"Happy… AROUNDO!" Rinku's trademark cheer was audible in the background of the closing verse of their closing song. Just like that, the year was over and they were brought right back around to the very beginning all over again.

Fitting, Kyoko thought, eyes flicking up from her phone as a certain overeager vocalist came flying into the Yoba cafeteria. She hasn't changed a bit!

This very cafeteria was where she and Rinku spoke for the very first time. Was the universe trying to tell Kyoko something with all these overlapping, circular circumstances? Circle, round, link, Rinku, Hapiara… It really was all connected, wasn't it?

Spurred on by fate, Kyoko finally rose from her seat to find Rinku. Perhaps they could eat tog—"EEHHHH?!" Kyoko was suddenly face to, well, food with a literal tower of items from the menu. Rinku peeked around the tower and her eyes lit up.

"Oh! Kyoko! Did you wanna eat together?!" The food swayed dangerously and Kyoko could only gawk up at it.

Several minutes later, though, Rinku had already made quite a dent in her meal. Kyoko sat across from her, chuckling as she chowed down on a burger. It really was exactly like their very first encounter.

"—mmmssspeaking of!" Rinku cried suddenly, slurping down her last noodle. "I have something at my house that I want to give you if you can come over after school! Hapiara won't be practicing, or anything like that, so I'm free all day!"

Not for the first time did Rinku effortlessly catch Kyoko off guard, but hey, going along with whatever she said hadn't let Kyoko yet! So…

ooo

"It's funny! We've been friends for so long now and I've never invited you to my room before!" Rinku gushed like someone a decade younger as she led Kyoko upstairs by the hand, beaming. "I can't wait to show you around!"

She stopped dead in her tracks and gasped. Kyoko bit her lip in a knowing smile. Here it comes…

"That's right… This is… HAPPY AROUNDO!" Rinku's delight was only slightly dampened when, while jumping spinning through the air, her wrist smacked a painting hanging on the wall.

"Woah!" Both she and Kyoko lunged, focused only on catching the painting as it seemed to fall in slow motion right before their very eyes. Because they failed to take one another into account, they smacked first into each other, then the wall itself, just barely catching the painting by their fingertips. Kyoko's eyes darted to Rinku's hand, which was pressed over her own. Rinku, meanwhile, giggled shakily.

"Close call!" she cried, meeting Kyoko's eyes breathlessly. Suddenly, Kyoko was also rendered breathless.

Finally, though, Rinku moved her hand, and she and Kyoko managed to get painting hanging on the wall again.

"And it's mostly straight," Rinku said, holding out her hands in L-shapes to measure the perimeter of the painting. "It's straight enough." Her grandma wouldn't notice a thing! Rinku had something much more important to get back to, after all. She grabbed Kyoko's hand again, smiling blissfully as she dragged the surprised and bemused girl the rest of the way to her bedroom.

How Rinku, Kyoko smirked as her eyes were suddenly bombarded by bright colors, cute plushies, animal photographs from Africa, and a desk covered in shells, including the conch her parents sent her for Christmas. Kyoko took a closer look at the other shells, the one Rinku gave her last year still in her own bedroom. They're all round…

Even if the shells weren't all perfectly circular, per se, every single one of them was at least round or spiraled.

But if Kyoko thought Rinku had a strange obsession with circles, she had yet to see what Rinku had in store for her! While she inspected Rinku's desk, Rinku grabbed a small folder from her nightstand and held it out to Kyoko, suddenly shy.

Kyoko raised her eyebrows as she took the folder from Rinku, then she gasped softly. Inside were a collection of drawings, each one slightly better than the last, and all of them were somehow related to circles.

The first was just a black DJ disc, but their unit logos were cut in half and placed side by side, their colors blending and superimposing at the edges. The next was Nyochio in a Peaky cap, drawn stylistically to be as round and cartoonish as possible. Then there was one of Kyoko and Rinku holding hands and singing at one another, a microphone stand between them. There was another copy of the same picture, except drawn at a higher angle so that Kyoko could see the way her and Rinku's arms made a circle as they held hands. Their mouths, and the microphone, and the spotlight under which they stood were all circular too. And so were all the music notes Rinku drew floating around the mic.

"Rinku… When…?" Why…?" They were beautiful, and Kyoko felt her heart flutter, but she didn't understand why.

"Oh, just ever since I met you!" Rinku grinned. "Well, sorta…" She tapped her chin. As she told Kyoko the very first time they spoke, she was a huge fan of Peaky P-key. That never changed, even as her own unit eventually became a rival to Peaky. And that was the heart of Rinku's gift.

She was eternally grateful for Kyoko's continued friendship, because it meant that she did not see it as a conflict of interest with Peaky. That was something Rinku used to fear, because Maho and Muni both pointed out that it could be a possibility. What was it that Muni called it? Fritterizing with the enemy? It sounded yummy to Rinku, because fritters were yummy, but from the way Muni and Maho said it, it was bad. But if Kyoko wasn't an enemy, maybe it could be good!

And Kyoko never felt like an enemy! She's always been so nice to me, even inviting me to sing with her onstage after the first time we met!

"I guess, consider it a Happy Arou—New Year—gift from me?" Rinku grinned sheepishly, clasping her hands together hopefully as Kyoko looked back and forth between the drawings and the drawer. Kyoko beamed and nodded.

"I'm sorry I didn't get you anything as awesome as this, but it's definitely been really great knowing you, and I'm also glad we were able to remain friends!" She held out a hand for Rinku to shake, but she already knew that—

"Oof!" Some of the wind was knocked out of Kyoko as the other vocalist lunged at her with a hug, arms wrapping in a circle around her.

Yep, and here we go again…

"Happy…"

Around and aro—

"AROUNDO!" They spun, spiraled, circled, sang, and danced long after the circular sun was replaced by the round moon. No matter the time of day, or night, the party never had to end! It would just go around and around and around in an endless spiral, an endless cycle, an endless circle, linked together by pure happiness!

AN: Requested by one of my best friends, Net Neutrality, we have Rinku/Kyoko from D4DJ with the symbol of a circle, chosen for the "straight as a circle" joke (which is all of D4 tbh, #D4DGay), plus how often circles show up in other Pride symbols (rings, flags, gender signs). And of course, D4 uses it as a symbol for connection or "linking" (hence Rinku's name), which is also pretty gae.

Also another D4 song request from moi: Listen to "Around and Around", because I certainly did while writing this!