This was written for the Anime and Manga Fanfiction Challenges Forum's '100 Prompts – 100 Stories Challenge'. It's still an active challenge forum, and the members are a bunch of very cool, very supportive people who think up amazingly inventive things to help you get back on your writing feet.
Claim 54 – Pocket
Character – Tsuruko (Ano Hana)
Clarity
By Tanya Lilac
It wasn't as if she had been seized by a sudden impulse upon walking past the hair dresser. Tsuruko walked past this shop every day on the way to and from the station. She had decided to forego the seven thousand yen hair cut at 'Berryz' where she had cut her hair last time, and become a patron of the much more humble 'Noko Time' whose team of three were charging a mere fifteen hundred.
She had made a booking a few days ago, and they had been happy to write her name in for an after- school appointment.
"Tsurumi-sama?"
Tsuruko blinked. She was sitting in the hair dresser's chair, a sheet draped over her. Pop music was playing from the speakers in the room. The others were working on bleaching a schoolboy's hair. Noko, as the owner called herself, was standing with a spray bottle in one hand and a comb in the other. Scissors glinted in the light from the pouches on her belt.
"Tsurumi-sama, I just want to ask you again, are you sure you would like me to cut your hair to your desired length?"
Tsuruko pat her pocket under the sheet, to check it was still there. Yukiatsu had given it to her last week and she had yet to wear it. It was odd, not because it was as if he had clearly told her he still had the fragile and slightly bruised heart of a child. She had carried the one he had given to Menma that day, in the same way she carried secrets. This clip was also in danger of becoming yet another, and she had realised in the same moment that in order to accept this gift, she would have to become much more honest.
"Just a moment," she said. "I would like to take off my glasses."
Noko complied, saying it was no trouble at all, and Tsuruko blinked once more at her blurry reflection. Somehow, her mind was clearer than ever as she closed her eyes and exhaled.
"Cut it."