"Ho-ly shit…."
That was all that Reigen could say.
"Can you fix it…" said Mob, holding her head in her hands. She felt Master Reigen patting her on the back. This was not how she had planned on spending her Saturday morning. She hadn't realized, last night, just how bad it had been.
"Mob….of course I can! I didn't do that stint in beauty school for nothing. Serizawa, my tools!" said Reigen as she ran her hand through Mob's hair. This was…not good. When Mob had practically broken down the door first thing that morning Reigen expected some world ending calamity, they had a lot of those lately, but it wasn't….well it kind of was. To Mob.
Mob loved her hair.
She didn't seem the type but she did love her hair. It really was her best feature, in Reigen's opinion. Long and thick. Glossy and pure black. The kind of hair Reigen had dreamed of when she was Mob's age and hating her strawberry blonde hair more than anything else in the world. She had always been slightly low-key jealous of Mob and her hair…
But she had never wished this on her.
"Here you go." Said Serizawa. He handed her the big plastic tub of hair stuff she kept under the bathroom sink. He also had her tool box in his other hand in case she meant that she needed literal tools. He had no idea what it was that she was dealing with, what he was even looking at. Miss Kageyama had a short spot in her hair. That happened sometimes. Sometimes you took it too close, that wasn't so bad, you could just cut the whole thing short. It was hair, it would grow back.
He kept his mouth shut about that.
And he made himself scarce. He had no idea what she was doing and he wasn't going to comment. He supposed that hair meant more to girls. Miss Kagyeama had very long hair. It must have taken a while to get it that long. Girls always had longer hair, well the usually had longer hair, and they were always doing something to it. So maybe it wasn't enough just to cut it shorter than usual.
He was so glad that he wasn't a girl. It just seemed like far too much work.
"This isn't going to be that much work. No, not a lot of work at all. Don't worry Mob, I've got this." said Reigen as she ran some dry shampoo through Mob's hair. Yup, right there…and not in the back where it could have been easily hidden. Right there at the side, almost thirteen centimeters it looked like, enough to be noticed. Enough to impede Mob's braiding…and she did love to braid hair.
"….please tell me that you can fix this…" said Mob softly. She should have just let Rei do it. Rei knew about hair. Rei was good at doing hair. Rei wouldn't have made such a stupid, serious, mistake. Mom was going to kill her. She wasn't allowed to cut her hair…and now there was a big piece of it missing!
"I can fix this….but, Mob, listen….I'm going to have to even it out." Said Reigen. She picked up some scissors and opened and closed them a couple times for good measure…which was the wrong thing to do back on the way the lights flickered above them.
"There's not any other way?" asked Mob softly. Her hair was the one nice thing about her. Since she was little people had been telling her how pretty her hair was. Teru loved her hair, too. He was always touching it and telling her how soft it was and how long it was…and now he wasn't ever going to be able to do that anymore. She had spent fourteen, almost fifteen, years growing her hair out. Master Reigen was probably going to have to give her a boy's haircut and then she'd look like a boy for the next fourteen or fifteen years until it grew back and then people would make fun of her and-
"Don't worry, it'll still look nice. It's your hair, Mob, how could it not look nice?" Said Reigen as stared at Mob's hair in thought. Maybe layers would be good….they'd have to be some pretty dramatic layers to keep it looking nice…but she couldn't just chop Mob's hair off…that would be too dramatic. Mob didn't have the face for a pixie cut…well there was no need to be so very dramatic. No, but a bob…or even just…down to her shoulders wouldn't be such a dramatic change….
"Because you're going to have to chop it all off." Said Mob softly. She could feel tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She wasn't even worried, anymore, about how mom would react when she came home and all of her hair was gone. She was more worried about how she'd get made fun of, how Teru wouldn't think that she was pretty anymore…he might even want to have another girlfriend…and then she'd be all alone again….
"All of it? No, unless you want a pixie cut-" said Reigen
"Please don't, Master…please don't." said Mob
"Well then I could do a bob or I could just leave it down to your shoulders. Whatever you want. You'd look cute with it down to your shoulders, or even with a bob." Said Reigen. Mob looked cute at all times, very cute, truly adorable. Not like Reigen looked at fourteen. All oily and spotty and moody.
"Can you cut it to my shoulders…I'd still look good like that, right?" asked Mob. She reached up and felt the short patch in her hair. To her shoulders…that wasn't that short. Tome's hair was shorter and she was really pretty. All of her friends were really pretty. Mob knew that she wasn't really pretty…
"Mob, you'd look good however, but yeah I can do that. Now hold still or you're going to be the little bald girl with no lollipop." Said Reigen as she got to work. Short cuts, lots of combing, all of that stuff she learned all those years ago.
"Lollipop?" asked Mob
"Yeah, when you get a haircut you get a lollipop…or at least I did when I was a kid." Said Reigen as she watched some of Mob's hair fall to the ground. A damn shame. Mob really had such nice hair…and she still did. Even if she couldn't braid it anymore…poor Mob….
"I never got a lollipop…but my mom always cuts my hair. She puts a bowl on my head and cuts my fringe." Said Mob
"I can do your fringe, too, if you want." Said Reigen. Mob's fringe…not her best feature. Well it had been when she was eleven…but she was almost fifteen now. Not that Mob wasn't adorable, no, she was just older. Had she been Mob's kid-Reigen gets off that train of thought. Mob is not her kid, she has no kids, and unless she's really confused about where babies come from there's no chance that she's having a kid….not that she's opposed to…keep your head in the game, Arataki, head in the game.
"No thank you, my mom cut it the other day." Said Mob
"Uh huh….but I take it your mom isn't responsible for this?" asked Reigen as she cut some more of Mob's hair. She almost made a mistake, a terrible mistake, when Mob nodded. She hadn't been kidding about Mob ending up being the little bald girl with no lollipop…there were lollipops around here, right? Yeah, probably, in her desk from the last time she had tried to quit smoking…
"No…that was me. Are you mad?" asked Mob
"Mad? Why would I be mad? It's your hair." Said Reigen
"I don't know…my mom gets mad when I do stuff to my hair, that's all." Said Mob. Reigen sighed. She knew what that was like. What was it with moms and hair? It was Reigen's hair, Mob's hair, and she'd do whatever she pleased with it! Seriously, it was just hair. It would always grow back.
"Yeah, my mom was like that too. One time when I was about your age I actually dyed my hair black and my mother just about shaved me bald right then and there." said Reigen with a laugh, a somewhat bitter one.
"Why did you do that? Your hair is pretty, Master." Said Mob
"Because I…people weren't as ok with difference back when I was a kid. That and, well, there weren't a lot of non-Japanese people where I lived. I was kind of an anomaly." Said Reigen
"But Master, you are Japanese." Said Mob. She felt Master Reigen stop cutting. Either she was done or Mob had said the wrong thing….but that didn't feel at all like the wrong thing. Master Reigen was Japanese. She was. People who were half Japanese were still Japanese….and Mob didn't get why people were mean to one another about something that was so inconsequential as where your parents were from in the first place.
"Thanks, Mob, just…thanks." Said Reigen. She was almost thirty years old. She was not still hung up on that. Nope, not at all. She cut the rest of Mob's hair as quickly as she could. It was way too thick…she ended up having to layer after all. How did Mob walk around with this much hair? It was thick enough to support a beach umbrella…not that Reigen was jealous or anything…
"I did this myself." Said Mob suddenly
"Huh?" asked Reigen. She wondered if Mob heard the part about being the little bald girl with no lollipop…because this really was delicate work…and not just because this was Mob. She had so much hair….
"Last night…I saw my mom's curling iron and…Rei curls my hair sometimes….so I tried to…to curl my hair because I look nice like that…and then…I think I held on too long because a piece of my hair fell out…" said Mob. She should have just let Rei do it. She loved doing hair. She shouldn't have been so dumb. Of course she messed it up. Now she was getting all of her hair chopped off and-
"Happens to the best of us, Mob, happens to the best of us." Said Reigen with a wave of her hand.
"It does?" asked Mob. She couldn't imagine Master Reigen ever making such a dumb mistake. She knew a lot about this stuff, a lot about everything, much more than Mob knew. She wonders, for a moment, if Master Reigen is lying to her…but of course she isn't. Master Reigen had made herself perfectly clear, she was never going to lie to Mob again about anything. Ever. She said that in those exact words. She'd keep things from Mob that she was too young to know about but she would never lie. Never again.
"Oh yeah. I did the same thing…but in university. My hair is a lot finer than yours, too, so you can imagine how I looked…and it was a chunk of hair from the front, too, in case you ever wondered about the fringe." Said Reigen. She omitted the fact that she had been drunk. Yeah…Mob didn't need to know every single sordid detail about her wild youth.
"It never grew back?!" squeaked Mob, alarmed. She felt something metal press, briefly, against the back of her head.
"Mob, what did I say about the bald girl with no lollipop?" asked Reigen. Or the little girl who had to go to the hospital at eight thirty in the morning because she got a pair of salon scissors lodged in the back of her head on accident because she just wouldn't sit still.
"Oh…sorry….but, did it really never grow back? That's why your fringe is so short and kind of choppy?" asked Mob
"Choppy?!" asked Reigen
"Just a little…and Rei said it first." Said Mob
"I'll have you know that in the ten years I've been wearing my hair like this not once has anyone ever called it choppy." Said Reigen
"Oh…Tome says that the best friends you'll ever have are the ones who tell you the things about yourself that you don't want to hear." Said Mob
"…thanks…" said Reigen
"I think it looks nice. I think you always look very pretty Master. Even the time when you bought all of that fake makeup on Wish and-" said Mob
"Ugh, don't remind me! Let my mistakes be a lesson to you, student. If it seems like it's too good to be true then it most likely is." Said Reigen
"I don't buy makeup anyway….but you're right. I thought that I'd look nicer if it curled my hair…but of course it didn't work-" said Mob
"Mob, you always look nice. Where's this coming from? Are people being assholes again? Because you shouldn't waste your time on assholes like that." Said Reigen. Easier said than done. Easier said with twice as much life experience as Mob had. Easier said from the comforts of the adult world where if someone was an asshole you could just never speak to them again. Even if it was a coworker you could just change jobs. It wasn't like school where you were trapped in a classroom with someone for the majority of your day…your year…your life….
Middle school sucked back then and it always would.
"I don't know I just…I guess that I don't feel like I look nice sometimes." Said Mob. She didn't know how to say it. The way she felt. Like everyone in the world was just…and she knew that everyone in the world didn't look better than her, that it was wrong to judge others on appearances anyway, and stuff like that…but she just could not help the way she felt. She wondered if it was one of those things that got easier as you got older. She hoped that it was one of those things.
"Man, you could not pay me to go back to being your age, I swear." Said Reigen
"What do you mean?" asked Mob
"Well Mob I'm going to put this in the nicest terms possible….middle school sucks. It sucks to be your age. It's just the worst. You feel like crap all the time, you're at your most self-conscious, and a lot of people turn into complete and utter assholes seemingly overnight." Said Reigen
"…I guess…" said Mob. Master Reigen was kind of right. People had always made fun of her but it had gotten kind of worse…but it was ok. She had friends now, friends that weren't Ritsu. Not that she didn't love her little brother, she did, but he was her brother…she wanted some friends who weren't her brother. Who were girls…and she had some…and that made the whole thing a lot easier. Even if everything that Master Reigen had just said was pretty spot on.
"But don't worry. It gets easier the older you get. You can choose your own company, your own path in life, and that makes all the difference." Said Reigen even though it wasn't that simple. Sure you left the classroom…but the world, in a lot of ways, wasn't much different…but Mob didn't need to know that. Not now, anyway.
"You can do whatever you want?" asked Mob. The thought is dizzying, almost as dizzying as the thought of never being able to braid her hair again. The floor was covered in her hair…and her head felt way too light. She wanted to shake her hair back and forth, to really feel it, but she did not want to be the bald girl with no lollipop. Well she could deal with not having a lollipop but she didn't want to end up bald. Short hair was bad enough.
Mom wasn't going to like this.
When Mob grew up she would be able to do whatever she wanted with her hair…with her entire life. She could work for Master Reigen fulltime…they could hang out all the time. She wasn't supposed to come in to work today. She and Rei and Tome were going to the manga store and then the videogame store. But here she was…and she didn't much want to leave. Even though she had to. She wished that Master Reigen could come…
But she couldn't.
Being an adult meant that you could do whatever you wanted…but you also had to do stuff…important stuff. Like go to work. She wished that Master Reigen had been her age. Then they could have been friends, well they were friends, but they could have been better friends…no, that didn't make sense either. Master Reigen was her best friend. They just couldn't hang out like she and Rei and Tome could. That was all. But she and Master Reigen were still friends and they would always be there for each other.
Like when one of them burnt out a big section of their hair and they had to get it fixed, fast, before anyone noticed.
"Within reason, and you have responsibilities, but yeah you can make a lot more decisions. Where to live, where to work, what to study-" said Reigen. She never wanted to go back to being Mob's age…or maybe she did. There was a lot of freedom to being fourteen. When you were fourteen your problems were big to you but small in the grand scheme of things. Like this. Reigen knew that if she ever burnt out a piece of her hair she'd just even it out and go about her life. Her mother couldn't just come up to her and chew her out for marring her beautiful hair or whatever mom would have said. Mob was in for it when she got home…
Some things were better about being fourteen.
And some things were worse.
Like getting reamed out for messing your hair up.
"How to wear your hair?" asked Mob. The scissors stopped. Master Reigen took a step back. Mob figured that it was all done with now. She shook out her hair…it was too light. She reached behind herself…it was right to her shoulders…how would she braid it now?
"Yup. Even how to wear your hair." Said Reigen. She went over to her desk and dug out her hand mirror. Good for contacting the other side as well as for quick touch ups when you didn't look your best. She held it out in front of Mob.
Mob stared at herself.
"…my hair is short…" said Mob. She touched the ends of it. It was…short…well she had known that it was short but now she was seeing it and…and it didn't look bad at all. She knew that Master Reigen knew what she was doing…but for some reason she kept on imaging that she would end up looking like a boy. This was….this was nice.
She looked nice.
"Yeah, it is, but it's still yours." Said Reigen. She gave Mob's hair an affectionate tug. It was a decent cut. The layers left something to be desired, Reigen was out of practice when it came to someone other than herself or Serizawa, but Mob seemed to like it.
That was what mattered.
"Do you think that I can still braid it?" asked Mob. It was nice, she didn't look at all like a boy…just because the only hair that she had ever seen Master Reigen had been Serizawa's did not mean that she didn't know how to cut girl's hair too…and it was nice. Mom wouldn't be too upset, that was what mattered…
Well that and what REALLY mattered.
"Come on, let's give it a try."