A/N: With any luck at all, this has gone up before midnight, enabling me to say "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, 'RENE-CHAN" without any need for further appellation. I didn't want to put pairings in it, so I didn't; I didn't want to commit such an atrocity on the characters, but I wrote it anyway. Consistency has never been my strong point. Big thanks to Lily for the prompt.
No one knew exactly what it was, and no one wanted to be the first to admit that.
It was beautiful though, a sculpture like beautiful music made visible, like the purest personification of the wind. Everyone walking by it stopped and stared, even for just a moment, at the soaring lightness of it, bringing to mind birds in flight or the looping contrails of a skilled skywriter. At random times of the day, with seemingly no obvious stimulus at all, it would sway lightly, the patterns changing and swirling like wind-swept clouds, reforming into new, even more complicated shapes, but so naturally, so organically, that one would never assume it to be the result of a mechanical apparatus linked to solar panels. In fact, most people didn't know.
"You did a good job, Hagu." Shuji said, standing behind her with one hand on her shoulder. She nodded absently, her eyes on the person currently inspecting her artwork. She had Shu-chan's approval, but...
"It's so beautiful, Hagu-chan!" That was Ayu, eyes shining and arms open for a surprise hug, which Hagu returned whole-heartedly; she was vaguely aware of Shu-chan laughing and drinking from his coffee before turning to walk back to his office. In the background, the early-morning sun peeked out from behind a cloud to flood the entire gallery with bright light; the sculpture hummed softly as its individual components clicked into new positions.
"Do you really like it, Ayu?" She asked, when she'd finally been released from the enthusiastic embrace.
"Mmhmm!" The taller girl turned to look at it, head tilted to one side, as if in study. "I think it looks a bit like an angel! What is it, anyway, Hagu-chan?"
Hagu smiled at that, and wouldn't say anything.
Ayu left for the pottery workshop, still pouting slightly because Hagu refused to say anything about the sculpture. Mayama came in after, carrying a large grocery bag that covered his face.
"I'm just stopping in," he said, slightly out of breath, as though he'd been running behind someone, "but I wanted to see what... Wow..."
He set the bag down and stepped closer to the stand on which the artwork rested, the sunlight behind him casting a shadow over it. As if his presence had changed something intrinsic in the machinery, it whirled again, the soft chime of metal on metal echoing through the room until it stopped, still gleaming brightly.
"Hagu-chan, this is incredible. It looks like a family taking a walk; there's the father, carrying his daughter piggy-back..." He looked down at the full grocery bag and frowned a bit as he hefted it again. "Anyway, I have to get to work, so just tell me, what is it?"
Hagu, her smile wider than before, shook her head and remained silent, so Mayama was forced to go to work with his question unanswered.
Takemoto stopped by early in the afternoon to talk to Professor Hanamoto.
"Shu-chan's not here right now, Takemoto-kun." Hagu murmured when she opened the door for him.
He sighed and almost turned around, but the light glinting off of the sculpture caught his eye, and Hagu opened the door all the way. The sculpture had changed several times as the day went on, and it changed again now, as Takemoto stepped into the room.
"I really like it! It's like a person riding a bicycle...you can almost feel the wind blowing through their hair..." Takemoto thought aloud, almost nervously. He turned to look at Hagu, who was still smiling at him. "That's...not what it is, is it?"
"I'll tell Shu-chan you stopped by, Takemoto-kun!" she shooed him out the door, and ignored his question, though so cheerfully that he couldn't find it in himself to insist.
And that night, she heard a noise near the sculpture and crept out into the room silently; everyone else was in the other room, likely begging Shu-chan to tell them exactly what the sculpture was. Morita was standing there, as she'd known he would be, though uncharacteristically silent, as he had been the entire time they'd been working on the sculpture together. He held a flashlight in his hand and was eying one of his solar panels critically.
"It worked." He stated quietly, surprising her; how had he known she was there?
As she stepped up closer to the sculpture, the soft chime of the machinery working surprised her, until she realized that Morita was shining the flashlight on the panel closest to him. She watched silently as the pieces she'd so painstakingly designed clicked into place on the stands and pivots and mechanisms he had constructed for her.
She frowned.
"But that's..."
"It's a mouse." And he grinned cheerfully at her, like a cat, before pouncing.
When Shuji turned the light in the room due to the commotion, followed closely behind by Ayu, Mayama, and Takemoto, Hagu was close to tears due to Morita's latest scheme to photograph her in costume. While everyone else scolded Morita, who simply shook them off, she watched, alone, as the moving sculpture resolved itself into the shape of a four-leaved clover.
Uh. Yeah, that sucked. Sorry I don't have anything better for you, 'rene-chan!