Chapter Text
Miku is used to screening the voicemails before Hibiki gets home. Anyone who needs to contact Hibiki or Miku would do it directly through their cell phones, so the messages left on their rarely-used home phone are mostly reminders for doctor’s appointments, charities looking for money, the occasional reporter looking to run an article on SONG’s taskforce. These are all normal. What isn’t is the scruffy, lazy voice that greets Miku when she checks in the late afternoon, while she and Chris are hard at work addressing letters.
“Ah… Hey, Hibiki…” It’s been so long, but Miku knows that voice. She’d know it anywhere. “Look, I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but, well… Heard you’re getting married… Dunno how I feel about it, but it’s what makes you happy, right? I’d like to come see it–”
Miku presses the pound key to delete the message before even hearing the rest of it. Whatever Hibiki’s father has to say, Miku knows that neither she nor Hibiki wants to deal with it. Hands slightly trembling, she hangs up and places the phone down on the table.
“Who was that?” Chris asks from where she sits opposite Miku, a large pile of cards, envelopes, and pens between them.
Miku bites her lip. “Hibiki’s father. She hasn’t heard from him in years, and now… He says he wants to come see us get married.”
“Never can trust people like that,” Chris sighs, and jams another invitation into its envelope. “Dickbag.”
Miku nods in affirmation, then returns to her work of handwriting addresses on the envelopes. It would break Hibiki’s heart to have to see her father again, never mind having him show up uninvited at her wedding. Miku’s already sworn to herself to make it the happiest day of Hibiki’s life. For all the things Hibiki’s given her, she can at least give Hibiki that.
“So, what’s his full name?” Chris asks, now typing something into her phone. “You wanna make sure he doesn’t show up, right?”
“Yeah.” After so many years working together, it feels like Chris knows Miku’s intentions before she even realizes them herself. “Kou Tachibana. I’m not sure where he lives, though.”
“Okay, gimme a blank card.”
“None of them are blank,” Miku says. “They all have, um… You Are Cordially Invited on the front.”
“Whatever.” Chris passes her phone across the table to Miku. “You’re better at this. Find this asshole’s address and I’ll write him a little note.”
“Will that be okay? He won’t bother us?”
“I’ll make sure he never even gets close to your wedding,” Chris says. “And if this doesn’t convince him I wouldn’t mind going to his place an’ giving him a few bullets to the knees for you.” She flashes Miku a smile, and goes to work on her card. Seconds later she hands it back to Miku, her grin wider and more wicked than before. “Read.”
Miku does, her eyes widening before she bursts into giggles. “Chris!”
“It’s great, huh?” Chris beams. “So he sees it and thinks you’re inviting him to your wedding, and then he opens it and you’re actually just inviting him to piss off.” Her face softens into seriousness before she continues, “But really, if he tries anything, I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Um, I don’t think you need to actually kill him…” Miku says, smiling. “But thank you. I know we both don’t want Hibiki to worry at all.”
“No problem. We gotta look out for that idiot, right?”
“Mmm.”
And soon enough, the wedding invitations are done, and Hibiki is home, and she greets Chris with a hug and Miku with a kiss. And Kou Tachibana does not come to the wedding.