28 Her Name (13)

Time flew past on the shoulders of a cheetah, and Kyro stood up to go to the shower. Iris saw him looking at her, but since she was once again pretending to be asleep, he didn't touch her. Good boy!

The moment she heard the sound of water, she jumped to her feet and rushed to the mouse. The computer was still on, so that was a good start. But that was it. Everything else was one horror after another.

Moving a mouse with a paw showed up to be harder than she had expected. She couldn't just put a hand over it and move it as she wished. Her best solution was to sit down behind the mouse and try to control it with her front feet. It was extremely uncomfortable and inefficient, but she couldn't think of a better way.

The amount of time it took for her to open a private window on the browser and click on the search bar was close to forever. If not for the clock in the right corner saying that she had spent six minutes, she would have already started waiting for Kyro to step out and find her in the act.

Not yet, though. She still had time. While repeating that to herself, she ran to the keyboard and started typing. I-R-I-S. Yes, that should be it. She was almost proud at how easy it seemed, but when she raised her head, she was met with the reality of how fat-fingered she was - ieertiosssd.

'I did not type that! It's this damn keyboard! I certainly did not hold the s-key for so long!'

She smashed a lot of keys for that, then remembered her time constraint and rushed to delete everything. Try number two went a little better - ireeeios. At least she managed to get two keys right.

After a couple more tries, she managed to type in 'iris lyrics'. Her results, though, were disappointing to say the least. All the search gave her were Goo Goo Dolls song, and she already knew it had no mention of her name. That was its major flaw!

Iris was pissed, but she didn't have the time to show her emotions. If she didn't hurry up, Kyro might come out and see her using his computer. Now wouldn't that be a fun conversation…

Her movements became quicker and she scrolled down with the arrow key to the last search result on the first page. It read 'Lyrics containing the term: iris'. 'Perfect!' She almost screamed out in joy. But no, she needed to stay quiet. Her cries might attract Kyro's attention and he'll hurry out, which would be a disaster of extreme proportions. With her ability to manipulate the mouse, her 'swiftly close the page' would take around a minute.

For her, the simple act of clicking on the link took awhile. The mouse on the screen went either too far or not far enough, or to the side out of nowhere. Bringing it down was also a nuisance, since she had to move herself first.

Another forever later, she was on the page and could finally look through the songs. To her disappointment, there weren't that many of them, or at least none she knew. Most were stuff from eighties, or even fifties, almost half a century before she was born.

It didn't matter much, though. She paid a cursory glance to the lyrics, making sure it was nothing weird, and put to memory the first song that she saw. With it in mind, she painstakingly closed the private tab and maximized the normal pages. Kyro had left his browser on the news page, but it showed up to be one of the two tabs open. The other one was with youtube, some song Iris didn't know.

Elated, she moved the mouse on that tab and clicked. 'Just need to move the mouse to the video search bar and I'll be done. A minute more and it'll be over! My name, I'm coming for you!'

But as she started writing her name, her mind blanked out. She'd planned so hard how she was going to act the moment she heard her name that she hadn't paid enough attention to the stuff before it. How was she going to explain her writing down the title of the song and the group to Kyro?

Her original thought was to pretend that the song just showed up as part of suggestions and she accidentally clicked on it, or the song came to play as the next video, but that was a horrible plan. As she was moving about, she saw the icon for history. If Kyro clicked there, he would instantly notice that something wasn't adding up.

What an idiot she was. So much thought spent on deleting the history of her searching for the song, but as to pay attention how she played the song without typing it in? Who needs that!

How could she not have thought of it right away! Arhg! She'll have to try again tomorrow, when she came up with a better plan.

It wasn't meant to be, however, for it was at that moment that Kyro stepped out of the shower. Having been too preoccupied with her own thoughts, Iris had forgotten to pay attention to the sound of water and when it ceased.

Kyro was walking for his wardrobe when he heard a yelp from the study. 'Did something happen to the fox?' He ran in to find the fennec standing like a deer in headlights before his keyboard.

'Did it do something?' Lucy never showed such an expression—he was too shameless to be embarrassed when caught doing something he shouldn't—but Kyro's family dogs had showed it every time he stumbled upon them misbehaving. And the fox looked exactly like them at that moment.

"Now what did you?" he asked while looking around. The table was clean, so that was good. The trouble this time shouldn't be the smelly kind. He didn't have time for that kind of stuff.

When he came closer, he noticed that his browser was open. Didn't he minimize it before going to shower? And youtube? He was sure he hadn't changed the tab.

Wait, wasn't there something written in the search bar? He was about to delete the gibberish, having understood why the fennec had that look, and close the browser, when he recognized the word. The thing in the search bar wasn't random nonsense.

"Iris?" he said uncertainly, wondering if this was just a coincidence. The letters were quite far apart, though.

As if something had put the battery back in, the fox shot into motion. It dashed at him, eyes shining and tail wagging. When he didn't react in time, the fennec stood up on its haunches while leaning against his chest and cooed with excitement.

Kyro's eyes fell on the word in the search bar and he repeated it. "Iris."

Once again, the fox began moving. It fell back and ran a couple circles before him, chasing its tail, then came to lean against him, cooing.

There was only one thought in Kyro's head as he kept looking from the fox to the name in the search bar - 'I need a beer, or ten, and somebody call in sick for me today. Please.'