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Kokomi had accepted she would never have a perfect birthday, no matter how perfect she herself was. How could she? Each of them started with Makoto whining outside her locked door, “Happy birthday, Kokomi dearest!”
Then he’d make her eat the cake he bought for breakfast, and she would do it because she was perfect. And then she would prepare the several bags she would need for all the gifts she would get from her admirers should she leave the house, and when she got back she would have to deal with whatever weird gifts her brother had gotten her. But that was alright. She was prepared for it.
As she went to bed, she fell asleep imagining being able to spend most of her day with Chiyo, and Saiki giving her a gift, saying, “Happy birthday, Teruhashi-san…”
It was just a dream. But it was a nice one.
Kokomi woke up to sunlight streaming through a slight gap in her curtains, lighting up her face in gold and mingling with her natural angelic glow. Something was strange. A bird was singing, for her of course, but other than that there was nothing. The house was quiet.
She got out of bed and went to the door. When she unlocked it, the hallway was empty. No one waiting outside it, listening to her.
“Makoto?” she tried. Nothing.
She went downstairs, though she held on to her caution. Wasn’t this too good to be true?
There was a note left on the kitchen counter. She skimmed past the “I love you”s and the other weirder stuff to find the only thing that mattered.
“I tried to fight it, but they said I had to start filming immediately and my flight was already booked, but I swear I’ll make it up to you, beloved sister blah blah blah…”
He was gone. For the whole day. Her entire birthday. This could only be one thing.
An act of love from some kind of god.
(Saiki Kusuo, who happened to still be within range of Teruhashi’s thoughts after using his powers to ship her brother off to the States, flushed an uncharacteristic shade of pink.)
(“Don’t write that. That didn’t happen.”)
With her morning now entirely free of pests, Kokomi made herself some crêpes for breakfast, with strawberries and a very generous amount of chocolate spread. While eating, she checked her phone, muting Makoto and ignoring his thousands of messages. Chiyo had texted her.
Happy birthday Kokomi!!! <33333
Can I come over later?
And Chiyo was coming over too? That alone was probably the best present she could have asked for. Kokomi had very few friends, and even fewer that weren’t a little jealous (like Imu, though she was at fault for that), or a little starstruck by her appearance (Imu again, but also all of Saiki’s friend group, though she couldn’t blame them), or even in love with her (also Imu).
But she did have Chiyo. Though they’d started off a little strangely, there was no truer friend to Kokomi than her.
I can’t wait to see you!! (✿◠‿◠)
This was a problem Saiki had never expected and certainly had never wanted to face.
He’d gotten Teruhashi’s brother out of the way because he was a creep and also reminded him uncomfortably of his own brother, and no one should have to put up with that on their birthday. It hadn’t been that difficult, but it was more than enough to count as a birthday gift.
Teruhashi had changed a lot since they’d (technically) first met, which also had happened to be on her birthday. She’d changed since the birthday he’d swapped out the hideous blue mug for a cute one, too. So he’d done her the favor, and that was enough. More than enough.
There was just one thing. He’d heard her thinking about her plans for his birthday. Thankfully, she didn’t want to give him her gift (or gifts) publicly or anything like that, but it would still be awkward if she turned up at his door and gave him something thoughtful and homemade, while under the impression he’d given her nothing. It wasn’t as if they were friends or anything, but still. She’d given Nendou a gift a few months ago, because she was Teruhashi Kokomi and she gave all of her classmates a small yet thoughtful gift on their birthday, and she’d also come to hold Nendou in a higher regard than her admirers, and this was not the point—
The point was he really had no choice but to get her a present. The problem was that he didn’t actually know what to get her. And not because he was agonizing over getting her the “perfect” gift, or anything stupid like that. He needed to make sure that whatever he got her didn’t feed into her delusions of him having a crush on her. So it couldn’t be too big or thoughtful, and there had to be no way it could be considered romantic.
That last one was probably impossible. Not because there was any romantic intention behind any of this, but because Teruhashi would want to see it that way no matter what he gave her.
All the same, it couldn’t be any old useless trinket, that would just as bad as getting her nothing.
This should have been easy. He heard her thoughts nearly every day. She liked cute things. She liked sweet things. Her favorite color wasn’t actually blue, it was purple. Things her admirers gave her were never thrown out, just shoved in a drawer, but things her friends gave her were kept on her windowsill.
She’d probably like anything he got her, but somehow that still didn’t make any of this easier.
After they’d put Kokomi’s birthday cake into the oven and made the icing, they sat in her kitchen and talked about anything that came to mind. It hadn’t always been like this, but now she felt like she didn’t have to make perfect conversation with Chiyo. She hadn’t told her everything, but Chiyo did know that dealing with her fan club didn’t come as easily to her as she made it look, and that she didn’t like her brother very much, and that she had fallen hopelessly for an antisocial guy who wasn’t under the spell of her beauty. In turn, Chiyo had told her about her insecurities, her mother, her disastrous failed romances and terrible ex-boyfriends.
“I just think that if—oh, I think the cake is done, Chiyo. Here, do you want to take the oven gloves?”
It was going to be delicious. They’d had lunch hours ago, and she was hungry now.
But then Kokomi’s heart sank. “I think someone just knocked.”
It wasn’t any of their other friends. Chiyo had suggested they all hang out soon, but if Kokomi wanted to have a peaceful birthday then she should. So who was it?
‘Please don’t be Makoto. Please.’
’Saiki?!’
After recovering from her shock (which probably took too long) she tried to smile at him. “Um, what are you doing here, Saiki-kun? Not that it isn’t nice to see you, of course!”
“Happy birthday, Teruhashi-san.”
Someone had heard her dreams and decided to make them come true. He was handing her a box wrapped with pretty lavender paper and a darker purple ribbon.
“O-oh, you didn’t have to…”
“Yare yare. You can open it if you want.”
Did he want her to open it? She peered a little closer at his expression. Was he uncertain about her reaction? Was he going to offu?
(Maybe that last part was a little unlikely, at this point.)
She was careful not to tear the paper. Inside the box was a fountain pen, a cute flower-shaped button that she was definitely going to be putting on her windowsill, and some chocolate.
Was she dreaming? Was this really from Saiki? He knew her this well? She loved cute things, and sweet things, and she had the strangest feeling that the ink of that pen would be purple, her favorite color.
Saiki cleared his throat, though his voice was as oddly clear as it always was when he spoke. “The chocolate is from Kuriko.”
It was silly, but her heart did a little jump at the mention of his sister. “She’s back?”
“No.”
“So she told you to get something for me? That’s so sweet of her!”
So the button was from Saiki? That was seriously cute. Had he seen it and thought of her, or was that too much to hope for?
He cleared his throat again. “The button is from Kuriko too.”
That was quick. Like…wait a second. “Kuriko told you specifically to get me a button?”
He nodded, but she was pretty sure he was lying. Were his ears a little pink? No, that was too far. She must have been imagining it.
“Well, anyway, do you want to come in for some cake?”
It looked like it physically pained him to turn down an offer for cake. She laughed. “Then you should come tomorrow. Chiyo was going to organize a get together with everyone else.”
To her surprise, he nodded, before turning around. “I have to go home now.”
“Wait!” Without thinking, she put her hand on his shoulder. “I…sorry, I just wanted to say thank you. For the present. And for coming to see me.”
‘Agh, I’m still touching his shoulder!’ She snatched her hand back.
Saiki just shrugged. “It’s your birthday.”
The smile on her face was one of the widest she’d ever had, and nothing about it was fake. “The best one yet.”
Saiki heard an excited shriek that could have only come from one Yumehara Chiyo, presumably after Teruhashi told her who had been at the door, and about the three presents that she hadn’t believed were mostly from Kuriko.
Okay, so what? He hadn’t been able to decide what to get her. The pen was good but felt like too little. And if he’d just gotten her that and the chocolate, she’d have nothing from him to put on her windowsill and then if anyone saw they’d think he just let her gift him things and never gave anything back, like he was some kind of leech, taking advantage of the perfect girl’s generosity. Or something. And that would be bad.
(Who the hell would be looking at her windowsill? Who the hell would know by looking at it if there was something from him?
…not important.)
Whatever. At least it was over now for another year. If that tingling in his shoulder could stop already that would be great.
He heard a thought from Teruhashi just as he was about to be out of range.
‘I’m so lucky.’
Of course she was. She was God’s favorite, after all.
‘Maybe,’ Teruhashi thought, looking at the button, looking at her best friend icing her cake, ‘a perfect birthday is possible.’