• I want a cute birthday.

    No one believes me. Really. I’m turning sixteen and everyone thinks that what I want is something small, something more like, eat at a restaurant then go home. Something peaceful. Maybe I’d jog for a while, or play a few matches of tennis.

    No.

    I really want a cute birthday.

    I’m not kidding. Ribbons and lace and hearts and toys. A big cake with my name and face on it, with butter cream icing and strawberries. Presents from the truckload, big ones, small ones, ones with my name with in fancy script on cards, ones with hand-made cards, ones folded at both the mall and at home, ones in small boxes and ones in big bags. Gift cards to shops, new shoes, little trinkets to hang from my cell phone and waistband, alarm clocks with cute, baby-faced and wide-eyed anime characters in the back, smiling blithely at me as it beeps out its six a.m. wake-up call. Most of all, though, I want a pet.

    A pet. All for myself. A little cat with pointy ears and pretty fur, a shiny bell collar, soft meows and adorable paws that pat and press and is just perfect.

    No one believes me.


    ~*~*~



    “Kaido.”

    Inui-senpai looked as if he was trying to look nicer than usual—ever since Tezuka-buchou left school to go to Germany, Fuji-senpai has been more vicious and Inui-senpai has been trying to look kind and not evil. The reasoning behind that is over my head, but sometimes he succeeds and seems nice and sweet and acts like the kind of guy that girls all over the school flail for, but then, sometimes, he fails miserably and scares off more people than he attracted the last time he succeeded. “I understand that tomorrow is your birthday, is it not?”

    I nodded, grunting an inelegant reply.

    Inui-senpai’s glasses reflected the light in a odd and creepy way as he adjusted them. “I hope you’ll forgive me for asking, but do you have anything planned?”

    I shrugged. My mother was going to make a big dinner for me, but, other than that, I was going to celebrate it in the way I’d celebrated my other past fifteen birthdays—by performing my daily schedule with only the slight change of age. Doing nothing special. I wonder why Inui-senpai was asking. Maybe he was going to get the team together to throw sparkles at me while they sang a horribly off-key version of the birthday song? Probably not. He’s probably just checking to see if I was going to leave school early or anything. “No.”

    He nodded, a reaction on his face that didn’t make sense to me. “Well,” he said, adjusting his glasses once more. “Then, Kaido. If you don’t mind, may I ask you out on a date for your birthday?”

    I blinked.

    I don’t think I quite caught that.

    ...What did he say?


    ~*~*~



    I don’t think Inui-senpai had planned for the storm when he asked me out. And, take that sentence both literally and figuratively. He repeated the request and I broke out in red, accidentally breaking off the locker handle and almost smashing a first-year in the face with it. When the kid ran off, he patted me on the back, promised me a good time, and then told me to expect it, whatever ‘it’ was.

    And then it started raining.

    Halfway through English, the sky turned a murky grey, rumbled a bit, then started pouring out water. Some girls in class didn’t enjoy the loud sounds, but when the rumbling started to get loud enough that it seemed as if it was shaking the very frame of the building, even some guys started to worry. And, because bright flashes of seemingly-white-while-actually-purple light filled the sky and loud claps of thunder were echoing through the school, I had thought that Inui-senpai would’ve called off the ‘date’.

    I was wrong.

    Inui-senpai, smiling in a failure/creepy way, was just standing near my shoe locker, bag slung over his shoulder, umbrella hanging off his arm, and a white box in his other hand. “Kaido!” he called out when he first saw me approaching my locker, pale-faced and knotted-stomached. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had already made plans and I didn’t want to worry you by not showing up. Are you ready?”

    Oh, Gods, Inui-senpai.

    I slipped off my shoes and placed them inside my locker, the acid in me munching happily away at the lining of my stomach. He was really going to go through with this, wasn’t he? He really was going to go on a...‘date’ with me. A date! Did this mean Inui-senpai liked me? For how long? Don’t tell me he liked me ‘from the first time we met’. I’m sorry, that line has been recycled too many times and is as worn-out as my old sneakers, the ones that the sole was starting to peel off before Mother bought my current ones. Does this mean I’m a shoujo heroine? Does that mean Inui-senpai is a shoujo hero? Oh, please. If it’s not already bad enough that him asking me out on a date was his indirect way of confessing not only his feelings but his curved sexuality, it’s horrible that the truth of the matter is that since I didn’t reply with something that wasn’t a denunciation, that means that I am reciprocating the feelings and curvasiosness, if that’s even a word.

    Once I was ready, I turned and tried to smiled pleasantly, like the anime characters on alarm clocks. I think I just hissed instead. “Ready, Inui-senpai.”


    ~*~*~



    I knew this was a bad idea.

    Despite the looks and whispers we’d gotten from sharing an umbrella in such a downpour, we’d managed to get to the station safely. Whilst on the train, we’d been—well, he’d been—too engaged in a conversation, and it was only once we had slipped our tickets on the way out when Inui-senpai slapped his forehead and shouted out an exclamation. I didn’t need to ask him what was wrong, because I’d already noticed it.

    We’d left the umbrella in the train.

    So, taking a risk, Inui-senpai told me that there was a small café not too far from the station and asked me if I minded running there. I shrugged and grunted another reply. I mean, we were going to get wet either way. At least we’d be able to reach a café first. Maybe we’d reach a convenience store on the way there and get an umbrella—no, two. No way was I sharing an umbrella again.

    So we ran.

    The water was glacial and I felt like an idiot. We got soaked, the icy cold liquid drenching our clothes so that it stuck to our shivering body and the wind whipping at our faces to that our dripping wet hair was also getting into out eyes and mouth and sticking to our skin uncomfortably. If I really want more stamina, maybe I should do this daily—more than once the cold took the breath from my lungs and I had to stop running before I face-planted into the concrete ground. More that that, I think, the worst was the stoplights. Standing still while people stared at the two dumb high schoolers, walking around in this horrible weather with only their clothes for protection, and even that wasn’t doing much.

    When we reached the café, my teeth was knocking into each other, making a loud chattering sound, as if I had firecrackers in my mouth or something. The heat of the store did nothing for me—the sub-zero water had completely removed any sort of heat in my body and was still feeding off of it, like the worrisome acid in my stomach to the soft organ tissue in me.

    Inui-senpai pointed to an empty booth and we waddled our way over there, freezing and shivering and shaking and wet.

    We plopped down onto the seats and I instantly started rummaging around in my bag, hoping my cell phone had made through the wind and water well enough for me to call my Mother for help, or something.

    When I looked up, Inui-senpai had his face in his hands. Poor Inui-senpai. He’d probably planned this out for a while. It’s not like our data-master would just randomly decide to ask a same-sex teammate out on a date without any prior planning. Everything must be horrible for him.

    Pity overtook me and I leaned forward, trying not to seem mean. “Inui-senpai, are you alright?”

    Much to my surprise, he didn’t look up and smile like I expected. No, he looked up and I saw tears. Despite the water running down his face from his hair and dripping off his glasses, I saw a stream of tears appearing from under the glass to off of his cheek.

    My heart just about stopped. “Inui-senpai?”

    “I’m sorry, Kaido,” he said, voice breaking on the ‘a’ in my name. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your birthday like this. I’m sorry.”

    I bit my lip, back rigid. What do I say? What can I say?

    He pushed the sopping, crumpled and deformed white box in front of me. “I’m sorry. I got you a cake, but it’s probably ruined by now.”

    Not able to do anything else, I nodded and opened the box.

    It was small, and, yeah, destroyed, but I could still make out what the fancy script icing had said. With a piece of chocolate in the center with my name and a salutation to my birthday on it, there were strawberries surrounding it, most of them smushed, the red skin and seeds everywhere. The butter cream icing had gotten all over the box and the embellished bordering on the outside edges of the cake was ruined, but, in the mess of sugary paste, there was one long, lacy ribbon, to have been placed around the outside of the cake.

    I leaned forward, my chest pressing into the destroyed and beautiful cake, grabbed Inui-senpai’s face with my dripping and icy hands, and kissed him with all my might.


    ~*~*~



    Inui-senpai kissed me back, of course. Well, after a moment of extreme silence in the café and awkwardness between us, he slammed his elbows down into my perfectly deformed cake and pulled me closer to him and his also cold body.
    Afterwards, he asked me if I’d been okay with this birthday.

    Well, yeah.

    I only wanted a something different. The Cute Trail would’ve been as far off as Normal Track as I could’ve possibly gone. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed on it, anyway. I mean, look at me. I look like I just killed your mother, and was coming for you.

    When I told him that, he laughed in a successful/pleasant way and just kissed me again.