Birthday Boy

One Shot: Birthday Boy

Kotake Tetsuya was discovering that messing up with his sleep schedule was definitely not a good idea. For just one day though, he could endure it. It was his birthday, after all, one doesn't turn fourteen every day!

Besides, he had good reasons. His parents appeared in his bedroom with a birthday gift exactly at midnight: his very first phone. Of course, he would have to add every contact today, so he stayed up late to adjust everything and figure out how to use the new gift properly. After five hours of sleep, the now fourteen-year-old boy got up at 6am to go straight to his morning soccer practice. Normally the exercise gave him a much-needed boost to survive classes. Today though, Kotake was exhausted, and sighed heavily as he sat down on his desk.

Noticing he still had exactly sixteen minutes til class started, he figured he could just lie on the table for a little bit. There were already some classmates around but plenty of them still had to arrive, so it was quiet enough... yes, he could even close his eyes for a couple of min –

'Good morning!!'

Nevermind, Harukaze Doremi had just arrived.

Wait, the Harukaze Doremi? Kotake double-checked his watch: it was still quarter past eight. What the heck was she doing here so early? She always rushed in just before the professor closed the doors.

'Good morning Doremi-chan!' Kotake heard a couple of classmates greet back. He looked at Doremi as if she was the most bizarre sight he had ever witnessed. He expected her to look tired, resisting a yawn, even. But surprisingly enough, she held her head high, a smile of her face... and was walking straight to him.

It's not like they haven't grown closer since they finished primary school and besides, they were seated next to each other this year, so for her to salute him wasn't that strange. But she could have just stopped to chat with Okuyama Naomi, he figured, or sit directly at her desk. Instead, she stopped right before his seat and suddenly grinned, her shoulders going up in excitement. Now that was strange.

'Good morning!' Doremi then caught his puzzled expression. 'Why are you giving me that look?'

'What on earth are you doing here this early?' Kotake managed to ask. He was wondering what she was doing specifically there, in front of him, but left that out of the question. Doremi looked at him as if he had just asked the stupidest thing she had ever heard.

'Cause I have something for you!'

What?

'W-what do you mean, you have something for me?' The smile that reappeared on her lips suddenly erased all possible thought and the poor boy was unable to join the dots in his head.

'Well, it's your birthday, right?' She turned around and bent down to take something out of her schoolbag, then turned again so eagerly that she almost hit him with the cute, pink plastic-wrapped bulk she held in her hands. With an excited 'Happy birthday, Kotake!', Doremi pushed the package right in front of his face.

Kotake was left speechless for a few seconds, but after some internal 'get-your-shit-together' screaming, he managed to simply muster:

'Y-you remembered?'

He didn't realise how soft his voice came off, but Doremi definitely did – she noticed something funny in her stomach which she couldn't identify as anything other than sudden nervousness, and she tried to play it off.

'Of course I did, you idiot. Seriously, what did you have for breakfast today? Your questions are sillier than usual'. She stuck out her tongue as a sign of playfulness, but then her expression turned into embarrassment and her left hand flew up to the back of her neck. 'I don't know if you'll like it tho... I'm out of practice'.