I never thought of that before. Slowly, I nod. “I want to look like me,” I say. “But…different. A bit different.”
“Sure.” She walks around me, her face assessing as she runs her hands through my hair. “To confirm, no blue hair?”
“No.”
“Green?”
“I would prefer not.”
“Got it.” She winks at me. “You want to watch me work, or you want to do the classic makeover surprise reveal?”
“Surprise.” My answer astonishes me.
She swings the chair around. “You got it.”
Nayeon talks to me as she works, chatting about living in New York, where she went to college at Parsons before working as a stylist for some K-pop bands. “The schedule was too much,” she says. “I had no life. It was even harder for the idols.”
“How so?”
Nayeon lifts my hair with both hands. “Too much scrutiny, and they have to be cautious of every single thing. One step out of line and it could be the end of your career or even your band. The pressure is enormous.” She starts snipping again. “What’s the event tonight? Do you want to be super glam?”
“It’s the StarLune concert.” There’s no harm telling her. Ibet all the stylists here are sworn to secrecy, and I’m on Jihoon’s tab anyway.
Her eyebrows raise. “Lucky. You’ll need staying power because those shows are intense. Who’s your bias?”
I know what this is now—my favorite in the band. Might as well be honest. “Min.”
“I like X, so it’s good we don’t have to fight,” she says. “We want Min to see you from the stage so he can fall in love and run away with you, and that’s not going to happen if you’ve got mascara running down your face.”
Nayeon is careful about asking me for input—do I want curls, light lipstick or dark, how much hair trimming will I allow?—and ends with a shoulder massage that almost has me purring.
She does a final dusting on my face and steps back with a big smile. “Tell me what you think.”
She swings me around at the same time as a beat drops on the speakers as if to herald the new and improved Ariadne Hui.
Nayeon is a magician. My hair is down but has more presence, if you can say that about hair. I stayed clear of bangs ever since the school photographer kept calling me China Doll on my grade eight picture day, but I now sport a thick line of bangs that frame my face and make my eyes pop. I love it. She takes a mirror and shows me how she’s cut layers to form the back into a pointy shape.
Then there’s the face. I look nothing like my usual professional made-up self, which is designed to make me less memorable, not more. My cheeks are faintly flushed, and my lips look like ripe summer cherries. My skin is creamy, if slightly freckled, glass. Nayeon explains how to recreate the look, and I barely listen as I turn my head from side to side to watch my hair settle. Despite the high gloss on my lips, not a strand sticks to them. Nayeon grins and grabs a tube out of a drawer that she holds up. “Lip varnish,” she says before tucking it into my bag with a wink.
“Very nice.” Hana comes in with a big grin, and my painted mouth falls open. Her hair is shorter, a bob that comes under her ears, and her look is sultry. She looks like she can go croon some jazz hits while lying on a piano in a red satin dress. “Worth spending Hoonie’s money.”
“I’ll pay him back.”
She snorts. “As if he’ll let us.”
We thank Nayeon, who is beaming with pride at her work, and head down to the reception area. I strut with a little more swing than usual and am self-aware enough to be embarrassed even as I toss my hair. After all, lawyers aren’t sex kittens. Strong, confident women aren’t sex kittens. Then I pass a guy so ethereal he glows, and when he does a double take, eyes wide in appreciation, I preen a bit.
I decide I can be all those things if I want.
Yeong is waiting, and he gives us a bow.
“He says we looks lovely,” Hana translates after he speaks.
We get in, me shaking my hair because it feels so light and smooth, and I reach into my bag, already red in the face at what I’m about to do. “Can you ask if Yeong is free to drop something off?”
She eyes the box. “A present?” She speaks to Yeong and nods. “No problem, he says.”
I pass over a little box, tied with a ribbon. “It’s for Jihoon. Can Yeong bring it to him? I’m not even sure where he is right now.”
