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Realizing she may have been looking for the hair dye box, Jun grabbed it off the chair and shoved it under her nose. “Here.”

She took the box and tossed it to the side. “We don’t need that right now.”

“But I thought you said you wanted to dye–”

“I know,” she said. She pulled out two hair products. “But your hair is dry as fuck. So it’s time to take some drastic measures.” She motioned with her head towards the chair.

He dropped his full weight into the chair, the legs skidding across the concrete floor. Kana looked around. “Didn’t you say you had a hose?”

Jun pursed his lips and jutted his chin at the hose beside him.

She snatched the nozzle and chuckled. “Can’t believe we have to resort to this.”

Jun shrugged. “I don’t have a shower head. Sorry.”

“I figured. I mean, this is meant for the garage anyway.”

“And on myself.”

Kana let out another short laugh. “What, like you use it to shower yourself?”

Jun slowly nodded, then looked down at his feet, cursing at himself for admitting that small part to her.

Kana didn’t say anything. She twisted the nozzle to a gentler pressure and stepped behind him, the water arcing up like a small fountain. “Lean back.”

Jun did and flinched as the cold hit his scalp, a sharp gasp escaping before he could stop it. He should have been used to it by now—but someone else’s hands controlling the water triggered something instinctive in him.

“Do you not condition your hair?” Kana asked. Her fingers massaged his scalp. The water stopped. A chill settled over his scalp, and he could hear the faint drip-drip hitting the concrete below.

“I don’t think about it,” he replied, which was true. He braced himself a second too late — the cold water came back, and he shivered hard.

Kana darted over to the wall on the balls of her feet, light as a dancer. The knob squeaked shut, and she plucked a small gray towel from the plastic bag.

“Well, that’s gonna change now,” she said as she wrapped the towel around his head and started rubbing it.

If Jun was back to his usual self, he would do the things Kana was doing for him. Guilt crawled up his throat. The bare minimum of taking care of himself had become someone else’s job. He hated how embarrassing it was. He couldn’t let this happen again.

“You really don’t have to do this,” he muttered when she stopped drying his hair.

Kana groaned. “That again? You keep saying that.”

“Yes, but…” his voice trailed off. Sometimes the right words didn’t exist between languages—certain phrases in Mandarin carried a weight that English couldn’t hold.

As he searched for the right words, Kana started setting up her station on Jun’s workbench, adding more products and hair tools. She also unfolded a large black garbage bag, fanning it out.

He swallowed. “I don’t want to burden you.” The words tasted wrong in English—too clinical, too detached from what he actually meant.

Kana snorted. “I told you. I want to do this.”

She grabbed a pair of thinning shears from the workbench, opening and shutting them with a few quick snips. She snipped off a large corner of the garbage bag.

“The more I look at your dead hair, it makes me feel more dead than I already am inside.” She hopped over to him and motioned for him to close his eyes. The garbage bag fluttered over him like a makeshift cape, his head poking through the hole she had cut. “So trust me, you’re helping me a lot.”

The snipping sound traveled from one ear to the other. From the corner of his eye, he watched pale dry ends drift past his shoulders and settle on the concrete.

“You have experience in doing other people’s hair?”

More snips on the other side of his head. “Yeah. I had to teach myself.”