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It would have been easier for Pixal to have download instructions on how to braid hair off of the internet. She would have known it in mere seconds, but she didn’t. Instead of downloading the instructions off of the internet, Pixel came to Nya one evening after dinner.
The water master had been surprised when Pixal asked her to teach her how to braid her hair but had gotten over it surprisingly fast.
“Do you want to do it in here or go sit out in the main room?” Nya asked.
If they did it in the main room, then there would be more people around to watch. “In here, please,”
With that in mind, the former samurai invited Pixal over to join her on the floor.
“How much do you know about braiding or plaiting hair?” Nya asked.
“Nothing, this is completely new to me. The closest thing I’ve done to braiding is coiling rope,” Pixel told her. “And coiling rope isn’t really the same,” she added.
“No it isn’t,” the other agreed.
The android watched as Nya began to separate her own hair into three clear sections.
“The most important thing to remember when doing this is to keep the sections of hair moving,” the water master told her as she secured each of the three sections with hair ties.
‘Keep the sections moving’? Hair was connected to the scalp, she couldn’t just take it out, could she?
“The easiest way for me to teach you to braid is for you to try it on my hair, so you can see what you’re doing,” she explained, opening an invitation for Pixal to take the three sections of hair into her own hands.
“Forget the middle one for now, it’s not important,” Pixal let the middle section slip out of her hand.
“Just checking that you’re holding the left one in your left hand and the right one in your right hand?”
“Yes,” Pixal confirmed.
“Great. Keep the left one where it is but bring the right one over the middle one so that it ends up between the left and the middle ones,” Oh, they were starting.
The android did as she told her.
“Now, keep the seconds separate but change your right hand over to what used to be the middle section,” Nya instructed, still managing to sit still as she fumbled a little with the other lady’s hair. “Make sure that the section that you just crossed over doesn’t fall back to where it was when we started,” she added.
It took more fumbling and a bit of balancing but Pixal managed to do it.
“The rest of the process is pretty much the same, just alternating sides,” the water master said. “‘Keep the sections moving’ means that, until you run out of hair you keep crossing the sections over while keeping alternating sides,”
Pixal crossed over the sections a few more times but soon she ran into a problem, the braid was too loose, and there were visible holes in it in parts.
“What do I do if the braid is quite loose?” she asked.
“Undo it and start again. You can pull each section tight as you go, don’t worry about it hurting me,” Nya told her.
She did what was suggested, letting go of the braid which was loose enough that it just fell apart. This time, as she worked on braiding Nya’s hair, Pixal remembered to pull it tight.
The second time’s the charm, it seemed. As she was close to running out of hair, Nya flicked a fourth hair tie up into the air, it arched up and over her head to be caught by Pixal’s free hand.
Securing the end of Nya’s hair with the hair tie marked the completion of Pixal’s first full attempt at braiding hair.
The moment that Nya was sure that the samurai was finished, she got up and opened her closet door so that she could have a look at Pixal’s attempt.
Once more, surprise flittered across her face, and once more it was gone as soon as Pixal had registered it.
“Pix, are you sure that this is your first time ever braiding hair?” Nya asked, turning to face the android again.
“I’m positive. Why?” she asked.
“This-” the water master took the braid into one of her hands. “-is incredibly neat. I guess I’m just surprised at how neat it is, as it was your first time I was expecting, well, a mess,” she told her.
An idea struck her. “I think I’ve still got a photo of my first attempt,” Nya snatched her phone up off of the bedside table and started flicking through it.
After a minute or so, she turned it around to show her something. It was a photo of what looked to be a hard copy of the original. In the picture, there was a mass of hair stapled rather shoddily to a piece of wood. The hair (wig) was twisted into a very messy braid that looked to be quite loose in some places but also tight in others. The date was scribbled in the corner, dated ten years ago…Nya would have been eight-years-old.
That meant that Nya had learnt while her parents were still missing, and that had to mean that it was Kai who taught her.
“That’s not a bad attempt for an eight-year-old,” Pixal told her.
“No, it isn’t” Nya agreed. “You noticed the date,” she added, a moment later. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“I did,”
“I know you’re wondering, Kai taught me — sort of — he tried to but I eventually turned to books,” the water master told her. “Growing up, our village didn’t have access to the internet,” she added.
“Thank you for teaching me,” Pixal thanked, moving the conversation on.
“Anytime, Pix,” Nya said. In the next few days, the others kept seeing Pixal with her own hair twisted into a tight braid.