Notes – For the gx_100. Set during season one, a few days before Hayato duelled Chronos.

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"Why didn't you tell me it was his birthday during the school year?" Juudai asked, gleefully rushing on ahead without worrying about being seen as much as he should have done.

"Because I knew you'd do something like this!" called Shou, who was more nervous and trying to maintain as much cover as possible as they headed for the Obelisk Blue dorm. Why couldn't it have been Hayato who had seen the present Shou was trying to wrap? Hayato wasn't the sort of person who'd insist that they had to go to Ryo's room and throw him a surprise birthday party!

But Hayato had been busy recently. Busier then he usually was. Or maybe, Shou thought guiltily, he'd been busy for sometime and they'd all been too distracted dealing with the Seven Stars to notice that he was.

Either way Hayato had shut himself in a room and Shou was left lagging behind as Juudai reached the base of a tree.

"You can climb right into your brother's room from here," Juudai informed, "I did it once, back when I was trying to stop Rei getting caught there."

Shou nodded, using this pause to catch his breath.

When he'd done that he pointed out, "Even if I could climb that it'd be impossible to manage it with all this stuff."

He motioned to the bag he was trailing behind them. It contained streamers, brightly coloured hats, whistles, balloons and anything else Juudai could get his hands on to do with birthdays. Shou considered that Ryo would probably be a lot more grateful for this had he been seven years old, but the current Ryo probably wouldn't care much for decorations that had so many colours they challenged rainbows. Also, it would have been a lot easier to carry had Juudai not blown the balloons up beforehand, but he'd said this would save time.

"Don't worry, I can get that up the tree no problem," Juudai answered, and much to Shou's relief took the pack from him to put on his shoulders, "Now, you better go first so that I can catch you if you fall."

Nodding meekly, Shou stepped forward to climb up the tree. Their progress was slow, much slower, Shou knew, than it would have been if Juudai had come alone. But at least they were getting somewhere.

When he was more than half way up something that looked suspiciously like a balloon drifted past Shou's face and up into the air.

"Sorry, lost that one," came Juudai's voice from behind him, "Let's hope he doesn't see it."

The same thing had crossed Shou's mind. Ryo had eyes like a hawk, so if he were in that room he'd certainly notice a balloon floating by and wonder what was going on. As it was no one came to the balcony, so it could be assumed that he either wasn't there or was too distracted to notice. Shou secretly hoped he wasn't there to save him the embarrassment.

But as the two of them struggled onto the ledge it became clear that Ryo was there. Not because they could see him, the curtain that led out to the balcony was pulled shut, but because they could hear him. Those were noises that Shou was sure he'd never heard coming from his brother before. They made him panic.

Juudai, the braver of the two stepped forward and had a glance around the curtain. He was watching for a considerable while before Shou prompted him in a whispered to find out what it was.

Pulling back from the curtain, Juudai said, "I really think we should come back another time Shou."

"Why's that?" Shou asked in annoyance.

"Because Fubuki's giving Ryo his birthday present right now."

It was a few hours later before that particular birthday present was finished. But Ryo never understood why, as he wandered out on the balcony for some air, there was a bag of funny hats and balloons left lying there.