Makoto Naegi was not exactly the greatest when it came to gift-giving, a fault that he'd only discovered himself to have after several failed attempts at surprising his girlfriend for her birthday or holidays, only for her to have already known what she was getting. It wasn't for a lack of effort, as he was trying his best to get her something that she would like and wouldn't be expecting, but time and time again she managed to deduce whatever it was he was getting her before he actually presented her with it. There was the time he'd bought her a watch and she'd called him out on it the very next day, without any free time for her to have been searching for where he'd hidden it. Once he got her a gift card to a store she loved shopping at, so he could help her pay for some things she wanted, and before he could give it to her she had drafted a list of things she'd get with the money, so that once it was in her hands she could go buy them.
Usually a string of consistent failures like those would bring a man's spirits down, but Makoto wasn't the type of person to lose hope in a situation. If he was going to stop trying to surprise one Kyoko Kirigiri, it was going to be because of something outside of his control, not because she kept finding out about what he'd been trying to surprise her with. He'd been thinking about what he could do to possibly raise his chances of getting a surprise off on her, and the one idea he kept coming back to was buying her something without a reason and giving it to her on some random day, so that she wasn't expecting to receive any sort of gift and would therefore be surprised to get anything. It wasn't foolproof, but he wasn't going to give up on trying to make her happy without her knowing that's what he was trying to do.
Things were helped after he'd heard about a convention somewhere nearby that was going to have exhibits and panels about things related to criminals and solving cases—things that were entirely up Kyoko's alley that he knew she would be interested in—and he decided that he was going to buy them some passes to attend, to do as a date activity. She wouldn't ever admit to wanting to go to something like that, citing it as a distraction from her freelance detective work she was making a living off of, but he knew that if she was given a ticket she would appreciate the thought and the day to spend with her boyfriend. That was the problem, though, getting her to have the day off without making it obvious that he wanted them to go to the convention.
As any self-respecting man with a goal in mind would do, Makoto didn't directly approach Kyoko about what he was going to do and how he needed her to take one full day off a few weeks in the future. Instead, he wrote a note to himself to remember to get the tickets for that one day in specific, and talk to her about it a few days before the convention so she at least had some notice about needing the day off. That note was promptly posted somewhere that he'd see it when he woke up the next morning and he went to sleep without thinking too much more about it; it was a perfect reminder for what he was going to do and he was thankful it was hanging on his wall when he awoke having mostly forgotten what his plan was for the day.
It probably should have been removed from its hanging spot the moment it no longer had any use to him, but in his dedication to going to the convention hall's ticket counter and picking up the tickets he needed Makoto completely spaced on taking the note down. This wouldn't have been much of an issue if Kyoko didn't tend to appear at random at his apartment, letting herself in with her copy of the key, making herself comfortable there for a little while before going back to whatever she'd been doing to put her in the area. She happened to walk by the note on the wall and after doing a double-take at the fact that something had been crudely pinned up for some reason, she investigated what it said.
Her normally stoic, tight-lipped face cracked into a smile as she thought about how she'd heard a thing or two about the convention, in specific that one of her idols in the detective field was going to be giving a presentation that she was interested in. Getting to go and see that with Makoto was going to be a great use of their time together, and she was happy that he'd considered what would make her happy when deciding to buy those tickets. But right as she thought that she should thank him for the kindness, it dawned on her that she was looking at his reminder to himself about getting the tickets, and that meant that they were going to be a gift to her.
"Oh Makoto, leaving this up like that, you've ruined another present for yourself," she said as she read over the note again, mentally cataloguing the date so she knew in advance not to get involved in anything work-related that day. "I'll try my best to act like I don't know this one's coming, for your sake."
The first thing she had to do to make that possible was leave before he could come back and catch her in the apartment, which was inconvenient for her as she'd been looking for somewhere quiet to eat lunch, but sacrifices had to be made at times. When she went back to his place that night to properly visit with him, the note was gone and he seemed to be nervous about something, but she wasn't calling attention to it. "How was your day, Kyoko?" he asked, trying to mask the fact that he was clearly thinking about something that wasn't her being there. "Did you have any interesting cases to solve?"
"No, nothing interesting or unusual today," she replied, sipping from the cup of tea she'd made herself upon coming back over. "There were a few lost items I had to find, but it wasn't anything close to a day full of abductions and murders."
"That's good, I think. I had a good day, before you ask. Got out and ran some errands, nothing out of the ordinary for a day off." She couldn't help but want to ask him why he sounded like he was trying to keep himself from saying something, but it was best to not touch that subject unless necessary. He didn't even notice that he was squirming as he sat, glancing around the room, acting highly suspicious about something, and she wasn't going to be the one to tell him he was doing any of that. "Sometimes I wish our days off would align, but that's the nature of your job, isn't it?"
"I suppose so, no guaranteed days off unless I block them out for myself." How strange it felt to be talking about that when she knew he was going to ask her eventually to take a single day off, but she remained as neutral-voiced as she could be to not raise suspicion that she already knew what he was going to do. "It's a line of work I enjoy and that's what matters, more than having any time off."
Nodding as he watched her take another sip of tea, Makoto smiled at Kyoko once she was looking back over at him. "And it's not like we don't get to see each other all the time, you're always coming over to check on me when I'm here and you'll come in when I'm not to surprise me when I get home!"
"That I do, I like seeing how flustered you get to see me waiting her for you." Saying that was enough to fluster him right then, which did a great job of masking his suspicious behaviors because now she couldn't actually tell if it was him trying to hide what he'd done or him being embarrassed by her calling him out on how he acted. "My apologies for not being here today, I decided to have lunch at my office and lost track of time to stop by, but as it seems you were out running errands perhaps that was for the best."
"It's okay, I thought you might've come in while I wasn't here but if you didn't, that…that's actually fine by me." When he hesitated, Kyoko knew it was because he was thinking about the note he'd left on the wall she wasn't supposed to see, but to keep him from guessing that she'd been lying about what she'd done, she turned away right as he'd continued speaking in an attempt to hide his stumble. He knew that she was going to pick up on any little thing she could, but as long as he played it cool there was no way she was going to make some far-fetched guess about getting tickets for a convention.
And if she hadn't known that was what he'd done, she wouldn't have been able to guess all the way down to the tiny details in that moment; it was a foregone conclusion that she knew he'd done something that day, but he was blissfully unaware that she knew the exact details of it all. That was how it was going to stay for as long as he could keep it a secret, and even after he let her in on it she might have let him have this one supposed victory over her and her deductive eye.
That was her plan, and she let him get worked up every time she was at his place visiting with him as he attempted to keep her in the dark about his gift for her, all in an attempt to stick with what she'd told herself she was going to do. There was only so many times she could hear him get high-pitched when talking about spending future time together, and about how they really needed a day off at the same time, but she would endure far more than necessary if it meant seeing her boyfriend happy when he finally got a surprise off on her.
If there'd been nothing more than the tickets involved, the end result would have been exactly what Kyoko had been expecting, and she would have been able to keep it to herself that she'd known what he was hiding from her from the start, even without referencing the note she'd seen. Makoto knew that she'd gone to his place that day and read his note, or he was at least moderately positive that she had, because she hated staying at her office and wouldn't willingly have eaten any meals there ever. That made his reveal of the present he'd bought all the sweeter, because as she opened her mouth to tell him what he'd done to make it obvious that he'd bought the tickets for that specific day, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something she definitely wasn't expecting him to give her.
Her hands were a sore subject and she always wore gloves to hide them, so the fact that he'd skipped buying her a ring and had settled on a nice necklace instead, to give her in addition to the tickets to not just see but meet her idol in person, shocked her to the point that she couldn't even tell him that she'd known one tiny portion of the present was coming. For once, he'd managed to stump his detective girlfriend, and he'd gotten a fiancée out of it.
A/N: while this isn't my first attempt at danganronpa fic, it's my first that I've written since actually playing the game. I love the idea of Makoto outsmarting a super detective by using her powers of deduction against her c: