A week later, Gumi's new album came out. It was a big celebration because it was entirely made of songs not yet released to the public, and making it had to be carefully balanced with maintaining constant releases. Quite a few months of work had gone into the project, and while the songs didn't exactly tell a story, there was a common link between them all. I didn't entirely get it, but I was happy for her anyway. Plus, the songs were great. Still trippy, but great.
The party was at the office, and all the Internet Co. 'loids were there, except Ryuto. He's a bit young for this kind of celebration anyways.
Gumi was pretty close to all the them...quite the contrary to me. I tend to stick only to Gakupo and Cul, so I spent most of my time talking with those two. But polite congratulations were passed around from singers to crew and vice versa, so mingling was forced.
This was the perfect occasion to give her the gift, though. I handed it to her as if it was something I had happened to pick up somewhere, and I needed to get rid of the thing. But she could see I had put time into it, and that's what really matters.
Wanna know? It was a little bunny holding a carrot, that I saw while I was shopping. That's cute enough, but I added some goggles-glasses-things; a perfect copy of Gumi's pair. I couldn't resist. A post-it was stuck to the carrot with a little 'congrats' on it, too.
She thanked me, and I could see she was resisting the urge to just jump me right there. I smiled, patting her head, silently promising more when we got home.
And then the party went to shit, at least in my opinion. The manager pulled me away, talking about money. Blech. Profits, interest, debts... Then there was competition, our 'opponents' were brought up, then an idea to keep interest on the company...so incredibly boring.
The only thing that kept me awake was Gumi's smoldering gaze fixed on me from the opposite end of the room.
It's so weird nobody's noticed yet.