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Caught on Camera

Photograph: The Eyebrows

Upon first glance, it looked like nothing but a simple picture of a pair of elementary school age children doing a crafts project. It took Shinichi a moment to realize what was odd about it. "Kaito, where're your eyebrows?"

"What?" The magician gave him a bewildered look before he too took a look at the picture. "Hey, you're right. They're not there. That's weird. It looks like this one's from when I was ten? I'm pretty sure I had eyebrows when I was ten."

Ten… Shinichi thought back and suddenly brightened. "Oh yeah, it must have been the whole fire flower incident!"…

. . . . . . . . .

Sitting in the middle of a mass of assorted sheets of construction paper, Shinichi eyed his school project with a critical eye. They had been instructed to build a model of one of their favorite architectural structures. He didn't really have a favorite building, so he'd decided to just go ahead and make Tokyo Tower even if he knew it wasn't a particularly interesting choice. Now he was wishing he'd picked something a little less tall and skinny. The half made tower lilted wearily to one side as though its two hours of life were already too much for it to bear. He was starting to have serious doubts that it would survive until the due date. And if it did he wasn't sure it was going to be presentable.

Maybe he could reinforce it with some disposable chopsticks or something. They didn't have any at home though…

"Shinichi!"

Tearing his eyes away from the tower that was beginning to look more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa by the second, Shinichi caught sight of a blur that skidded to a stop beside him, sending scraps of paper in every direction. Several pieces fwapped against his tower. It was a rather depressing mark of just how weak a structure it was that the light buffeting sent it wobbling. He reached out hurriedly to steady it before glancing back around. The blur had resolved itself into his best friend who looked like he'd run all the way from wherever it was he'd been.

"Did you need something?" Shinichi asked as he finished righting the tower. It immediately started to wilt again but at least it stayed upright.

"I've got this great new trick," the aspiring magician exclaimed, eyes bright with excitement as he produced a rather large paper rose from somewhere. "Watch!"

He twirled the rose once then brushed his free hand over its vivid crown of crimson paper petals. Shinichi thought he heard a kind of ssccchhh sound but he didn't have time to wonder what it had been because at that moment the flower burst into flames. The entire thing from crown to stem went up in a ball of orange and yellow light and searing heat. Kaito let out a cry of surprise—so apparently this wasn't supposed to happen—and both boys stumbled away from the flash of intense heat.

What remained of the rose fell in flaming pieces—right into the middle of the nest of construction paper that Shinichi had been using. In seconds fire was racing over the ground, rising higher and higher, faster and faster. Orange tongues licked up the wilting Tokyo Tower as other flames began to creep onto the wood of the porch where Shinichi had been working.

Both boys stood for a moment just staring in horror at the hungry flames with their mouths agape and eyes wide. Then they were both running. Shinichi grabbed the house coiled just off the porch steps as Kaito raced to turn the handle on the faucet to which it was attached. Then water was gushing out in an almighty spray, blasting everything on the porch like a small monsoon.

The flames gave a hiss of protest and died, the faint wisps of steam their last wave farewell. Shinichi continued to spray the porch for several moments longer before turning it off just to be safe. Once he was sure nothing was going to suddenly light up again, he dropped the head of the hose back onto the rest of its coils and surveyed the huge, black patch on the porch the fire had left behind. As for his construction project…he couldn't even see it anymore. It had been completely consumed by the flames along with most of the unused construction paper.

"I, uh, I'm really sorry…" an unusually small voice said from behind him with an even more unusual hint of guilt.

Shinichi sighed and shook his head. "It's all right… I was thinking about remaking it anyway. At least the fire didn't reach the house. The important thing is that no one got hurt, right?" He turned to confirm this only to frown when he noticed that his last assumption hadn't been entirely correct. White it was true that Kaito had gotten away from the fire quickly enough to avoid being really hurt, he'd still gotten minor burns on both his hands and face, the most obvious being on the tip of his nose.

"You should go run those under some cool water. I'll be right back," he said hurriedly before running back into the house. Both his parents were out, but he remembered that his father had used the cream for helping sun burns on his hands when he'd burned them after spilling hot coffee. Racing to the medicine cabinet, he took a moment to stare at the bottles arrayed there. It took him a second to locate the right one. Grabbing it, he followed the sounds of running water into the kitchen where Kaito had climbed onto the counter by the sink.

It wasn't until they had finished tending to the burns that Shinichi realized why he'd been getting this strange, niggling sensation that something was off with his friend ever since the incident.

"Um, Kai…"

"Yeah?"

"I think you kind of burned off your eyebrows."

Kaito blinked then turned to examine his own reflection in the polished front of the oven door. "…Well, I'm sure they'll grow back."

. . . . . . . . .

…They had spent the rest of that day rebuilding a much more sturdy miniature of the Tokyo Tower out of cardboard. It wasn't until much later that Shinichi thought to ask what the trick had been supposed to do. Apparently the flower had, in fact, been meant to catch fire, but it was supposed to emerge unharmed. It certainly hadn't been meant to go off like a fire bomb. The fact that it had probably meant whatever method Kaito had been using to light the fire along with the construction of the flower itself had been flawed, but the magician with his magician's secrecy had refused to explain anything, claiming he'd fix it and show it to Shinichi again when it worked better (which didn't happen until years later because neither Kuroba parent had been pleased to discover that their son had been—literally—playing with fire. It didn't help that the huge black burn mark on the porch had been impossible to hide).

TBC

A.N: A couple years ago I did actually see a friend of mine lose a pair of eyebrows to a Bunsen burner. It was rather shocking since the whole thing went up in a plume and everyone was like what the...!