She swept up the orange locks on the floor, wondering when the day would end.
It wasn't that she didn't like what she was doing. No, she loved cutting hair, framing people's faces, and watching them walk out the door with a new spring in their steps. There was a serenity it sweeping up the hair people wanted to get rid of, and the baggage they seemed to drop with it. Haircuts were important.
But it was hard lately. It was hard dyeing away that vibrant orange-red, cutting away the identical double buns, the off center top-knots. It was hard letting these people walk out of her doors with a fresh start and an appearance that would let them walk among the people they had tried to murder unnoticed.
They came, one or two on slow days, four or five on busy ones. There seemed to be a never-ending stream of them, and she sometimes saw the ones she'd trimmed congregating back near Café Lysandre, unrepentant. Some of them asked to be shaved bald, and she gleefully complied, recalling a conversation she'd had with an old punk with natural chestnut hair and purple tips about shearing collaborators in the war. She didn't mind giving out punk cuts to people who asked, but sometimes, she thought, she'd like to give them to the folk who didn't.
Then the bell rang, and she looked over her shoulder. Her heart sank when she saw orange. He was a tall man, stocky, his slightly darker skin in contrast to the orange on his head. His suit was sleek, nicer than many, suggesting rank.
"Hello. I hope I'm not too late to get a haircut?"
"Not at all. Would you like a dye, too?"
"Well… yes."
She lead him over to the sink. "So, would you like to go lighter or darker than you are now?"
"I'd like my natural brown back. Dark brown."
"Got it." She set to work with the bleaches, the dyes, half-hoping not to do too much damage to the hair that way. "And what were you thinking for the cut?"
"I don't really know. I thought about shaving it all off, but that wouldn't send the right message." He took a deep breath. "For one, some of my bosses shaved bald and waxed as a fashion statement. For two, calling me a collaborator suggests I was ever something other than Team Flare."
She dropped the bottle.
"Oh, please don't be alarmed. We're all very sorry about how we were going to go about our goal. But trying to stop humanity from destroying itself is a good goal, don't you think?"
"You tried to kill us all."
"And we're sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. You know what, surprise me. If you're still angry at Team Flare, take out your aggressions on my hair."
She decided she would give him a tonsure and tried not to look at his smarmy smile.