A/N: Written for the festive prompt 'pumpkin'. Betaed by Fanuilos, who has a wonderfully sarcastic red pen.
My fanfiction writing/editing will be on hiatus for the month of November, because I am doing NaNoWriMo. Instead of borrowing other authors' worlds, I'll be off on an adventure with my own original characters. See you in December!
Spoilers: None.
Characters: Risa Harada, Takeshi Saehara, and Satoshi Hiwatari.
Disclaimer: Yukiru-sensei owns all rights. I own only this idea and the effort I put into writing and editing it.
Humming softly to herself, Risa swept her paintbrush over a backdrop for the class play, industriously filling in the lines of a pumpkin carriage. When the strokes grew faint, she dipped the brush in the paint pan that balanced on a middle step of a ladder she had appropriated to use in lieu of a table. As she withdrew the brush, her arm bumped the side of the ladder, jostling the nearly full bucket of paint perched on its top. She uttered a cry of alarm and darted forward to steady the bucket. Though she stabilized it successfully, her elbow caught the edge of the pan of paint, flipping it off the step. She grabbed at it wildly and managed to catch it by hugging it to her chest.
Complete disaster averted, she let out a breath she had not realized she had been holding. Then, as the result of her actions sank in, she winced in anticipation of the mess she had surely made of her shirt. Ever so slowly, she peeled the foil pan away from her chest and looked down to survey the damage.
Orange paint coated her front and dripped down to the floor in viscous streams. She grimaced at the sight of the sticky mess. Carefully setting down the newly emptied pan, she grabbed a rag and began dabbing at her shirt.
Hearing someone laugh, she looked up and was nearly blinded by a flash.
Her classmate Saehara lowered his ever-present camera from his face. "So you're going to be in the play, Harada-san?"
She stared at him, spluttering in shock and indignation, then stepped toward him threateningly. "How dare you take a picture of me!" She raised an accusatory finger, her other hand fisting at her side. "That's cruel and I— I— W-what?" Her fulmination stuttered to a stop as she tried to make sense of what he had said.
"How should I phrase the caption for the school paper?" he asked, laughing. He posed dramatically, hand underlining invisible words as he envisioned the bold print. "'Risa Harada cast in the play as the pumpkin'?"
Her bewildered frown changed to an irate scowl. "Why, you—!" she sputtered.
Hiwatari chose that moment to come hurrying towards them, his arms stacked high with boxes. Before either of his classmates could perceive the imminent danger and call out a warning, he bumped into the ladder, sending it toppling in the direction of Saehara.
Hiwatari gave a surprised grunt. "Look out!"
The self-proclaimed reporter let out a startled yelp and jumped out of the reach of the ladder, unconsciously dropping his precious camera in his panicked rush. The ladder clattered harmlessly to the floor, but neither Saehara nor his camera could escape the cascade of paint. The rush of orange splattered both boy and device to the detriment of both.
The following shocked silence was broken only by a muted rattle as the paint can rolled across the floor and came to a stop in a puddle of sticky color.
A muffled giggle quickly escalated to a full-out laugh. "Who's the pumpkin now?" Risa taunted merrily.
Deaf to her teasing, Saehara uttered an anguished wail. "My camera!"
"I apologize," Hiwatari said. "I was not aware the ladder was so close." He deposited his boxes in a spot clear of paint and picked up the splattered camera. As he straightened, there was a click and flash. "Oh," he said, sounding slightly surprised, "was that the shutter button?" Grabbing a nearby rag that had somehow avoided the two fateful spills of color, Hiwatari began wiping paint from the expensive device.
Saehara's face twisted with concern, a comical expression, given that his features were entirely coated with orange. He wiped his hands on a patch of his pants that had miraculously escaped the paint. "Here, here, give it to me," he demanded, reaching out.
Hiwatari yielded the camera to the reporter, who took it gingerly, cradling it in his hands as though it was an injured baby animal. Without removing his eyes from the endangered equipment, Saehara lectured, "You have to clean cameras carefully." He hurried off, muttering something about delicate lenses and stupid, clumsy geniuses.
Watching the retreat of her paint-covered classmate, Risa stifled a burst of giggles. "Sweet revenge," she chuckled, eyeing the trail of orange droplets the vibrant reporter left behind. At the sound of a rattle, she checked her mirth and turned to see Hiwatari finish righting the ladder and begin to straighten the rest of the disaster.
She tilted her head to one side, considering him. Even with boxes distorting his vision, for Hiwatari to bump into something as large and obvious as a ladder was nearly unbelievable. From all Risa knew of him, he was extremely agile, almost surprisingly so, making this unprecedented lack of dexterity quite remarkable.
"Harada-san?"
Realizing she had been caught staring, she fought a blush. "Ah, yes, Hiwatari-kun?"
"You should try to salvage your clothes." He gestured to her paint-soaked garments.
"Oh. Yes." She glanced down and noticed, to her chagrin, that her shirt was stiff with drying paint. She brushed at the orange, but with little result. Huffing a sigh, she took a step away, then paused, eyes flicking over the catastrophe. "But what about—"
"I will take care of it."
She regarded him with some surprise. Though he had perpetrated the accident, that was what it was: an accident. He was not compelled to clean it up by himself, particularly as she was at fault for leaving the paint in such a precarious place.
"Go on," he said, making what appeared to be a shooing motion.
Snickering at his uncharacteristic action, she nodded and took off for the bathroom.
With a bit of scrubbing under hot water, the paint came off Risa's skin fairly easily. She had nearly finished cleaning her hands when she heard yells echoing down the school hall. The noise, unmistakably identifiable as Saehara, grew rapidly louder, and Risa was soon able to discern his words.
"Where's my memory card? Who stole my memory card? Has anybody seen my camera memory card?"
Footsteps pounded past the girls' bathroom and the shouting faded into the distance.
Risa raised an eyebrow at her reflection in the mirror. Saehara's camera memory card was missing? How could he not know where it was? The camera had never left his hands — except once.
She thought back to the situation with Hiwatari, Saehara, the paint, and the camera. Understanding struck and her pensive face transformed as she burst out laughing. Though she had thought nothing of it at the time, she remembered Hiwatari's hand brushing his pocket after he had handed the camera to Saehara. The blue-haired boy must have slipped the memory card out of the camera while ostensibly cleaning the device.
The more she recognized the situation for what it was, the more humor Risa found. Hiwatari had purposely tripped on the ladder, purposely spilled paint all over Saehara, purposely taken a picture, all to confiscate the desired memory card.
Risa leaned the counter, gasping for breath between bursts of laughter. "I do believe I have a fairy guardian," she gleefully informed her reflection.