The sun shone brightly over the Oarai school ship as Erwin made her way back home burdened with heavy shopping bags. Her latest excursion to the military surplus market had been a success and she was insufferably pleased with herself.
Getting there early she was able to get a bandolier to go with her Afrika Korps uniform, the final piece she had needed to complete it, at least in her mind. In addition, she acquired a Polish army helmet, a large set of unit patches to add to her already substantial collection, and a 1915 French Army shell casing.
Erwin was grinning from ear to ear, the weight of her purchases not bothering her in the least; although, that might have been due to how much lighter her wallet was now. She was flat broke until the end of the month when she would get her living allowance. If her parents found out about this she would get scolded again.
"I'm not an impulse buyer" she told herself. "I thought carefully about everything and had to make a lot of sacrifices." She sighed heavily, wishing she could have afforded the Fallschirmjäger uniform that had been for sale but it had been well outside her budget. She have had to save up for over a year to have afforded it. "Oh well."
As she walked back to the small house she shared with the other three members of the history team, she realized just how empty the ship could be when it arrived in port, especially now that summer break had begun. Most of the students were off ship shopping, as she had been; gone home for summer break, or had gone on a vacation trip. Erwin had visited her family last time and they were off on business for a while so she couldn't visit them anyway.
As she passed by the school grounds, she heard a commotion. The pitch of the voices sounded familiar and her mind quickly made the connection to the Rabbit team. What were they up to?
Rounding the corner and peering through the bars of the fence, she spotted several students in the courtyard. Setting her shopping bags down she reached inside the pocket of her coat and retrieved a pair of binoculars. Peering through them, she focused in on the small gathering of students.
She spotted the members of Rabbit team alright, just as she had suspected. All of them were carrying colourfully wrapped boxes, adorned with pretty ribbons. They had half surrounded Yukari who seemed a bit bewildered by the attention.
'What's going on?' Erwin wondered. She doubted the freshman would bully Yukari, but why did they have those colourful packages? Were they gifts? For Yukari? Was it her birthday?
Erwin felt a lump rise in her throat as the freshman handed their gifts to their senpai, watching the Anglerfish team loader grimace as her arms became loaded with a precariously stacked tower of festive packages, struggling to keep them from teetering too far.
Erwin started to feel the weight of her purchases again, even though she wasn't carrying them. They were nearly as numerous as those colourful packages, but they were full of things she had bought for herself.
Erwin's shoulders sagged as she was filled with a huge sense of self loathing and guilt. She hadn't even known that one of her friend's birthdays was today and she had gone and spent all of her money that very same day on stuff for only for herself. Maybe it wasn't too late though; maybe there was something in her purchases that she could repurpose as a gift for Yukari!
Frantically she began searching through her bags, trolling through her collection of patches and uniform pieces to try and find something that would be adequate as a birthday gift, but nothing seemed adequate. She looked through her other bags but they were all full of things she dearly didn't want to give away, many of them had been rare finds.
Sighing, Erwin leaned her back against the fence. She realized she was committing a wrong. "Use an attack to exploit a victory, never attack to salvage a defeat." She recited. She wasn't sure if the quote came from Tsun Tzu or someone else but it seemed apt to her.
In moral terms, giving someone else something that she had originally bought for herself seemed rather thoughtless. People always said that it was the thought that counted with a gift, not its monetary value, and Erwin hadn't put any thought of Yukari into those items, they had all been for her.
"So what do I do?" She mumbled to herself. She refused to let the day pass without providing a gift for her friend, her own pride wouldn't permit it; that still left the question of what to do. She had virtually no spending money left and wouldn't get more for several days and she couldn't barter for anything that Yukari would want, not on this ship. That left one solution to Erwin's mind: she would have to make a gift herself.
She leaned her head back against the fence, looking up at the sky as if to ask the passing clouds what kind of gift she could possibly make from scratch with her limited skills, and what kind of gift should she make anyway?
Erwin's gaze fell back upon her bags of military memorabilia, staring at them to try and perhaps get an idea of something she would actually be able to make with what limited materials were at home. What a cruel irony it was that she had bags full of things her friend would love but she could give her none of it.
When her gaze focused on the bag of unit patches, she felt a gentle prodding in the corner of her mind. Something about those patches was calling to her, trying to inspire her. She reached into the bag and pulled out a small handful, staring at them.
The patches he had bought were from a variety of different armies, unit types and even ages. They were sometimes circular in shape or cut in a half circle, meant to be sewn onto the shoulder sleeves. 'Hmmmm sewn….'
Erwin's thumb gently brushed the patches she held, passing over the images and letterings on them, created by sewing coloured thread or cutting fabric into various shapes before sewing them together. Suddenly the proverbial lightbulb lit up in her mind.
"That's it!" She leapt from her kneeling position to standing up straight and tall, excited with the discovery of what she believed to be the solution to her dilemma. "I'll make Guderian an anglerfish patch!" The idea seemed so simple, so obvious. It brought the question to her mind why they hadn't thought of doing uniform patches for the various tank teams before!
Erwin picked up her bags and hurried home, suddenly feeling very motivated again. She had made a mistake, but there was still a chance for her to salvage the situation.
Yukari grunted softly as she tried to balance the stack of presents on one hand while using the other hand to open the door to her family's barber shop. The packages teetered precariously as she struggled to balance them against the forces of the wind and her own movements while she opened the door.
She had to duck almost to a squatting position to fit under the door with the packages but managed to make it inside without incident, placing the stack on the floor of the shop and shutting the door behind her.
Looking around, the shop appeared deserted. Neither of her parents were to be seen, unusual for them. Normally they would sit facing the door on their stools, her father reading and her mother would sit and… well Yukari actually wasn't sure what she did. She just seemed to sit there, with her eyes closed, perhaps sleeping or simply contemplating. Even to Yukari, her mother's own child, it seemed strange. She herself would never be able to do that, she would be too bored and restless.
"Where are they?" She mumbled to herself. It was unusual for the shop to be open with nobody to watch it. Her parents were normally so diligent about that. Well, it wasn't like they were a very busy business most days anyway, especially during the summer months when most of the student body left for home. Maybe it was alright.
Yukari picked up the packages again and carried them off to the shop storeroom, tucking them behind a tall stack of cardboard boxes, out of sight. She walked back out of the storeroom and almost bumped into her father.
"Oh Yukari. You're home already?" Yukari swallowed and forced a smile.
"Y-yeah, well various things happened. Uh, I'll be in my room." She hurried past him and ran up the stairs, leaving her bewildered father behind.
Yukari stepped into her room and flopped face-first onto her bed, feeling drained and discontented. Her body felt like she had just gone through a heavy workout but in fact she hadn't done her daily exercise routine yet, and she certainly wasn't feeling up to it now.
She had gone to the tank sheds today to try and find some of her teammates who hadn't left for the summer, hoping to at least find the hard working auto club working on their tanks, but no such luck.
Leopon team had left yesterday to take their car to an autocross competition, the rest of Anglerfish team had gone home to see their families, history team seemed to have done the same because nobody had been home when she'd gone there. The only ones she had met were the members of Rabbit team who offloaded all of those packages onto her before running off with their own plans.
Yukari groaned and rolled onto her back. She had spent most of her life without the company of friends, of close companions she had come to hold dearly. It had been lonely but she had adapted; and yet, right now, without those people for only a day or two, she suddenly felt extremely lonely, more than she had in a long time.
"Lady Nishizumi would be disappointed with me." She mumbled mournfully to herself. Saying that though, she started to miss the girl she idolized even more.
"Yukari?" She bolted upright, sitting up straight on her bed as he her mother passed through the curtains over her doorway. She wore a white blouse and a long black skirt; she must have been out shopping.
She looked at Yukari with modest concern, not moving any closer, simply standing where she was, looking at her. Yukari made sure she smiled; she didn't want her mother to fret over her.
Her mother saw her smile but her face still bent into a frown. Yukari had never been able to fool her mother; she could read her like a pamphlet.
"Are you feeling lonely with school out for the summer?" She asked in that gentle motherly voice that Yukari both loved and sometimes dreaded.
"Everyone's gone so we can't have practice. I'm just not used it, that's all." Yukari didn't want to let on that she was lonesome. Her mother worried about her a lot as it was, always worried about her social life, always worried about her emotional well being.
"Well, if there are a few of your friends around, maybe invite them over for dinner tonight. Maybe they're feeling lonely too."
"I'm not lonely" , was what Yukari wanted to say, but she knew she would be lying flat out at this point. She never had anyone over for dinner with her family before; somehow that seemed even more significant than the meals she and the other Anglers had shared together in either Lady Nishizumi or Saori's apartment. The problem with this idea was that she didn't know who was around to call, if there was anyone at all.
"I'll try asking around." She said at last. Even if she couldn't get anyone to come, maybe she would at least calm her mother until then. She'd probably be a little distraught if nobody came, which Yukari thought likely, but she could at least try for her mother's sake, and it seemed to work as she saw her mother smile a little.
"Okay sweetie. Just remember that you'll also be helping someone else by doing this. You can't see the big picture if you focus only on yourself."
Yukari nodded. "I know, I know mother." Her mother chuckled softly and left the room, leaving Yukari all alone once again. Now she had to think of who she could actually call. Even if she was teammates with the others that didn't actually make them friends did it?
She rubbed her face with her hands and then fell onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. "What am I going to do?"
Author's notes:
Was originally going to be a one-shot but now it's going to be a multi-chapter fic, my first attempt at one in a while. I'll try to update more reliably with this fic than in the past.