Hikaru no Shampoo
Session Three
-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.
*
Shindou Hikaru had been a rather ordinary Japanese schoochild, in terms of spiritual faith and devotion; he had taken part in the popular Shinto festivals, was familiar with Buddhists and monasteries; likewise, he had a pretty clear idea about Christianity. Occasionally he invoked deities in conversation, for emphasis. But he'd never prayed as wholeheartedly as he prayed now. Never had such a wide audience of gods and spiritual leaders been prayed to in one go.
"Buddha, God, Kami-sama, Confucius, Shiva, Allah..." Hikaru was mentally ticking them off on his fingers as he went. "...Please, please, please...don't let this crazed ghost do anything bad to my hair..." He considered, licked his panic-dried lips, and rephrased, "Anything...too bad..."
Above his head, his hands were whirling away with scissors of all sorts, a razor, combs...Sai had taken over his arms from the elbows down, and Hikaru felt like one of those scary amputees he had sometimes seen in photo books on victims of land mines in third-world countries. He began to pray again, keeping his eyes firmly shut. He could feel the heavy layers of curls on his shoulders go away, but motions and sensations elsewhere were rather less welcome. At one point, Sai used Hikaru's left index finger to tap the boy's head. "Hikaru."
"What?" Hikaru had been in the middle of reciting his prayer, and was rather unhappily interrupted. He felt like he had just eaten a giant block of ice, which was now sinking rapidly toward his belly-button. "What?"
"Open your eyes. Tilt your head to the left." Sai pushed on Hikaru's head. "There now, open your eyes. It's not so bad, really."
Hikaru opened one eye a tiny crack. He shrieked.
Sai, flustered, hovered above him. His hands were cocked above his head, grasping various gleaming instruments of hair abuse. And instead of a Lord Fauntleroy, Shindou Hikaru now had a glossy bowl-cut that reached his chin. With bangs.
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod...!" Hikaru forsook his former religious correctness and ran in tiny circles around the bathroom, dropping stray bits of hair clippings as he went. Sai was still in his hands; the rest of the ghost was being pulled along, looking as though someone had insulted his own hair. "Ohmygooooood..." Hikaru halted abruptly at the mirror once more, took a glance at himself, and turned to Sai. "What have you done to my hair?!"
"...You said you would prefer the model's haircut." Sai pouted. "And this was his haircut. Isn't it lovely? Look how it shines--"
"I don't CARE!" Hikaru wailed, trying to rid his hands of the styling tools, but Sai clutched them as if they were made of platinum. "This is HORRIBLE!"
"But you said so yourself!"
"Since when do you listen to me?" Hikaru shook with indignation. "And GET OUT of my body!" Sai looked shocked. "But..." tears began to form in his eyes. "But Hikaru..."
Uh-oh, Hikaru thought as an all-too-familiar ripple of nausea rolled over him. "Er, Sai. Er...I meant, it really isn't...Sai...sorry..."
Sai sighed and exorcised himself from Hikaru's arms. He stuck one slim hand into a hidden pocket somewhere and extracted a very lacy, very silky, and very pink piece of cloth and began to dabble at his face with it. Hikaru stared. Sai realized something and looked more carefully at the cloth, blushed furiously, and tried to stuff it away.
"What was that?" Sai had now shoved the piece of cloth messily up his sleeve. A large lump protruded from his forearm. "Er...nothing!" Sai flew about haphazardly, keeping his face averted from Hikaru's.
"Sai. What was that?"
Sai turned slowly, a quivery smile on his face. Hikaru looked so cute with his shiny new hair! And his annoyance helped the overall effect greatly. Sai sparkled. He was in a stream, a river, a deluge of bliss. He'd not felt so wonderful and warm since...he remembered the embarassing piece of cloth he still had lumped in his sleeve and blushed. Maybe if he turned away, and just barely poked the cloth up into his fluffy collar, he could hide it..."Sai! What're you doing?"
"Um." Sai coughed delicately. It seemed that he would not be able to hide it from Hikaru any longer. "Well...um. Hikaru, I think you should get comfortable."
"I'm fine where I am." Hikaru snapped, perching himself on the sink counter. "Well?"
"Well..." Sai sighed deeply and pulled out the piece of pink cloth. It was a tiny slip of cloth, a triangle with two thin straps. Hikaru goggled. "I had this on me when I died," said Sai, "when I fell into that stupid pool.
"I was a successful artiste, with a nice flat and people everywhere simply demanding that I treat their hair." Sai paused to give Hikaru a meaningful look. "Day and night, I received pleas to rescue horrid hair and to consult famous performers. Oh, such good times..." Sai beamed and closed his eyes. "My wonderful tools, always polished and gorgeous...all the conditioner anyone could want...
"And then I met him. It was at a huge dinner party, the kind with the fancy hor d'oeuvres made with Russian caviar. I had been having a lovely time, drinking the French champagne and meeting all the people who were just mad about their hair after I'd treated it.
"I was laughing with several of the most beautiful people in the city, every one of them with wonderful shining hair, every one of them as unbelivably gorgeous as they were supposed to be. Then there was one who went to find a friend to introduce to me. The 'friend' had an awful haircut, ugly and...ugh. It still gives me chills just to think of his hair. 'This is so-and-so,' said the woman, and the man with terrible hair and I shook hands. I knew I would not like him, because he smelled like an artiste, the shampoo and all, but I knew--know that he was nothing of the sort."
Sai stopped, and Hikaru absorbed the story in silence. "Um, Sai...what does this have to do with the underwear?"
"Hmph." Sai turned away so that the boy could not see him blush. Underwear! "I'm getting to it. Have patience, for heaven's sake."
*
The man had ridiculously blond hair, obviously dyed. And worse, he had his bangs waved so they looked like undercooked instant ramen. He wore cheap black PVC and pretended it was leather. He had drunk four glasses of champagne and consumed seventeen caviar rolls, four finger sandwiches, and a large piece of Bavarian cream cake. He still had a good deal of crumbs all around his ugly lipless mouth. "So you're the great Sai," said the ugly man. "Y'know, I'm a hairdresser myself."
Sai was revolted. "Hairdresser" was for minimum-wage people who held scissors incorrectly and who wore aprons at work. "I am Fujiwara no Sai, yes." Maybe the stupid man would get the idea and move off. But of course he didn't.
"So, how long have you been in the business? I've been at it for four years, myself. Done a lot of work, heh..." he nudged the starlet who had introduced him, and she giggled obligingly. "It's pretty nice here, huh?"
"Indeed." Sai tried to scoot away.
"Aw, hey, I've got an idea. Let's have a little demonstration right here, hey?" The man guffawed and gestured at the general mass of people around him. "Get some business."
Sai almost said no, but when the man turned, he caught the hint of uncertainty in the ugly tanned face. That's right, let me show you "hairdressing". "All right."
*
"It all went downhill from there. The guests loved the idea and gave us each a pair of scissors, a bottle of shampoo, and some leave-in conditioner. Two young press darlings volunteered to serve as models. We had an hour to finish one coiff and then the party at large would decide the winner.
"Of course, mine was far superior. It was a neat little page boy, and suited my subject's round face perfectly. The blond man was sweating by the end of the first quarter-hour. He was losing from the very start, and knew it. The clumsy cuts on that poor girl's head looked as though she had very recently collided with a pair of dull hedge clippers. The man dumped a mound of conditioner onto her head in an attempt to resucitate the poor hair. I decided to touch up a bit in the same way and located the bottle of conditioner and had just squirted a bit into my palm when I realized that it was not conditioner.
"Somehow, I had a bottle full of hair remover instead of Floral Essence conditioner."
-end Session Three-
Notes:
Have been enormously, enormously busy.(--really! ) This chapter is horribly fragmented, but at least gets the point across. Just envision Hikaru with the infamous bowl-cut. *snerk* Next session: the end of the tragic tale, the pool, and the lingerie. Will arrive hot and steaming on ff.net at some point in the future. Thank you much for the feedback, it is greatly appreciated.