Chapter Text
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The twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of the current year.
For anyone else, it's nothing but another normal day to do normal things; however, for Isagi and the others who are gathered inside his penthouse, the twenty-seventh day of June is all but an ordinary day. After all, today is the day that their resident king is turning another year older, and as such, everyone has agreed to surprise the man, a plan orchestrated by none other than Kunigami and Reo themselves, mostly because no one else can be trusted to make plans and see them through until the end.
Unfortunately, their plan makers seem to be running late as of the moment. According to the last text message Isagi has received from Reo, they have been caught by heavy traffic and therefore, are taking longer than intended.
"Hey, are they here yet?" Bachira asks as he presses his face and palms further against the glass walls of Isagi's penthouse, looking down at the city thirty storeys below.
"They're still a couple of blocks away," Isagi answers as he carefully places pieces of newspaper on the center table and the carpet surrounding it.
"How long till they get here?" Nagi, who seems to have taken residence on Isagi's couch and is currently lying upside-down on it, questions, eyeing him intently.
"Hopefully, soon. We need to start preparing for Barou's party before he gets here." It's Chigiri who answers Nagi, nudging the pale-haired man with his foot in a silent order for him to move, something that Nagi did without any questions. "What time did you tell Barou to come over anyway?"
"Around six in the evening." Isagi states almost absentmindedly, too busy preparing their workspace, "He said he needs to do something until five, so he can only come after."
"He's working even on his birthday? Such a man," Chigiri comments, leaning into the backrest of the couch with an elegant sort of grace that only he can achieve.
Nagi pouts, "I'm a man, too."
"I know you are," Chigiri assents, ruffling Nagi's hair. "You're a man amongst men."
If anything, Nagi's pout seems to grow as he moves to sit up properly, opening his mouth to say something but is cut-off when Isagi's doorbell starts to ring.
"They're here!" Bachira announces joyfully, basically flying from his post towards the door, quickly yanking it open to greet their other friends.
"We have arrived," Reo declares with a flourish the moment the door swings open.
"Sorry for the intrusion." Kunigami barely manages to take a single step forward before he gets smothered by the notorious Bachira hug, one that Kunigami returns in a much more gentle manner.
Bachira beams, "Kunigami! Reo! You made it!"
"What? No greeting for me?" A familiar but surprising voice drawls from behind Kunigami, and Isagi's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline at the sight of Shidou carrying a box filled of what seems to be snacks and cans of soda.
Isagi has no idea that Shidou will be coming over, too. Then again, Kunigami is here, so maybe, Isagi shouldn't really be that surprised by the other's presence.
"Shidou!" Bachira exclaims, grin still in place. "You're here, too?"
Shidou's lips stretch into a wild grin of his own, "Of course."
"Why is there an extra here?" Nagi drones with a raised eyebrow.
"You call yourself an extra? That's so sad," Shidou tells Nagi, and Isagi wonders how he can look mocking and pitying at the same time.
Nagi's eyebrow twitches in annoyance, and Chigiri lets out an amused snort, "Well, you have that coming. You know no one can win against him when it comes to pissing people off. I wonder why you still try."
Nagi just puffs his cheek in response, an action that earns him a soft laugh from Chigiri.
Chuckling at his friends' antics, Isagi welcomes the newcomers to his home, directing them to where they can put all the supplies — the goods, as what Bachira likes to call them — that they brought for the party, and with everyone's help, their small group is now ready to start making Barou's gift.
"Okay, so we know what to do, right?" Isagi asks as he looks around his friends, each of whom is situated around his center table.
His question is met with an enthusiastic chorus of agreement, all of them pumping their fists in the air, "Yeah!"
"We need to do this right, or Barou's going to chuck all of us out of the window," Isagi warns with a grave and serious voice, pausing only for a moment before he continues, "Not you, Kunigami. Nobody's going to throw you out of the window, don't worry."
Kunigami chuckles awkwardly, "Thanks?"
"Anyway, let's start," Isagi states, looking over at Kunigami. "Do you have it?"
Kunigami nods, handing him a rather thick brown envelope, "Here."
"Whoa," Isagi hears Bachira exclaim in awe from next to him. His yellow eyes are wide as he watches him take out the contents of the envelope, "look at all these pictures."
Isagi can't help but be astonished as well, silently counting all the photos previously secured inside the envelope. He's sure that Bachira's amazement stems both from the number of pictures Kunigami has managed to acquire as well as the contents of said photographs.
"Are these pictures of Barou from when we're still in Blue Lock?" Chigiri voices out what half of them seem to be thinking, carefully digging through the images laid out before them.
Kunigami hums, "They are."
"He looks so young in these," Bachira giggles, holding up one photo of Barou in his Team X uniform.
"And grumpy." Shidou points out, looking at three photos at once. "He looks like someone put salt in his coffee instead of sugar in all of these photos."
"He looks cute in this one," Reo pipes up with a dopey smile, pointing at a picture of Barou eating a steak. "He's got hamster cheeks."
"Your opinion is invalid," Chigiri deadpans, his expression carefully blank.
Reo snaps his head towards Chigiri, whining. "What? Why?"
"It just is." Chigiri says, keeping his tone impassive and completely ignoring Reo's protests to ask Kunigami a very important question, "Where did you get all these?"
Kunigami merely shakes his head, a secretive smile on his lips, "My lips are sealed."
"I hate it when you do that," Chigiri groans, glaring at his best friend without any heat.
Kunigami just laughs softly, "Sorry."
"Kunigami's secrets aside, are we going to use all these?" Nagi questions, spreading at least ten photos of Barou on the table.
Isagi allows a thoughtful frown to form on his lips, "I don't know. Why don't we try it first and see?"
"Yosh!" Bachira cheers, "Operation Gift Making starts now!"
♢♢♢
In hindsight, they really should have thought things through.
They really, really , should have because half an hour later, they are suddenly faced with a big problem.
"That's our last hard paper," Kunigami declares forlornly as Bachira ends up ripping another piece of paper in half.
Isagi blinks, horror quickly dawning on his features, "The last? You sure?"
Kunigami nods, "Yeah. We've already used up all three packs. That's seventy-five pieces of paper."
"We don't have enough time to buy more paper either," Reo seconds the bad news with even worse news.
"Well, what are we going to do now, superstar?" Shidou asks, perhaps the only one looking completely unbothered by the problem at hand.
Isagi thinks it over for a moment, trying his best to find a solution and wishing that his genius in football applies to art and crafts problems too. Eventually, he is able to come up with what he hopes is a plausible solution to their current plight.
"I think I still have my scrapbook," Isagi states as he races to his art room, quickly grabbing said scrapbook before rushing back to the living room.
"Let's see it then," Chigiri urges, gesturing at him to open his scrapbook.
Quietly, Isagi obeys, flipping through the pages of his scrapbook and feeling his stomach drop the closer he gets to the end, "I have a good news and a bad news."
Bachira shuffles closer to him until their shoulders are touching, "Tell us."
"The good news: we can use my scrapbook," Isagi swallows, "The bad news: there's only one page left."
"Well, one page is better than none. We just need to be careful right?" Reo smiles encouragingly at all of them, and Isagi suddenly realizes how Reo has changed over the years.
"Reo's right," Nagi nods in agreement, picking up his scissors one more time. "Let's get back to working."
Thankfully, they manage to avoid any big blunders — Bachira accidentally crumples one side of the paper, but with Kunigami's patience and steady hands, they managed to straighten the paper once more — that will negatively affect the condition of the last paper in their possession, and the next few minutes are spent with them taping Barou's pictures onto the paper. Once they're done with the photos, they immediately move onto the next step.
Writing notes and birthday messages for Barou.
"Alright," Isagi grins, "Who wants to go first?"
Bachira's hand immediately shoots up into the air, "I want to write first!"
"Okay." Isagi hands the paper to Bachira along with different colored pens he can choose from. "Knock yourself out."
Unsurprisingly, Bachira picks the yellow-colored pen before he starts writing his message on the paper. Bachira looks so engrossed with what he's doing that Isagi can see his tongue peeking out from his lips. It's kind of cute, if Isagi says so himself.
Too soon, Bachira finishes his work, "Done! Who wants to go next?"
"Hand it over here," Chigiri raises a hand, reaching for the paper with a subtle smile of excitement on his lips, an expression that immediately changes into something else the moment he gets a hold of the paper. Somehow, he looks like he's about to get a headache as he stares at Bachira, looking wholly unimpressed. "Did you just write butt day?"
"Bachira!" Isagi exclaims with a gasp quickly snatching the paper away from Chigiri's hands to see what Bachira has done. True to Chigiri's words, Bachira really did write buttday instead of birthday.
"What?" Bachira asks, looking unapologetic as Isagi scrambles to correct the words Bachira has written. "It's the day he came into this world butt-naked."
"Good point," Shidou acknowledges with a tilt of his head. "You should just keep it as is."
"No, it's not. Don't encourage him." Kunigami lightly smacks Shidou on the arm, his expression parts exasperated and a whole lot fond even as he moves to dig through the bag of art supplies he has with him. "Sorry, Isagi, can you fix that? I think we have some liquid eraser in here somewhere."
"Uhh," Isagi smiles sheepishly, scratching the back of his head as he shows Kunigami his attempts of correcting Bachira's intentional misspelling, "My bad?"
Kunigami blinks once, twice, seemingly not knowing what to say at the sight of Isagi's green pen crossing out the second half of Bachira's written message. Kunigami continues to stare for another three seconds before carefully, reluctantly, sliding the paper back towards Chigiri.
"I guess that's fine? You can go ahead and write your message now, Chigiri."
Chigiri shrugs, "If you say so."
Another fifteen minutes pass before all of them manage to write their message for Barou, and Isagi will be lying if he says that he hasn't sweatdropped at half of what his friends wrote for and about Barou on the single page of the scrapbook that they have. But of course, the notes aren't where their gift ends. They still have the next phase of their project, which is adding decorations and stickers, even glitters, to make their gift prettier, or as pretty as they can, at least.
At the moment, Reo is taking his sweet time doodling what appears to be hearts on the paper. He seems set on filling every corner of the paper with purple hearts as far as Isagi can tell.
"That's a lot of hearts," Shidou indicates, brows furrowed as he watches Reo scribble hearts after hearts.
"Really? I think it needs more," Reo hums, adding yet another heart.
Reo seems pleased with what he's doing, a direct opposite of Chigiri who's cringing really hard as he watches Reo's actions. "Reo, stop with the hearts!"
"Make me!" Reo challenges, sticking his tongue out at Chigiri, proving that he's unstoppable by yes, you guessed it, adding two more hearts to the paper.
As if Reo's purple heart agenda isn't enough, Shidou decides that he also wants to add his own mark on the paper, something that is thankfully stopped just in time by Kunigami.
"What are you doing, Shidou?" Kunigami says, raising an eyebrow questioningly at Shidou.
"Nothing," Shidou responds, and it's very clearly a lie because Isagi can see him super-gluing real chains onto the paper.
"Did you just doodle a mustache and a goatee on Barou's face?"
And yeah, that too. Shidou has also done that.
"Maybe," Shidou replies, which sounds more like a yes than anything else. Isagi thinks that it's good that Shidou is at least being honest regarding the doodles.
Apparently, Kunigami is also not done interrogating their resident demon because he goes on to ask, "And do I even want to know where you got the chains from?"
"Probably not," Shidou grins just as he finishes gluing the chains on the paper. He looks really proud of his handiwork that Isagi doesn't have the heart to tell him that the paper will not be able to hold those chains. That, and Isagi is still kind of scared of Shidou, too.
"Alright. I'll take your word for it," Kunigami finally backs down, which Nagi takes as his cue to speak up.
"You're not going to say anything about his message to Barou?" Nagi questions.
"He says that to Barou every day. There's no point in telling him to stop," Kunigami relays with a sigh.
Nagi, too, seems satisfied with that answer, proceeding to snatch the paper to add more flare into it, namely dustings of bright yellow glitters.
"Nagi! What are you doing?" Reo grouses, looking annoyed at his best friend. "You're smudging all the ink. Look! You ruined the hearts!"
"That's not my fault."
"Yes, it is. Keep your sweaty hands away from it!"
"I'm still adding glitters," Nagi explains.
Reo groans, "Then wipe your hands first. Or wear gloves. I don't care. Just keep your disgusting hands off. This is the last paper that we have."
"Fine," Nagi huffs, wiping his hands on his pants.
"Oh, great," Chigiri exclaims as he takes Nagi's momentarily distraction to look over at the current state of their project, and listening to the tone of his voice, Isagi thinks that if Chigiri's sarcasm is water, Isagi is sure they'd all be drowning from it by now. "You smudged what I wrote, too. Give me the red pen, I'm going to re-write it."
Eventually, everyone ends up doodling or adding stickers on their birthday gift, their project taking them at least two hours in total. Although, Isagi supposes that the labor is worth it in the end, something that is made apparent by the beaming faces of his friends.
"It's done!" Bachira bellows in delight, hopping on top of the center table as he cheers loudly, completely missing the most dangerous thing of all — an open bottle of glitter.
"Wait, Bachira! You're going to" — Isagi tries to reach out for the open bottle of glitters that Nagi left dangerously close to their finished gift for Barou, only for his godly reflexes to fail as Bachira accidentally knocks the bottle over before he can reach it, sending its contents flying everywhere— "spill glitters everywhere."
Silence.
Absolute, deafening, and dead silence.
"Oops?"
Yeah, Isagi thinks, they're totally getting chucked out the window.
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