“I’m—mutating? Like Hina?” Yes, Ezzen, that’s what she just said, don’t ask stupid questions. I tried for something more cogent. “Related to what I did with the punch, I assume?”
Ai nodded, prodding the hologram of my arm. She had highlighted the tricep, deltoid and pectoral—the punching muscles.
“Maybe four percent higher muscle density.”
The electric excitement deflated slightly. Four percent didn’t sound all that significant, not enough to warrant the giddiness or the quiet horror.
“Density, not mass? Er, you know what I mean by that…obviously, higher density would also increase the mass. What I mean is that it’d look the same from the outside, yeah? Like how Hina doesn’t look strong at all.” I eyed Ai’s biceps, still bare from when we’d sparred. She was muscular and made it look good; honest gains from honest exercise, not Hina’s brand of magical transcendence which left her looking slender and petite until she pulled her shirt off and revealed how heart-flutteringly toned she was, the steely muscle under her soft skin.
“Yes. For contrast, she is closer to three hundred percent, and the way her muscles anchor is different from ours. I would assume you will also probably have changes in the bone, but nothing external.”
For some reason, I was relieved that I wouldn’t become any bulkier. Four percent more mass wouldn’t have turned me into a hypertrophic roid-monster anyway, and arguably would have pushed me into a more conventionally attractive zone of built-ness than where I was now, but wider shoulders would just mean more to hide under a hoodie. I realized my sleeve was still rolled up from when Ai had scanned me and hastily pulled it back down. No shade on Ai’s physique; I just found it uncomfortable to imagine myself looking more like her.
“Cool, cool, that’s—good. And, um, spitballing here—it’ll only continue if I put more magic into it? Keep aggravating the Flame? Like with Opal’s tail.”
Ai’s expression darkened. “That’s right. But it’s important to understand that, like her tail, this is not a controlled process.” She half-turned to pull up her top slightly and point at where it exposed her tattoo on her lower back. “This is calibrated. It’s enhancement, but also shock absorption and safety limits. Right now, your only mutations are only in your arm, so…let’s say it progresses to fifty percent higher density. Your arm would be much stronger, but the rest of your chest muscles and joints will still be regular strength. You could hurt yourself badly. Hina-san has changed enough now that she can take it, but for years, she just…”
“Let herself get hurt.” I sighed. “We talked about that. Well, not the history, but that attitude.”
“Yes. It’s horrifying.”
An awkward silence stretched between us.
“She’s not a bad person, Ai.”
Ai shook her head, deactivating the hologram and flopping into the chair at her desk.
“You have a bias.”
“I—sure, I guess I do. But the way she described it, she’s not being cruel. That’s your hangup, isn’t it?”
“It was yours, too, until a few days ago.” She spun the chair lazily, looking up at the assemblage of robotic tentacles over the bed. “I thought you understood why.”
“I do,” I protested. “She did make me uncomfortable with all the…masochistic moaning from having her bones broken. But that’s not externalized cruelty. I didn’t even harm my Flame for this.” I held up my arm. It felt basically the same; maybe a bit of an ache, but neither damaged nor noticeably stronger.
“You will, if she wants you to. Now that you’ve had a taste.”
“No, I won’t. She offered, after you left, and I pushed her away. Specifically because we had promised you, mind, and I didn’t want to betray that. Why are you treating this like such a slippery slope? Alice and Heliotrope have been doing that too.”
“Because that’s what happened with Jason. Her ex-boyfriend.”
“Sky? He got way too into the pain stuff?”
“He wanted power, she gave it to him.”
“Less cryptically?”
Ai sat back in her chair, counting on her fingers.
“More muscle, new senses, he got taller, hair in different places…”
“New senses. Like Heliotrope’s eye?”
And hair? That felt…mundane, but the rest was interesting. I pulled out my phone on reflex to ask him myself—was interrupted by a knock on the door and a shimmering white dome of hair peeking into the doorway.
“Ojamashimasu. There you are, Ezzen. I was wondering where you’d gone.”
“Oh. Hi, sorry.”
“No worries,” Alice hastily assured me, stepping in and closing the door behind her. “I’m glad to see you’re here with Ai. What’s all this? Door was ajar, so I assumed nothing too sensitive…”
I exchanged a nervous glance with Ai—I could see Alice getting mad if she learned what I had done with Hina. Given Ai’s own judgment toward Hina on the topic, would she even cover for me? Plus, Alice was also being transformed by her magic, which Amane had indicated was a less-than-euphoric process for the dragon-girl. I opted for a distraction, reaching over to the desk for my mikan. I lobbed it to her. Alice caught it and looked at me curiously.
“Thanks?”
“Not that hungry anyway.”
Alice shrugged and got to work puncturing the skin with her long nails. Ai looked at her own mikan, as though registering her own hunger, and hesitantly began to peel it, but Alice tapped her shoulder.
“Normally I’d be delighted to see you eating real food, but I had actually been intending to ask if you wanted dinner.”
Ai blinked, glanced at the clock, then scrambled out of her chair and toward the door. She yanked it open and started calling across the hall and into her workshop. Alice chuckled.
“Mm-hm.”
Ai turned back to us, signaled with her hands that she’d be right back, and slipped out the door.
“She showed me her tattoo,” I informed Alice. It wasn’t like me to start conversations like that, but I thought I remembered Alice telling me to ask about it at some point. If nothing else, it kept us off the topic of my arm. She swallowed a slice of fruit.
“What did you think?”
“It’s impressive. Um…really quiet for the output, and the ward integration is neat. I thought the kinetic dampening could use some work, but I’d need to look at the diagram; I’m not great at organics. Of course, that’d be different from how it’s done in the mantles, but the rest is fairly similar.”
“It’s different when it’s a basic human body being enhanced, isn’t it? More magical, I suppose.”
“Completely,” I agreed. “That was my first time seeing it in person, really, aside from a few times Hina’s been Hina, and it’s a lot more visceral in person. The gap is much more apparent, but there’s something more relatable in it, too, I think, kind of easier to self-insert into it and imagine what it’s like to move like that…” I trailed off. “Um. Hina was there, too.”
“Did she demonstrate?”
“Yeah.”
Alice shifted her weight, tail sliding on the tiled floor. I braced myself for more bile or judgment about Hina’s disposition, but Alice was smiling.
“She really loves the freedom of movement. That’s actually how we got to talking, back when we first met. We both loved how physical the action in a lot of the more modern mahou shoujo anime is.”
“Um. She really seems to love it,” I risked. This conversation could still blow up in my face, so I was trying to take it stage-wise before we got to the part where I had used my Flame.
Alice gave me a knowing look. “Gave you the parachute talk, did she?”
“That’s a specific thing?”
“She’s tried every metaphor there is. I still only half-get it, to be honest, but as long as she’s happy and not doing it on camera…”
Ai stepped back into the room, looking relieved.
“They just finished, no problems.”
“You don’t trust your best engineers?” Alice’s tone was dry.
“Of course I trust them, touzen. But we’re already behind, and…” Ai visibly shook off whatever grip the project had on her. “I said I was giving you this afternoon, Ezzen, and especially now that your arm is beginning to mutate, I want to make sure you have the support—”
Alice’s tail thudded heavily on the tile.
“It’s what?”
Ai re-activated the hologram in answer. “It’s very minor, low-red, just muscle density enhancements like we saw with Hina that summer. As mild as it gets.” Nervousness crept into her voice as the air temperature began to rise; Alice was gripping the mikan so hard it was leaking juice onto the tiles. “I didn’t expect Hina-san to provoke his Flame that quickly, I shouldn’t have let them spar. I’m sorry.” Ai bowed.
“They were sparring?”
“Hina was…being Hina,” I explained, guilty for having been baited in by my girlfriend’s antics no matter how authentic her neediness had been. “We—we stopped quickly.”
“Why did you bother at all? You don’t need combat training right now; you need public relations coaching and a haircut.” Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ai, I thought you said you were going to brief him today? On the political situation?”
“I showed him mantle schematics and some of our interviews because—kanyuu no jouken dakara.” Ai glanced at me, wincing at her slip out of a language I spoke. “Ezzen agreed to stay because of his interest in our mantles, not for the politics.”
“We are on a time budget until Saturday. Until such a time as the PCTF stops hanging over our heads, politics are actually the highest priority.” She took a deep breath, stilling her tail. Her slitted pupils moved to me. “Not to say your comfort and interests don’t matter, Ezzen, it’s just—these mutations make the situation more complicated.”
“Um—fairly minor, isn’t it?”
“Not to everyone. On Saturday, Miyoko will see that, and she’ll make a big deal out of it and that will change the PR calculus for your whole presence at the event. It’s one thing to be a flametouched magical engineer, but mutagenic residuals elevate you further in Hikanome’s belief structure, even the smallest ones.”
I looked at Ai, wondering why she hadn’t mentioned this if it was such a big deal. Neither had Hina, but that seemed at least par for the course with her—the dour look that had taken over Ai’s face when Alice had mentioned Hikanome’s beliefs was the missing piece of the puzzle. She didn’t care about the cult’s peculiarities, if she bothered to know them at all.
“Takehara-san.” The Emerald Radiance looked and sounded tired. “Calm down. We knew Miyoko-san will care about his scars. I don’t think a few muscles being less than five percent more dense will change anything.”
Alice’s tail thumped.
“She will care, because it’s extra leverage.” The two Radiances glared at each other for a long moment, and Ai was the first to avert her eyes. Alice’s tail twitched. “Why are you even pushing back on me about this? We both know this is Hina’s fuckup for doing that to him. You ought to be angry, too.”
Ai’s eyes flashed.
“I am angry, but I am trying to direct it somewhere useful.” She looked at me. “Ezzen already knows to stop the mutations. No more channeling emotion with glyphless Flame.”
I blinked. “Um, yeah, I already had a bit of a fight with Hina about it.”
Of course, that wasn’t the whole truth; she’d actually talked me around on the appeal, and it was really only her behavior that we’d clashed on. But I didn’t want to piss off either of them further right now, so I was more than happy to kick that can down the road.
Alice sighed in relief. “Okay, that’s—better than nothing, I suppose. Then—shit, this is just a wake-up call, really. We’ve been slacking on prep to begin with; it’s already Tuesday, and we haven’t even briefed you on manners, let alone the talk track or—God damn it,” she fumed. “Three more days sounds like a lot, but it’s not.”
I swallowed. Alice seemed unable to fully smother her anxieties, and they were fanning the flames of my own. I felt unaccountably guilty for mostly lazing around and snuggling with Hina since our interference in the Thunder Horse Inferno; logically, I knew that it was Todai’s job to prepare me, but I still felt like I’d somehow been procrastinating. And it didn’t help that my girlfriend seemed to be persona non grata, even if her teammates were gracious enough to not extend that to me by association. I took a deep breath.
“Um, okay. I’m with Ai, for whatever it counts: solutions first, yeah? What do I need to do in the next three days?”
—
Two days later, I was now seriously regretting that question.
First, they’d given me homework. Todai’s PR department had scraped together a list of YouTube videos covering both basic Japanese formal etiquette for foreigners and some more specific information on Hikanome’s particular practices and beliefs—the latter including, ironically, a video co-authored by Star. Watching those had taken me deep into the night; it should have only taken an hour and a half, or half that at 2x speed, but I kept getting distracted.
The rain had returned, and I found myself missing the warmth of Hina’s body against mine. My bed was just too big for one person. I at least had enough experience with ennui to recognize that a hot shower would help, but it was still rather lonely. I kept glancing at the balcony, hoping to see her tapping on the glass, or catch a hint of purest blue. No such luck.
I entertained the idea of talking to Sky, asking about the kinds of mutations Hina had given him—or he had given himself—but there were two problems. First, I knew I didn’t need the temptation; that was also why I told myself that Hina’s absence was for the best. Second, now that it was apparently connected to the Hikanome event, poking Sky about it almost felt like work. So I avoided it and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Yesterday had begun with me being woken up too soon given my 2 AM bedtime. My mission: hands-on practice of what the videos had covered. This had taken the form of a deeply embarrassing series of repeat-after-me’s with Alice until she’d had to rush off to other duties—including more yelling at Hina, I’d find out later—leaving me to continue with one of her bilingual subordinates whose name I instantly forgot. Slowly and excruciatingly, I achieved passable delivery of basic greetings and simple phrases which would mildly impress the average Hikanome member and give the impression I really was intending to stick around long-term.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The good news was that I wasn’t expected to do almost any of the talking, not with three of the Radiances at hand to field questions.
“In fact,” Amane had explained via Ebi at lunch, “the less you talk, the less chance you have of leaking something extremely confidential. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but many of Hikanome’s higher-level people, and especially the flamebearers, will be trying to extract useful information from you, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s pretty obvious you don’t have the experience or skills to gracefully deflect away from sensitive topics in that kind of social piranha tank.”
“I—yeah,” I sighed. “I don’t.” It stung to admit that I didn’t have a public face befitting a VNT; I’d always envisioned a Vaetna version of myself as being outgoing and loquacious like Heung. I resolved to try to channel that energy in a less high-stakes setting than what we were doing on Saturday; there, I’d just be doing the social equivalent of huddling inside my shell. “Will you be mantled up the whole time?”
The black-haired girl shook her head. “Not in private. We’ll be having a flamebearer-only dinner, and I’ll be human for that.”
“Isn’t that the most dangerous time? Surrounded by other flamebearers?”
Amane shook her head stiffly as Ebi translated what I’d said.
“They’re not that hostile. The show of trust matters anyway, and Yuuka would stop any danger before it happens.”
Her level of trust in her former kidnappers amazed and baffled me, even with the security afforded by precognition, but it wasn’t my place to prod further. I just nodded and kept working through my katsu sandwich. Ebi had me eating a lot, both because my foot was still healing and because it would take my arm another day or two to fully integrate the mutations, and that was apparently calorically-intensive. At least the food was good—but it was takeout, not home-cooked. I’d still seen neither hide nor hair of Hina since she’d vanished on me.
Yesterday afternoon had been a lesson on what the Radiances called “opsec,” the control of sensitive information. Overload had mentioned in the chatroom that I would be answering some questions for his next video, which Ebi had seen, and so I had wound up with Ai, Amane, and Ebi all hanging over my shoulder as I drafted my responses to avoid any leakage.
Q: What was it like being flametouched?
A: Disorienting. I heard voices.
Even as I turned to give a tentative, questioning thumbs-up to the other girls, I realized my mistake. Ai was blinking at me. Ebi crossed her arms.
“Say what?”
“It…talked to me. When I was first flametouched.”
The three women shared an uneasy glance. Ebi tapped her chestplate.
“I’m the only talking Flame I’ve ever heard of, and I’m a really special case. This isn’t the kind of thing you just don’t mention.”
“It—I kind of forgot,” I muttered shamefully. “There was a lot going on at the time. And it hasn’t really…done anything since then.”
“What did it say?”
“Um—I don’t really remember what it said the first time. No, really, I don’t, it’s all kind of a…haze. The only other time was in…the car, right before I was rescued. It wanted me to trust it.”
A tingle ran down my spine as I recalled the firelight dancing in pitch darkness. I still didn’t understand what it had meant—was it trying to push me down the same path as Hina, seeking pain? But in that case, it felt odd that I hadn’t heard it when I had channeled it into my arm yesterday. And there had also been the time both Hina and I had heard it, when she’d cleared the patch of hair from my skin the other night—but I definitely couldn’t tell them that. It was deeply private, for one, but I also really didn’t need them more on my case about Hina-induced Flame misuse.
“Trust, huh. Just words? Not a vision?”
“No. Is that how it is for Heliotrope?”
Amane nodded. Instead of translating for her, Ebi let out an autotuned sigh.
“I can’t believe you’re only bringing that up now. It’s been, like, five days, and you didn’t tell us.”
Ai poked my bad arm gently. Perhaps it was my good arm now, in a sense.
“Better that he didn’t. If Hikanome found out, they’d be much more interested in you.”
I was confused. “Isn’t that what we want? I didn’t really get Alice’s problem.”
“It benefits us to a certain point,” Amane clarified via Ebi. “We want them to be interested enough to work with us, but not enough that they want to poach you. This would be too much, with the arm. They’d think you’re some kind of prophet.”
Prophet. An interesting word, considering Heliotrope’s eye. I didn’t really want to think about her, either, though.
“So…delete it?”
“Yes, delete it.” Ai had her phone out, taking notes. “I’d like to test you more, but…I honestly wouldn’t know where to start,” she admitted. “It’s probably related to all the other strange things with your Flame. The second contact, how it came through the camera. But I don’t know what to do with that information.” She frowned. “We don’t have time for a serious investigation right now, anyway.”
Of course, cutting that part left my answer too sparse, so we back-filled with talk of my elation, framing it as a dream come true, mostly leaving out the parts tinged with nightmare.
Q: How did you end up at Lighthouse?
“Oh, God.” This was the exact kind of question I had been most nervous about answering—not only because I wasn’t sure of the policy surrounding discussing the PCTF’s actions, but also because nobody had actually told me what had happened between me burying the car and Hina whisking me away. Somehow, in our murky night whisperings, I had never thought to ask. And now she wasn’t around to give the answer.
Todai was one step ahead, though. Ebi practically yanked the keyboard from my grip and wrote out a response.
A: My flamefall had badly injured me with residuals (mainly the injury to my foot) and with the Spire already scrambling to respond to the other fragments of my flamefall and the immediate aftermath, they were not in a position to accept me. Radiance Sapphire was local for an unrelated event, and was first on the scene, and she made the executive decision to bring me to Lighthouse instead where I could receive the best possible post-amputation care and prostheses.
“Is that really how it went down?”
“Well, we’re obviously trying to omit the part about you getting hurt trying to escape the PCTF, but yeah.”
That made me angry. I understood the need for some level of secrecy and diplomacy, but—
“We really can’t even say that much? Why does everything they do stay rumor when there’s people like me and Amane as living proof? Why can’t we accuse them of their crimes?”
Amane sighed quietly. Ebi translated.
“First, they’d disavow the actual force who came after you as an independent third party unsanctioned by the PCTF. Plausible deniability. That’s why they kill the cameras. Then they’d declare an investigation, find that the kidnappers and all their materiel had mysteriously vanished, and that would be the end of it. Everybody knows what they do, but accusing them wouldn’t make them admit it.”
“Opal told me that telling Hikanome what they did to you would be our diplomatic trump card.”
“Alice is an idealist.” Amane shut her eyes and shifted in her seat, gripping the armrest with her prosthetic hand. “She’s talking about a world where, if the average Hikanome member could be persuaded to believe our claim, the church’s money and influence would be enough to hold the PCTF accountable. But it’s not.”
“Then…?”
“Violence is the only language monsters can understand.”
“You mean going to war with the PCTF?” My heart sank. “More of what we did to that oil rig? That’s not—”
“Stop,” Ai broke in. “This isn’t related to what we’re doing now. Regardless of our long-term plans, this particular statement accomplishes all we need it to. People can infer as much as they want, but if the PCTF takes issue with this, they would need to admit that they went after you in the first place. That’s the goal. It validates your presence here.”
“Okay,” I sighed. I had to admit these kinds of political moves weren’t my strong suit—hell, that was why the Radiances were helping me with this, why this paragraph had been decided on without my input. But as I reread what Ebi had written, a different gap began to grow: What about the Spire? By now, I had a pretty good picture of the various reasons Todai wanted me here, and obviously, it was still far better than ending up in the PCTF’s clutches, but why had the Vaetna allowed Hina to take me when I was unconscious? That wasn’t like them at all, not when I had obviously been on the way to the Gate. With three of them there, there should have been nothing in the world that could stop them from taking me off her hands—taking me where I belonged.
Something was still missing. I thought about how Brianna had left the oil rig and abandoned Holton to his fate, averted only by our intervention. Could the Vaetna have done the same in my case? The idea of being abandoned like that was just horrible—I had to ask Hina what exactly had happened. Over text?
“Ezzen?”
“Huh? Oh.”
Q: What kinds of projects do you intend to participate in at Todai?
Texting was too insecure; calling her didn’t seem much better. But I hadn’t seen her in person since the day before. I supposed I’d talk to her about it tonight, next time she was in my bed and it was just us. I didn’t want to confront the possibilities in daylight. It was far easier to shove those thoughts to the side and talk about magic instead. Far safer waters.
We finished the questions, and I sent them off to Overload. I think he could probably tell that Todai had a hand in their writing, but that was to be expected.
Hina did not materialize on my balcony that night. I stayed up late, watching videos and holding out hope that she’d show up so we could make up and cuddle and I could ask my questions. But there was no sign of her. Around midnight, I texted her.
Ezzen: Hey, you okay?
I didn’t get a reply.
—
Now it was Friday morning, and I had been allowed to sleep in. I was again disappointed to find no hyena-like girlfriend pressed up against me—which was a little dumb, wasn’t it? I’d been sleeping alone for the better part of a decade, and I’d only shared my bed with Hina three, maybe four times, depending on how you counted. So it was stupid to miss her.
Even once awake, I didn’t properly get up for over an hour, not until I got a message from Ebi telling me to wash up. When I asked why, all she said was:
ebi-furai: haircut.
That one word sent shivers up my spine. I didn’t like haircuts. I averaged less than one a year, and those were always just to police the split ends and knots rather than take any real length off, so over the years, the hair that had been cropped short at the time of dad’s death had developed into a shaggy, unkempt mane. I had made occasional attempts to brush it after the hairdresser had cleaned it up, but those never stuck, and it always returned to a chaotic mess, especially in the dry winter air. The hair itself wasn’t gross enough to be called matted, and my new routine’s more frequent washings with better shampoo at least kept it from being greasy. Without the grease, though, the frizziness got worse, and I had to admit that Ebi had a point. So I threw on my clothes and trudged out to the upper common area, where Amethyst was waiting.
“Haircut,” I declared grimly, running a hand through my locks in a last-minute effort to defeat a few more knots.
In reply, she pulled out her phone—tiny against the crystalline frame—and showed me a map. Most of it was in Japanese, but in theory, the hairdresser was just around the corner, easily within walking distance.
“Oh, you don’t have an in-house stylist? Or cosmetologist or whatever?” I looked around. “Where’s Ebi, anyway? I’d have expected her to do this.”
“Just us today,” Amethyst replied. Between her accent and the natural glassy, vibrato chimes of her mantle’s voice, it was hard to make out the words. She tapped on her phone again with those too-long purple claws and showed it to me.
Text is easier. This is a hairstylist we trust. Her name is Kamihata.
“Okay, lead the way.”
Thus marked the first time I saw the front entrance of Lighthouse Tower. It was an odd mix of a standard office building lobby and a themed entrance. The centerpiece of the lobby was an assortment of oversized gemstones representing the Radiances, suspended in midair and floating gently with magic. We didn’t stop to gawk—and in return, only a handful of people did a double take at the three-meter crystalline mech striding out to the front door. The main doors were big enough for her, and I trailed behind as we made our way out onto the street.
Cold, as usual. At least it wasn’t raining this morning, but the sky was definitely thinking about it, with dark, heavy clouds softening every shadow below. The indirect lighting changed how Amethyst looked, muting the brightest facets of reflection in her body into a more suffusive, translucent purple glow. People paid more attention to us on the street, but as with Opal at Tochou, I was mostly a footnote to her distinctiveness, huddled in my hoodie and trying to ease the pit of anxiety fermenting in my stomach from being out in public.
We went down the street, skyscrapers looming all around, and turned the corner. I followed Amethyst into a nondescript building—nondescript by this city’s standards still meant eight floors, but compared to the titans of glass and steel to either side of it, the building looked downright cozy. Once we were inside, Amethyst dropped her mantle. The crystal folded and collapsed downward out of reality, leaving a thin girl in its place, warmly dressed in a sweater and long skirt. Amane leaned against the wall, supported by her prosthetic arm, taking deep breaths.
“You alright?”
As she looked at me with a smile and a nod, her eyepatch lit up, projecting her eye-facsimile. This was the fancier version I had assumed existed, one which seamlessly projected a three-dimensional LM copy of her other eye, the vivid sea-green indistinguishable from the real thing after a moment. She pushed herself off the wall, found her balance, and pointed down the hall.
“Elevators.”
My foot agreed; stairs seemed draconian. As we walked, she summoned her phone from pocketspace and showed it to me.
Nice to be out of the crowds.
“Yeah. And the cold.”
“Mhm.”
The weather is nice today.
“You think so?”
The elevator took us to the third floor, which had a perfectly normal-looking barbershop. Jazzy Japanese hip-hop played from hidden speakers. It was deserted except for us, probably bought out for the duration of our appointments, and also seemed to be devoid of staff until a head poked out of the back room and called out in Japanese. Amane called back and dropped herself on the plush waiting sofa—a little too forcefully to have looked entirely voluntary. I winced; I was having some misgivings about being the only person to come along. What if she had some kind of medical emergency?
But she seemed fine; the “weather,” by which she meant the local ripple, seemed to be treating her well enough. After a minute, the hairdresser came rushing to the front of the shop with a half-bow.
Kamihata—presumably her last name—was short, with angular features and a narrow face. She was older than the Radiances, maybe in her mid-30s, and had faint smile lines around her mouth. Her hair was dyed blonde, wavy and kept in a side ponytail bound by a decorated metal clasp. I could definitely see why this place played the kind of music it did; something about the funky beat just fit her aesthetic. Her brown eyes rarely moved as she exchanged greetings with Amane, remaining fixed on the other woman’s face until they were done speaking, and only then moved to me.
“Regular haircut?”
Her accent was thicker than Amane’s, but intelligible. I nodded uneasily. Kamihata glanced at Amane and asked her something, who grinned while shaking her head. I received no explanation on what the joke was as I was led inward and guided to the nearest chair, where I encountered my least favorite part of getting a haircut: the mirror.
My pale face and sunken eyes were framed in twisting shadows. Outcroppings of frizz shot in odd directions at the top of my head, and the ends around my shoulders were so split and unkempt it seemed almost like ocean foam—but dark and heavy, as though somebody had dumped the Thunder Horse’s pipeline out over my head. I really didn’t understand why Hina insisted on calling me cute; from eyes to nose to lips, to the way they were all framed by the shaggy mess on my head, I was not a pretty person.
But that was why we were here. A haircut would make me more presentable, clean me up enough for polite society, make me seem like I wasn’t a rubbish rat who had been dragged out of its den and into the blazing spotlight of fame by unlucky fate. As Kamihata got set up, I glanced back at Amane—her hair was glossy, smooth, a nearly impeccable curtain. If she felt like she needed a haircut, how bad was my state? Humiliation swept through me, made worse by confusion as I was coaxed out of my chair and over to a corner of the room. Hadn’t I just sat down? The confusion deepened as my chair was reclined, and I leaned back to suspend my head over a basin—then it made sense.
I’d never had my hair professionally washed before. My annual-ish barber appointments were bare minimum trims, about twelve pounds—this was far more full-service, and I let my eyes slide shut as the hairstylist’s hands did their magic. The hot water felt fantastic after our brief stint in the cold, and was gone too soon, leaving me with a soaked mop of hair sitting heavy on the towel wrapped around my shoulders. That problem was solved with copious application of a blow-dryer and brush, working in tandem to defeat knots. The dryer was loud enough to drown out the music, and although I wasn’t particularly fond of loud sounds, it at least filled the air with enough white noise that I didn’t feel awkward being silent. The blow-drying felt nice—I had an absurd moment where I wondered how I could scrounge together the money to buy one, before remembering that Todai was rich.
Once I was dry, I was led back to my seat and the work began in earnest. I didn’t pick a style; between my shyness, the language barrier, and Todai’s probable particularities about the look we were going for, I just trusted that wherever I was being taken was better than my current disaster of a mane. I shouldn’t have. In my defense, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate what I wanted—but what I got definitely wasn’t it. As it was, to avoid looking straight in the mirror, and feeling too awkward to pull out my phone, I just closed my eyes and let Kamihata do her thing.
Everything went wrong when I felt the shears close above my ear. My blood ran cold as a huge fluff of hair fell off my head and landed on my shoulder, where my hairstylist’s hands swiftly brushed it down to the floor. In my naivete, I had thought I was just getting a trim—in fact, I was being shorn.
I kept my eyes closed and didn’t say a word, too afraid to face what had just been done. Snip by snip, my head got lighter as bundles of hair were severed. Eventually, Kamikata stepped away from me.
“Open, please.”
I complied, wincing open one eye to witness the damage—and it didn’t look like me at all.
It wasn’t a bad haircut; indeed, it was perfectly serviceable, an entirely average haircut I knew was in fashion among boys my age. It wasn’t even as short as it could have been, still leaving a fair amount of fluff on my temples, but the hair that had previously gone down to my shoulders was gone, and with it, my silhouette had changed completely. My neck felt exposed to the air as I reached up to touch the new style, disbelieving.
“Are—are we done?”
“No. Do you want it shorter before the fine trim?”
“N—no.” My chest was tight, and I didn’t understand why. “Keep it long.”
Kamihata met my eyes in the mirror, scanning my face. I was obviously distraught. “Did you not want it this short?”
“It’s fine. Too late now anyway.”
It was not fine. The growth of years spent in my apartment had been removed in minutes. It was horrible, sickening, as unpleasant as having part of my flesh pared away—and it was too late. The damage was done. I shook my head a few more times, feeling the lightness, the distinct absence of a weight I’d become accustomed to for years. More than the loss of that signifier of time, I just looked—wrong. Maybe this haircut would have looked good on another person, but on me, everything about it felt awful now that the shapes of my face were no longer being framed by the hair. And I felt so exposed, unprotected; my hair had been part of my armor, and I hadn’t even realized it. I pulled my hoodie higher up around my neck.
Kamihata looked grave, calling over to Amane. But she didn’t understand why I was grieving; neither of them did. It was a perfectly fine haircut. I’d look fine on Saturday. So why did it hurt so much? Why did it feel so wrong? The wrongness, the incompleteness, who could possibly understand how—
I scrambled to pull out my phone, typing with shaky fingers.
[Direct Message] ezzen: how do you grow yoir hair back
ezzen: with magic. what are the glyphs
ezzen: sky
ezzen: tell me you know how