Would You Rather?

Birthday?

Saturday seemed really busy for me, not only did I have an early morning shift at my part-time job, but there was a training session scheduled nearly precisely afterward, causing me to have to run to Wakasa's gym while snacking on a sandwich I quickly purchased in the convenience store.

Once I stepped my foot inside the building, the first thing I heard was.

"Here you are, and we thought you wouldn't show up." Being so out of breath caused me to just wave my hand, then I drank some water before arriving at the changing room.

Under the pass, I heard the strangest of things from Benkei right after he asked me to put all my strength into the next singular punch since he wanted to assess me on it.

"Finally I can feel some improvement, although it's maybe only like something as small as 1 percent." I was astonished by hearing this, glancing at my stats I could see how I had 31 points in strength. Unlike before my stats were going to work normally now, but could he really tell the difference of one singular stat raise? If so that was freaking impressive. What kind of power was this?

"Come on stop spacing out, we are not done yet!" I shook away any of the distracting thoughts and continued the training. When the session was over Benkei decided to share his newfound discovery with Wakasa.

"I thought you would never improve as things were standing." It wasn't my fault that previously my stats were in an unmoving state, always seen as average. But my presumption was this man had no hope of me becoming a great fighter. Did they really enjoy projecting their friend into me? But wasn't Shinichiro mostly described as bad in a fight and weak to women? I wasn't, no wait a moment I always tried to somehow pamper the girls and give them compliments every chance I got. Maybe it created some sort of misunderstanding, not that I minded, being a little bit gay for them pretty girls was justifiable.

"I will show you that Senju knows what she's doing." I puffed my chest and went to change my clothes. But shortly after I went in I received a call.

"Michi!" I heard as soon I put the lure to my ear.

"Hello to you too I guess." That was a strange way to start a conversation, no hello just yelling my name.

"Why aren't you here?" Now I was confused, where was here exactly?

"What are you even talking about?" Upon hearing my response she must have realized something.

"Don't tell me no one told you about it." Told me what?

"I'm still not sure what you're talking about, a little explanation would be nice." She proceeded to sigh heavily, her voice sounded disappointed.

"I told the guys to inform you about Mikey's birthday party, which is today mind you, I can't believe everyone suddenly forgot to invite you." I guess in Emma's case she must have been busy with preparations, Keisuke forgot perhaps because he was still angry at me, and the rest must have put their whole trust in Keisuke to do the job in their stead. I heard her yell at someone on the other side, but then she continued our conversation as if nothing happened.

"Listen I know it's a last-minute invitation, but can you come?" I wasn't sure I had the mental capacity to see so many people at once, the part-time job already exhausted me with the human interaction quota for today.

"But I don't really have any birthday presents ready, it sounds kinda crappy to arrive without any." But Emma suggested me an idea.

"How about you just give him his favorite snack? You can buy it on the way." However, I wasn't convinced.

"Wouldn't the other people do the same?" They were after all just teenagers with not much money to spend, wouldn't they already have thought about giving snacks to this boy?