Thumbs Up!
The next morning, at Lee Yeonhwa Hair Studio.
“Yeonhwa unnie, you really do nothing but work, you know that?”
One of the employees tossed the remark at owner Lee Yeonhwa, and the others gathered around her nodded as one.
“Of course you work hard. You can’t just slap it together, can you?”
Yeonhwa answered as if it hardly mattered. The rest of them were not so easily waved off.
“Unnie, promotion matters these days, too.”
“She’s right. You don’t promote at all.”
“And now that we’re a celebrity-only salon, even more so!”
“We could post on Outstar, run a blog series, film something for MewTube… Anything would do. I really think we need at least one proper promotional plan.”
“Hmm…”
Objections flared up from every side, and the truth was that Yeonhwa—calm face or not—was privately conscious of every one of those points.
Money.
The problem, as ever, was money.
Lee Yeonhwa had fought hard for the skill she had now. With nothing in her head but the resolve to become a master, she had wandered from country to country learning the craft, and in the end she had done it.
The moment she returned to Korea, she met the wall of reality head-on. Raising your skill and gathering clients to run a shop were as far apart as heaven and earth. The clients, simply, would not come. And with so few of them, there was never any occasion to show what she could do.
“Unnie, all we ever do is what’s good for the customer. I’m not saying that’s bad, but it’d be nice if it could be good for both sides, right?”
“Exactly! Everybody takes the hair we give them, lands a man, gets married, has kids, sets up house! And what about us?!”
Yeonhwa sighed and shrugged.
“…Which is why we decided this studio would only take celebrities, remember? Our skill is wasted on ordinary people, and only celebrities can pay what we charge.”
“That’s exactly why promotion matters even more! Unnie, the entertainment world runs completely on connections. Completely.”
It was a point Yeonhwa agreed with, at least in part. Building enough skill to lay hands on a celebrity’s hair was one thing. Getting those celebrities through the door was another. And how was Lee Yeonhwa—who had spent her years abroad doing nothing but practice—supposed to have connections?
“Hmm…”
If she had been swallowing the losses alone, she might have lived with it. But there were employees now, several of them, and the responsibility sat on her whether she wanted it or not.
One of the staff clenched a fist.
“Unnie, regulars! We need to lock down regulars!”
“Regulars?”
“Yes! Regulars! You know that salon that’s been killing it in Cheongdam-dong? They were scrambling for an assistant not long ago, and I went by. I got a look at how they work, and let me tell you—they’ve got their celebrities in a vise.”
“…A vise?”
“Yeah. They grab the heart and don’t let go. They fix it so the celebrity brags about the salon everywhere they go. You hang a bell on the cat’s neck.”
The employee pressed on, fervent. Chat a little while you cut the hair, bring them something to drink—pile on care like that, and apparently it was enough.
Yeonhwa nodded.
“As it happens, we do have one celebrity appointment coming in today…”
“Really? For real? Here?”
“Yeah. Remember the client who got a piercing last time? Turns out she was a stylist. The word got passed along just right and reached a celebrity.”
“Which celebrity? Doesn’t matter—we have to land them! We absolutely have to land them!”
“I understand why we need regulars. But…”
Yeonhwa scratched her head.
“…Which one of us is going to hang the bell on the cat?”
“…”
A silence followed.
Like keeps to like, as the saying goes, and this shop was nothing but timid hairdressers gathered around Yeonhwa. Their skill was excellent across the board—and why wouldn’t it be? They were timid. They spent every day clutching wigs and drilling. Facing a person was harder than that, so they had simply chosen what felt easier.
The quiet looked ready to stretch on forever. Then one of them burst out.
“Nothing says we can’t all hype them together! I saw it—other places don’t work solo either! If three people say there’s a tiger, folks end up believing it. That’s just how people are!”
“Yeah, yeah! We’ll back you up from the side!”
“The celebrity! We’re making them a regular, no matter what!”
That was when the door flew open and a party came through. At their head were PD Choi Heewon and writer Lee Geumsuk, and with them the production team of Special Task Force 808 and a troop of stylists.
They arranged themselves like a fence, and the formation alone was a threat—as if they meant to watch the hair designers’ every last move.
Lee Yeonhwa glanced around.
One of her people was suddenly fascinated by something off to the side. Another had buried herself in a magazine. A third had started cleaning, though nobody had asked.
…These girls?
And last through the door came one more woman.
“Hello.”
A low voice. The instant their eyes met—
“Ah, ah—hello. I’ll give you my very best today…”
Yeonhwa bowed from the waist before she knew she was doing it. And she understood something else as well.
A mouse, by its very nature, cannot hang a bell around a cat’s neck.
I think I’ve been kidnapped.
That was Sua’s first impression. She had been planted in the studio chair, and the crowd watching from behind was no small thing—PD Choi Heewon, writer Lee Geumsuk, and ten or so stylists she had never so much as been introduced to. They had one thing in common. Every pair of eyes was fixed on Sua’s face alone. It was, frankly, a lot.
A cold smear of dye touched her cheek.
Sua slid her eyes sideways. It didn’t look deliberate. The owner’s hands were shaking hard enough to see.
“I-I’m sorry. I’ll wipe it off right away.”
“Take your time.”
The owner’s hands only moved faster. Behind her, the stylists stood with their arms folded and added a word each.
“Please keep the damage to the hair to an absolute minimum.”
“Yes, yes, of course…”
“You did mix the dye properly, didn’t you? It doesn’t seem to be going on.”
“It’s just that she has so little oil in her hair…”
“How long until the color comes through?”
“Well… she’ll need to wash it over the course of a few days…”
Now and then Sua checked the owner’s face in the mirror, and every time she looked, the woman seemed to have aged another ten years. PD Choi Heewon came over with a tablet and began laying a great many things out on the screen.
“This is you dressed as a man, Sua. Once we CGI the chest and the hips, the feel should be something like this. And this—this is Kim Yu-han with the mask off. The look we’re building here today.”
Sua watched without blinking. It was fascinating. Seeing the face she would wear in the actual shoot was fun, and strange besides: she was plainly looking at herself, and yet it felt like watching an entirely different person. Like transforming into someone else. The feeling was new.
It’s like flipping through a character design book. Genuinely incredible.
Once PD Choi Heewon, who had the direction, finished explaining Kim Yu-han’s exterior, writer Lee Geumsuk came over to explain the interior.
“These are the scripts for the actual shoot. There’s rather a lot, isn’t there?”
She offered Sua an awkward smile, and she had reason to. Stacked from the floor, the scripts rose all the way to Sua’s thigh.
“Honestly, I can hardly show my face as a writer. Late scripts weren’t enough—I had to make the pile this enormous, too. With you, Sua, all I ever feel is sorry, and grateful.”
Sua, for her part, thought very little of it. Many scripts or few, one touch of her hand and they were finished, so the amount meant nothing. And the world waiting inside Special Task Force 808 was fun besides. She nodded, perfectly at ease.
“The more inspiration, the better. If anything, give them to me as fast as you write them.”
“Sua…”
Was there any remark that could move a writer more than being asked for even one line more? Writer Lee Geumsuk looked at her with eyes more deeply stirred than ever.
PD Choi Heewon, at her side, picked the explanation back up.
“Lee Kangcheol—the heavy, principled one—is black. Kim Yu-han is white, a white that can take any dye at all. We’ll set them against each other.”
“That’s right. And once you read the scripts, you’ll see there’s a stretch in the middle where you step out and rest. So the episodes you actually appear in come to exactly half? About ten?”
Sua blinked before she could help it.
Ten episodes? She was paid three thousand dollars an episode. That was thirty thousand dollars. She was going to make thirty thousand dollars?
This is fun… and I get paid, too…?
She considered it in earnest. Was this actually allowed? Wasn’t life the arrangement where you only earned money by doing work you hated and could barely stand? Then what on earth had she been living all this time?
That was when a ringtone went off—writer Lee Geumsuk’s phone. She glanced at the screen and slipped it back into her pocket, and another alert chimed. Not two or three times. Quite a few.
“Aigoo. Busy, I am so busy.”
It was the sort of line that ought to end in a sigh and a collapse, and yet Lee Geumsuk’s face was brilliantly bright. She was even aiming a deeply satisfied smile at Sua.
“The other actors message me every morning. Telling me they’ll truly give it everything they’ve got. All of this is thanks to you, Sua.”
“…?”
Me? How is any of that thanks to me?
But her mouth, by now, moved on habit.
“Acknowledged.”
“So you do know it yourself. The wake-up call you gave them on the day of the mock shoot helped enormously. They’re all tearing themselves apart over it.”
After that, Sua had to sit through praise, instructions, encouragement, thanks, explanations—everything under the sun—and the time poured past like water.
And at last, Sua’s hair, shampooed and dried and white as new snow, showed itself to the world. The moment a beauty mark was set beneath her eye, precise as a pinprick—
“Oh…”
A dazed sound. It came from the owner. Her face had gone blank and a little foolish, and anyone would have understood why: even she had not expected a result like this from her own hands.
No words passed between Lee Geumsuk and Choi Heewon. They only traded a look.
“Sua…” Choi Heewon’s voice was quiet.
“Sua…” Lee Geumsuk’s was warm.
And together, both thumbs shot up, crisp as a snap.
So Sua, with nothing else to offer, matched them. Using both hands.