Quote:
At some point, you notice a present nestled somewhere in your house that you've never seen before. Maybe it's somewhere obvious, maybe it's sitting on a window sill or hidden in the back of your closet. It's decorated very festively, with a cursive script letting you know that the present's owner is none other than yourself but there's no sender listed on the tag. Who in the world could have put it there?

Opening the present reveals an item that you've sorely wanted for some time now but haven't been able to afford or haven't allowed yourself the pleasure of buying. The trouble is that you've never told a soul about wanting it.

Who could have known? And how did it get there?


At long last, all presents had been wrapped and taken care of.

Tochi had finally finished buying gifts for her family members, having bought Morie’s last. Her sister was notoriously difficult to shop for; while they shared at least one common interest in the stars, Morie was interested in them in more of a scientific sense, compared to Tochi, who mostly just thought the stars were pretty to look at and tried to use them for doing some fortune telling. In other words, Tochi couldn’t simply buy her some sparkly star jewelry and call it a day, which was a shame, because she knew of some local (and online) shops that sold some really pretty necklaces and earrings, made with sparkly and colorful crystals, too. It was a shame, but at the same time, it meant Tochi didn’t have to share, not that the sisters really ever borrowed each other’s things. Tochi and Morie had different tastes in clothing styles, Tochi preferring to dress more flashy and sparkly, and Morie… preferring a more practical style, as always.

(Her sister could be really boring at times.)

With presents out of the way and under the tree, Tochi had retreated to the safety (and comfort) of her bedroom, where she had been planning on doing an entry for her idol vlog, where she posted her song and dance covers, talking about her plans for the coming year. Tochi knew Morie disapproved of her showing her face online like that, for all her warnings of the dangers of putting personal info like that online, so it was a good thing Morie wasn’t home, now wasn’t it? Even better that Morie didn’t know Tochi had a Youtube channel, as well.

(Tochi really hoped to make it big eventually, and perhaps move onto a platform such as Twitch- she wanted to do IRL livestreams one day.)

Just as she was about to sit down in front of her computer, though, something caught her eye, something… shiny? Investigating further, Tochi found the source of the shiny; there, sitting on her bed, peeking out from behind her pillows, was a wrapped present. It certainly hadn’t been there before; Tochi could ascertain at least that much. At the same time, who put it there? Tochi would have remembered if she had left it there,and she was very insistent on having her privacy when she was in her room, shooing her siblings away so she could listen to her idol songs and do her recordings in peace. Admittedly, it didn’t always stop Morie, especially when homework was involved, but Tochi couldn’t fathom leaving a gift like this in such an inconspicuous spot.

Further examination showed there was no sender listed on the tag, only Tochi’s own name, written in fancy script. Perhaps it was from one of her subscribers, then? Well, there was only one thing left to do. Paying no heed to anything Morie may have told her about not opening strange packages, Tochi unwrapped the gift, and found something completely unexpected:

Folded neatly within the box, Tochi found a replica costume of the concert outfits Aqours wore during their Christmas mini live two years ago. It had been something she’d been wanting to cosplay ever since she saw the costumes, because they’d be the sort of outfits she could wear to a holiday party and not get lectured by her sister about her choices in fashion… sort of. The only thing was, the original costumes were designed to be ‘tear-away’, to reveal the Aozora Jumping Heart costumes underneath, and Tochi’s sewing skills weren’t nearly on the level of making something like that; in fact, her skills at the moment had only recently gotten to where she could make little cat-sized costumes… for a certain idol-loving Mauvian in her life.

There was, of course, also the issue of cost, to commission someone to sew something like this for her, since they would be making not one, but two costumes, and all she had for the base outfit were screenshots from the live, and a handful of seiyuu photos she’d gotten off of Twitter… All in all, it wasn’t something she had explicitly expressed wanting, other than maybe some wistful sighing about how cute the outfit was, so how did someone know to get her this? It definitely hadn’t been Morie, that was for certain, given her sister’s disapproval of her idol activities, and she doubted the small handful of fans of her channel she had could afford something like this, unless…

Well, maybe it was a group effort! After all, Love Live fans had gotten together to make the worldwide poster girl outfits for the seiyuu of their characters in the past year, with Suwawa’s being the most recent, so it wasn’t outside the realm of plausibility that maybe the tiny handful of Livers that followed her channel would do the same for her. If nothing else, well… perhaps it could have been another her! A version of her from the future, perhaps, when she made it as an idol who could make her own costumes, at that, who had come to personally deliver a present to her past self as a means of encouragement.

Whoever the sender ultimately was, Tochi was overjoyed all the same, and couldn’t wait to show off the outfit in her next video.

(wc: 897)