Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ The Small Things ❯ Technical Difficulties ( Chapter 6 )

Technical Difficulties:

 

 

Upon her arrival in the Sohma household, Tohru had been instructed to discretely install two cameras in each family member's room, in addition to a set of mini-speakers in her own room, so that she could receive any emergency calls at the speed of light (or sound, rather), as well as further instructions - which primarily involved installing more and more borderline-microscopic (and surprisingly hard to install) surveillance cameras. The first of the original two: a typical and unnoticeable spot in a corner on the ceiling, to give a bird's eye view of the entire area. The second was more of a recent invention and still completely unknown to the general public; a thin wire, which ran along the inner edges of a frame (in this case the largest mirror in each room, since everyone knew how vain the male ego was when it was alone - or, at least, when it thought it was) and sent electric signals (invisible to the human eye - obviously) across the surface, recording all information by - well honestly, she didn't know exactly how it worked.

 

 

All that mattered was that it did, and that all data was sent via infrared signals to three little CCDs (Compact Compact Discs), which were safely stored in a small machine that could pass for an old-fashioned cassette player, lying forgotten in a dusty corner, and could be left untouched without any suspicion.

 

 

Picking it up, Tohru headed to the spare room and into the closet (a roomy little thing it was, considering), where she had set up her laptop. Very carefully, for it was more than her life to do anything to damage the strange machine in any way, she opened it up.

 

 

“Okay, time to see what the Sohma boys have been up to recently…”

 

 

Her hand hovered over the three little discs.

 

 

“Hmm… So many choices…”

 

 

Sohma, Kyo

 

 

Sohma, Shigure

 

 

Sohma, Yuki

 

 

Even after a rather maturing re-education with the CIA, she always flinched at the mere idea of what might have occurred (recently or otherwise) in the uncharted depths of Shigure's lair - the source of all things (living, inflated or otherwise) that went bump in the night, more often than not. Shortly after she had settled in, Tohru had witnessed part of a most unforgettably traumatic scene which took place in that dreaded room during the early hours of one perfectly frightful morning, and should never again be repeated for fear of corrupting the poor, innocent minds of the greater public (or all public for that matter) - or at the very least, cause them to not-so-spontaneously combust into millions of little but very, very disturbed shreds.

 

 

In other words, it was best to leave that one for as long as possible. She had kept to that philosophy throughout the entire duration of her stay at Shigure's house, which was probably why she still had large quantities of unseen footage collecting dust. That is, not to say that the footage actually collected dust, as the special material that CCDs were made of was both insect and dust repellent.

 

 

Deciding to stick with a safer option, Tohru chose the first and carefully slotted it in her laptop.

 

 

She pressed play and sat back.

 

 

The screen was divided in half. The left side showed the information from the ceiling, while the right showed everything the mirror reflected. But no matter which way you looked at it, it was still no more than what it was.

 

 

And it was: an empty room.

 

 

“Is this thing working?” Tohru pressed the play button repeatedly.

 

 

The disc was working fine; she could hear the faint whirring noise. The room was just empty.

 

 

“Oh bloody -” Irritated at the lack of interesting activities, she pressed another button. The hands on a clock on the wall spun around rapidly. Other than that, nothing had changed but the direction of the sunlight through the room's window. It was almost like a scene from a cheesy-but-attempting-to-be-deep-and-fooling-no-one-quite-frankly Hollywood film.

 

 

“So this is what it's like to watch a room in fast-forward.” She sighed. This was pathetic. What did the CIA expect? They were just boys for god's sake! Stupid, seventeen-year-old bastards - even the one ten years older acted just the same - all pretty much without peculiar or secretive lives (excluding the relatively unimportant consequences of the Sohma curse, of course), if any - or even girlfriends! And consequently, at most times, they were almost ridiculously and unbelievably horn-

 

 

Suddenly, an orange-haired figure flew into the room and towards the dresser, hesitated in front of the mirror, then proceeded to circle madly about, waving its arms around in a very disturbing matter. Quickly pausing the recording, she rewound it, then paused it once again, just as he was passing the mirror.

 

 

Wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. He'd probably just left the shower.

 

 

Either that or he just enjoyed waltzing around the house almost nude.

 

 

No, wait - that was his older cousin. And yet another unnecessary spectacle she had been forced to witness. But in the meantime, she pushed that image away, and basked in the glory of what lay right in front of her.

 

 

“Da-yumn, Kyo…”

 

 

She refrained from swooning. He may have been a little temperamental, but one had to admit - he was appealing and currently topless. And that was always a plus. Constant training had paid off.

 

 

After taking a second more to drool over him, Tohru let the footage continue.

 

 

But what followed next was… rather disappointing.