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It had taken Itsuki a while to acknowledge it, to accept how she felt, but it shouldn't have surprised her. She loved cuteness, and Tsubomi was the cutest person Itsuki knew. Cute and smart and really brave — not fearless like Erika, brave, able to get over being scared and keep going anyway — and now that they'd been friends for so long, Itsuki couldn't imagine a time when she wouldn't want to see Tsubomi every day, and talk about books with her, and listen to her talk about flowers, and help her with her garden.
For Itsuki's birthday, the first spring after they saved the world, Tsubomi had given her a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers and yellow and white peonies, and she'd given similar bouquets to Erika — blue-eyed daisies, blue cosmos, white cyclamen, and pale blue erica flowers — and Yuri — white and purple lilies and lavender — on their birthdays. When they all exchanged chocolates at Valentine's Day, Tsubomi gave everyone chocolate cosmos, their brown-maroon petals smelling enough like chocolate to explain the name.
Tsubomi's own birthday wasn't long after that, in early spring, and now Itsuki knew what to give her and how to give it.
The problem, of course, was that the best flower shop she knew was the one owned by Tsubomi's parents. She could always come in when Tsubomi was studying, or at the botanical garden, but it was still a little risky.
Risky and awkward. "What would you like to have in the bouquet?" Tsubomi's mother asked, bouncing Futaba on her hip, and smiling kindly and maybe a little knowingly — or maybe it was just that she thought it was sweet that Tsubomi's friends were getting her a bouquet. Itsuki hoped it was that.
"Well, uh... can you put cherry blossoms in a bouquet?" She'd never checked Tsubomi's heart flower, and it probably wasn't sakura, just like Itsuki's wasn't sunflowers, but she'd always associate the sight and smell of cherry blossoms with Tsubomi's transformations.
"We can, though Tsubomi's birthday is juust a little early for that," she said. "I bet we can get some from a greenhouse, though."
"Oh. Well, um... pink things, anyway. Pink roses?" Pink roses meant love, didn't they? Red certainly did, but red seemed a little bold, not to mention the wrong color for a Tsubomi's-birthday bouquet. Roses were even further out of season for Tsubomi's birthday than cherry blossoms were, but the idea of roses blooming all year round in a greenhouse made more sense than cherry trees doing the same. "And, um... I guess there are a lot of pink flowers."
Tsubomi's mother was smiling wider now. "There are. Would you like to take a look around the store for some ideas? You can browse as long as you want."
"Yes, ah... thank you!" She bowed a lot lower than she probably needed to, but she was flustered. She'd had a whole list in her head before she came to the store, and now it was gone forever. All the flowers in the shop looked the same to her; pretty but confusing, because flowers could have all kinds of hidden meanings. Usually positive, but not always. They could mean sadness, or anger, or envy, and Tsubomi knew all their meanings, much better than Itsuki did. The very last thing Itsuki wanted was to give Tsubomi a bouquet that meant "you make me angry and I hate it when you wear your glasses."
Calm down, Itsuki, she told herself. Deep breaths. Center yourself. Not that she was going to use the flowers' momentum against them, but this was a challenge she could face, just like any spar or match. Even if she gave Tsubomi a messed-up jumble of a message, Tsubomi wouldn't take it as an insult; she just wouldn't get what Itsuki was trying to say with the flowers. It would be a lost opportunity, not a horrible mistake.
But she didn't want to lose the opportunity. And she also didn't want Tsubomi to drop in and catch her shopping for flowers, so she excused herself to Tsubomi's parents, rubbed Futaba's fluff of hair and cooed at her for a little bit, said goodbye to Tsubomi's parents again, and headed for the botanical garden.
It wasn't actually a surprise to find Tsubomi there, but expecting something and being prepared for it weren't always the same thing. When she saw Tsubomi from behind, crouched down to look at some flower, her heart started pounding immediately.
"Hello," she called, feeling awkward. Tsubomi jumped to her feet, already smiling by the time she'd turned to face Itsuki.
"Itsuki!" She was wearing her glasses. Itsuki hadn't even realized she had a bit of a thing for girls in glasses, or maybe just Tsubomi in glasses, until Tsubomi got tired of contacts. "It's so good to see you! I thought you had some errands to run today?"
That had been her excuse for going to the flower shop. "They didn't take as long as I expected," she said, truthfully. "So I thought I'd drop by and see you."
"Really?" She sounded positively excited, and it occurred to Itsuki she hadn't really spent much time with just Tsubomi in quite a while. Maybe since the summer, when Erika had been staying up late and sleeping in? "I'll go make tea!"
"No, that's okay, I don't want to interrupt... what you're doing. With the flowers. Um." What she wanted was to walk through the botanical garden with Tsubomi. Partly just to spend time with her, listening to her talk about the plants — it wasn't so much that she cared about their rarity or unique botanical characteristics, but she liked to watch Tsubomi really excited about something she enjoyed — and partly because it was a good way to get a look at the flowers Tsubomi liked the most, to learn their names and see what they looked like. And if they were pink and bouquet-appropriate.
"I wasn't really doing anything important," Tsubomi admitted, sounding a little sheepish. "But if you just want to look around..."
"Is there anything special blooming right now?" Itsuki asked hopefully. Bingo — Tsubomi's eyes lit up.
As it happened, there were a few special things blooming, but Tsubomi was easily sidetracked whenever she spotted a flower she particularly liked. Cosmos came in all kinds of colors, not just chocolate, including many types of pink. "They mean 'joy in love and life,' Tsubomi explained. "That's why I try to put them in as many bouquets as I can." Tulips, blooming outdoors now, meant a declaration of love. Pink tulips, she thought, and maybe pink cosmos? Or would those go together at all? Maybe the pink roses were the best idea.
"Itsuki?" Tsubomi asked. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh! Yes! Of course!" She rubbed the back of her neck, a habit she picked up when her hair was first growing out. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little distracted."
"I know what you mean." Tsubomi sighed. Itsuki sighed too, before the meaning of her words sunk in.
"Is something bothering you?" she asked. It might explain why Tsubomi had assumed Itsuki was troubled. Well, that and the fact that Itsuki was troubled.
"It's nothing," she said. "Oh! Let me show you the lilacs. That's about the last thing outdoors that you haven't seen yet."
"You don't need to worry about finding things to show me," Itsuki said, a shot in the dark. "It's barely even March. It's just early. That's why they named you 'Tsubomi,' right, because the flowers were budding but not blooming yet?"
Tsubomi giggled a little. "That's true. I can't believe you remember that. So what else would you like to do?"
"Oh... I should have brought that book you loaned me! I finished it, but I didn't plan on stopping by..."
"You can bring it to school. There's no rush. Did you like it?"
Ordering the bouquet was anticlimactic. She'd realized she wouldn't walk out with her purchase, not a week before Tsubomi's birthdate, but it still felt odd to leave empty-handed after all that planning and worrying. Pink tulips, ranunculus, and roses; if Tsubomi's parents found anything unusual about the selection, neither of them said so. Itsuki would drop by the afternoon of Tsubomi's birthday, after school, to take the bouquet from them and give it to her. Which really did seem like an unnecessary step, but she wanted to see Tsubomi's face when she received the flowers.
She did and she didn't, because once she was at home, in her own room, she proceeded to quietly freak out, much to Potpourri's dismay. What if Tsubomi was disappointed? What if she didn't get the carefully-picked-out message? What if she did, and didn't like the message? With Itsuki right there to see her face fall, or to see her smile obliviously, or laugh awkwardly.. Maybe it would be better to let Tsubomi's parents just give her the bouquet themselves, first thing in the morning, along with a card, and Itsuki could give herself an ulcer until she finally saw Tsubomi on the way to school. Which would be maybe an entire hour and a half after Tsubomi woke up and got the flowers. But Erika would be with her, and that wouldn't allow for any kind of private conversation.
Why, exactly, had she thought this was such a good idea?
Because if it did work, it would be the perfect way to confess her feelings to Tsubomi, she reminded herself, and hugged Potpourri to her chest.
Tsubomi's birthday was a beautiful morning, clear and unseasonably warm, and Itsuki, who'd changed her mind three times over the past week, was going to go to the flower shop early, give Tsubomi her flowers in person, and have it over with so she could face the day with a clear conscience. Or something like that.
Before she'd met Tsubomi and Erika, she never would have dared to do it; skip out on her morning training just for personal reasons. Or any reasons. It seemed like a good tribute to Tsubomi, in a way, making one of her few exceptions for an occasion like this.
She did worry that it looked a little suspicious to Tsubomi's parents, making such a fuss over giving Tsubomi flowers directly, but she couldn't tell if their smiles were knowing, or just friendly. They didn't seem upset, anyway. She was too nervous to worry too much about that. "Tsubomi should still be at the house, getting ready," Tsubomi's father said. "Hope you don't mind — we warned her some of her friends might be stopping by with gifts."
"She didn't see the flowers, though," Tsubomi's mother added, hastily.
"No, that's fine— thank you so much!" she blurted out, bowing low. The bouquet smelled wonderful — it had to be the roses, she thought. She barely even paused to pay tribute to Futaba before she left with the bouquet.
If she'd thought she was nervous before, that was nothing compared to how she felt now that she had the flowers in hand, and stood at the door, waiting for Tsubomi to answer after she knocked. She was about to give some serious thought to leaving them on the doorstep and running away when the door opened.
"Itsuki!" Tsubomi exclaimed. Over the bouquet, which she was holding up as if to hide her face, Itsuki could see that Tsubomi was smiling, and surprised, but not disgusted or annoyed or any of the things she'd managed to come up with on her own. She forced herself to lower the bouquet a little, and hold it out. "These are for me?" Tsubomi asked.
"Of course! Happy birthday!"
Tsubomi's fingers brushed hers as she took the bouquet, and Itsuki covered her mouth and cleared her throat slightly. She should have had a speech ready, or at least a sentence or two, something to say about the flowers, or Tsubomi's birthday, or how much Tsubomi meant to her. But unless she'd actually written it down and brought the paper with her, she would have forgotten it anyway, at the sight of Tsubomi's shining eyes, her slightly pink cheeks — was she really blushing?
"Itsuki... are these...?"
"I, ah, I tried to be sure about what they all meant in flower language before I... before I made my final choices. So I hope I didn't make any mistakes. I didn't really want to ask Potpourri and risk him letting it slip." There. She'd said it. Sort of.
Tsubomi was just staring at the flowers, and then she looked up at Itsuki, looking almost like she might cry. Oh no. "Itsuki!" she cried out, and then she threw her arms around Itsuki's neck, flowers and all — Itsuki was pretty sure they hit her in the back of the head — and hung on tight.
"I... um... they mean that I like you," Itsuki said. "Don't they?"
"Yes." Tsubomi sounded almost like she was sniffling. The hug was a good sign. The sniffling not so much.
"I was sort of hoping you'd be happy," Itsuki said.
"I am!" Tsubomi exclaimed, letting go a little. Itsuki heard the bouquet rustling, and tried not to worry about its well-being too much. When she was able to look into Tsubomi's eyes, she could see that she'd teared up a little, but she was definitely smiling, hugely, brightly. Itsuki felt her own face begin to thaw into an answering smile, relieved and cautiously happy. "It was just such a perfect..." Tsubomi seemed to forget about finishing the sentence, looking into Itsuki's face, and then she kissed her on the lips.
When the separated, both smiling into each other's eyes, Tsubomi's glasses were askew. They both giggled as Tsubomi pushed them back into place. "I guess that's why people take them off to kiss," Itsuki said.
"It must be," Tsubomi agreed. She brought the flowers — they seemed unharmed — to her face, inhaling deeply, and smiled at Itsuki over them.
She was the cutest person in the world.