Warnings: None

Response to entry "hair" on daily prompt list

RIOT CHILD

Chapter 06:

"Hair"

For as long as Yusuke could remember, Keiko hated her hair.

She wasn't quiet about her feelings, either. She always strapped it down into a tight bun on the nape of her neck, and whenever she was forced to wear it down, she moaned and bitched about it until she could pack the strands away again. Sometimes she wore it in pigtails around her family, seemingly by choice? But even during those moments, she'd flip the tails over her shoulder with an impatient hand, clearly annoyed at their presence as they hung down on her chest. She'd finger the ends of the tail and sigh, or glare, or roll her eyes like her hair had offended her somehow.

Keiko looked uncomfortable in long hair, to put it mildly. She looked the way Yusuke felt whenever teachers made him wear a school uniform in a color he hated. Like something didn't sit right. Like something was wrong.

"Why don't you just cut it?" he said to Keiko when he caught her eyeing a pair of scissors with distinct longing coloring her bright brown eyes. "If you hate it so much, just chop it off."

"Nuh-uh." Keiko cupped the bun sitting tight on her nape with protective fingers. "I need it for something."

"What, you gonna use it to weave a new mask?"

"No," she retorted. "This hair is going to save your life someday."

"Pfft. As is!"

A few years later, Yusuke hovered as a ghost outside a burning apartment complex, wherein his comatose body lay dangerously close to an impromptu barbecue. He cheered when Keiko ran up to the edge of the building to save him—but his smile wasn't half as big as hers. He saw the size of it when she ripped off her mask and doused her head in a bucket of water, a laugh slipping from between her parted lips as she prepared to plunge into the roaring flames.

Before she did, she ripped her hair down, shook it out over her shoulders, and gave it a gleeful look of hate.

"Finally," she said to the hair she'd despised for so long. "Good fuckin' riddance!"

With a cackle and a grin, Keiko sprinted headlong into the inferno—and when she came out again, dragging Yusuke's body in tow, her hair has been burned off nearly to her nape.

She didn't appear to care, however.

If Yusuke didn't know any better, he'd say Keiko looked positively thrilled.

NOTES

And then she marched her happy ass to Shizuru and demanded the short haircut I'm wearing right now. The one that has made me feel more like myself than I ever have in my life.

Context: Remember when Yusuke's body nearly dies in a fire, but Keiko saves him? And Yusuke sacrifices the energy he'd earned doing good deeds in order to keep her safe? In the manga, Koenma intervenes during that scene and says a sacrifice will be required from both Yusuke AND Keiko to keep her safe. From Yusuke is was all the good energy he'd earned up until that point; from Keiko it wound up being her hair that got burnt off. Because her hair was necessary for that bit of the story, 2020!NQK couldn't cut it off before then.

I can out as nonbinary during the pandemic (surprise to those who haven't heard yet), which means 2020!NQK has explored her identity more than OG!NQK has. And that means her perspective on her former pigtails and short new haircut is a bit different than in Lucky Child. Woo! In this version of events, she knows exactly what haircut she wants in an effort to reclaim her past self. In regular LC, she got her haircut mostly to distance herself from canon-Keiko, and she found her preferred presentation in the process. The difference is subtle, but I think it's important.

Those who were asking on Tumblr for me to cover the nonbinary thing in LC will (eventually) get their wish in this story as opposed to in LC proper, almost entirely since 2020!NQK is more connected to that part of my identity than OG!NQK is. Hope you enjoyed!