𝐄𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐘 『 senku 』

v. her first experiment

what was your first experiment?

AKARI IS SMART and she knows it. Ask her anything of what she had read and she'll answer you in a heartbeat with the exact same words in the books from memory. If you ask an open-ended question or wish for her to debate, she would gladly take up the challenge and could go on for days talking about a certain topic with solid evidence and argument.

But, one flaw that Akari hides from everyone was her practical learning. The girl could memorise thousands of scientific theories, she could even calculate the most complex numbers and show you her neat working correctly - but if you ask her to do practical learning, she would simply malfunction.

For some reason, her body can't keep up with how fast her brain thinks that her actions became a blubbering mess. She could write workings and essays since they're going with the flow of her thoughts but science experiments or geography practical? Whew, her father was happy the house was still in one piece. Not to mention, Akari hates doing anything physical since it drains her energy. 

Akari found out about her flaw through Senku. He had invited her during their class lunch break to make a small rocket experiment! They started with something small; where they were going to place candy into a gassy drink bottle to create a small fizz causing the bottle to "fly". Senku had done it once to show Akari how it worked, then, he made Akari do it as well since experiments were fun and meant to be shared among others, right?

Wrong. It wasn't meant to be shared with Akari.

Akari stood in the open space of her school's yard. Kids were running around at the other side while she stood her ground, holding the tube of candy. Senku was sitting on the ground, a few meters away from her, waiting for her experiment to start. Akari walked slowly to the cold open fizz drink as her face was full of concentration. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she ran through the theories of how this experiment works, the calculations of how high the bottle would go up, the speed of it flying etc. 

"Just get on with it. We don't have all day!" Senku shouted as he dug his ear. His face was full of boredom which caused Akari to be more nervous.

"It's okay. It's easy. He can do it...so can I..I just have to put one candy in and run for my life..." Akari thought. Without hesitation, she pushed one candy into the bottle.

But nothing happened.

"Huh..why won't it work? Was my bottle not cold enough? Was I supposed to shake it?  The candy was supposed to produce a large amount of carbon dioxide in the gassy drink which will cause bubbles to form and result in an eruption...Maybe I should put more," Akari thought. 

She quickly placed 3 more candy into the bottle when she heard Senku exclaimed, "Oi! What are you doing? You're going to-"

Suddenly, the bottle erupted like a fountain, splashing its content on Akari who was nearby. Akari was shocked by the sudden eruption that she stood rooted to the ground, taking in her consequence as Senku watched from the sidelines with an open mouth. After a minute, the water eruption had died down and the two little scientists could see the whole mess they had made. The yard was wet and had multiple small puddles of fizz, but the worst part was Akari's wet clothing and hair as she had a shocked face (still holding the tube of candy - or what was left of it).

Senku sighed before face palming himself. 

"You don't put more than one candy in the bottle, idiot. It will cause a stronger reaction and we didn't calculate any of that,"

"But...nothing was happening..." The small girl tried to explain as she turned to look at him. He took the tube of candy from her small hands and kept it in his pocket. 

"That's because the reaction was still forming. You could've waited awhile since we did open the bottle that was exposed to the air for quite some time," Senku explained. The raven haired girl looked down to the ground as she was disappointed in herself. She also believed that Senku was disappointed in her and wouldn't be her friend since it was the first time she had failed something.

"I'm sorry..." She apologised.

"For what?" 

"Huh? I failed the experiment...you wanted to take notes..."

Senku laughed.

"There's no such thing as failed experiments! In fact, I got better notes because of that strong eruption, it means we should put more candy for it to last longer and erupt higher!" 

Akari was surprised. She thought he would've scolded her or insulted her but instead he's comforting her? Senku noticed her reaction. He sighed before taking a napkin and wiping off the water on her damp hair and face.

"We learn from failure, not success. Don't worry, you did well, Akari," He stated before walking away and picking up the empty bottle.

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

Akari held her chest. She could feel her face warming up and her heart beating fast but why? Could it be the heat from the humid environment? Perhaps...or maybe it was the feeling of being comforted? She shrugged the feeling off.

"Thank you, Senku"

"Hey maybe next time, leave the experiments to me yeah? You can do all the note taking and calculations," Senku looked back at her with an excited grin. Akari nodded eagerly, reciprocating his excitement. The two young children had only begun their journey and Akari knew that from that time, that she was going to stick by Senku's side until the day the world stopped spinning.