I’d struggled with insecurity about my hair since childhood. My mom had gotten pregnant with me in high school, and my father and his family moved to a town far away before I was born. I’d only seen his face in photos; he probably didn’t even know the sex of his own child.
It’d be giving my mother far too much credit to say she worked as hard as she could to raise me as a single parent after that. She went through one rocky relationship after another, and my last name changed more times than I cared to count. I hated having to explain the situation to my friends each time that happened.
“Was your real dad foreign, Hikaru-chan?”
Since I’d been born with light-brown hair and eyes, I was barraged with thoughtless questions like that all the time. My friends might’ve asked out of mere jealousy over my appearance, but I’d never forget overhearing my own grandparents whispering about the same thing late at night. However westernized Japanese people were becoming, no one around me had such light hair.
Back in junior high, one boy in my class had actually complimented me. “Your hair’s so cool, Iguchi.”
We’d been smack in the middle of puberty, a period when boys and girls rarely interacted, but he was a popular kid who’d gotten along with everyone.
At the time, my female classmates were spreading rumors that I dyed my hair. I guess having a Japanese-looking face but lighter hair and eyes didn’t seem believable. However many times I denied their accusations, no one believed me. That boy was the only one who believed me.
A lot of girls in my class didn’t like that I was friendly with him.
When we came back after a junior-high summer vacation, one girl showed up with lightened hair. “Iguchi-san has brown hair, so we should be allowed to dye ours too,” she said.
From that point on, they started coloring their hair, one after another. It wound up becoming a big problem at school. Eventually, the girls who’d lightened their hair—and me—were called to the staff room and told, “You all need to redye your hair black.”
“This is my natural hair color,” I’d protested.
“You need to dye yours too, Iguchi. School rules state that everyone needs black hair.”
What the staff were asking seemed completely unreasonable to me, but the other girls were appeased; they redyed their hair immediately. I bought a home hair-dye kit and colored my hair black, but that was just the start of the hell awaiting me.
My hair didn’t hold color; not long after I dyed it, it would fade back to brown. Whenever that happened, the other girls tattled, and I’d be called back to the staff room and coerced into dyeing it again. My hair eventually got so damaged, and my scalp so irritated, that I had to chop off most of the hair I’d worked so hard to grow out.
My mother was so infatuated with her new partner that she paid no attention to my plight. When I told her I needed to go to a salon for a haircut, she just handed over money.
I’ve never forgotten the girls’ smug looks when I showed up with my hair cropped. After that, I hit the books, hoping to get into a good high school that wouldn’t make me change my hair if I proved it was natural. I worked hard to treat my damaged, broken hair, and slowly managed to regrow it to its old length. I taught myself makeup skills as self-defense; cosmetics were a tactic to distract from my hair.
“You’ll catch cold if you sleep in a place like this, Iguchi.”
I must’ve nodded off without realizing; a rough shake jarred me awake. Recognizing a familiar scent, I slowly opened my eyes. “Chiaki…?”
Against my expectations, Rintaro stood there. “Your face looks terrible. Were you crying?”
“No.” I rubbed my eyes as I sat up, then remembered I had makeup on. The amount of eye shadow on the back of my hand was more than I’d expected to come off with just one swipe of my hand. Hurriedly taking out my compact, I confirmed that I’d completely destroyed the eye makeup I’d worked so hard on that morning. I now resembled a panda.
Everything around me looked white and cloudy—I must’ve still been half-asleep. I was cleaning up my messy face with makeup remover when the door rattled open.
“Hey, Rintaro, is Iguchi awake?”
It was Chiaki. His lighthearted smile must’ve perked me up, because all the color suddenly returned to my field of vision; the world became a bright neon that made me blink. His oil-paint scent wafted over from the seat next to mine. As my senses slowly returned, I realized I was in the art room.
“I texted you so many times, but you never answered,” he told me. “I figured you were probably here. It’s already time for lunch!”
He grabbed my phone from where it’d fallen on the floor and handed it back to me. Since the school festival ended, I hadn’t gotten a single text, but now the screen was full of notifications thanks to Chiaki.
Whenever I skipped class, I came to the art room. It was supposed to be locked, but I knew exactly where the laissez-faire art club advisor hid the spare key.
“I told the teachers I’d make sure you attended the afternoon classes. And you can copy my notes. That’ll make us square for earlier,” Chiaki declared, returning an easel facing the window to its original position.
I’d fallen asleep atop a row of chairs. My joints popped and cracked as I stretched.
“You usually buy lunch at the canteen, right? Even if you go now, I think most of the good stuff will already be sold out,” Chiaki added, handing me a foil-wrapped onigiri.
Rintaro looked on in surprise as Chiaki placed his lunch bag on the desk. “You brought another huge lunch.”
“I’m a growing boy,” Chiaki replied. “Are you buying lunch from the convenience store again, Rintaro? You can have some of mine, if you want.”
Chiaki’s bento box was the same size as those used by the students in sports clubs. He had enough onigiri to cover not just lunch, but breakfast and mid-morning and after-school snacks. They weren’t a uniform shape or size, so I could tell at a glance they’d been made by a high-school boy who didn’t spend much time cooking.
“Sorry about the side dishes. They’re just leftovers from dinner last night,” he apologized.
“Still, you put this bento together yourself, right? And first thing in the morning, to boot. That’s impressive.”
“Well, I’d feel bad asking Mom to do it. I go to school early for the art club.”