A/N—After reading NatsuHime's latest chapter, I wanted to write something with a birthday in it. Oh, and to clear up some apparent confusion, these drabble/short story thingies are in no way connected. If they were, I'd have three ongoing stories at once, which would be…gah. Yes, this thing has no plot. And yes, the color mauve is out to get Natsuki.
"Make a wish!"
Staring at her mauve cake and deciding that Mai had to have known how much she hated that color, she prodded it with the end of her fork. She hadn't made that many wishes on candles, and those years that she had she could barely remember. There had been her wish for a dog when she was younger, and then she'd gotten Duran. After that, they had all been rather trivial things, up until… She remembered wishing for a means of getting revenge. Not, she was sure, what every young girl wanted for her birthday. But this year was different. This year she had friends, and so… What did she want?
"What if I can't think of anything?"
Mai raised an eyebrow. "Just wish for something, anything. It's not that hard."
But it was 'that hard'. She hadn't had much practice with wishes; what were you supposed to want, anyway? She had money, she had her bike, she had that wolf plushie Shizuru had bought her the year before last. Wishing for world peace would be cheesy as well as impossible, and she was sure she wouldn't get a real wolf no matter how much she wanted one. Turning her head aside stubbornly, she ignored the cheerily smoking candle.
"I don't want anything. What am I supposed to-"
She was cut off by a pair of arms wrapping around her shoulders, and a voice mumbling in her ear. "Nothing? Nothing at all?"
"Sh-shizuru! Don't sneak up on people like that, it's not-"
Undaunted by her protest, the older girl only tightened her grip. "There's nothing Natsuki wants, nothing that would make her happy?"
Happy, huh? Relaxing into the hug, she let herself think about it. She was already happy, wasn't she? At least, happier than she'd been in a while. Friends, a party, Shizuru… Shizuru. Grinning, she closed her eyes and blew out the candle.