Hikaru no Shampoo
-A Hikaru no Go Fanfiction
DISCLAIMER: Hikaru no Go doesn't belong to me. A certain name-brand shampoo's famous (infamous?) ad campaign also doesn't belong to me. In fact, even the idea of this fic doesn't belong to me (thanks to dear Morgie-porgie~ XD)...so I'm just a sad, sad person with no life! Enjoy the madness.
*
It was another perfectly ordinary day in an anonymous suburb of Tokyo. Shindou Hikaru, perfectly ordinary sixth-grader, was bored and whiny. "This is so stupid!" He leaned against a wall of the attic and sighed; with the intake of breath he choked on some dust and gave a huge sneeze, whereupon a pefect avalanche of dust bunnies fell on him. Akari giggled. Hikaru made annoyed noises and inhaled more dust, causing more sneezes and more deluges of dust until he'd cleaned one corner of his grandfather's attic as thoroughly as if he'd just swept it. He sat in the sea of gray fluff and sighed again. "Great. I just took a bath yesterday and washed my uniform." He brushed at his hair, where the bulk of the dust had accumulated.
"Why don't you just go take another one?" Akari was still laughing. "You definitely need one."
"Aww...it's so much trouble...and it'll take forever..." Hikaru rolled his eyes.
"Well--" Akari began, stepping toward Hikaru's dust puddle, and stumbled. "What is this ?" She picked up a strangely shaped glass bottle, miraculously unbroken despite her tripping over it.
"Lemme see," said Hikaru, reaching out a hand. He held the bottle up to the light from the window and peered at it. "The glass is too dark, I can't see anything." He attempted to uncap the bottle, grunting with the effort and shedding dust particles all over, to no avail. "Stupid thing," he said, huffily tossing the bottle aside and getting up, "I'm going to take a bath now. Hmph." Akari had already turned to go back downstairs.
Suddenly, Hikaru heard a voice. A rather hollow-sounding voice. It had a slight and elegant accent from some European country."Hello? Young man?"
"..." Said Hikaru. "Akari? Stop that!"
Akari poked her head back up to stare at him from the ladder. "Stop what?"
"Aww, don't pretend--"
"You can hear me? Young man? Can you hear me?" Hikaru stopped, mid-sentence, and swallowed. "Gr-grandpa? That you? Stop it right now!"
Akari groaned. "Don't be silly, Hikaru. Go take your bath." She finished descending the ladder.
Hikaru ignored her. "Grandpa?!"
The voice sounded highly offended. "'Grandpa'?! How rude of you to refer to me as such!" And then the bottle began to quiver. With a great rattle, the cap flew off the brown-glass neck and a lovely fragrance seeped forth into the musty attic. Along with the scent came a man dressed in a expensive white designer outfit consisting of a fluff-collared turtleneck angora sweater with white suede pants and what appeared to be white go-go boots. Well, at least he seemed to be a man. Hikaru screeched. The man jumped. He was perfectly made-up, replete with exquisite purple lipstick. Hikaru's legs went weak. What was this...thing?
"I happen to be Fujiwara no Sai, coiffure artist extraordinaire!" The...man danced around the room, his record-length purple hair gleaming madly. "I have been allowed to return to the mortal coil! Ah, such a wonderful feeling!" He stopped dancing and looked down at Hikaru, who had collapsed in a dusty pile. "Oh heavens! Oh my!" Fujiwara no Sai bent and inspected the unconscious boy. He reached out a tentative finger and rubbed Hikaru's hair. "OH MY!" He shook his finger, face flushing. "What IS this? This is horrible! Disastrous!" He covered his face with both hands and wailed. "The most disgusting, dirty, nasty hair I have ever seen! How CAN he live with this terror?" Sai struck another pose, as though he were falling into a faint, and then assumed a heroic stance, brandishing two combs of different sizes, three brushes, and a huge "professional use" squeeze tube of super-ultra-mega-cleansing shampoo. "To work!"
*
"Mmffn?"
Hikaru opened his right eye. It was very bright, so he couldn't be in the attic anymore...he opened his other eye and sat up. Or tried to, because he screeched and fell out of bed when he saw the coiffure artist extraordinaire staring intently at him 3 inches from the tip of his nose. "Who the hell are you? What the--" Hikaru untangled himself from the bedclothes, to faciliate his speedy escape, and realized that he was now 1)very naked and 2)literally squeaky clean 3)in an unfamiliar room. He felt as though he would faint again. He closed his eyes and repeated to himself, calmly and rationally, that when he opened them there would just be his room, nice and messy with his shirts and manga all over the place. Okay. He opened his eyes. "AAAAAAAGH!"
"Well," said the strange man (?) in white, "I don't see why you need to be so very melodramatic. You ought to thank me." He nodded encouragingly.
"Th--what?! Who the hell are you?!" Hikaru felt like the protagonist of an F-grade horror film. "What are you doing in my room?! What the hell happened?!"
The man sighed a little. Patronizingly, he explained, "You're definitely anemic, dear boy. You fainted. I saw the awful--" here Sai shuddered--"condition your hair was in, and cleaned it up. A very nice old man, your grandfather I assume, called the ambulance and took you to the hospital. "
"So...this is the hospital?" Hikaru had gotten to his feet and was trying to secure a sheet around his waist. "And...who are you?"
"MUST I repeat myself again? I am Fujiwara no Sai, coiffure artist extraordinaire!"
Hikaru stared.
"And," said Sai, a little less confidently, "it seems that I have once more manifested myself as a ghost. So only you can see me." He smiled sweetly.
"..." Said Hikaru.
"Oh yes, here." Sai drifted down to Hikaru's eye level and handed him a small mirror. Hikaru looked, unreasonably afraid that it would suck up his soul or do something equally horrible, and dropped it promptly. Sai caught it, glaring at Hikaru all the while, and protectively put it back into where-ever he kept his accoutrements.
"What did you DO to my HAIR?!" Hikaru clutched at his hair, trying to undo the damage, but it was far, far too late. Sai glared some more. "Well, I thought it would fit you well, and it does."
Shindou Hikaru, sixth grade, had a beautiful Lord Fauntleroy fall of soft curls over his ears and onto his shoulders.
-end Session One-
Notes:
In case you didn't know what a Lord Fauntleroy coiff looks like, it's sort of a Victorian little-boys' cut with big curls all over the place, preferably of a golden color. The mothers of aforementioned boys loved the look but the boys, of course, felt rather differently.
Sai fans: fear not, I lurve Sai to death. ~_~ No insult intended.