Bad Habits

by Granate, 2005


Disclaimer: Don't own, not making any money!

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Ryuuzaki was having soup for lunch.  Soup meant crackers, of course, and someone had made the mistake of leaving him the entire bag of oyster crackers.  Raito took a break from work to eat his own lunch.  They were seated on the couch and had been looking through the list of Yotsuba's employees.  Raito rubbed his eyes, glad for the break.  He ate and watched absently as Ryuuzaki sprinkled a few crackers in his soup and had a few spoonfuls.   Raito thought it odd that he then laid a pile of the crackers on the table.  Over the next half hour, Ryuuzaki became obsessed with emptying the bag and setting the crackers on the coffee table in rather intricate design dictated by their hexagonal shape.  Magazines and papers were shoved aside, his soup was left forgotten.

"Ryuuzaki, they're food.  You eat them," Raito finally reminded him.

"I intend to," Ryuuzaki said without looking up.  His eyes were glazed over and he seemed to be looking through the crackers.  Raito knew that this look meant he was doing one thing and thinking about three others.

"ALL of them?"

Ryuuzaki seemed to come out of his trance and took a good look at the span of tabletop his creation covered.  "On second thought, maybe not all of them," he admitted.

"What is that?" Raito asked, nodding to the table.  "Looks like a fractal."

"It is.  Sierpinski's hexagon."

"Sierpinski?"

"Ah, better known for the Sierpinski Triangle."

Light nodded.  He'd learned about fractals in one of his higher level math classes.  He watched Ryuuzaki for a while longer.  When the hexagon was complete, it looked like a large snowflake.  Satisfied, Ryuuzaki dropped a handful of extra crackers in his soup and ate some.

"Oh, my soup's gone cold," he said, giving the bowl a disappointed look.  

It seemed like common sense that the soup would go cold, but Ryuuzaki said it with such surprise that Raito had to laugh.  "Serves you right.  Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?" he joked.

"I did not have a mother, but if I had, I'm sure she would have told me not to play with my food," Ryuuzaki said agreeably.  "She probably would also have told me to sit up straight and not bite my fingernails."

Raito chuckled a little.  "Maybe I can lend you my mom for a while, then."

"No, thank you, I'm quite happy with my bad habits," Ryuuzaki said before summoning Watari to reheat his soup.

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L is making the fourth iteration of Sierpinski's Hexagon. Read more about it here.