Gifts
Author's Note: I have only (barely) skimmed through manga scanlations found on the net. I therefore warn that this is an H2 alternate universe fiction firmly based in the live action camp, and features pairings from the TV series. In this world, Haruka and Hiro did not spend the whole of their senior year's autumn and winter barely talking to each other. Instead, after Kōshien, they gain a comfortable relationship as friends, though not before a number of mishaps and misunderstandings involving takoyaki and—of all people—Tachibana Hideo. But that's another story. :) I may have also gotten Noda's girlfriend mixed up with Haruka's other friend (I'm not entirely sure which is which. shrugs).
Warnings: Fluff. Also, spoilers for the whole live action drama, H2: Kimi to Itahibi.
Summary: Koga Haruka has been receiving presents from an unknown admirer.
Disclaimer: Adachi-sensei owns the H2 manga and its characters. I don't own the live drama either.
- - - - -
It was on the second Friday of February when Haruka laid eyes on the first gift.
The present in her shoe locker was a small plushie, a velvety grass-green frog with beady black eyes and wide pink mouth, conveniently displayed on top of her school shoes. There was no note.
Finding gifts in her locker should not really have been unusual; Koga Haruka was a very pretty girl who was smart, cheerful and kind to boot. Still, only a few brave souls had dared, over the years, to woo her with trinkets and missives; for most of the boys, it had been obvious enough that Koga-san carried a torch for Senkawa's ace pitcher.
Lately though, there had been a veritable increase in love letters—mostly seniors' last ditch attempts before graduation (the Kunimi Hiro issue notwithstanding). This was the first time, however, that a would-be suitor had failed to leave an expression of admiration, a simple greeting, or a name. There was no anonymous note, even. It was unprecedented.
During lunch, Haruka puzzled over the frog, while her friends Asako and Satomi made fun of its appearance and speculated wildly about her mysterious admirer/stalker/whatever.
She was chewing thoughtfully on an onigiri, staring at the plushie propped up by her bottle of apple-flavored tea, when a hand reached out and swiped at the plushie. Haruka looked up to see Kunimi Hiro studying the frog, his eyebrows raised. He tossed it to Noda Atsushi, who nodded to her and then settled himself into a chair beside his girlfriend Asako. The catcher soon involved by his better half in a playful discussion over date plans for Valentine's Day, which fell on Wednesday the following week.
Meanwhile, Hiro sat opposite the team manager and started on his lunch. "It is ugly," he mumbled in between bites.
"That's mean, Kunimi-kun."
"Do you even like frogs?"
"Not really," Haruka hedged, picking at her food.
"See? So give it back."
"But that's disrespectful to the giver!"
"Who did not identify himself in the first place. Who can say that he's not actually a creep?" He argued, gesturing with his chopsticks. "And it's not the kind of toy you like, anyway."
"I don't know. Maybe it'll grow on me. It is kind of cute…"
"If you squint at it sideways, Haru-chan," Satomi offered, paying attention once more.
"Ne, Haruka-chan, maybe if you kiss it, it'll turn into a prince?" Noda teased, waggling his eyebrows and grinning at Hiro, who rolled his eyes.
"Stop talking nonsense," the pitcher muttered, spearing a piece of beef from his bowl.
"Kunimi-kun, you're not jealous of Haru-chan's secret admirer, are you?" Asako slyly asked. Noda tauntingly waved the frog at his friend. Haruka sighed, grabbing the plushie back. Hiro said nothing, devoted to consuming his meal.
Noda shrugged, pushing up his glasses. "Never mind him, Haruka-chan. He's got an even uglier frog in his bedroom, remember?" "Oi!" The two boys began bickering back and forth.
Haruka found, however, that she had bigger problems than green plushies and anonymous suitors. "Haru-chan! you didn't tell us you'd been in Kunimi-kun's room!" "Spill!" "I-it wasn't like that!"
- - - - -
The second gift appeared the next Friday: an elegant purse lying innocently inside her locker, bearing a handwritten note.
"It's a little early for White Day, don't you think?" Asako later teased, as Satomi cooed over the obviously expensive gift.
"That would imply that Haruka-chan's admirer received chocolate from her on Valentine's," Noda retorted. This observation sent Satomi a-flutter once more as she catalogued all the boys their friend gave sweets to.
"So? You don't have to receive Valentine's chocolate to give a gift to a girl," was Asako's rejoinder.
Haruka blushed as she recalled nearly tripping when she gave chocolate to Hiro. She couldn't help but think that Noda-kun had it wrong, though. The only people who had received sweets from me were otou-san, onii-san, Kunimi-kun, Noda-kun—actually, the whole Senkawa baseball team—and Hideo-kun, she thought.
"What crappy handwriting." Senkawa's ace pitcher was now looking over the note.
"Hmm… it looks like a right-handed person tried to disguise his penmanship," observed Noda, adding, "Unfortunately, it also rendered the message completely illegible." He then segued into a lecture about how personality was revealed through handwriting, until the teacher arrived and barked at them to get back to their seats.
As various classmates scampered, Haruka wondered about the vague feeling she had about the purse, as if there was something she ought to remember about it.
- - - - -
Another week passed. This time, a wind-up toy, a fluffy yellow chick, peeped out at Haruka from inside a shoe.
"How disappointing," Asako said as her boyfriend attempted to make the toy work. "Just as he was starting to impress me, what with last week's offering and all." Noda placed the chick on Haruka's desk, where it chirped and wobbled as they looked on.
"How do you know if it's the same person?" Satomi countered.
"Woman's intuition."
"If it's the same guy, maybe he'd been cleaned out, buying that purse," Yanagi speculated; he had dropped in earlier and thus heard about the previous gifts. "You're not curious about who it is, Koga-san?"
"Well," Haruka said, glancing uneasily at Hiro, who was leaning back in his seat and tossing a ball upwards. "A little, but if he's not ready to reveal himself…" She trailed off, stopping the toy before it fell off her desk. She wondered how he felt about all this.
"It looks like something you'd see on a sidewalk," Asako observed. "By the way, Haru-chan, was there a note again?" Haruka held out a smudged, illegible piece of paper to her. "If he can't write properly, he could have gotten someone else to do it."
Satomi took the note and scrutinized it. "You know, maybe he's afraid to screw up even a written message. It's not that he can't write properly, it's that he won't. Because he's afraid, he messes up his penmanship on purpose."
Asako scoffed. "Well that's just stupid. If that's the case, then he should just leave off on sending notes. Though that might be more foolish—the notes are his only option, if he's not brave enough to face Haru-chan."
Haruka was wondering over the note as well, when a loud 'thump!' startled her. Everyone turned to Hiro, whose ball had apparently hit the ceiling after a too-enthusiastic toss.
"Sorry," Hiro mumbled, shoving the errant ball into his bag, not meeting anybody's eyes.
Yanagi glanced at Noda. "How does he feel about Koga-san's admirer?" he whispered. The latter glanced at Haruka, who was staring at Hiro in dismay. "Who knows?"
- - - - -
There was no gift the following Friday. Haruka felt a little disappointed; it was the day before her birthday, after all.
- - - - -
On Haruka's birthday, her friends held a surprise party for her at the Koga residence, partly because the members of her family were overseas and would not arrive until the day after.
Everyone from the baseball team was there (including some of their old sempai), as well as a few people from Meiwa Daiichi – Miho (who came as Kine's date), Hideo and Hikari. At first Haruka had been concerned at the possible friction between the latter two and Hiro, but it seemed as if they had already let bygones be bygones, from the way they greeted each other. In the clamor for a karaoke battle, she was forced to move away from them as Noda turned the conversation to their approaching graduation and entrance exam results.
It was well into the party when Haruka's attention was caught by a strange sight: Hideo appeared to have cornered Hiro and was arguing with him. The latter looked frustrated as Meiwa's star player gesticulated wildly; she could not hear anything from where she sat, to her frustration. At one point in the dispute, Hiro seemed to have noticed that she'd been observing them; the look he gave her before he glanced away was one she could not read. She didn't have time to mull it over, though; Satomi had thrust the microphone before her face and declared amidst cheers and catcalls that it was "the birthday girl's turn."
- - - - -
The celebration broke up when it was already very late. The birthday girl cheerfully (if a bit tiredly) saw off the team and her Meiwa friends at the gate; she did not see the meaningful glance Hideo gave Noda, nor the thumbs-up in reply. Asako and Satomi stayed to help tidy things up, corralling Senkawa's pitcher-catcher duo into carrying out the more unpleasant tasks. Haruka had already dismissed her maid, saying they could handle things by themselves.
While Hiro was taking out the last of the trash, Noda and the girls were finishing up in the living room. She bid them to wait, saying as she scrambled towards the kitchen, "There's a lot of leftovers! You can take them home, I'll just pack those for you…"
Once she was out of sight, Asako said, "I saw that look Tachibana-san gave you, Noda Atsushi." With that gleam in his eye, her boyfriend glanced at her and Satomi, and carefully asked, "This is quite an opportunity, don't you think?"
Takazawa Asako didn't need to look at Satomi to know that her own smirk was mirrored on her friend's face. "Oh, yes. Indeed it is." They made for the door. Senkawa's ace pitcher came in as they were leaving.
"Wait for me, will you?" Hiro grumbled as he looked for Haruka in order to take leave of her, too.
"Can't. Need to get Acchan home right now or her parents will bust," Noda replied innocently.
"Oh, and Kunimi-kun, there's still Haru-chan's presents to tidy up. Help her, please?" Satomi asked him, quite sweetly.
Hiro's face expressed some alarm; his bespectacled friend, meanwhile, didn't even look a bit repentant. "You guys…"
The trio was already out the door when Asako turned and fired a parting shot: "This is your chance to beat that secret admirer, Kunimi-kun – don't waste it! Ja ne!" Hiro glared at Noda, who only gleefully mouthed "Gambatte!" at him and hurried the snickering girls off.
And thus he was left alone with Koga Haruka in her house. Granted, there was a maid sleeping somewhere, so technically they weren't alone alone, but still!
He was still cursing Noda when Haruka reappeared, packed leftovers in her arms. "Oh, they've left?"
The answer was a sullen "Obviously." There was a beat of awkward silence as the implications of their exchange washed over them.
"Er, Nakata-san said something about presents?" He glanced at the suddenly nervous girl.
"Um, yeah. I still have to transfer those to my room. But don't worry about it! I can do that—"
"I don't mind," he said, already moving towards the pile of gaily wrapped gifts.
- - - - -
Haruka's bedroom was large (almost three times as big as his) and elegant. As he placed the pile of presents by a couple of beautifully carved chairs (she'd sort them out later, she insisted), he noticed the plush frog and the wind-up chick side by side amongst her bric-a-brac.
They made small talk about his draft pick and her college acceptance letter, anything to lessen the unease of such a situation. They did not after all, have the excuse of being old childhood friends like Hiro did with Hikari (not that it would ever be the same around that pair again). He floundered for a topic.
"So, what about your secret admirer?" This was asked in an 'obviously fishing for information' manner.
"Er, what about him…?" Haruka was understandably flustered as she led him out of her room. This was not a topic she'd expected to discuss.
Hiro's tone was studiously nonchalant. "Just curious. He usually leaves something on Fridays, right? A little research and he'd have learned that it's your birthday today. No gift yesterday?"
She shrugged; this wasn't really a subject she wanted to bring up around Hiro. She'd been treating him as merely a friend for the past few months, but the truth was, she had no real desire to 'move on.'
"No," she merely said, looking at her hands.
- - - - -
She gave him leftover birthday cake to take home. They lingered by the gate in the light of the pale half-moon and the cold night air; spring still seemed so far away.
"Good night," she whispered, wishing he would not look at her like that (because it made letting go so much harder), and made to go inside.
His hand held her arm fast. "Koga."
She willed her bird-flutter-heart to still.
"Can you… will you meet me tomorrow morning, at the school gate? There's something I want to show you."
She knew she should have pointed out that her brother and new sister were coming home from their honeymoon tomorrow morning just for a belated birthday celebration, and that her father would be flying in early as well and expecting her to be there, and for goodness' sake she should at least ask why.
Instead, all she asked was, "What time?"
- - - - -
The next day dawned cold and bright.
Haruka had been grateful for fatigue; else she'd not have slept a wink because of hapless conjecture. She'd also been grateful for her cell phone alarm; else she'd woken up late and missed her meeting entirely. Leaving last-minute instructions to the maid that her brother or her father was to send her a message once either arrived, she grabbed her coat and scarf and headed out the door.
She still felt a little sleepy as she made her way to school. Hiro had asked her to meet him just after sunrise.
Leaning against the school gate, Haruka wondered what he was to show her. He'd already given her a gift yesterday, so that ruled out any birthday-related things. As she pondered various reasons in the chilly morning air, she spied movement out of the corner of her eye.
She waved to Hiro as he jogged up to her.
"Where are we going?"
"The park."
There were few people out at this hour, probably taking advantage that it was Sunday so they could sleep in. The skies were brightening as the sun made her journey over the horizon. They didn't talk much, content to enjoy their walk, letting the silence flow in comfortably between words.
Many trees were still bare, but there cheerful birdsong and clear weather lifted the girl's spirits.
At a corner of the park, Hiro stopped. "Look," he said, and pointed at something beyond the path. To Haruka's delight, the ground was dotted here and there with clumps of snowdrops and crocuses.
He watched her break into a full-fledged smile, one that reached her eyes. "A little too early for cherry blossoms, so we had to settle for these. Happy birthday, again." He smiles, too, when she beams at him.
"Thank you, Kunimi-kun," she said, and turned back to gazing at the flowers.
Haruka did not see him frown at the 'kun.' Nor had she any idea at the consternation in his mind along the lines of: Kunimi-kun still. Well, Hideo, here goes nothing.
"I'd have bought you hothouse flowers, but that purse really cleaned out my allowance."
Purse? She turned to him, eyes wide in astonishment and disbelief. Purse?! In the back of her mind, a memory blossomed.
Birthdays. Playing catch. Simple, wished-for things.
Like a toy from a street vendor.
Or a bag from Louis Vitton.
Or an arcade prize.
Or a single flower.
"It was you…" Tears, bright and unshed, glimmered in her eyes. "You remembered."
He shuffled his feet, looking bashful, and nodded.
"Why?" Why now, when I'd made up my mind to stop chasing you? Why now? Why?
He saw the wariness wrought by last year's debacle cloud her eyes, saw the sorrow that trickled down her cheeks, saw the heartache that lingered round her mouth.
So he faltered for a moment, uncertain.
"Because," he fumbled, cursing his inept tongue. "Because I…"
With his eyes he willed her to understand him and cast away her doubts, and with his hands he eased away her regret. He watched as her eyes cleared like a day after a storm—he knew then, that no words were needed. It seemed that for her, his gaze had been answer enough.
"Hiro," she murmured.
So he took her into his arms, happy and relieved and content, for winter was over, and spring had come.