later,” she added emphatically as she put it back in the bag. There would be consequences, Kabru thought, for not keeping that promise. “After we eat the cake.”
Kabru looked around the room. There may not have been enough free space on the walls to put up the poster. Some things would have to be rearranged ever so slightly. Unless, that is, the idea was to put the poster on the ceiling. It may well have been. Falin probably wouldn’t mind staring at it as she fell asleep. She might have preferred it to counting sheep.
Having directed her attention to the other bags instead, Falin started pulling things out to show him, one by one - and there were many. Having seen the contents, Kabru fully believed that Marcille bought every single thing Falin so much as looked at. Countless plushies filled the shopping bag, each one getting a hug from Falin as she pulled them out. “This one reminds me of Laios,” she said, showing him a plushie of a shaggy dog with sad brown eyes. Kabru nodded. It wasn’t all plushies, though. There were also too many kinds of candy to count, as well as a few pairs of fuzzy socks. Kabru thought that he may have gone overboard with his birthday gift for Laios. Seeing Marcille’s gift for Falin, he no longer worried about it.
“She didn’t have to buy me all of this stuff,” Falin said softly, hugging a large cat plushie close to her chest. There was a hint of sadness in her voice that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was just guilt from knowing how much money Marcille spent on her. Laios expressed a similar sentiment to him regarding his own birthday. For someone like Falin, perhaps even more giving and selfless than her brother, it must have been a confusing experience. Kabru sent her a reassuring smile. Falin buried her face against the soft plushie. “I’m really grateful. Marcille is so nice to me.” Was she trying to hide her face?
Getting up to his feet, Kabru nodded his head. He opened his mouth and immediately closed it again, startled by Marcille’s shrill voice calling out of the kitchen. “It’s time for cake, it seems,” he remarked playfully, offering Falin a hand. She put the plushie back in the bag and grabbed his hand, letting him pull her up to her feet.
It became immediately obvious that neither Laios nor Marcille heard him knocking on the door. Laios’ face lit up when Kabru entered the kitchen, his hands instinctively reaching out for him, demanding to be held, at least for a moment. Marcille, on the other hand, seemed not to notice him at all, instead focusing all of her attention on Falin as she led her towards the table. Kabru had become used to Marcille treating him with thinly-veiled hostility. He found it rather amusing, and encouraged it in a number of small ways. Marcille’s hostility was born out of a misunderstanding. Now that it was cleared up in a long, sincere conversation, Kabru trusted that their interactions would be more cordial (though hopefully just as amusing). That she didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence at all was rather unexpected.
“Okay, Falin,” Marcille chirped, keeping one hand on Falin’s shoulder as she gestured towards a box on the table, “are you ready to see your cake?”
Bouncing excitedly on her feet, Falin clapped her hands. “Yes! Yes!” Standing beside Laios, Kabru looked curiously over his shoulder. Falin came up with a really unique cake for Laios’ birthday. Wonder what she would get in return.
Marcille and Laios lifted the box together, revealing the cake. Falin covered her mouth with both hands, letting out a gasp. The cake was topped with a variety of bugs which, unlike the other ones, were probably not real. Though they certainly looked realistic, at least until one took a closer look. Gummy worms and caterpillars, sugar butterflies, and everything else was presumably made out of chocolate: beetles and spiders and other bugs Kabru couldn’t identify. Falin spun around in place, clapping her hands. “Amazing! Incredible! Fantastic!” she exclaimed, her cheek flushed and her eyes twinkling. She pounced on Laios and wrapped her arms around his name. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you!” she shouted, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. She then pounced on Marcille and squeezed her tightly. “Thank you! It’s perfect! It’s perfect!” she cried happily.
Laios put his hands on his hips and proudly puffed out his chest. “I knew she’d like it,” he said, smiling smugly. Kabru laughed, nodding as he returned his smile. His attention was elsewhere though, as he studied Marcille’s strange, twitchy smile. He would certainly have something to investigate once the celebrations were over.