3.

The road to the dormitory, where Runa is living with her two strange friends is deep in the university campus, so it means, Runa has to cut across the buildings, full of students. It is never an easy task, because a professor, or an elder student could stop you anytime, and you have to run errands for them. Sometimes these are innocent errands, like bringing coffee or food, but helping them in their experiments are not always so boring: last year, an errand student was asked to carry a basket from one building to an other. The package was proved to be two poisonous snake, both of them alive and in a really bad mood because of the moving imprisonment. The professor didn't tie the cloth properly to the basket, so when one of the snake's head came out, the first-year student errand throw the basket away. It wasn't his fault, that the basket fell into the middle of the crowded cafeteria. The snakes were happy to have a chance to stretch out all their vertebraes, and they immediately started to escape each in opposite directions. The people wasn't so sympathetic with them. Well, they weren't emphatic at all. Somehow they didn't want to eat together with two dangerous animals, and they gave a voice to their opinion. A loud one. In the end, the screaming crowd make the furniture of the place into a pile of trash, a lot of students were sent to hospital for severe injuries, getting in the panic. So the leaders of the university wasn't so happy, as the snakes. The professor had to catch the two adventurous animals, and had to exile them into their locked terrarium. And they didn't even bite anyone. It was a miracle. The first-year student vanished from the university at that night. It was rumored that it was too much for his nerves, and he went back to his parents' store to sell fried potatoes. It is also rumored, that his parents changed the menu, turning the french fries to the shape of a coin. Life is often unfair.

So running errands in the university is not always on the safe side, and one errand could change your life forever. Fortunately a bell chimes, and it indicates the end of the evening courses. Suddenly crowds of students has flooded the streets, and although they make the sweeping harder, Runa becomes somewhat safe in the middle of the chatting crowd. She could even join to her first-years classmates, who's lived in the same dormitory, so a sudden ask for an errand is vastly decreased. The professors, and the upper class students usually pick out those ones, who are alone. Runa has a nice chit-chatting with her classmates about the lessons, the professors, and the latest relationship gossips, while they have reached the dormitory. Nobody have ask her about the Competition, or their invention but it is not surprising at all. None of them have said a single word about the application.

First year students are usually don't enter any competitions. Why would they? They are less educated, than the upper class' students, so thy start with a disadvantage. They don't have any chance to win an award. Sometimes the second year students also fear to enter even a small competitions, not to mention, the National Invention Competition. It is only mandatory for the last year students. They have to show, what they have learned during the university, and how they could use the acquired knowledge. It is very important to their future. Although the application is mandatory for some university students, anyone is allowed to enter. Amateurs and professionals are all welcome. So maybe Runa, Harper and Kitchener are all coward, because they never mentioned anybody in their class, or in the dormitory about their work. Why? They probably have never wanted to be a laughing material all over the university, because of a rejection.

Laughing material? Well, if not their invention, their behavior is one. Kitchener and Harper are cousins, and their temper is very similar. The before times it could be said, they have Mediterranean temper. They both are loud, hot-headed, and their quarrels are common, loud and usually end up destroying everything, they find throwing to the other. It is well-known all over the campus, but their quarrels are so frequent, that the other student are now getting bored with them. To the extent that nobody would notice, or care when they would start to kill each other for real. Well, the biggest victim of their quarrels is usually the entrance door of their department. It so often breaks, so the looks of it suggest, that the tenants of that department of the dormitory are very poor, and austere. In the before times there were a lot of trees, so houses were made of wood. But nowadays it is hard to find suitable trees to make proper doors and windows. The trees are important to cover the town, and feeding the people. Felling them is a luxury. So the windows and doors are need to repair, when broken.

Even Kitchener and Harper's door. They are the part of the family, who owns the biggest company of the world, so they are rich. But even they have to repair their door, when it is broken. Broken by them. Like now. The door has broken again, when Runa reach the door-handle. She quickly has jumped to the side, counting on some flying things. She has been right, the split of the broken door a socket-wrench, two turbines, a part of a ventilator, and a middle-sized wheel has flown out in quick succession. The cousins are in another heated conversation. Runa sigh and starts to cry.

"HEY, YOU TWO! STOP! NOW!"

The flying saucers... erm... tools are suddenly stopped, and the two crying voices have died down. Two guilty faces appear in the split of the broken door.

"Hello!" Runa smiles at them, she loves them, after all. "Can I help you?"

The other two nod, so Runa enters the room, while the half of the door fall out to the pavement.

Harper and Kitchener are staring at each other, and their gaze slowly starts to wander to Runa.

"So, now what's happened?"

"She blames me selling the wrench sized six." Kitchener spits angrily.

"He is the only one, who could even sell the tools we need! No one else!" Harper riposte in cool voice, which always makes his cousin even more angry.

"I haven't bought anything for two days!"

"HEY!" Runa yells at them. "I don't know where that wrench is, but the mess is so big, that even a whole car could be here, without noticing."

Her two roommates are trying to avoid her gaze. They are aware what she want to say.

"Let's make some tidying, so we could bring the missing parts in."

"Could you get everything?"

Two hopeful, eager pairs of eyes looks at her. When she has nodded toward the shapeless silver-colored turtle, and the other two has burst up in loud cheers. Where has been the anger, and quarreling? The joy has overflown everything. Runa watch them with love.

It has taken a bit of time, to make room for the cart, but somehow they has managed. When they have pulled the cart in, a metallic jingling is heard, and Runa's hair is falling down.

"Oh." She swallows under the gaze of her friends. "I really don't remember using the wrench sized six as a hairpin." She tried to smile innocent at them, not to anger them again.

Kitchener just stares at her, his mouth opens and closes, like he would want to say something, but no voice comes out. He finally pulls himself together and clears his throat.

"So, it was you." He turns to his cousin, and points his finger at her. "Since I am innocent, repairing the door is your task! I am leaving!"

"Where do you go?" Runa ask him a bit hurt.

"My father and Uncle Plummer asked me to meet them in the evening."

"Do you really go to see them in this clothes?" Harper asks him irritably.

"What's wrong with these clothes?"

"Nothing." The girls answer in unison, so Kitchener freeze at that moment.

"Just you put on then three days ago, and we haven't got a proper sleep since then. You haven't changed, or took shower, so you stinks."

"Plus the oily palmprints are not fashionable in the high society's parties." Runa adds, with a bright smile, knowing that her outfit looks the same.

Kitchener finally gives up, he is aware, that he has lost to the girls. He has to take a shower and change his clothes, and neither of these tasks are simple. While he is making free the shower from the oil cans, and other important things, the girls try very hard to find a clean set of clothes for him.

"At least they are clean, and smell good." Harper tells her cousin, watching over him from head to toe.

"They want to talk to me, not bringing to a fashion show." Kitchener shrugs, and starts out the department. "The door is your responsibility!" He says, and vanish to the sunset.