#AUGHGHH I MISSED THEM SO MUCH!!! writing Toma feels like coming home after a long time away... <3 and with your Shin to boot!!!

[yeonban]

@dangaer, cont'd.

                            ❛     seems like every single one     i have gets stolen by everyone else.   ❜  he phrases it like a suggestion, but he doesn’t mean it like that, not really —- he can tell they are, more than aware when a singular conversation one day leads to discovering a certain pink haired colleague in the same shop he tries out, a mathematical genius in a familiar isle, an forever-followed bluenette causing a sell out of … everything remotely similar to the singular hint she had offered him, though he struggles to admit the full story, frown deepening. while no stranger to uncertainty, he’s always thought he held the upper hand when it comes to … his childhood friends, he thinks, despite how distant he’s slowly become. he may not know what it’s taken for toma to get here, but to be in the same predicament together … he’s pretty grateful, really; it makes his idea easier, a solution for them both rather than it benefitting only one.  

                         ❛   the only way i can think to give her something special now is to come up with a surprise … like getting something together, this time.   ❜  he offers, a little too forwardly. ❛   i can pay, and with all those girls you hang out with, you know the latest trends, don’t you?   ❜  

❛ Yours too, huh...? ❜ He can't say it's a surprising turn of events, not when he himself has been trailed by their colleagues all over the city similarly to a criminal who's escaped confinement and was endangering public safety. A hand rises to rustle through blond locks while recalling the memory, and it's with a soft sigh that he declares to having found himself in the same boat. ❛ I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it was getting pretty hard to when Kent and Waka seemed to come out of the woodworks wherever I happened to check for gifts. ❜

The idea of a shared gift prompts Toma's gaze to lift from the ground onto his childhood friend's face and after a momentary pause he smiles, an expression of tender happiness that would seem mildly unfit for the occasion (it isn't the saving of money on either of their parts that gladdens him, it's the fact that Shin suggested they work together... as they haven't done in longer than Toma would have liked). ❛ A joint effort, hm? Not a bad idea. No matter what gift we'll settle on, I think she'll be happy even just from seeing us present it together. ❜ And that wouldn't apply to her alone, either. Latching onto the rare opportunity to spend more time with Shin without being kept at an arm's length would certainly be akin to a balm for Toma's heart, as well.

❛ Well... I do, but it depends on what we want. I think she'll have enough clothes and accessories to last her the entire year if we think about what the others have bought. ❜ Especially if Mine and Ikki had any sort of say in it. A thoughtful silence takes over while he silently ponders on an unique gift she would enjoy, before a soft interjection ('oh!') betrays his potential solution as he ambitiously glances over. ❛ ...Say, Shin? What if we book her a vacation? She's been looking a bit worse for the wear lately, so I think she might be stressing too much. A break from university and work would do her well. I have some friends who work at inns, so we could get a discount, and maybe I could score a room before they put it up on their site too. ❜