The salon

he entered Kathy's salon, the bell on the door jingling and alerting everyone in the room who all ll turned to look at him. Ryu could feel his cheeks flush as he made his way to the counter at the front where a pretty, blond girl dressed in a pastel pink top, lavender skirt and light glittery pink eye shadow and lip gloss sat. She seemed preoccupied with the magazine she had in her hand while the rest of the workers and customers chatted. Ryu could still feel their eyes on him and if not for his full head of hair would be showing them his glowing red ears.

"Excuse me?" he asked in a soft voice.

"..."

"Excuse me."

The girl's eyes darted up as Ryu felt a sigh of relief at the escape from saying excuse me for awkward the third time.

"Haircut?" She asked pointedly looking at his bird's nest of hair.

"Um...no, I was wondering if you were hiring?"

The girl raised an eyebrow quizzically

"You cut hair?"

"No...as you can tell, I'm not that well practiced with cutting hair except my own, and you can see how that's turned out. Um I'm looking for other work you know, cleaning hair and stuff, I'm good at that. Been doing it all my life, so um if you could give me a chance id really appreciate it."

The girl gave him a long look.

"Alright. I'm Sydney, my mom runs the store so you'll have to ask her, she's a bit strict but I'll see what I can do." She smiled at him making Ryu go reder than he thought was possible.

"Thank you so much, Ma'am"

"Cut the ma'am, were probably around the same age anyway"

"Oh um thanks ah Sydney"

She nodded and went to the back of the store which was curtained. When she came back she brought someone who looked like an older clone of her own. Same light blue eyes, same blond hair and same plink makeup, though with more noticeable purple mixed into the edges. The only difference was that she was slightly taller, had better posture and had bigger breasts, that Ryu ofcourse did not fail to notice.

"Hey I'm Kathy, welcome to my salon, Sydney tells me that you're looking for work?"

"Yeah Gred from the pawn shop said I might get some work here, if you have space for me."

"Well... You're in luck, our previous cleaner Li just left for University last week so we do have some space for you but I have to say, it's not a high paying job, and it has some rules."

"Rules?"

"Well yes we have rules for everyone that works here, you need to be here on time and leave at 9 everyday except Sundays. You need to look presentable like all our staff, you need to know the basics of hair cutting and makeup which we can help but you need to learn on your own time as well if you want to keep up."

"Wow okay um that's reasonable I guess. What do you mean by look presentable?"

"Well for one you'll need a haircut, if you work here most treatments can be discounted but we'll have to give you a cut that seems good to our store's image."

"Okay I think I get it.

"So you in or are you out?" Asked Kathy looking like she was getting tired of Ryu's passive tone already.

"Ah...