05. Bowl Cut
It surprises Gai, sometimes, at just how many people stare weirdly at his choice of hair-cut, but just how few people actually ask him about it. In fact, there're only two people who know the story behind it. His mother and Lee. Though, the latter is the only one living who knows.
Gai's earliest memory is of his father the first time he took him training and taught him a basic jutsu and how to throw kunai and shuriken correctly; he was a very tall, lean man with a bowl cut identical to Gai's (he also had terrible, mossy teeth – and was the one who encouraged almost obsessive dental hygiene in his son). They didn't have long together before the man left on his last mission, an S rank; the days just waiting for news was wrenching and his mother was distraught at it…Gai must have been…five? No, nearly five, about a month from his birthday, when they eventually were told. After the loss of his father, his mother went into a kind of madness, nothing helped and the only thing she wanted was to erase everything that Maito Kadoma had been.
Gai had rebelled, though, and cut his hair to an identical style to his fathers – it was the only thing he could do to rescue some vestige of the man before everything – besides Gai's existence himself – was wiped clean from the earth. It still pains Gai to think back to those days, so he tries not to – it's enough, he thinks, that he keeps the bowl cut…
Even if it was the last topic of conversation he'd ever had with his mother, all those years ago.