Chapter 2.5

Das Haar, Das Ich Bürste

The Hair That I Brush

"Jun! You're doing it way too roughly –desu!" Suiseiseki whined needlessly on purpose. Jun wasn't too rough. In fact, he was doing it almost perfectly.

"Yes yes, I get it already!" frustrated Jun replied to the doll who was sitting on his left thigh. Her pleated beret was resting on her lap while the boy was trying his hardest not to displease her. With long strokes Jun brushed Suiseiseki's soft brown hair, which seemed to go on forever.

She sure has long hair, I wonder how long it would take to grow on a real human? And these twirls in the end are a pain. Jun tried to run the flat hairbrush along the twirls but quickly opted to grabbing the hair from where the twirls begun and pulling the hairbrush through, stretching the twirls straight, before letting them spring back to their original form.

Jun noticed that his leg was starting to get numb as he was grooming the twirls. Geeze, she's kind of heavy… now that I think about it, she's huge for a doll, almost half of my own length! Shinku seems to be quite short and felt much lighter when I combed her hair.

"Suiseiseki, could you move just a little bit? My leg is going numb," Jun hinted with a somewhat painful look on his face.

Suiseiseki grumbled silently and edged herself a few inches from her previous spot. What, is he implying that I'm heavy? This mini-human is so rude it makes me want to kick him in the chin! W-well, I can't say that he's not doing a decent job, but I can't let him get all cocky just because of that! Suiseiseki gripped her beret.

"Wait a minute! You're concentrating too long on one spot -desu!" she snapped at Jun.

"Whaa? But… oh never mind…" Jun quickly gave up. This was not the time to be arguing, not while he was suffering his community service sentence. He moved on to the second half of her inhumanely long hair. What was that again? She can be such a pain sometimes, I just wish that at least once she'd…

Jun's heart jumped into his throat. A tangle. The third stroke had hit the shoals of the brown sea of hair. He tried to use a little bit more force but the brush did not budge. He tried pulling it back the way it came from but in vain. Slightly starting to panic, he tried directly taking the brush away, however it was completely stuck. Oh god oh god, what should I do?! Looks like she hasn't noticed yet, but if she does, I'm toast!

"Why did you stop –desu?" Suiseiseki turned her head to observe his face over her shoulder.

"I-It's nothing, really, I have everything under control!" Jun quickly responded.With a slightly confused expression Suiseiseki turned back to her original position, she was past caring for now.

Whew, that was close. Jun tried to use a lot more strength, but it just pulled and yanked Suiseiseki's head back a bit. This gave Suiseiseki yet another chance to complain about the quality of his service.

"Ow! Be careful –desu! My hair is not a rug you can pull and twist as you wish –desu! Even a puny human like you should know it!" Suiseiseki winced at him.

However, Jun was barely listening. He was too busy trying to untangle the hairbrush from the hair. He tried to use his fingers to pull small strands off, but it seemed to work the opposite way. Ugh…looks like it's there for good. What am I going to do? Heh, I wonder if I could hide it in her hair? Jun tried covering the hairbrush a bit, but it was too obvious. The red hairbrush with white flowers painted on its back stood out too much, however, the handle disappeared pretty well since it was pretty thin. Hmm…I have an idea and it just might work!

"Say Nori, didn't you have two of these?" Jun waved at Nori.

"Yeah, I think so," was her reply.

"Could you bring it to me?" he asked.

"Why do you need a second hairbrush –desu?" Jun's peculiar question had raised Suiseiseki's interest.

"Err… two brushes, twice the speed!" Jun quickly made up a half-witted reason. Although Suiseiseki had her suspicions, she let this one pass with only a raised eyebrow and an angry stare at Jun.

Soon Nori came with the second hairbrush and a plateful of cookies, which she offered to the dolls. She handed the hairbrush to Jun and placed the plate on the living room table. Quickly Jun brushed the rest of the second half, avoiding the tangled area. He then placed the second brush around the same height as the other one was, but on the first large strand he had groomed. He gently tied the hairbrush with Suiseiseki's hair and hid the rest of it so that only the red backside and white flowers were showing. Perfect! This ought to do it!

"Suiseiseki, I'm done!" he happily exclaimed.

"About time –desu!"

Suiseiseki jumped down and quickly went to see herself from the mirror. Everything seemed to be in place. But what are those? Suiseiseki noticed two red flower patterned items in her hair.

"They are… uh, hair accessories! I placed them there while brushing your hair," Jun tried to cover his anxiety. Suiseiseki inspected these "accessories" carefully.

"I-I guess they are okay –desu," Suiseiseki stuttered a bit to contain her happiness. It seems Jun had done exceptionally well this time, but her pride didn't allow for much more praises. She continued:

"I guess I can forgive you just this one time –desu."

Jun sighed from relief and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He noticed Shinku staring at him intensely. Oh boy, I guess it's not over just yet.

"Jun. Are you done with her?" Shinku asked crossly.

"Eh… yeah I guess so," Jun replied with a new cold sweat breaking on his forehead.

"Then you can probably do as good job fixing my dress as you did with grooming her hair, can't you?" Shinku's voice seemed to carry a bit of jealousy in it.

"But it was your idea, wasn't it?" the boy tried to cover himself.

"Quiet you. We'll take this to the upstairs, get your tools and follow me," Shinku commanded as she pranced away. With a sigh, Jun soon followed her and spent the rest of the evening and part of the night, trying to repair the dress and thus satisfy the needs of this even prouder and more demanding doll.

This chapter brewed from the part of 2nd chapter which I left "unfinished" on purpose to not add way too much stuff on the actual chapter, it was getting quite long already and I think that adding 2 pages about this would've broken the flow. I didn't really intend for this to be comedic in nature at all, but I decided to add a hint of that into it as well, mostly because I got stuck on what to write after I got into the middle point of this minichap. I actually wrote this in way under 2 days, but there was a long pause between the two days when I was trying to figure out what to add into it really. I knew what I was going to write but how I was going to do it was another matter.

Nothing special about the name though, I wanted a bit more poetic name for the chapter, since I was originally thinking about more of a non-comedic minichap, but even after I changed my plans a bit I liked it and decided to keep it.

Thanks to:

Edgewalker for beta reading and support

Yorumi for translation help