Isn't Your Bangs a Little Too Long?
"Aren't your bangs a little too long?"
A weekend that felt nothing like a weekend came and went. Yeoncheong rewrote the rejected report, dropped by other clubs' gatherings, and before she knew it, another uneventful week had slipped by.
The calendar, clinging desperately to the tail end of May, finally flipped over to June. The sun began poking its head out boldly from the early hours of the morning, as if to announce that this was now its season. Days were fast approaching when wandering around comfortably wouldn't be so easy—and that meant the school trip was now exactly one day away.
Hwaryeong High School's uniforms didn't differ much from one grade to the next. Even so, as she walked through the gates, Yeoncheong could tell at a glance who was a first-year and who was a second-year.
That group's second-years, probably. And those ones over there look like first-years...?
It was Monday, and though school had only just started, some students wore remarkably bright expressions. Those were the second-years, headed off on their school trip tomorrow.
The students whose excitement ran a notch lower were the first-years, whose field trip was scheduled for later this week. And everyone besides those two groups naturally fell into the third category—third-years, their eyes brimming with envy.
Reading the transparent faces around her, Yeoncheong stepped into the school building.
Her class, buzzing louder than anywhere else in the building, wasn't so different from the other classrooms she'd passed in the hallway. The students sharing the same lodging had already clustered together, chattering away excitedly. The same went for the girls who would be sharing a room with Yeoncheong—they called out to her the moment she set her bag down, but—
"Everyone, take your seats. Let's do roll call."
Teacher Jisu had arrived earlier than usual, and the gathering was nipped in the bud. Her eyes went straight to Yeoncheong's desk first, as always—a teacher could hardly abandon her highly reliable tardiness indicator. Yeoncheong simply shrugged at the now-familiar sight.
Once she'd confirmed every student had arrived, the homeroom teacher spoke up.
"I have to go back to the teachers' office for another meeting, so I'm only here to tell you to keep it down in here. Got it?"
Apparently, having the whole schedule planned out didn't mean she wasn't busy. Jisu called Hasol, the class president, forward, then opened her mouth to call the vice president's name—and froze.
"Teacher, you were about to call my name, weren't you?"
"Hasol, make sure the kids don't get rowdy. Please and thank you."
As if she hadn't heard a thing, the teacher left only those parting words and slipped out of the classroom. Complaints of that's so unfair echoed around the room.
Was the excitement showing that much? Every teacher who came in for class swept their eyes across the students' faces and smirked.
"Look at you all, faces practically glowing over that school trip."
The exact wording varied a little, but the tone was always the same. Of course, classes that began with those amused smiles turned out to be grueling. Four whole days of missed lessons—every teacher was racing to push the curriculum up to the final exam range before then.
As always, the four of them ate lunch together, took a walk around the field noticeably shorter than usual, and headed back to the classroom.
The moment she entered, Suyeon flopped face-down onto her desk and groaned.
"Ugh... come on, not every subject even meets all four days. Why do they all say the exact same thing and then cram in extra lessons?"
"Teachers always want to get through the material as fast as possible," Hasol said with a light laugh, sitting down beside Nayun at her desk.
Wondering if Suyeon had more to say, she lifted her head from the desk.
"Then finish the curriculum first and give us self-study time. Instead they keep teaching and the exam range just keeps growing for no reason."
Nayun, peeking out from behind Hasol, chimed right in. "Couldn't agree more. Yeoncheong, you think so too, right?"
"Well, a smaller exam range is easier, sure," Yeoncheong replied, nodding as she hovered near her friends, having nowhere to sit.
"But if the range shrinks, everyone's scores go up together, which actually works against you."
Hasol's precise observation made Yeoncheong and the other two recoil in horror. At that moment, Seoha, who had been quietly listening to the conversation, slid her chair back a little.
"Yeoncheong, if your legs hurt, want to sit with me?"
It was a kind gesture toward Yeoncheong, who'd been standing the whole time for lack of a seat. It was the same with Suyeon, who'd sat on Hasol's lap a while back, and with Hasol now sharing a seat with Nayun. It all seemed perfectly natural—except to Yeoncheong.
When she politely declined, Suyeon this time slid her own chair back a little.
"Then how about my lap?"
The curl at the corner of her mouth made it obvious she was teasing. Yeoncheong considered for a moment, then chose a third option: she perched lightly on the edge of Seoha's desk and grinned. Suyeon went tch and flopped back down onto her desk.
Yeoncheong's dangling legs swung back and forth, and every time they crossed, Suyeon's head pressed a little deeper into her desk.
"I can't see anything..."
The shadow cast by the skirt had created an absolute exclusion zone. Only then did the legs stop. Yeoncheong stretched out one foot and gave Suyeon's desk a little tap.
"Look and you die."
"You just said I can't see anything anyway?"
Suyeon raised her head, having been staring up at Yeoncheong's face from below. Then her outstretched hand seized hold of the blue bangs.
"Yeoncheong, aren't your bangs a little too long?"
Back when she'd been a man, going once a month had been the bare minimum, however long it got. But with hair that reached her shoulders, a bit of extra growth barely showed. And so it had already been well over a month since she'd last set foot in the salon she'd always visited without a second thought.
To Yeoncheong's eyes it was all the same length, but to eyes born female, it clearly wasn't.
Once Suyeon opened the floodgates, the others each added their two cents.
"Right? And here I thought I was the only one who thought it was long."
"Me too. The back doesn't show as easily, so I never noticed."
"Looks like about a month and a half since your last cut... am I right?"
At Seoha's pinpoint accuracy, Yeoncheong flinched.
"What? You can tell just by looking?"
She pulled her bangs straight down before her eyes. Hair that had only barely grazed her lashes now covered them entirely.
"...It is a bit long. Think I can make it to a salon today?"
"Hm? You're going to a salon just to get your bangs trimmed a little?"
Suyeon, by now fully upright from her desk, drew her brows together. She wasn't alone, either—the other girls gave off much the same vibe. When a flustered Yeoncheong asked what she was supposed to do instead, Suyeon, rather than answering, rummaged through her bag and pulled out a pair of haircutting scissors.
"What do you think? Bangs are something you just trim yourself."
"Exactly. Paying money to get that much cut would be a waste," Hasol added, and Nayun, from behind her, nodded vigorously.
"I'll cut it for you. Me and Siyeon trim each other's all the time."
Yeoncheong glared at her with an expression full of distrust, but Suyeon snip-snipped the scissors in the air reassuringly.
"I'll just neaten it up a little. If you hate it, you can go to the salon and have them fix it."
"You're sure it has to be just a little?"
Yeoncheong rolled her eyes upward—and in the corner of her vision, a dark shadow swayed. Now that she'd noticed the length, it kept snagging on her awareness. Deciding she had nothing to lose, Yeoncheong surrendered her hair to Suyeon.
A small hand mirror was placed on the desk, and Yeoncheong was seated in her own chair. Suyeon knelt on one knee, matching their eye level.
"Hold still."
Suyeon's lips pursed in deep concentration. The bangs gathered between her fingers slid into the open jaws of the scissors.
Snip.
Blue strands drifted down onto the skirt of her uniform. With each soft snipping sound, a little more hair fell away. Yeoncheong had squeezed her eyes shut, apparently unable to bear watching.
The other girls, curious about the result, milled about behind Suyeon.
"Oh, not bad."
"Yeoncheong, you can stop worrying."
Handling Yeoncheong's blue hair for the first time, Suyeon marveled inwardly.
Wow... it's so pretty. Look at this hair.
It swayed so effortlessly she found herself wondering what kind of magic it took to make hair behave like that. Where the light caught it, it seemed to actually sparkle.
Afresh, the same impulse Yeoncheong herself had once given in to long ago stirred in her chest—an urge to stroke it. Just for a moment. The tiniest of moments.
But her focus had slipped for a fraction of a second, and for someone who had never trained as a hairdresser, that was the one thing that must never, ever happen. Her fingers, moving like a well-oiled machine, fell out of rhythm, and the scissors closed at precisely the wrong instant—jaws that should have stayed open snapped shut.
"Ah."
With Suyeon's short, strangled epitaph of regret—
Snip.
A sound of cutting unlike anything before it rang in Yeoncheong's ears.
Yeoncheong examined her reflection in the hand mirror from every angle, her face grim. Beside her, Suyeon knelt like a criminal awaiting sentencing.
"Yeoncheong... I'm really sorry. Siyeon cuts way better than I do. Should I ask her to come fix it?"
Given how utterly sheepish she looked, there was no way it had been on purpose. Yeoncheong let out sigh after sigh, pushing her ruined bangs down again and again, then glanced sideways. Suyeon, hunched over and stealing nervous glances, met her eyes and ducked her head deeply.
With one last sigh, Yeoncheong smothered the last flickering embers of her anger.
"It's fine. I'll just go to a salon later."
"Let me know when you do. I'll pay for it."
"I said it's fine. I'm the one who sat down and let you, so I share the blame too."
Yeoncheong and Suyeon went back and forth like that, and just as Hasol and Seoha each grabbed one of them to break it up, Nayun—haircutting scissors somehow already in hand—spoke up.
"Why are you two making such a production? I'll just re-cut it."
"Nayun, if it gets any worse from here, it can't be fixed," Suyeon warned nervously, but Nayun was unbothered.
"Yeoncheong, what do you say? Wanna get fooled by me one more time?"
"You're confident?"
In answer to Yeoncheong's suspicion-laden voice, Nayun pointed the scissors at her own basketball pouch.
"I'll stake my basketball on it."
Everyone knew about Nayun's love of basketball. And those eyes were brimming with certainty. Yeoncheong made up her mind.
"Okay. Give it a shot."
Her hair had already been ruined once. It was all or nothing now.
Nayun combed carefully through her hair, checking it from every angle. The sound of scissors rang out only a handful of times, and even the friends watching from the sidelines didn't scream.
"All done."
Only then did Yeoncheong open her eyes and study herself in the hand mirror.
The gamble was a resounding success. Yeoncheong let out a breath of relief, and the other girls marveled at how completely Suyeon's blunder had vanished.
Suyeon's eyes lit up as though she were gazing upon the savior of her life.
"Nayun, where'd you learn to do that?"
Yeoncheong scratched her nose, showing off her neatly trimmed bangs.
"Nowhere. Ever since the bear living at my house messed with my hair, I've always trimmed it myself."
"A bear...?"
"You have a bear?"
Amid her friends' confused murmuring, Seoha guessed the answer.
"Do you maybe have an older brother?"
Nayun's face scrunched at the words older brother, and she nodded slowly. From the look of it, "bear" seemed to be a rather sanitized way of putting it.
"By blood relation, sure."
Hasol, who'd been fussing with Yeoncheong's hair, turned her head too.
"Nayun, you have an older brother? I had no idea."
"Of course you didn't. There's a pretty big age gap."
When the girls kept pressing with questions, Nayun decided enough was enough and shut her mouth.
After a lunch hour full of drama, and an afternoon of classes fought through on a tide of drowsiness, Teacher Jisu finally entered the classroom for the end-of-day homeroom.
With the school trip starting tomorrow, most of it consisted of related reminders.
"...And also... oh, right."
The teacher shot a quick glance at Yeoncheong.
"Do not be late tomorrow. There's nothing we can do if you miss the bus to the airport, but there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about a missed flight. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The homeroom dragged on. Checking her smartphone as if she'd forgotten something, Jisu looked up.
"This should go without saying, but... alcohol! You know better than to bring any, right? It's not even good for you. Drinking it before we even leave gets you absolutely nothing."
"Teacher, what about non-alcoholic stuff?"
"That's a no too. Don't even think about confusing anyone—just don't bring any at all."
Unlike the crisp answer to the roll call, the students' responses this time were listless. Teacher Jisu repeated, again and again, that they were absolutely not to bring any.