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A box of blue hair dye and a bleach kit sat in the middle of the coffee table between them. Byeol shifted nervously on the other side, eyes firmly looking at the boxes rather than Khun. Her hair still brown, thank god, but Khun wasn’t blind to the implication. It was clear to him that something happened between this morning and this evening. Bam had decided to make dinner and stay out of their way, only leaving the two of them in the uncomfortable silence of the living room.
Khun’s arms folded a little tighter as he looked at the box, and then at his little girl. Well, she wasn’t so little anymore. She’s lost all of her baby teeth that she kept in a private collection hidden somewhere in her room. She lost the baby fat around her cheeks and her body, turning her into a more slender athletic figure. It was scary to think that she was transitioning into a teen. At least, he glanced at the box of dye again; this wasn’t some form of rebellion meant to piss him and Bam off. Not that dying her hair would. It would just be an easy way to make fun of her if she managed to screw up the bleaching process or chose the wrong color.
He picked the box up. He was well aware that this was the same color as his hair. Byeol would need to take a reasonable amount of time to get a lot of the red out of the brown, and it would be messy considering that they weren’t working with thin and short hair, but long locks and thick wavy hair. “Why?” He finally asked, “Why this color of all things?”
“Why not?” Byeol questioned back, and it made Khun want to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I thought it’d look pretty.” A lie. He let out a short breath as he looked at Byeol. She still was keeping her gaze firmly away from him. Her shoulders were shaking. Whether out of panic of his reaction or trying to hold back her emotions, he wasn’t sure yet. He’d bet on the latter, however. It was a rare day Byeol could get them truly angry.
The dye wasn’t something to get mad at either, but Khun knew that this was a dangerous road. “You don’t like blue.” Well, that wasn’t necessarily true, but Byeol rarely wore anything blue beside the family crest that she was proud of. She wasn’t wearing it now, which worried him slightly. “It’s not your favorite color, anyway.”
“Well...no.” Byeol agreed, albeit hesitantly. Her eyes flicked up, meeting his for a brief second. “But, I thought I…”
“Did someone say something to you?” Khun ended the song and dance. He could hear Bam slow his chopping, clearly listening in. “Perhaps...something about you not fitting in with the rest of the family?”
Byeol’s jaw ticked, and Khun looked at the box again. “So you think that,” he said slowly, “somehow dying your hair will automatically get you into the family.”
“...”
“You know they’d just find other things about you that don’t fit in,” Khun placed the box down. “They’ll accept you, maybe for a few weeks. A month if you’re lucky. But then you’re going to do something. The roots are going to show, the way you fight isn’t the same way we do, or you’re going to do something that’s very un-Khun like that’s going to remind the rest of them that you aren’t the same.”
He watched Byeol’s shoulders sag, and he felt his heartbreak a little in his chest. He knew that his family outcasted Bam, but Bam was good at handling himself. Bam rarely lets it get to him. They had allies, friends even that loved Bam and Byeol. But that was the thing. They were Khun’s and Bam’s allies. They were all adults, living their own lives. Khun set the box down after a moment. Byeol didn’t have that. As big of a family that she had, he was aware of how the family treated her: too much respect or none. There was no way for her to get a normal friend in the Khuns. Allies yes, enemies for sure. Friends? It was a foreign concept.
“If I were you, I would dye my hair, my favorite color.” Khun said carefully, “and be me whoever that would be. If they like me for me, then they’re allies I can count on till the very end.”
Byeol glanced up at him.
“People suck.” Khun wasn’t going to mince words. “It’s easy to try to fit in, but at the end of the day, you’re only stuck trying to be someone you’re not. You are trying to please people that don’t mean anything two...three years down the line. You want something that lasts, so you want to be authentic. Its’ easier said than done. They make it tempting and make it hard so that you feel like “you” isn’t worth a damn.”
“They told me you only keep me around because Daddy asked you to.” Byeol murmured, eyes once more downcast and hidden behind her bangs.
Oh. Khun’s jaw ticked, but he swallowed that rage. He could hear a soft thwack of a knife against a chopping board in the kitchen. There was no mistake that Bam was still listening. “Little wish, do I look like someone that just keeps someone around because your Daddy asks him to?”
“Yes.”
He could hear Bam laugh shortly, and Khun’s eyebrow twitched. “No.” He said sharply. “I may bend myself here and there to accommodate what your Daddy wants, but I don’t just “keep” people around. That’s not what this is.” He looked at Byeol. He was reminded so much of Bam sometimes. “Bam’s wish was to have a child with me, and I gave him some of my shinsu to make that happen when we reached the top. It didn’t matter to us what you looked like, who you took after, what your interests were, or what you disliked. I don’t keep you around for convenience’s sake, and I certainly didn’t keep you because Bam was giving me puppy-dog eyes before we even got to the top.”
Byeol glanced up slightly.
Khun let out a low breath, “You and Bam both belong with me.” He gently reached across the table and brushed her bangs away from her face, showing off the blue of her eyes and how they were shining with unshed tears. “If you want to dye your hair, I’ll help you. God knows you’ll probably fry and damage it before you can get the color in. If you want this color, I’ll be more than happy to apply it too.” He paused. “But don’t do this because you think it’s a fast way to the “in” crowd. Pick a color that makes you happy, that you can look in the mirror and say “this is me,” okay?”
“You’re going to let me dye my hair?” Byeol blinked.
Khun shrugged, “It’s not like you’re asking to get a tattoo or a piercing. Though,” he glanced at her ears. “Are you thinking about getting your ears pierced?”
“When I turn fifteen, I was going to ask if I could!”
“Why are you waiting till fifteen?” Sometimes, Byeol came up with some of the strangest rules to live by. Khun wasn’t sure if that was a Bam thing, a Khun thing, or if it was someone else and who that someone else could be.
“Should I push it till sixteen?” Byeol asked, looking off to the side thoughtfully.
Khun let out a sigh, “Do whatever you want.”
“Yes!” Byeol cheered, she glanced at the box again, and she seemed to hesitate. Khun wondered if any of his words managed to reach her. Was she going to ask for that color? Not that he would say anything, but he wasn’t sure how well that color would take to how much red she had in that brown of hers.
It could very well end up a disaster.
“Maybe not blue.” Byeol said after a moment, “...It’s okay to be different, right?”
“It’s very much okay to be different,” Khun wasn’t about to let her walk away without getting that through her head at least. “If I could make a suggestion, you might want to go with a color that has some red in it. The purple family maybe.”
“...How does neon pink sound?”
Khun huffed a soft laugh, “You’re going to be very easy to spot among the sea of blue for certain, little wish.”
Byeol giggled.
X
“Are you sure dying her hair pink is a good idea?” Bam questioned as they were lying in bed. The conversation was still playing in the back of Bam’s mind. Khun lightly traced a pattern across Bam’s chest, feeling him breathe in and out as the darkness tried to entice them to sleep. They were already sweaty with a different type of activity.
“Hmm, better than dying it blue. Her hair would turn green in an instant,” Khun hummed softly. “We avoided that disaster.”
“...I was thinking about how easy it would be for her to be a target.” Bam murmured.
“For our family, she’s already easy to spot with the brown alone. If for whatever reason she has her hair dyed when she’s going to the Tower, well perhaps it’ll buy her some time.” Khun said, keeping his tone soft.
“When,” Bam repeated. “Not if.”
“She’s a child of a wish, Bam.” Khun stopped tracing his lines and looked into molten gold eyes. “We’re kidding ourselves if we think otherwise.”
“...I don’t want her to go up,” Bam whispered, his voice cracking at the edges.
Neither did Khun, but he tucked himself close against Bam’s side. “So, we give her all the advantages we can.” He murmured, low and soothing. “When she starts to climb, we’ll figure out what floor she’s on, visit every once in a while since we can safely go up and down floors now. God knows that FUG’s been wanting you out of retirement for some time. They have their eyes on her as well.”
Bam sighed as he curled around Khun and brought him close against him. He could feel Bam’s heart thudding in his chest in a steady rhythm of anxiety and concern. Khun couldn’t blame him; he was sure his heart was beating to the same rhythm. “Good thing for Ranker advantage, I guess…”
“Very good thing. Sleep now, love.”
“Goodnight, Aguero.”