Chapter Text
"Oh my god, this crybaby had a midnight breakdown again!"
"Shut up, Jessica!" Jisung bites back, shoving his canary-yellow hair under his pom pom beanie.
Sure, he can cut it, but first of all, he'll end up looking like a peacock with a chopped off tail, and second of all, it'll grow back overnight anyway.
When he was a teenager, the involuntary change excited him, especially since his parents never let him dye his hair on his own, but now that he's a college student, he's old enough to have a certain image on his mind that he wants to upkeep, and the toxic-neon-snapchat-themed hair colour no longer suits his fancy. Now it's but an imposed whim of someone he doesn't even know. Yet. When they meet, he'll make sure to make this guy's life hell, just like he's making Jisung's current one.
The vast majority of people have it easy; two or three strands at most, and since they don't tend to dye their hair a crazy colour, it's rarely noticeable. But the universe damned Jisung with a split hair dye, basically a half of his head dedicated to this gaudy vandalism and his soulmate is an anime protagonist with unpredictable mood swings.
"Every damn week, he goes from fuchsia to lime," he grouches to his friends when they meet up for their biweekly NeedForSpeed night. "I have no clue how he didn't go bald yet!"
"Listen, Sung," Changbin cuts in, "maybe you should visit a hairdresser?"
Jisung chokes back the tears of lifelong indignation. "You know damn well it's impossible to get rid of it!"
"No, but why don't you give it a shot?" Chan squeezes his shoulder in an attempt of cheering him up. "There must be a chance a professional might have some secret kind of solution to your problem. You can't be the only one out there struggling with it!"
He shakes his head. "Nonsense."
As he steps foot into a local hair salon, the first thing he smells is that toxic tinge of hair spray and apple shampoo.
He gave Changbin's suggestion a thought, of course, the overthinker he is. Usually, he doesn't need hair-related services cause he copes perfectly fine by himself, shredding the shit out of his hair in moments of weakness. He ends up looking extraordinary lame, but who cares if he always covers it with a hat?
The receptionist invites him to go sit on the sofa while he waits for his turn. He scrolls up and down his muted YouTube shorts with no real intent, focused on the digital clock in the left corner, counting minutes. 15 minutes left. 10 minutes. 5. As if on cue, when his leg lifts in a half bounce, a guy emerges from the main area, pulling on a pair of black latex gloves.
"You must be my 7 o'clock, right?"
Jisung nods, and the very instant he catches his eyes gravitating towards the guy's cat-like ones, he makes a conscious effort to look elsewhere but him.
"Um... What's your name?" he pries, probably when he figures Jisung won't speak if not spoken to.
"Han— Han Jisung."
Out of the corner of his sight, he sees an easy smile make its way onto an otherwise intimidating-looking resting bitch face. It's surreal to be smiled at by the same archetype that likes to taunt him for his bizarre hair at college.
"My name's Minho, nice to meet you. Please, take a seat—" he gestures to an ivory-leather spinning chair. "And you might want to take your hat off for this," he banters.
"Yeah, about that." Jisung sits up and rips the beanie off, his hair pops up all frizzy and electrified as though he's a mad scientist straight out of the basement.
With a bit of afterthought, he realises that without his hat he feels— exposed. Naked, almost. The breeze of the AC messing with the fuzz of baby hair on his forehead feels like peeling socks off after a long day. It's become such a ritualised thing for him he didn't notice the item of clothing worm its way into the list of things he needs to quit. He fights the urge to huddle up and wrap his arms around the knees. Staring in the mirror, he watches Minho adjust the height of his chair before his eyes flick up and he freezes.
"I know right?" Jisung rushes to fill the galvanising silence. "It's a mess, but it is not my doing. It's just that— my soulmate is an ass."
Minho gapes at him as if he's grown a third head and barked at him in fluent Hellish. "It's— I've never seen something quite like that," he stammers, hands creeping up to pull his own hat a little lower. His hat is plain black and it suits his eyes, Jisung notices. "It's usually like— two strands. And yours is..." He runs his fingers through the glowing bright locks, inspecting the damage. "It's enormous."
"I know," Jisung groans, kicking his feet in bottled up frustration. "I tried to bleach it and stuff but—"
"I see," he says as he grabs a rat tail comb and starts to part his hair in certain sections, eyebrows knitted while he takes his time examining his (burnt to the scull) scalp. It's already itchy from all that fuss, so Jisung digs his nails into the palm to not reach out and just scratch it and embarrass himself even further. "Your ends are split as well, and even your roots are damaged— except for the yellow part, it's fine."
"Yeah, this guy somehow knows how to keep it all healthy and shiny. Isn't that ironic?"
Minho hums, and Jisung gaslights himself into thinking he saw him bite down a smirk. It's probably a trick of the light. He keeps ruffling through the haycuse of his hair, almost like it's more for his own amusement than for an actual need. Before he can dwell on it, a tall figure appears in the reflection, another hairdresser, Jisung assumes, whose eyes bat between them before they zero in on his lemon chrome hair and then he bursts out laughing.
Even though his hairdresser acts nonchalant, he doesn't miss the fierce look he sends his co-worker through the mirror.
"And as you know your hands are tied when it has to do with your soulmate," Jisung grumbles, "so I just sit here looking pretty and wait untill he pulls something new every week."
"Why do you hate it so much?" Minho asks, a brow raised in curiousity that borders on subtle teasing. As if Jising is overplaying the pain. He grabs a strand from each side of his fringe and joins them above his head in a crooked mimicry of a heart— or a pretzel. "I think yellow hair suits you."
"Well, Jessica doesn't think so. And neither does Sarah."
He drops the locks as if his heart has just been broken. "Do you want to pull girls or something? Didn't take you for the type..."
"Hell no," Jisung is quick to correct such an unfounded speculation. "I just want my hair autonomy back! It's kinda weird reading Articles of Association while a toxic-green strand keeps dangling in front of my eyes like a sour reminder of my misery."
"You study law?" Minho asks, voice dropping lower. His eyes meet Jisung's in the mirror and it's the scariest thing he's ever experienced; on the inside, he feels as if he's been dipped into a hot spring, though he doesn't let it show when he continues as animatedly as before.
"See? You can't believe it, 'cause I don't look like it and that's because of my hair!"
The silence stretches, but in the midst of it, he sees pink build up in the other's cheeks.
"No, it's just— I can picture you fighting everyone in a courtroom and I'm trying my best not to laugh." Minho purses his lips before he speaks up. "I just think lawyers are incredibly hot— anyway, if it bothers you so much, there is a solution."
Jisung chooses to turn a deaf ear to the lawyer comment for the sake of his sanity. "You mean scam?"
"Why would I scam my client?"
"'Cause I'm an idiot with canary-yellow hair."
Minho tilts his head, a brow raised in an unexpected offence. "Even if you're a lawyer with canary-yellow hair?"
"I'd sue you but it'd be post factum and bitter. And you'd probably win 'cause there's no way to check what I asked you to do. And since my hair is yellow no one would take me seriously."
He lets an exaggerated huff of annoyance. "So do you want to get rid of your perfectly dyed and nourished and looked after yellow hair?"
"You talk like you dyed it yourself!"
"Yes or no?"
"God, yes. Yes, please."
With that, he takes no time to proceed to work. Retrieving a bunch of mysterious bottles from a cabinet, he squeezes the ingredients onto a plate and mixes them together. With gentle strokes, he starts to apply the paste on his hair, spreading it from the roots to the very ends. It tingles the skin of his scalp a bit, but the intoxicatingly flowery smell compensates for it all.
After he lets it sit for a couple of minutes, he moves Jisung to a sink and rubs the shampoo into his hair, foaming it up, and slowly, the blister-like resentment starts to evaporate, replaced by the utter bliss arising from under the spellbinding touch of Minho's hands.
"Is the temperature okay?"
"Mhm..."
He hears a quiet snort, but then rivers and rivers of warm water flow through his hair and he feels like he's soaring in clouds.
It's short-lived though, his eyes fly open to a sound of a stifled giggle, the same hairdresser from earlier, and he doesn't miss Minho send him a death glare, as if they're in on a secret he knows nothing about.
After he dries his hair, Jisung doesn't notice any visible changes, except his hair looks silkier now, as if he didn't bleach it five times in a row last weekend, all traces of that massacre gone, his locks cascading down his face in a bouncy, flattering manner.
"This will work overnight. Tomorrow your hair will be your natural hair colour."
His half-smile quickly turns into a scowl. "Let me guess," he begins, "tomorrow I'll show up here, furious, with my yellow hair still intact and you will be nowhere to be found."
Minho clicks his tongue as if Jisung isn't onto something when he totally is. "Okay, let's make a deal. Lawyers like deals, right? I'll give you my number, and tomorrow morning, you'll text me if your hair is brown, so if I'm not fooling you, I'll get your number. Deal?"
Jisung lets a repressed chortle of self-pity. "Deal."