metamorphosis

let the celebration begin!...or not

The group finally arrived at saiki's house, only to be greeted by streamers and confetti (thanks to kurumi's eagerness to suprise the boy).

"My my, you've changed so much! We missed having you over! poor kuu-chan has been so sad without having you around" Kurumi cried out, tears of joy streaming out of her eyes.

"Thank you miss for setting this all up! I missed Saiki a lot too." He muttered the second part, seemingly embarrassed to admit how much he longed to see his friends while he was away.

"huh, guess saiki missed me too. wouldnt blame the guy, he isnt the best at socializing, he needs someone to be around."

kaidou couldnt help but feel a bit warm at learning that his friends missed him just as much as he did them.

The boy in question observed the scene with a pained expression, embarrassed at his mother for claiming that Kaidous absence made him upset. If anything, Saiki was happy to have one less headache around to harass him.

Though he did have to admit it was a bit different when Kaidou wasnt there...

Saiki quickly shook off those thoughts. After all, there's no way any of these pests could ever make him this sentimental.

"Hurry! Hurry! The girls are waiting inside with the cake!"

Kurumi urged the group to go inside.

What they walked into looked like a crime scene.

Frosting splattered the floor, smearing red everywhere. flour covered every surface, bowls strewn all across the kitchen. the decimated remains of what  seemed to be a cake sat on the floor.

Teruhashi and Chiyo were huddled in the corner, their faces looking dejected.

"My goodness! Are you okay?? What happened?" Kurumi asked in concern.

Chiyo was the first to respond.

"We were making the cake, but everything started to go wrong. the flour bag broke, the batter kept spilling, we kept getting egg shells in the bowl."

"We finally managed to somehow make a cake but it ended up toppling over as soon as we set it down." Teruhashi added.

Shadows seemed to hang in front of their faces as they slumped in defeat.

"Ah, don't worry about it. We'll help clean up, okay?" Aren offered in sympathy.

Saiki would've reversed time to help fix all this mess, but it wasn't possible to do it in front of everyone without revealing his powers, so he resigned to helping the rest of his friends clean.

Finally after about an hour or so of their combined efforts, the kitchen was mostly back to normal. there were still red stains in some areas and flour in hard to reach areas, but saiki could just fix that later by reversing time on the kitchen once the group left.

Kurumi served them all tea and they all sat around the coffee table, tired from the rigorous cleaning.

Aren was still determined to make this celebration a happy one, so he brought up that he got a gift for kaidou.

he excitedly searched through his bag only to find a broken CD.

"I'm so sorry, I found a CD with the soundtrack to your favorite anime and i guess it broke somehow on the way here" Aren hurriedly explained.

Aren was about to stand up and announce that Kaidou could punch him when Shun interrupted with "Dont worry about it, I don't really like that type of music much these days anyway." Kaidou gave what he hoped would be a reassuring smile.

Aren was hesitant to accept his reasoning, but very reluctantly decided to let it go.

The group sat in awkward silence for a bit, not sure how to save this disaster of a party. Nendou saw a paper on the table.

"Oi, little buddy, the snacks you like are on sale. you want to go get some? itll be really yummy!"

Aren silently thanked nendou in his head and decided to go along with it.

"Yeah! We could get all of our favorite snacks and buy some cake! It wont be the same as homemade but Cafe Mami has some really good sweets."

"Ah! I forgot to make dinner." Kurumi sighed sadly.

"Could you guys maybe pick up some groceries along the way? Kaidou you can choose whatever you'd like to eat for dinner!" She smiled warmly at the boy.

Kaidou was touched by the amount of effort all of his friends were going through to make his welcome back enjoyable. He was content to simply hang out and talk, but he knew theyd feel guilty if they didnt do anything special.

"Alright, we'll go shopping together and see what we can get. I've been craving those snacks for a while too." Kaidou stated to the relief of the rest of the group.

The teens made their way into town, their spirits renewed by their new found hope to save the party.

Authors note: I'm sorry if this seems really angsty so far. It will go down a bit soon but its needed to set up the story. So just suffer for now ig 🙄 /lh