The Cutting Edge

014

It was pure, unadulterated torture.

In the day, Hyejin would camp in the training room with her stacks of magazines, ploughing through each and every one dutifully while trying to add her own unique spin on a hairstyle that would fit the fashion trends of last season. At night, she would drag another trolley full of magazines home and continue the same routine in the barbershop till the wee hours of the morning. Day after day, it was simply rinse and repeat.

What added salt to the wound was the fact that the other trainees all seemed to be having a much better time with their training programme than she was. From time to time she would see the other senior stylists bring their mentees into the training room to teach them a thing or two about the latest perming techniques or treatment methods—all of them would toss her looks of sympathy (some of scorn) as they walked past.

"You're still here?" an annoying voice echoed from behind her. Turning around, she scowled when she found Hannah standing there with an obvious gloat on her face. "To think that I was slightly jealous that you were assigned Hyunwon as your mentor. Where is he? I don't think I've ever seen him in here with you. Was he too disappointed with your standards that he decided to give up?" She fluttered her false eyelashes innocently as she spoke—it made Hyejin want to smack her plastic face.

"What do you want?"

"I just came in to pick up some dyes," Hannah replied, walking over to the cupboards and slowly searching through them for the dyes that she wanted. "Natasha says she's going to teach me how to improve my technique in ombre hair dying. Do you know what that is? It's when you have a gradient of colour running down the length of the hair," she explained patronisingly. "It's one of the most advanced techniques you learn on the university styling course. Difficult to do well. I don't suppose you would have heard of that when you were working in that pathetic barbershop."

Hyejin scowled.

The whole wide world knew that she used to work at her father's barbershop before joining the Cutting Edge (although Gina and Ryu had done some back-end manipulation to the timeline to give the false impression that she had been recruited beforethe Ares incident), thanks to the interviews that had been splashed all over the newspapers and magazines. At the peak of the media frenzy, the reporters had praised Ryu to the ends of the Earth and back for having spotted and scouted such a talent, but she knew that there were many—including some of the senior stylists in the salon—who felt that she was undeserving of all the praise and attention. Hell, she actually agreed with them on that account.

Still, it didn't mean that she liked it when people used her background as reason to patronise and belittle her. She had never felt like there was anything wrong or shameful with having worked at the barbershop for so many years. That was her home, and it was where she had picked up her very first pair of scissors.

She tried to ignore the other girl and continue with her sketches, but Hannah seemed determined to milk this moment for all it was worth. Walking over, she peered over Hyejin's shoulder and remarked, "Trench coats were in fashion in the Fall/Winter collections two years ago. Don't you know that the collar details of the coats are what's most important about the outfit? You can't have models wearing their hair down when they walk the catwalk in trench coats, that's a fashion basic."

"Hannah, I can't concentrate with you jabbering in my ear," Hyejin snapped. "I think Natasha is waiting for you, maybe you'd better be going."

Hannah's ruby-red lips curled up into a smile. "If those sketches are all you're going to be able to do, then I don't think it makes much of a difference whether or not I'm here distracting you. But you're right, I should probably get going. It takes a couple of hours to complete the ombre hair dying process so I'll need to get started soon. Have fun!"