Notes: I should stop listening to little voices that bounce around in my head—they always give me weird ideas. This time, they hit me with Yukihiko plot bunnies and firmly told me: "You see when Yukihiko meets Ginji for the very first time on the ship? When he said that he got an ice cream that was meant for his missing brother--while we know perfectly that they shared the body? I want explanation about the ice cream, now"
What could I do other than saluted and do what the voices bid? I'm, after all, a devoted Miroku fangirl.
Revised: Typos & Grammar fixed. Many thanks to Rabid Lola!
Tradition
For a traditional Japanese family like Miroku, birthdays weren't something they needed to celebrate. It was--according to Natsuhiko, just another pathetic useless foreign tradition that they certainly didn't need to follow.
But that didn't stop them from making an exception for their youngest sibling.
If Yukihiko himself were asked, he would say that it started when he reached the age of ten, though he absolutely haveno idea on how it happened.
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He remembered it all began after they had finished a job, and were dining peacefully in a cafe. Yukihiko, who was exhausted from having to stay up all night long, found himself drifting to sleep not too soon after the third menu was served. He was jerked awake when somewhere in his groggy state of mind he heard Kirara-neesan ask, "And what would Yukihiko-chan like?"
Startled, Yukihiko's eyes darted to the menus that hung on the cafe's wall, picked the most colorful one, and answered quickly, "An ice cream would be nice, thank you"
The silence that met his answer signaled that, whatever the question was, it was not related to desserts.
(As it turned out, their previous client was being rather generous and gave a hefty sum of bonus. His siblings were discussing what to do with the rest of the money and can't reach an agreement. Natsuhiko and Hikage intended to buy a new furniture set, Tokisada had been eyeing a treadmill for a while now, and Kirara wanted a bath tub. It wasn't that the money wasn't enough. It was that the limited space in their apartment made it difficult to make the choice.
They were in the middle of a heated debate between the sofa set and the treadmill for 20 minutes before Kirara yelled that it was Tokisada's birthday today and they should been nice and give him a treadmill. Everyone—Tokisada included—was still dumbstruck at the (seemingly) foolish reason when Kirara turned and asked for their youngest brother's opinion)
It was Kirara who broke the silence, "Yukihiko-chan likes ice cream, ne? How sweet" She giggled and raised her voice ever so slightly, "We'll buy you ice cream for your every birthday then"
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And thus began the unusual tradition of buying-ice-cream-on-Yukihiko's-date-of-birth, which of course didn't relate to any useless foreign tradition called a birthday celebration.
Miroku Tsubaki and Ukyou didn't see any harm in buying their brother a cone of ice cream every year--they were usually busy bickering about which flavor they would buy for him (both never reached an agreement and ended up tossing a coin to decide).
Miroku Tokisada would say that they had the money anyway, and Yukihiko had indeed contributed to their job--so if the boy wanted an ice cream every year, he was okay with that.
Miroku Natsuhiko would raise his eyebrows disapprovingly at the 'celebration' word--because the Miroku, he insists, didn't celebrate something a trivial and useless thing like that. But he agreed that there was nothing wrong if his siblings wanted to buy ice cream for Yukihiko for every week of the entire year anyway and thus ended the discussion.
(Miroku Hikage didn't even bother to argue whether they should or should not celebrate Yukihiko's birthday--he just bought the ice cream when Yukihiko turned twelve. It was peach flavored.
And as for Kirara...well, she was the one who initiated the whole idea)
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So, during that particular day of every year, Yukihiko would find himself in front of an ice cream parlor, with a confused (if not freaked out) clerk that would swear that the customer before him had been someone else just a second before.
Yukihiko would also find himself holding a cone of ice cream.
He could always tell whom the clerk meant without having to listen to the description, and he always thanked that particular older sibling privately before he thanked all of his siblings in general.
This year, when he awoke and met the clerk who was too busy apologizing that they didn't have change and would give him two cones instead, Yukihiko smiled and ask if they had espresso flavor.
His eldest brother couldn't say no to caffeine anyway.
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Notes#2: After that, Yukihiko met Tare Ginji who looked like a lost little boy (and a cute hungry chibi at that) and because he felt quite content with waffy feelings from the siblings' moment of bonding, sweetly gives his present to the hungry chibi. This incident invoked the wrath of the rest of Miroku--especially Natsuhiko who needed caffeine after hearing Miss Hera's gibberish about her statuephile boyfriend for hours.
-beams up proudly at her stupid theory-