Chapter 16: Tail
Some things just aren't worth it.
Satan didn't like haircuts. In fact, he didn't do hair appointments at all.
The idea of letting anyone near his neck with anything sharp went so far against everything he'd ever known that, the first time he'd been taken to a barber shop as a baby, he'd very nearly lost it and mauled the workers there. He was so unruly that said haircut simply didn't happen for quite a while. He just barely tolerated the shitty priest trimming his hair after that, and that was only lasted until he was physically able to coordinate his hands around a pair of scissors.
He had a system in place, in fact. Cutting his hair was a pain to remember to do, made even worse since his hair grew abnormally fast, so he'd really only bother keeping his bangs out of his eyes. The rest he let grow until he could be bothered to cut it, which was whenever the mood struck him. Sometimes he kept up with it, sometimes he didn't and months would pass, and he, with practiced ease, collected and tied back his longer hair once it started tickling his shoulders. It was strange, seeing his hair so dark and foreign, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Eventually he'd get sick of it, or it really would get too long to deal with, and he'd chop the hair off in one swift movement before practically attacking his hair with the scissors until he reached that perfect messy-neat balance that best suited the shorter locks.
Probably the most unintentional side effect was the way he drew strange looks as his hair grew long. It confused the other kids to no end to see a fellow grade-schooler who didn't fit with their still growing world-views. They didn't actually know the difference between boys and girls to the point that, when he put off his grooming long enough, plenty thought his longer hair suddenly made him a girl.
He very quickly knocked that notion right out of their heads, and even let his hair grow a bit longer just to irk the idiots. The teachers that hadn't liked him in the first place were surprisingly quiet on the whole issue. Satan was sure it was because the cowards didn't want to explain human gender dynamics to a bunch of ankle-biters who barely even knew they had different parts.
Today, however, things had gone….differently.
When he walked through the doorway, Yukio weakly trailing behind him, he brushed past the shitty priest and…strongly walked into the kitchen. He certainly did not storm, did not stomp, and was not at all huffing as he dug through the drawer and pulled out the scissors. From the corner of his eye he saw Yukio trying to shoo Shiro out, but that was hard to do when he barely came to the man's hips. The sound of a snicker was all he needed to hear to know his son had failed at the futile task.
"So, getting rid of that ponytail, Rin?"
"Yes."
Because he wanted to. Not at all because someone had stuck a fat wad of gum in it.
Short chapter to let everyone know I'm alive. The next one will be much longer.