Hey, Megan talking. This is a one-shot mystery I wrote for English class. Hope you guys like it!

A Hairy Problem

Shigure Sohma was exhausted. He had been working all day fixing the rice paper door again. Kyo and Yuki, two of his teenaged cousins, had been at it again. Almost every week now they would come home from school with Tohru Honda, their rather permanent houseguest, in tow, bickering like a married couple. Nearly as soon as they got in the door, Kyo, the more riotous, red-headed one, would take a swing at Yuki, who, even though he was thinner and looked almost like a girl with his gray hair, was much better at martial arts. Almost effortlessly, Yuki would send Kyo tumbling directly through the door, tearing the delicate paper and shattering the thin wooden frame. This was always how it happened, and he was always left to fix the silly thing afterward.

"Why does anyone even make paper doors?" he said in annoyance as he finally taped the last piece in, completely installing a new door. "Well, that wasn't as hard as usual. I guess it should be expected that I have gotten better at this, since I do it at least once a week."

At that moment a group of people came bursting through the front door. It seemed that Yuki and Kyo had brought their cousins Haru and Momiji back with them and Tohru. Yuki and Kyo were exchanging insults while Haru looked on from behind the white hair falling in front of his face.

"Please, idiot," said Yuki, "stop annoying me with your jabbering."

"Why do you think you are so much better than me?" yelled Kyo, frustrated. "You're just a stuck-up brat!"

"At least I act my age. I wouldn't be surprised if you were in Kindergarten, the way you act."

"If you make one more crack like that, pretty boy, I'll---

"Why don't you ever fight me instead of Yuki, Kyo?" said Haru, interrupting the fight. "I'm the one who's set on beating you!"

"Because," replied Kyo in a severely annoyed voice, "you'll never give me a challenge! You're weak!"

"I am not!"

While Haru, Yuki, and Kyo were arguing, Momiji, who was a small, blonde boy that acted very young for his age, and Tohru were talking about something completely different.

"Tohru," said Momiji in a sad voice, "why does Kyo get mad at me so much?"

"Don't go whining to her!" Kyo growled, bonking Momiji viciously over the head. He frequently did this when he was annoyed.

"Shigure, Kyo hit me again!!!"

"Kyo, please don't hit your cousin," sighed Shigure. Kyo turned back toward Yuki with a grunt. "It seems I'm not going to get any more work done today. Oh well. So, Tohru, how was school today?" Before the brown haired, wide-eyed girl could reply there was a crash and the sound of paper ripping. " Oh no!" wailed Shigure. "Kyo! I just fixed that door! This time YOU have to put in the new one!"

"But Shigure---"

"NO BUTS!"

Grumbling, Kyo began to pick up the pieces of the ruined door, while everyone else started on their homework. It took him two hours to pick up all of the little pieces while Shigure watched like a hawk to make sure he didn't slack off. By the time he finished all of his homework, he was exhausted. Everyone else had finished their homework a while ago, and Haru and Momiji had already gone home. He went directly to bed.

The next morning Kyo got up early to have a shower. When he stepped out from under the water, he wiped off the misty mirror. What he saw horrified him. His once fiery orange hair was now a disgustingly bright green. He pulled on the rest of his clothes and ran down the stairs yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Which one of you had the nerve to put that dye in my shampoo?!?" he shouted as he stomped into the kitchen. Tohru, who had been making pancakes for breakfast, took one look at Kyo and dropped the pan she was holding. "Kyo! What happened?" she said in a concerned voice.

"I just said! Some idiot put green dye in my shampoo! I bet it was Yuki! Where is that brat?"

"Be quiet, dimwit," said a drowsy Yuki as he entered the kitchen, "I'm right here, and I didn't do anything to your shampoo. Ask Shigure."

"Where is that creep anyway?"

"I'm right here, Kyo, though I would appreciate it if you didn't call me a creep. I didn't do anything to your shampoo either, but whoever did is a genius. I truly wish I had thought of that. Ask Haru and Momiji when you get to school."

"I can't go to school like this!"

"You certainly can, and you certainly will."

"Oh!" exclaimed Tohru, "I have a great idea! We can bring Hana and Uo home with us this afternoon and the three of us can play detectives!"

"That sounds fun," said Yuki with a soft smile.

"Whatever," grumbled Kyo, "as long as we figure out who did this to me. When I find them, they're dead."

And so Yuki, Tohru, and a grumpy Kyo set off for school. Kyo got stares everywhere he went and was teased to no end, and by the time the bell rang he was ready to burst. Tohru had explained to her two best friends, the blonde punk Uo and the psychic and gothic Hana, what had happened that morning and how they were going to be the detectives. The two of them came with Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru, as well as Momiji and Haru, for they were suspects as well.

When they arrived, everyone gathered in the sitting room, and were soon joined by Shigure. Uo started the meeting.

"All right, everyone," she barked, "we're here to figure out who put dye in Kyo's shampoo. I don't want any lies or nonsense. I can guarantee that by the end of this the culprit will be caught, so, if any of you four," she said, gesturing to the couch that held Shigure, Yuki, Haru, and Momiji, "would like to make it easier on everyone and confess now, please do so. No? Fine then. Your turn, Hana," Uo retreated and Hana stepped forward.

"We must now search the house for clues. I request that the four of you stay where you are while Uo, Tohru and I search."

"I'll come in a minute Hana," said Tohru. "I'm going to go get some snacks for them for while they wait!"

Tohru was only in the kitchen for a few seconds before she called out for everyone to come see what she had found. They saw that she held the kitchen trashcan in one hand and a plastic bottle in the other. It was evident that the bottle had once held hair dye. Green hair dye.

"Hah!" cried Uo. "Our first piece of evidence! Good job, Tohru!"

"Um, thank you."

"Now," said Hana, "we must search the rest of the house. Uo, you take this level. Tohru, you go upstairs. I shall search outside."

"Hey, you three," said Shigure, throwing his hands in the air, "just make sure you don't destroy my house!"

"Whoa!" exclaimed Uo. "His hands are green! He did it!"

"Oh, no, I didn't!" cried Shigure, hastily putting his hands behind his back. "That is from one of my green correcting pens breaking. I am a novelist, you know."

"Yeah, right."

"Uo," said Hana, "I'm afraid it is very likely that he is telling the truth. We must gather more evidence to prove anything."

"Oh, fine. Let's get to work then. Oh! Wait a minute!" she said, pointing at Haru. "He's got green spots on his shirt!"

"What!" exclaimed Haru.

"You're right!" said Tohru, in surprise. "Haru, why did you do that to Kyo?"

"I didn't do anything!" he said. "I was doing homework the whole time yesterday! Wasn't I, Yuki?"

"He was," Yuki confirmed. "Haru, Momiji, and I were doing homework in the sitting room the entire time they were here."

"Then how did you get green dye on your shirt?" asked Uo suspiciously.

"I don't know. Wait, Momiji? Didn't you borrow one of my shirts yesterday?"

"Yes," said Momiji, "but---"

"Aha!" exclaimed Uo triumphantly. "So it was you!"

"No!" cried Momiji. "I would never do that to anyone! Not even to Kyo!"

"Hey!" growled Kyo in annoyance.

"He really wouldn't do something like that," said Tohru. "He's just too sweet!"

"And anyway," said Haru, "he never left the sitting room either."

"That's true," said Yuki, nodding.

"Well," said Hana," let's just look for more clues around the house. There has got to be something more."

The three split up to search the house. Fifteen minutes later, Hana slid into the house, calling for Uo and Tohru to come back to the sitting room. "I have found something," she announced when they got there. "It's a dry cleaning receipt, and it states on it that a green stain was removed."

"Does it say who got it removed?" asked Tohru.

"No."

"Then we haven't learned anything from it," said Uo.

"That isn't true," replied Hana. "We know that it wasn't Haru or Momiji, because they live on a family estate and wouldn't pay to have a stain removed if it could be done at home. Yuki and Shigure, however, would bring it to a dry cleaner's because Tohru does all of the laundry, and she would find it."

"You are really good at this Hana!" exclaimed Tohru.

"Hey," said Haru, "does that mean Momiji and I can go somewhere else and start our homework now?"

"Yes," replied Hana.

"Good. Come on Momiji, I'll help you with your math again."

The two boys left the room, chatting quietly. Kyo was starting to get really annoyed because it was taking so long to find who had made his hair green.

"There's no point in doing any more investigating! I know Yuki did it!" he said. "The brat would just love seeing me go through this."

"First of all," said Yuki in a bored voice, "I wouldn't go to the trouble to do something like that because I can beat you in any regular fight very easily. Secondly, Shigure would enjoy watching you suffer from something like this much more than I would."

"Oh, come on now," said Shigure. "I am the adult of the house. I wouldn't do something like this to Kyo, even if it is extremely funny," and he broke into a fit of laughter.

"Shut up!" yelled Kyo angrily.

"Hey!" shouted Uo. "That's enough! We can't prove either of you guilty yet, so we have to keep looking anyway. All three of you, sit down and be quiet."

Uo turned back to Hana and Tohru. "Did you two finish searching your areas of the house?" asked Hana.

"Yep," replied Uo.

"I just have to look in Yuki and Kyo's bathroom," said Tohru, "the scene of the crime."

"We'll come with you," said Uo. "It's the most likely place to find something. We should've looked there first."

"Yes," said Hana. "All three of us should search there."

The trio of girls marched up the stairs to search the last room. Down in the sitting room, Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo heard a triumphant cry. The three came marching right back down the stairs, Uo with a smug look on her face. In Tohru's hand was one of Shigure's ballpoint pens.

"How do you explain this?" said Uo to Shigure, her eyes bright. "You have your own bathroom! What was this doing in Yuki and Kyo's bathroom?"

Shigure sighed. "Well, it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to deny it any longer. I put the dye in Kyo's shampoo. What did you expect me to do, sit around and watch him destroy my house over and over again? I was desperate to get back at him somehow, and I thought, why not do something funny?' Well, this was hilarious, if I do say so myself, and I am willing to bet that Kyo has learned his lesson now."

"If you believe that, then you don't know me at all," said Kyo, and he launched a punch at Shigure which he dodged. "I swear I'm gonna kill you, you creep!"

"Now, really Kyo," called Shigure over his shoulder nervously as he tried to stay away from Kyo. "Is this really necessary?"

"YES!!"

"You wouldn't really hurt your dear cousin?"

"Why don't you stop running and find out!!!"

Kyo chased Shigure until he had cornered him in front of the paper door. He took a run at him, but Shigure dodged at the last second, and Kyo went flying right through the paper door, bashing it into a hundred pieces.

"KYO! YOU DID IT AGAIN!" yelled Shigure.

"No kidding," groaned Kyo.

"THIS IS CRAZY! WE USED TWO NEW DOORS YESTERDAY, AND NOW ANOTHER ONE TODAY!"

"You idiot," said Yuki, looking down at Kyo. "Don't you ever learn?"

Responses much appreciated. If I get a good grade on this, I'll tell you guys in one or both of our other fanfics.