Nezumi, like Shion's mother Karan, seldom really bothered cutting his own hair.
Sometimes he would go after the split ends, but as he complained to Shion, he didn't really keep any scissors sharp enough to avoid doing more damage than they were worth, and cutting his hair with a knife was a pain.
Shion, though, had shorter hair, and that meant it started to look unkempt more quickly. When he asked for help with it, Nezumi was derisive, as he was about so many things.
"You're not gonna be able to hide this by cutting it off," he said. "If anything, it's gonna make it worse."
Shion already knew that whatever was going on with his hair was...not entirely natural. He'd talked that over with Nezumi the second day after waking up to find it changed: about how sure, his hair could have grown in white from the roots, but having it all turn white from the roots all the way down to the long-extruded tips was more than a little impossible.
"Consider it a blessing," Nezumi had said, tone carefully bland. "It would look pretty weird if your hair turned all at the roots, right away."
"Given that it's often a side effect of malnutrition, I'm surprised it didn't lead to hair loss," Shion had mused aloud, running a hand through his hair and frowning.
Nezumi had swatted at him and told him to be grateful for that, too. Now, though, bending over Shion after throwing an old blanket around his shoulders, it seemed to Shion that he was less than happy about where they'd ended up.
"I cannot believe you are letting me at your face with a pair of blades," Nezumi muttered. Apparently, he didn't realize that doing this placed him close enough to Shion's ears that not even the lowest mutter was out of earshot—that, or he simply didn't care.
"I've told you, I trust you," Shion says. "All this time you could have killed me in my sleep, or just gotten annoyed and attacked me, and you haven't? And that's with how easily you get annoyed, too."
"Back to antagonizing the person with a blade inches from your throat." But Nezumi didn't even sound surprised, let alone threatening; just weary, resigned to the utter lack of survival instinct of the pampered youth under his reluctant care.
"I'm not trying to antagonize you," Shion protested.
"I don't care what you're doing, as long as you hold still."
Shion had always been praised, as a small child, for holding very carefully still while hairdressers did their work. He was sure he is no different now.
Still, Nezumi left the hair around his ears conspicuously long, winced the whole time he held Shion's bangs back over his head to trim them, nowhere near his eyes. Shion couldn't tell what he was doing with the hair on his neck, but it was very careful, almost ginger. Despite this, his hands never shook, and Shion wondered exactly what it was that Nezumi was being so careful of.
"I use a knife as a weapon," Nezumi said, when he had set the scissors down for a moment and Shion deemed it safe to ask. "You don't want to know what I've done with one."
"I'm sure I don't," Shion admitted, and can't help the smile. "But that isn't a knife, it's a pair of scissors."
"It's two knives."
There was no arguing with people sometimes. But when Shion fell silent, admitting defeat at least for the moment, he noticed the warmth of Nezumi's fingers in his hair, carding through as he looked for uneven areas.
His hair turned out fluffier than ever after this haircut, covered in split ends—for Nezumi was, of course, right about the dull scissors. It was yet another small thing that left Shion unable to recognize himself in the mirrors, some mornings.
But it remained a memory of touch, warmer than just about anything he's felt, aside from the nights when winter left them huddling together, or when one of them was sick, or, even, in the depths of wasp-sickness, of cold-feeling hands pressing him into a mattress thinner even than the cot he'd slept in at the bakery, lips (those were still somehow hot) whispering and shouting and cajoling in his ear.
It had been far from the first time Nezumi used a knife on him, he reflected that night, as his newly cut hair curled and tickled beside his ear. But it was by far the most bloodless of his favors, even if by some measures it was the least important of all.
It was a simple thing, not lifesaving, and so it felt like a treasure more than a favor.