Kindergarten Bully [Oikawa Tooru] | ✔

Season Finale: Holy Holy Night

Happy birthday.

— Tooru Oikawa to Naoko Makoshima

xXx

Naoko stared blankly at the paper when she got home, having retrieved it from their mailbox. The school was really going all out with this year's Christmas party if they were mass producing and mailing the flyers to the homes of every student in Aobajosai to make sure that they got the memo.

On the kitchen table was a shopping bag with cursive writing on one side, the insignia of a popular designer store. Inside were the clothes that Ayame had painstakingly picked out for her; the clothes that Anzu had so generously paid for, though she denied it was because she actually held some attachment to Naoko.

But those clothes were not Naoko's current concern. She merely kept staring at the paper, reading the listed time and date of the party over and over again. It started at seven o'clock and ended at eleven o'clock. A good, solid four hours of partying and socializing and reminiscing the past year.

According to Toshio, it was supposed to have ended at twelve, but the few faculty members that had volunteered to chaperone (because who could trust teenagers to be by themselves at a school party?) didn't want it to go on so late, especially since Christmas was as much of a holiday to them as it was to the students.

There would be no school on the day of the party; while Christmas was not an official national holiday in Japan, it was still incredibly popular. Popular enough to have days off on the twenty fourth of December and the twenty fifth. Then a ten day winter vacation for students would start on the twenty sixth.

Naoko turned her attention away from the time and to the date instead. The twenty fourth of December.

Christmas Eve.

The happiest night on Earth.

She continued to scrutinize the flyer for a little while longer before wordlessly folding it up and pinning it on the fridge with one of the few magnets that they had.

Then she got up and went to the living room, leaving her brand new clothes still sitting on the kitchen table in the bag.

Perhaps Christmas had brought out a more sentimental side to her, as Naoko plucked one of the framed photos sitting on the cabinet and brought it with her to the couch. She turned on the television and changed the channel to a popular news channel, though she only did it for background noise than anything else.

She'd never noticed how quiet it could get in the house before. Probably because, in the past, she had been more concerned and focused on other things.

Fool, she berated herself. Naoko snorted softly and beheld the image sitting in the frame behind the glass.

This one was old—something that she had dug up from the storeroom. She had only been able to find it because she still recalled herself putting it away all those years ago.

Left on the cabinet, her newer photos sat. All the ones that Mizushima had graciously took for them. Her new friends. Her family.

Naoko looked down at the photo she held. They—she couldn't forget, even if she wanted to—were also her family.

Tadashi had definitely gotten his good looks from their father—her brother was the spitting image of their father—blonde hair, blue eyes and whatnot. The only difference was that of their face shapes. Their father had a square jawline, stern eyes, and was what most women and some men would describe as ruggedly handsome. On the other hand, Tadashi's face was more delicate and he had a pointier chin and high cheek bones. Features he had inherited from his mother—a woman that Naoko had never known.