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As a reminder, I'm doing this as part of KiriArgo week 2021, an event I'm hosting on the SAO Fanfiction Central Discord with Agent94. Link here if you want to join: sNFEpCSPSc
Without further ado, let's get on with the chapter!
Day 3: Secrets
The stool wobbled as I pinned the banner in place. It was a lovely shade of yellow, with blue lettering. It had been really hard to hide it after I had bought it. But now it was going to be worth all the trouble.
Of more concern was the cake. I had decided to bake it today, while Tomo was still on her trip to Okinawa, for a video game convention. It hadn't been terribly difficult, although Suguha had coached me through a few of the more difficult steps from over the phone, and now it was sitting in the oven, steadily baking.
Technically, it wouldn't be her birthday for another few days, but this was the longest she was guaranteed to be out of the house for months, and I needed all the prep time I could get.
"You know, I'm fairly certain that Tomo would be perfectly happy with a normal party," Suguha said, her voice tinny from the speaker on my phone.
I smiled, stepping down from the stool and surveying the banner. 'Happy Birthday' hung proudly against the wall, framed by a pair of carefully-placed balloons. I had wrapped my presents, and the ones from Suguha, Asuna, Liz, Klein and our other friends. It had been tricky, having to set all this up in the span of a single afternoon, but it would all be worth it.
"Yeah, she'd probably be happy with a normal party," I agreed, picking up the phone as I walked into the kitchen. "But she's always surprising me with things." Things like free tickets to a lecture on the latest in VR tech; or a hidden area in ALO, GGO, or one of the other VR games that we played together. Stuff that she had clearly gone out of her way to get, and I hadn't gotten her anything.
"I want to give my girlfriend a surprise of my own," I finished, checking the timer on the cake—I still had a few minutes left—and putting the leftover tape scraps in the garbage bin.
"A noble goal," My sister said in a tone that was a bit too formal to not be mocking. I sighed.
"At least tell me that you'll be here on time." I said, opening the fridge to make sure that the icing wasn't too congealed to spread on the cake.
"Of course I am," Suguha said, her voice tight with annoyance. "I'm literally walking onto your street right—" She stopped mid sentence, and I felt a warning bell go off in my head.
"Sugu?" When she didn't respond, I spoke again. "Suguha?"
"We're in trouble," She hissed, and I could almost imagine her pressed up against a wall, peeking around the corner. "Tomo's home early."
The clipped words made my stomach drop straight through my body and settle somewhere in the lower half of my right leg.
"I'll try to delay her, but we'll need to get in contact with everyone else and tell them to come through the back door." Suguha said. "Can you contact them? preferably before Klein makes a fool of himself?"
"No," I said, just as the timer beeped to signal the cake was ready. "I'll delay Tomo; she'll talk to me longer. You get everyone together."
"Okay," Suguha said, and then there was no more time for talking. I hung up and dashed outside after turning off the oven, just in time to see my girlfriend lifting a bulky bag out of the side seat of her car.
"Tomo!" I called down, making her look up. I waved, and her eyes lit up as she saw me.
"Kii-bou!" She waved back, almost dropping her bag and I ran for the stairs.
When I got to the bottom, Tomo had taken two bags out, and was working on another.
"How much stuff did you get?" I asked, somewhat surprised at the sheer number of bags. Normally she only came home with a single bag that wasn't even full from the conventions she went to as part of her job.
"Not much," my girlfriend said, reaching an arm into the back seat of the car to drag out the final bag that I could see. She had changed out of her business suit on the way home, into a tank top that highlighted her muscular arms and well-defined shoulders. I swallowed, my eyes tracking the flex of her muscles.
No! I needed to keep her here, not be horny. Horny was the enemy, and the enemy must be defeated.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, focusing on the movement of my breath in and out. When I opened my eyes again, Tomo was looking at me, her hands on her hips, and smirking.
"How was the convention?" I asked, very carefully looking only at my girlfriend's eyes, and not the toned muscle of her arms.
Tomo chuckled, stretching her arms up over her head, lifting her tank top enough to hint at the toned abs that lay beneath it.
God, I was too horny for this.
"It was pretty good," My girlfriend said, her smile telling me that she knew exactly what she was doing. "Did ya miss me?"
"Very much," I said, opening my arms for a hug. Tomo wrapped her arms around me, and for a second everything was bliss. We had fought long and hard to reach this point. From Aincrad, to Alfheim where she had battled Sugou to free me from his experiments, to the BoB when we had tracked down some of the Laughing Coffin members that had tried to restart their killing spree.
But now all of that was behind us, and our biggest "problem" now was missing each other during the trips that we'd sometimes have to take for work.
"So, care to show me what you got?" I asked, interested in the boxes that Tomo had moved out of the car.
"Sure," My girlfriend said, reaching down and grabbing the flap of one of the boxes. "I found some really cool stuff."
"Did you grab another pair of cat ears?" I asked, even as I walked closer. "Because I told you, the one pair is enough, and I'm not certain anything other than black would go with my hair."
"Oh, no, this pair is for me," Tomo said, dragging a pair of yellow cat ears out of the box and slipping them on her head. "Nya~" She pawed at the air with one hand, sticking her tongue out.
I flicked her on the forehead in retaliation. "Save it for the bedroom."
"Why, you don't want ta play out here?" Tomo said, taking out a strip of leather with a bell on the front and fastening it around her neck. A bell collar I realized. "I've got so many new toys to try out." She grinned, running one hand up my side.
"Unlike you, I'm not an exhibitionist," I said, nudging her hand away and ignoring the faux-pout she directed at me and reaching into the box, grabbing what felt a lot like another bell and dragging it out.
A second bell collar dangled from my hand, and I felt my heart stutter.
"For when ya want ta be pampered." Tomo breathed in my ear, and I stuffed it back in the box, blushing furiously.
"Oy, keep it gentle!" my girlfriend yelped. "My new cloak's in there!"
"You got a new cloak?" I asked, well and truly surprised. Tomo had stubbornly held on to one cloak in VR, and an identical cloak IRL for as long as I had known her.
"Yeah, yeah, the sky's fallin', I know," Tomo grumbled, reaching in and grabbing what I had thought was the lining of the box and pulling it up, letting the contents gently tumble to the bottom. She whipped the forest green fabric around her, letting it unfold rapidly, before she swung it onto her shoulders in a single motion.
I clapped. It had been an amazing moment; Tomo standing tall with her cloak slowly settling into place, looking more like it was being blown in the wind. She pulled the hood up, and met my eyes with a grin.
"How do I look?" She asked, letting her arms drop to her sides so that the cloak draped without impediment. I paused, rubbing my chin in thought. It was a different color than her normal brown cloak, but it went well with her hair and eyes. Still, there was something off about her appearance. Oh, that was it.
"The cloak looks nice on you, but you should probably wear a different shirt with it," I said. "Oh, and lose the cat ears while you have your hood up. They don't bend nearly well enough."
"Alright," Tomo said, reaching under her hood and dragging the headband off.
"So, what's in this next box?" I asked, indicating the second container she had dragged out. Tomo's eyes lit up and as she opened the cardboard to reveal that it was stacked to the brim with books, I got a sinking feeling that I should have told her to moderate her spending.
Halfway through the third box, which turned out to be replica weapons, my phone beeped. I grabbed it out of my pocket and brought it up to view, grateful that Tomo was in a place where she couldn't just lean over and take a peak.
[Sugu]: Everyone's here except Agil, who said to start without him. You can bring your girlfriend up.
"And with a little sharpening, I might actually be able to practice my claw techniques IRL!" Tomo said, reverently placing the pair of metal claws back in the case. I thought that they were a wildly impractical weapon, even by the standards of VR, but my girlfriend made them work.
"That'll be really fun to see," I said, careful to keep my hands away from the potentially very sharp weapons. "Just be careful not to break them, I don't think these are as durable as your weapons in-game."
I carefully typed out a text to my sister. [Coming up]
"Now, let's get these inside so we can unpack them properly." I closed the flaps on the weapons box before Tomo could take out another deadly implement, then placed the first box, the one that contained the fetish gear on top of it. "I'll carry these up if you get the books."
"Sure ya don't want me ta carry them up?" Tomo smirked, lifting the box of light novels and manga up with one arm almost effortlessly. "I'd be able ta take all three, ya know."
"No, I'm good," I said, picking up the boxes and tucking them under my arm. The fetish box was so small that it fit easily in the gap between the top of the weapons box and my armpit. "Let's go."
As we walked up the stairs, I couldn't help but worry about how Tomo would take the surprise. She prided herself on being able to work out secrets and find things that people tried to keep hidden, and I had kept this a secret from her.
God, this was all going to go wrong wasn't it? Mom had told me that the foundation of a relationship was open communication back when I had asked for dating advice, and I'd mucked that up.
It was too late to call off the surprise party, and as Tomo's hand turned the doorknob, I felt my breath catch in my throat. I'd need to do something to make up for deceiving her. Maybe she'd like a trip to Akihabara?
Then, as my girlfriend pushed the door to our shared apartment open, a shout came from inside with all the force of a rock concert.
"SURPRISE!"
Tomo rocked back onto her heels, her eyes flying open as she took in the scene before her. Most of our friends stood on the other side of the room, Sinon on the far left, standing next to Keiko, who was holding a dragon plushie. Asuna stood next to the smaller girl, holding the cake that I had made, artfully decorated with the frosting from the fridge. My sister stood on Asuna's other side, with one arm wrapped around her. Ryoutarou and Rika rounded out the tableau, the two of them grinning and panting tiredly, as if they had just got done running. Knowing them, they probably had.
Tomo's head whipped back and forth between me and our friends, one hand coming up over her mouth. The box she had been carrying dropped to the floor, and my boxes almost followed them as I rushed over to her.
"You guys…" The journalist croaked out as she hunched over. Then she wrapped an arm around me and leapt into the room, heading straight for Asuna. I was dragged along, and I could see the shock grow in the fencer's eyes
"Wait, I'm holding the cake!" Asuna shouted, lifting the confectionary up above her head as a 120 pound blonde missile slammed into her. I grunted as Tomo's arm pressed around me tighter. Any more pressure and it would get difficult to breathe.
"Thank ya," Tomo cried into my shoulder. "Thank ya so much, Kii-bou,"
"Uhm-" I lifted my one free hand as best as I was able. "You're… welcome?"
Tomo tossed her head back and laughed, pulling away to clasp one hand onto my shoulder. "God, ya really got one over me, didn't ya? How long did it take ta set this all up?" She asked, peering around at the decorations I had put up and the pile of presents currently occupying the armchair.
"I set it up while you were at the convention," I said, fiddling with the cuff of my sleeve. "Uhm, do you like it?"
Tomo reached up to brush a hand across the tacky yellow-and-blue banner that I had set up what seemed like only a few minutes earlier. She turned back to me, and pulled me into a one-armed hug again, whispering a few words into my ear.
"I love it."
I felt all the stress of making sure things got set up right, of keeping this party a secret, of the worry that she wouldn't like it, fade away.
"Thank y'all so much for coming!" Tomo yelled, cutting through the nervous tension that had permeated the room. "Now let's get this party started!"
And with that, the chaos broke loose.
Rika produced a bottle of wine from somewhere, and started trying to open the cork with her teeth. Suguha wrapped an arm around Shino and dragged her into a conversation with Ryoutarou, something about sword technique. Keiko nervously stepped up to my girlfriend and wordlessly offered up the red-and-gold dragon plushie she was holding.
"I couldn't get this wrapped in time, but… uhm… happy birthday?"
Tomo smiled, reaching out to pat the smaller girl on the head.
"Aw, thanks squirt," she lifted the dragon out of an indignant Keiko's hands and slung it over her shoulder.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Asuna try to juggle the cake with one hand while trying to get Rika to stop biting into the cork. We have a bottle opener here—no I don't want to "give it a try" thank you very much!
I chuckled at the scene, and moved in to save the cake so that the fencer could focus on stopping her friend from ruining her teeth.
It looked like there wasn't going to be a dull moment at this party.