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He can tell. Now, of all times, he’s started to tell.
And if he’s started to see it, to feel it, then surely everyone else on the Bus can, too.
He started that morning with a simple gaze into that bathroom mirror, a routine staring, to — as old advice from an eternally ambiguous ‘friend’ — make certain that his portrait hadn’t yet been overlapped with the visage of someone he didn’t recognise. At first, it was only minor — little flecks of the same blonde that carpeted his head, now finding themselves strapped across the underside of his chin. Perhaps, it was just a small mess from the hair-cut he received courtesy, courtesy of employment at the LCB — the kind you can merely wash away with enough water, and go about the rest of your day with nary a care.
By the day after, when those flecks had yet ceased to disappear from his face, he knew that something, anything, had to be up. Maybe now, they were still only visible under the intense scrutiny of a paranoid person, but there’s truly no telling when they might just flare up, and suddenly cover the whole of his face — ‘this kinda stuff is a bit spontaneous when you aren’t looking,’ Herr Gregor did say. The difference is, he’d prefer if he didn’t start growing his hair in droves — Gregor is the only one on the Bus that, to his knowledge, really seems to do stubble well, without looking a little out-of-sorts in the process.
---
With no proper solution in sight by the fourth, maybe fifth day, he was really starting to worry. What might've just been a small sprinkling of facial hair before must have surely bloomed into a whole forest by now — no matter how much those looks at himself in the mirror try to say that it’s just as speckled as it was before, if only a little bit longer, and a little bit more abundant.
With every awkward moment that he brings his hands up to his face, hoping and praying that not a soul is daring to look in his direction — or not caring enough to really properly look — as he feels over his chin, cheeks, and that small space above his mouth in a desperate search for the beginning of a veteran’s stubble, his mind tries its very best to toss up ideas and solutions like clay discs — only for the very same mind that tossed them up to aim, and shoot them right back down into splinters.
Maybe, he can ask the ‘stubble-guy’ himself, Herr Gregor, for some kind of advice? No, he might just pass that info on to Rodion during one of their little chats, and that rumour’ll pass around the whole Bus like some deadly, invisible weapon that he can’t see until everyone is pointing them right at him.
Mr. Heathcliff, instead? He seems like the kind of fellow to have learnt a skill like that. Wings, no, what if he announces the fact outright, to everybody? Oh, he can almost hear him yelling it out now… ‘Oi, mates, you hearin’ this? The li’l guy doesn’t know how to shave to save ‘is life!’ Anything but that, anything at all…
Then, if either of them don’t truly work, what about the Executive Manager? They’re a responsible figure to ask this kind of thing to. …But, with a clock-themed prosthetic for a head, do they even need to worry about knowing how to shave in the first place? No, no no no, what if they end up turning the whole thing into a Bus-wide learning experience for those who do and those who don’t, where everyone will end up knowing exactly who to blame for it?
Ugh… he doesn’t even want to think about which of those three choices might end up being the worst for him — but, with that soon-to-be wheatfield of facial hair held over his head like a ticking time-bomb, that’s all he can truly bring himself to think about.
---
By the end of the week, the stress hasn’t gotten better in the slightest — if anything, the constant paranoia has only gotten worse. The start and end of every little mission or errand the LCB is sent on in wait of the next Golden Bough to hunt, he’s got his hands feeling up his face in search of any and every little bit of facial hair that even might be growing more — if he found any long-enough strands, he might’ve even thought to pluck them then-and-there, if everyone wouldn’t immediately hear the yelp of pain he’d probably end up making if he did.
Faust? No, she wouldn’t want to waste even a smidge of information from her seemingly-endless banks of knowledge on such a simple issue as his…
Meursault? He’d definitely know how to shave, but he only really listens to Dante, and to go talk to Dante, that means—
“Hey, C.H,” Ryōshū’s voice perks up from somewhere behind him, and the sudden hand on his shoulder nearly makes him yelp as loud as he would’ve if he was plucking facial hairs — at least, he would’ve yelped that loud, if he didn’t breathe out any and all of the air in his lungs at the exact same time, sounding like a lower-pitched deflating balloon the whole way. “...T.H.A.N.K,” she’s quick to continue, as though a few other Sinners didn’t just turn their heads from wherever they were standing to see if she’s tried squeezing him until he pops — again, considering that Contemptuous incident, a few weeks back — quickly looking back away once it turns out that, surprisingly, she hadn’t.
“R-Ryōshū,” Sinclair stammers out, doing his very best to catch any of that breath he just spat out, so he doesn’t faint while trying to breathlessly speak, as well as put on the slightest angry tone. “You can’t just show up out of nowhere! Someone might be, y’know… busy with some stuff… important stuff.” With every incriminating word he speaks, half of his mind hopes she never catches on, and the other half hopes she just catches on now, and gets this all over and done with.
“What, J.O.C.K?” She questions, the very beginning of a smug little chuckle forming already. “You know that’s A.P.L.” For just a moment, she lets him stand where is, trying to look anywhere that people couldn’t possibly be, before she suddenly wrenches him around, piping up again just as quickly as she turned him, an almost accusatory finger upon his cheek. “...Ah, you’ve got S.O.Y-face, that’s it.”
“NoIdon’tIreallydon’tIreallyreallydon’t!” Sinclair finds himself blurting out almost as soon as Ryōshū speaks up once more, nearly bringing a hand up to swat hers away, but stopping himself before he properly can. And, before he can speak again, he drops his voice down to the quietest, guiltiest whisper he can muster on the spot. “I don’t, I just… I don’t know how to— I know I look scraggly and iffy, but I don’t…”
“…Y.I.G.I, you don’t know how to shave.”
“Don’t be so loud! B-But yeah, I don’t…”
“And you H.A.H to tell anyone about it?”
“They might tell everyone…”
The most that makes itself known between the two for a short while is a sigh; a long, drawn-out sigh that lasts enough time for Sinclair to breathe in just a few more breaths before Ryōshū mutters out a statement — not a question, not a request, not an invitation, but a statement. “...Y.O.M a good A.P for this.”
“Th-Thanks, Ryōshū…”
---
Another night, Sinclair finds himself staring deep into that mirror, searching across his face for what must be the nth time in a desperate search for any stubble to rid himself of. There’s only one major difference, this time: compared to every other night, every other moment where he’s been searching on his own, this time, there’s a carefully-aimed katana down by his chin, sharp-edge facing the mirror too as a pair of red eyes peer out from the darkness behind him — searching just as thoroughly as he is, but with the comparative focus of an entomologist pinning a new insect to their glass-windowed corkboard. For a rare moment, that constant, flaring light of a cigarette is dull, leaving her nigh-invisible behind him.
“S.C,” Ryōshū commands, and Sinclair is quick to retrieve a tin’s worth of the stuff from the table nearby — snatched away from Gregor’s collection, much to his dismay in the moment she did it. After a moment spent drenching his face in a towel's worth of water, he slathers the substance across his face — covering his cheeks, mouth, and everywhere under his chin in a layer of white, foamy shaving cream. Holding the blade close to his face still, she speaks up once again — for just a moment, drawing his unceasing focus away from his own face so that he can stare at her through the reflection.
“...Sure you don’t just want me to L.Y.E head off?”
“W-What? No, of course not!”
“It’d certainly F.A.S.C.I.A.”
“You know that’s not certain, Ryōshū! P-Plus, I don’t want to have to torment the Executive Manager over something petty like this—”
In that split-second he keeps on talking, her blade is up against his cheek, quietening him right down to nothing. Slowly, it drifts down from where his hair starts, and down to where the underside of his head begins before she moves the blade back up, going again — only this time, a little further to the right, again and again until she’s moved to the other side. “K.T.M.O.Y.C — makes for an easier cut.” Soon enough, the blade’s ups-and-downs change to lefts-and-rights, catching any of the stray hairs she didn’t catch on the first go around.
With Ryōshū’s katana slicing away any of that straggling stubble on his face, Sinclair doesn’t risk moving even an inch; the most he can bring himself to do is slowly breath in-and-out, every lungful of air only daring to enter or leave through his nose, and nowhere near his mouth — lest they find some way to get cleaved away as well. His hands stay strictly by his sides — alternating behind hanging ahead or behind him with every teensy little cleave.
“You’re D.G.S.F,” Ryōshū mentions, barely slowing in her pace when she suddenly curves the blade around to the underside of his head, starting to carve away at the hairs growing there as well. Every stroke of the blade drags along his throat — stopping his breath every single time she does it. “S.T.A.M.M.E.R a panic.” And, as she speaks, up the blade goes again, cutting away at those last vestiges of scragginess upon his face in slow, focused movements.
…
“Done,” Ryōshū barely mutters, finally drawing the katana back away from Sinclair’s face, replacing it with a hand upon his chin — stopping him from turning to face her in the thanks she knows he’ll give, and instead directing him to look at himself properly. And so, Sinclair stares, watching his own face, now that all of his recent problems have been figuratively — and, literally — carved away. For a moment, he doesn’t speak up, continuing to look at himself, but soon enough, he directs his attention to the pair of red eyes behind him, taking in a solid breath before speaking up.
“I, err… Thanks again..”
“I.K.”
“N-No, I mean it, properly — thank you for helping, Ryōshū, I really appreciate it.”
“...Y.L.N.N.”
“Wha— no I don’t, this is what I normally look like!”