Red Fish, No Fish- wait, what? [open!]
It was a widely known fact within the household that Shintaro did not often go outside. This being said, the other residents often did, and although he wasn't very good with responsibility, while the others were out, that left a lot of animals to take care of. He was used to taking care of his own rabbit, Tono, and the hermit crabs that he had received some time ago (even though he had a habit of losing them), and it wasn't as if feeding the other pets was hard.
All he had to do was find the appropriate food, scoop it, put it in the bowls, and it made for a happy animal-- supposedly. Of course, with every perfect situation, there came a problem to ruin it, and it just so happened that this time the problem was the fact that one of the pets didn't have any food left. He couldn't even find the bottle of fish food for that... um, abomination of a fish that Kano had taken in, and while normally he didn't like going outside, he had to do something about that. Even a lazy person like him wouldn't let an animal starve and, from what he had heard, fishes died pretty easily!
He would just have to go and find the nearest pet store, except.. well.. it was safe to say that Shintaro wasn't a fish scientist. He could Google what sort of food he needed for this fish, sure, but to start with, he didn't even know what that thing was called, let alone if it were really a fish. The only safe bet was to take it with him and ask for suggestions, just to be safe, and even though that plan wasn't thought through one hundred percent, it surely showed his dedication to taking care of the house's pets, right?
Riiiight...
So, with this new plan set in motion, Shintaro took the fish bowl in his hands and very, very carefully let himself out of the house, taking extra precautions (see: bumping the door with his hip to close it and probably bruising himself in the process) in order not to drop the little creature's habitat. It wouldn't take too long to find a store where someone would know what he needed, he figured, but then again, Shintaro's perception of too long was way different than the average person's.
A few blocks (or maybe even hardly that), and he was getting too tired to continue on. He could feel himself sweating and it wasn't even all that hot, in his opinion, so that meant that he had worked extra hard and deserved a break or something. Taking it upon himself to locate the nearest bench, he would set the fish bowl down first and then sit beside it, preoccupying himself with his cell phone as soon as he was situated. Shintaro hadn't checked it the whole time he was out and, that, in itself, was a pretty large accomplishment!
Everything was going fine and dandy, and he was totally ready to get back to what he was doing within about ten minutes or so, but since this "mission" involved Shintaro Kisaragi of all people, something definitely had to go wrong eventually. Unluckily for him, it was just about time that this happened, and as he stood up to get ready and go, he noticed that... something was missing. In fact, something seriously important was missing! The whole fish bowl was simply gone, someone had taken it and he hadn't noticed even though it was right next to him.
How was that even possible? How could be so pathetic, oh no, the fish was gone and he was at fault and he would probably die or something worse, he probably deserved something worse, and it was all because he tried to be a productive of society and help around the household for once and, damn you Mom for trying to make him believe that this was a good thing to do back when he lived with her, there was no possible way that he would ever do anything good in his life again, and worst of all, he--
Wait. He still needed to figure out where the fish was, right? Haha... Well, it wasn't like he could just.. find it so easily. A fish thief wasn't going to just give themselves up, right? But if someone had seen the burglary in process, then... maybe... Maybe they could help. Talking to people was something extremely difficult, but maybe... maybe if he could force himself to do that, then this situation wouldn't turn out to be completely faulty...
Ugh. He hated having a guilty conscience sometimes.
Forcing himself to smile (see: awfully), he continued to push himself up from the bench and glanced around, desperately searching for someone he had seen when he originally sat down. If they had been here he whole time, then there was no way that they could have missed it, right? Yeah, of course! That had to be, that had to be-- ah, there!
It took him a good three minutes to build up the courage to approach the person (and even then it wasn't top notch), but once he did, the words came tumbling out, making him look as lame as ever.
"I-- hey, um, I-- sorry for interrupting you, I mean-- sorry, sorry-- h-have you seen... have you seen someone steal a fish around here? Or a fish in general? You see, it's not mine, but I-- I was...taking it, um... somewhere, and... I--... Fish, have you seen a fish?!"
