"This party is going to be awesome. When's everybody gonna show up?" Bokuto shouted.
"In six hours," said Akaashi deadpan.
Bokuto's jittering excitement deflated. "Oh, am I early?"
Birthday boy Keiji Akaashi chose not to countenance Bokuto's question with the obvious answer. It was 10 in the morning, with the party at Akaashi's home scheduled for 4. Bokuto had come stomping in with a crudely wrapped gift and was happily ushered in by Keiji's doting mom. The two boys pattered upstairs, where Bokuto bemoaned the lack of decorations in the setter's bedroom—an unsurprising fact given the party wouldn't take place in the bedroom.
"So, who else is coming?" Bokuto asked.
"Most of the team, some classmates, and people from Nekoma, except Kuroo apparently."
The last bit piqued Bokuto's interest. "Huh? Why not?"
Keiji shrugged. "I texted him this morning, but he didn't reply."
Koutarou furrowed his brow. "Sounds sus."
"Maybe he's studying," said Keiji.
"Or…." Bokuto's leading statement got Akaashi's attention. The cogs in the ace's brain whined sinisterly. "What if he's been kidnapped?"
"Or maybe he's studying," Akaashi repeated, not one to be pulled into Koutarou's suggestions. Ignoring Keiji, Bokuto tapped on his phone enough that Akaashi couldn't help but be suspicious. "What are you doing?"
"Kuroo and I installed one of those apps on our phones to track them, so that if something bad happens, we can know where our phones are."
"Are you sure he didn't do that so that he could find you if you got lost?"
"Hey!" Bokuto snapped. "That was one time!"
Bokuto's phone pinged with a signal. He zoomed in on the 2D map. As much as he tried to pretend like he didn't care, Akaashi couldn't resist taking a peek. A red dot on the screen denoted the phone's location.
"That's Kuroo's house," Bokuto observed. "Suspicious," he muttered without explaining why someone being in their own house would be cause for concern. Then Keiji alerted Bokuto to the fact the dot appeared to be moving outside. The dot crept across the screen, across the neighbor's yard, to what was presumably the neighbor's front door.
"Oh, no," Bokuto began to panic. "Maybe the neighbors kidnapped Kuroo."
"That's Kenma's house," Akaashi sensibly noted.
"Kenma kidnapped Kuroo?!" Bokuto gasped, and Akaashi didn't get a chance to say otherwise, because the dot started moving again, this time toward the street. It continued at a walking pace down the sidewalk.
"He's perfectly fine," Akaashi impatiently dismissed.
"Maybe," said Bokuto, not yet willing to get out of detective mode just yet, "but Kuroo's being sketch in ignoring you. We have to find out."
"No, we don't," Akaashi replied, but Bokuto could no longer be impeded.
"You'd think if he went to Kenma's house that Kenma would be with him," Koutarou surmised.
"Mhm…," Akaashi grunted.
"That's it! I should ask Kenma what's up," Bokuto said and subsequently read the text message allowed as he typed. "Is Kuroo OK?"
"That's too obvious," said Akaashi.
"Oh, right, right." He typed another message. "Are you two being kidnapped?"
"That's even more obvious," Keiji said.
Koutarou shrieked in frustration and clambered to his feet. "Then we have no choice. We have to follow them, confirm they're not being kidnapped, and find out why Kuroo is being so stupid."
"I really don't think they're being kidnapped," Akaashi reasoned.
"But we don't know that! We owe it to our friends to save them when they're in trouble. We'll find out what's going on and make it back in time for the party."
As Akaashi followed Bokuto downstairs—more so to prevent Bokuto from making a fool of himself—he sighed. "If they really are in danger, I don't think our biggest concern should be making it back in time for the party."
Having made his way to the department store downtown freely and safely, Tetsurou Kuroo was not the victim of a kidnapping. But he was in trouble—if he couldn't find a last-minute birthday gift for Akaashi, having forgotten it was that particular person's birthday today until Keiji incidentally reminded him by text that morning.
Beside him, wholly supportive while being wholly unhelpful, stood Kenma, tapping away at Animal Crossing on his Switch.
"Why am I here with you on a Saturday morning again?" Kozume asked without taking his eyes off the console.
"'Cause you need to help me pick out a gift!" Kuroo whined, rifling through a T-shirt display. He removed a kitschy black shirt that read "I 3 JP" in place of "Japan." "Does this scream Akaashi to you?" he asked, holding it in front of himself to model it.
"That screams 'bad gift-giver' to me," said Kenma flatly.
Kuroo dramatically exhaled.
"Look. I don't see what the big deal is," Kenma stated bluntly.
"The big deal is I forgot it's Akaashi's birthday, and I can't let him know it."
"Ooh, I caught an oarfish," Kenma perked up at his fishing prize in the game.
Kuroo wailed. "Why are you no help?"
Bokuto gazed up at the store with a mix of awe and confusion.
"You sure this is it?" he asked Akaashi, who currently held Koutarou's phone watching the tracker that indicated their target was somewhere inside the store.
"That's what it says," Keiji answered.
"The kidnappers are probably buying supplies before their cross-country escape," Bokuto deduced.
When they walked through the front door, Koutarou spun around, looking deep in thought.
"What's wrong?" his compatriot asked.
"Wouldn't it be dangerous for us to both approach at once?"
"No," said Keiji, still hopelessly trying to get Bokuto to consider a possibility other than abduction.
"You should stay further away and watch me from a distance," Koutarou dramatically insisted. "I'll approach Kuroo and Kenma and act all smooth to get them to drop a hint about their situation." He marched onward. Keiji dreaded what "smooth" meant in the ace's mind.
After hopelessly perusing many more aisles, Kuroo shrieked at the utter failure to find anything worth giving. Kenma had spent the entire time digitally fishing or doing some such thing. Tetsurou gave him an unnoticed evil eye.
"I'm going to the bathroom. Try not to get bitten by a tarantula."
"Wrong island," Kenma said.
"I don't care!" exclaimed Kuroo, stomping away.
Kenma didn't falter. He stood in the hairdryer aisle, oblivious to Bokuto peeking around the corner.
Under normal circumstances, Koutarou would stride right over crying, "hey, hey, hey," but this, being a possible criminal enterprise, required subtlety. Thus, Bokuto innocently wandered down the aisle pretending to shop, took interest in a box, removed the hairdryer from inside, and lazily waved it around his head in a blatant indication he had no idea how to use one. Then, while gripping the hairdryer like a pistol, he inched closer to Kenma, who had noticed Bokuto out the corner of his eye but was so absorbed in the game he didn't bother to react.
"Hey," Koutarou whispered when he reached Kenma's position. "Where's you-know-who?" he said, in reference to the alleged kidnapper.
"He's in the bathroom," Kenma replied of Kuroo, before noticing Bokuto's eyeballs darting around in search of anyone suspicious. "Uh, what are you doing?"
"Shhh. Pretend you don't me," Bokuto said.
"Ooookay?" Kenma said.
"Where's Kuroo?"
"I just said he's—"
Bokuto flinched when he spotted Akaashi nonchalantly pacing down the aisle towards them, totally blowing their cover. Koutarou dropped the hairdryer with a clatter and dragged Akaashi around the corner out of sight. With his arms he trapped Keiji in front of an endcap display of diapers. When Bokuto peeked down the aisle again, he saw Kuroo sauntering towards Kenma.
Kozume fleeted between looking at the spot where he last saw Bokuto and Kuroo.
"What's wrong?" Tetsurou asked.
Kenma mulled a moment and decided it was too irritating to recall what nonsense had just transpired. "Nothing."
"Okay," Kuroo said. After leaving the bathroom, Keiji's mom had called to confirm if the teen was still coming. She said she was picking up the birthday cake from the store's bakery and offered to give Kuroo and Kenma a ride home when she learned they were there. "I just got word from the organizer. We're meeting at the bakery counter, so we gotta make this quick." With that, he speedily led Kenma away.
"Did you hear that?" Koutarou whispered to Keiji. "They're meeting the 'organizer.' Maybe they're getting trafficked overseas."
Akaashi gently shoved Bokuto back.
"They clearly aren't under duress. I'm just going to walk up and say hi to them—"
"What if they've been brainwashed?" Bokuto warned.
Then they're no worse than some people I know, Akaashi thought.
Kuroo trudged past the clothing section, desperately debating what to buy, when an eerie feeling told him to look back. There he spotted Akaashi and Bokuto, the latter slouching like a bad secret agent, trailing him at a distance. Kuroo flinched and looked straight ahead.
"Turn left and don't look behind you," Kuroo whispered to his comrade. He tried to be subtle, but instead darted into a sea of clothing displays in such an obvious manner it made Kenma jump before he tailed begrudgingly.
"Come on. We're going to lose them," Koutarou urged and picked up the pace.
"Wait up," Keiji called exasperatedly.
Soon Bokuto and Akaashi found themselves wading through a sea of shirts on hangers displayed too tightly together. Bokuto kept a lookout but couldn't spot any movement amidst the sea of fabric.
Akaashi surveyed the rows of clothes and spotted a circular rack, stuffed to the max with shirts. Sticking an inch above the shirts was someone's ghastly black bedhead, and Akaashi pretended he saw nothing.
"They're not here," Keiji lied and pushed Bokuto out of the clothing section.
Once Akaashi and Bokuto had gone, Kuroo cartoonishly stuck his head through the shirts and urged Kenma to follow him.
"Can I say this is getting ridiculous?" Kenma bluntly said as he languidly followed Kuroo's escape.
Despite continual searching, no luck could be had finding the rogue Nekoma students. Bokuto and Akaashi found themselves outside the bakery where the staff were putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake. Nobody suspicious loitered around, despite this being the alleged rendezvous spot with the kidnapping's orchestrator. A person approaching scared the boys momentarily.
"Oh, Keiji!" the boy's mother declared in surprise. "What are you doing here?" She hid any indication she was here to pick up her son's cake.
"Mrs. Akaashi!" Bokuto cried. "We're here because something horrible has happened."
"He's exaggerating," Keiji interjected. "We're just trying to buy some melons because the one Bokuto got was rotten." He tugged his ace's ear close to his mouth. "Don't scare my mom," he whispered, neither legitimizing Bokuto's imagination nor hurting Bokuto's feelings. Koutarou nodded.
"Yes, ma'am," Bokuto said, his tune changed. "I hate rotten melons. They're so rotten and icky and, uh, rotten." Akaashi looked away in embarrassment.
"Oh, I see," the woman said, with a motherly guise that made it impossible to tell if she bought the ruse or was just being polite. "You two continue shopping. I just have to pick up one thing." As she finished, her intuition detected the finished cake being placed on the display rack for pickup.
Facing the bakery counter, Bokuto and Akaashi couldn't see Kuroo and Kenma walking away, having spotted the pair talking to Keiji's mother. Kuroo peeked back to confirm they still weren't looking and then ducked down the kitchenware aisle. When Kenma didn't follow, Tetsurou yanked him by the sleeve to make him follow.
Bokuto turned around just in time to see a hand reach out, nab Kenma's sleeve, and tug him away. Koutarou flinched in fear.
"Pardon us, Mrs. Akaashi," Bokuto said, surprising himself at how calm he was remaining despite what he just witnessed. He snaked his arm around Keiji's elbow and then made a mad dash with the woman's son in pursuit of Kenma and his presumed abductor.
"OK, it's hopeless," Kuroo said to Kenma, breathing heavily. "We gotta get out of this store."
"What's this we, kemosabe?" Kenma said with perfect nonchalance. Kuroo snarled.
Just then, Bokuto skidded up to the entrance of the aisle, towing a confused Akaashi.
"Run, you guys!" Koutarou shouted, abandoning all attempts at discretion. "We're gonna save you!"
That absurd statement got Kenma to look up from his game. Kuroo blinked in confusion.
Behind Kuroo and Kenma, a teenage bystander in a long coat knelt down, studying a shelf appliances to find something on his parents' behalf. Bokuto assumed anyone in such an outfit must be a crook. He grabbed a mug off the adjacent shelf, wound up like a baseball pitcher, and chucked the mug at the suspect….
"And that's how Tora ended up with that bump on his head!" Kuroo finished, recounting the day's events, to the raucous laughter of Nekoma and Fukurodani students gathered in Akaashi's living room that evening.
"It's not funny!" Yamamoto protested, a noticeable red lump on his shaved scalp.
"Can't believe Bokuto thought you ghosting was a sign of getting kidnapped!" Yaku cackled. Koutarou Bokuto pouted in the corner with embarrassment.
"At least it was nothing more serious," Inuoka pointed out, taking a bite of cake.
In the dining room, Lev yelled over Kenma's shoulder to not get distracted and bitten by a tarantula, which led to Kenma getting distracted and bitten by a tarantula. Kuroo, meanwhile, pattered over to the birthday boy Akaashi with a hastily giftwrapped box.
"Hey. Since my secret is already out, today gave me the perfect gift idea," Tetsurou said. When Keiji unwrapped it, he unveiled a porcelain mug with an illustration of a great-horned owl that could almost resemble Bokuto. Keiji smiled.
It wasn't necessarily the best birthday Akaashi ever had, but it was certainly the most unforgettable.