I am sure that people would already have expected something like this, so without further ado… Happy Birthday to everybody's favorite hardworking-to-a-fault keyboardist: Hazawa Tsugumi!
Also, fun little trivia that I thought would be fun to share: this is apparently my tenth story for this fandom… so yay, me~
The cover image is the trained artwork of Tsugumi's first 4* from the Sweets event.
Disclaimer: I do not own BanG Dream!
"Are you ready?"
Tsugumi looked up quizzically, trying to look at the person who had just addressed her; it didn't take her very long to find who it was. With a smile, Tsugumi nodded in her colleague's direction.
"I am," Tsugumi said confidently, though the little quiver in her voice was still very audible to the other girl in the room. Tsugumi knew that her friend had noticed this, but she was thankful that it was not brought up.
She would have to formally thank her friend for it later, knowing that she didn't have the time to do so right now.
"Well then, Eve-chan," Tsugumi turned to her friend with a wide smile on her face. A smile that managed to put one on Eve's face as well as she knew what this smile meant. Without wasting any more time, Tsugumi grabbed her stuff, dusted her skirt off and exclaimed excitedly, "Let's go!"
"Right, Tsugumi-san!"
With a nod of confirmation, Eve followed Tsugumi out of the changing room and the two girls walked over to where the register was on the other side of the Hazawa Café. Once there, they saw a familiar face waiting for them.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Tsugumi said with a small bow, a habit that she couldn't suppress no matter how hard she tried. With an embarrassed and sheepish giggle, Tsugumi turned to all of the people who had been waiting for her, "If everybody is ready—"
"Come on, Tsugu~," Moca trailed off with a teasing sing-song voice, interrupting the brunette mid-sentence and catching both her and Eve's attention. Without missing a beat, Moca added, "Moca-chan has been ready for half an hour~"
"Is-Is that so?" Tsugumi asked, sounding embarrassed at having made her friend wait so long. The truth was that Tsugumi could very well have been ready in time for their appointed time, but something had been holding her back.
"We're sorry, Moca-san," Eve apologized quickly before either Tsugumi or Moca could do or say anything. Hastily, almost as if she wanted to change the topic, Eve added, "But let us go now! I am sure that the others are waiting for us, too."
"Eve-chan…" Tsugumi breathed out with wide eyes, looking at her friend and colleague at her side. Tsugumi knew that Eve didn't need to go this far to support her, but the mere fact that she did was enough to cheer her up.
The three of them had been planning this day for weeks. A day where they could all hang out together and have fun, something that they had all been looking forward to for a long time.
That was when the people who had their shifts today in the Hazawa Café called in sick and Tsugumi accepted her fact that she would be here all day. Thankfully, with the help of Eve and Moca's constant nagging, Tsugumi's parents were convinced to let Tsugumi off early for the day. And that gave Tsugumi, Moca, and Eve the freedom of the day to spend like they had planned to spend it in the beginning.
What Tsugumi didn't know was that her parents had secretly been wanting Tsugumi to take a day off for herself for months now and, as a result, were elated to hear that Moca and Eve had been planning a day for Tsugumi.
"Let's not waste any more time!" Tsugumi exclaimed after some time had passed in which Moca and Eve had been discussing where to go. Tsugumi, true to her words, was the first one by the door and was already standing outside before either Moca or Eve knew what was going.
It didn't take the two of them long to finally come back to reality, however.
"I'm sorry if I was rude just now, Moca-san," Eve bowed quickly in Moca's direction, clearly feeling bad for what she had just said and done. Eve was stopped from saying anything else by Moca, however, as she was casually waving off Eve's concerns.
"I should apologize too, so why don't we both forgive each other and pretend it never happened?" Moca offered, an offer that Eve was quick to accept. With a smile on both of their faces, the two of them stood up, looked around them to make sure that they had not forgotten anything, and walked out to try and catch up to Tsugumi.
The three girls were wasting no time after leaving the Hazawa Café to get to where they needed to be, knowing that they had to get there fast. With Tsugumi leading the way, they managed to find a shortcut to their destination and get there half an hour faster than they thought they would.
But now, instead of entering the building that was in front of them, the three of them were left looking at it in awe.
"Is this…?" Tsugumi breathed out as she looked at the building that she was standing in front of with her two friends on either side.
Eve, who was the one to be standing on Tsugumi's right, was as shocked and speechless as Tsugumi was, if not more so. Craning her neck back to see as high as she possibly could, even the tallest of the three had to take a couple of steps back in order to see the top of the building. Bewildered, Eve muttered just loud enough to be audible, "This place is huge."
"Come on, Tsugu, Eve, let's go," Moca motioned for the other two girls to follow her before stepping inside, flinching slightly at the sudden gust of wind that was blasted in her face but managing to keep her composure enough.
Once inside, and confident that she wasn't going there alone, Moca scanned the area until her eyes finally landed on what she was looking for. Taking a deep breath to calm herself down, both her nerves as well as her breathing after the long walk, Moca was about to walk over to the front office when somebody had beaten her to it.
"Excuse me?" Eve asked as she reached the front desk, only barely able to peer over the high counter. Suppressing the urge to say something about that, Eve instead forced herself to remember why she was here in the place and focus on that, "I am here for R—I mean, Mitake-san. I think she should have made an appointment several weeks ago?"
"Please hold on, let me see…" the woman on the other side of the desk noted before she began working on what Eve could only assume was a computer.
A few seconds had passed since the silence between the two of them had started, and Eve was about to say something again when she was met with a pleasant surprise. Instead of a vocal response, the woman working at the front desk stepped out and into view, holding something that Eve could not quite see in her hands.
"Here you go," the woman said in a gentle voice, opening Eve's palm and placing what Eve now knew was a card in her hands that fitted there comfortably. Before Eve could say or do anything, though, the woman pointed in a seemingly random direction behind Eve and added, "If you walk down that way, you will see the elevator. Go to the thirteenth floor and it should be the fifth door on your left."
"Thank you very much!" Eve bowed gratefully in response, holding the card gingerly in her hands as she hurried over to where her friends were waiting for her. Quickly going over to what she had just been told to her friends, Eve looked to them for confirmation, "Should we go now?"
"Yes, let's go, Eve-chan, Moca-chan," Tsugumi said with a determined nod, erasing any doubts that either of the other girls may have had.
Now knowing where they had to go, Tsugumi led the way as she headed for the elevator. The wait for the elevator, as well as the elevator ride up to the thirteenth floor, went off without anything out of the ordinary happening.
'That is…' Tsugumi thought with a small smile as she remembered what had happened when the three of them had stepped into the elevator. Moca had pulled a prank on an unsuspecting Eve and, while no harm had been done to either of them, Moca had yet to convince Eve to forgive her since.
Tsugumi tried to not think too much about it, knowing that Moca had meant nothing with it as always and that Eve would forgive Moca eventually anyway, and was leading the way. Before any of them had fully realized it, the three of them already were where they wanted to be.
"Is this the one, Eve-chan?" Tsugumi asked as she turned to her white-haired friend. Eve, despite still looking slightly downcast from the earlier event, looked up and nodded, handing over the card to Tsugumi.
"Well, Tsugu, what are you waiting for~?" Moca asked playfully, but it was clear in her voice that she was very impatient right now. Thankfully for Moca, she didn't need to push Tsugumi's buttons even more than she already was; Tsugumi wanted to see what was on the other side of the door more than anything as well.
Tsugumi was about to place the card on the door to unlock it, but was suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia and remembered something that had happened a few weeks ago…
"Say, Tsugu, when do you have some free time again?" Moca asked casually, looking up at the girl who had just brought Moca's order to her. On the other side of the table, a certain bassist had already dug into her serving of sweets the moment they were placed on the table.
"Hm… that's a good question…" Tsugumi trailed off, looking away in thought as she tried to remember her schedule for the near future. Taking out her phone to confirm that she had remembered it correctly, Tsugumi nodded to herself before turning back to Moca, "The sixth is my day off. What were you planning to do, Moca-chan?"
"Oh, nothing nothing~" Moca replied quickly, a tad too quickly for Tsugumi to believe her, but the brunette decided to let it go. Moca soon grew a sudden but intense interest in her cup of coffee and didn't respond anymore to when Tsugumi tried to get her attention soon after that.
Tsugumi sighed but couldn't stop a smile from forming at the idea that Moca was doing so much to try and hang out with her. Tsugumi turned around, having decided that she needed to get back to work when she quickly sneaked a last look at her friends at the table.
Tsugumi was sure that she had not mistaken it: Moca was smiling widely.
"Tsugumi-san?"
The question that was asked in a gentle and careful tone shook Tsugumi back to the present. Tsugumi turned around to look for the person who had called her name, but in doing so she ended up seeing the worried looks on both Moca's and Eve's faces.
It took Tsugumi way too long for her to realize why they were looking at her like that.
"I-I'm all right, don't worry about me," Tsugumi tried to quickly brush off the worries of her friends with what even she knew was a forced smile. Taking a deep breath to try and calm herself down, Tsugumi raked her brain for something to use to change the conversation, "What is… behind here…?"
"Only one way to find, Tsugu~"
"Let's open it and go inside, Tsugumi-san!"
These responses caused a chuckle out of Tsugumi, not knowing why she had been expecting another answer from these two girls. They had gone out of their way to make sure that Tsugumi didn't know, so why would they tell her now?
Tsugumi felt ready. She may not know what was waiting for her on the other side, but she trusted her friends. If they had brought her all the way here… if they had used up so much of their time and energy to bring her here, then there must be a very good reason for that…
"All right, here I go!" Tsugumi announced as she held the card tightly in her hand and gently pressed it against the door. As the brunette had expected, a small green light shone to indicate that the door had been unlocked.
Smiling to herself that it worked, Tsugumi grabbed the handle and carefully pushed it open—
"Surprise!"
The next thing that Tsugumi knew was happening was the ear-shattering sound of explosions all around her and the sensation of being covered completely with thin strips of paper.
"Wha-What?" Tsugumi managed to utter in sheer shock and surprise, not knowing what was going on. Tsugumi tried to clear her clothes from the paper strips when she suddenly felt the weight of not one but two bodies on her back, almost forcing the brunette to tumble over.
"Easy there, Moca, Eve, we wouldn't want Tsugu to get hurt because of either of you, right?"
A familiar voice to Tsugumi's ears came from somewhere above the brunette before the weight on Tsugumi's back disappeared. Looking up curiously, Tsugumi quickly found the person who had saved her.
"Tomoe-chan!" Tsugumi exclaimed in delighted shock as Moca and Eve helped Tsugumi back on her feet. Tsugumi was about to run over to her red-haired friend when she realized that Tomoe was not the only familiar face that Tsugumi recognized in the room.
Upon closer inspection, Tsugumi saw two more people standing behind Tomoe; two people who Tsugumi knew and loved. Himari was standing a bit to Tomoe's right with a big grin on her face as she watched what Tsugumi was doing while Ran, who was standing on Tomoe's other side, was fumbling with something behind her back that Tsugumi could not quite see yet.
"W-What's everybody—?" Tsugumi tried, looking around her a bit more but was stopped from doing so when she felt something. More than one of her friends had walked up to her and held her close in a loving group hug, forcing Tsugumi to let the rest of her question die in her throat.
Tsugumi could only stutter incoherently as her brain was working on overdrive to try and process what was going on. Even long after her friends had let go of her, Tsugumi still couldn't formulate a coherent sentence yet, so somebody else decided to do it for her.
"Since we know that you will be busy tomorrow with your family's café, we all decided to do something today," Ran explained as some of the others nodded in confirmation. When Ran noticed the look on Tsugumi's face, she quickly added, "Himari and Eve both said that they got the Hazawa Café covered in your absence."
"Aya-san and Hina-san really wanted to see how it was like to work in the café," Eve said enthusiastically, picking up where Ran had left off as she turned to face Tsugumi, "It didn't take me long to get your parents' permission to have Aya-san and Hina-san work there for the night."
"Everyone…" Tsugumi breathed out, tilting her head down to try and hide her face from her friends. It was a futile effort, however, as everybody had already seen the tears well before Tsugumi could try to hide them.
"You didn't… didn't have to…" Tsugumi muttered in a raspy breath, trying her hardest to keep her voice steady but not doing a very good job at that. Through her bangs, Tsugumi saw the gentle smile of Himari who was offering her handkerchief to her, something that Tsugumi accepted with a grateful nod.
"We know we didn't have to, Tsugu… we wanted to~," Moca replied with a wide grin as Tsugumi was busy drying off her eyes. Looking over at the others, Moca nodded before adding, "Besides, if it were any of us we know that Tsugu would work hard to make it work too."
"So allow us to say this, Tsugumi-san!" Eve said quickly, turning to the other members of Afterglow instead to make sure that they were on the same wavelength as she was before counting down ecstatically, "One… two…"
"Happy birthday!"
Tsugumi remained unmoving after this, not responding to the declaration in any way, shape, or form. Before anyone else could ask her if she was all right, however, Tsugumi had already raised her head to look at the people who meant so much to her. To the people she would do anything to keep in her life.
With the brightest smile that anyone had ever seen, Tsugumi said, "Right! Thank you so much, everyone!"
And with that, Tsugumi cheerfully joined her friends—her precious, irreplaceable friends in the early birthday party that they had prepared for her. The six of them would end up staying up far past midnight, and hence far into Tsugumi's actual birthday, before they would call it a day.
But none of them would have had it any other way.
And that wraps up today's oneshot. I hope you all enjoyed it, please leave a review on your way out, and until next time! Take care!