"You're doing this on purpose aren't you?" Hyejin asked, narrowing her eyes at her new "mentor".

They were in Hyunwon's office after Remington had left her there following the end of his briefing and tour to the new trainees. Hyunwon was sitting comfortably in his swivel chair, surfing the internet and behaving as though Hyejin simply didn't exist. He knew she was there, of course, he just found it particularly amusing how her face was turning red as a beet with every passing second. So, he decided to continue whistling and doing his own thing.

Hyejin marched over and slammed her palms down on his desk. "Are you even listening to me? What are you trying to do? I got on this training programme fair and square so why are you trying to ruin everything by trying to take your petty revenge!"

"Petty revenge?" Hyunwon finally looked up at her, arching an eyebrow.

"Isn't that what this is about? Everyone knows that you haven't mentored a trainee in goodness knows how long, and all of a sudden you decide to make an exception? There are nine of us, but you just had to pick me. And don't tell me that Remington was the one who did the mentor assignments because I know for a fact that he wouldn't be able to say no if it was a directive that came from you."

Hyunwon stood up and folded his arms across his chest, casually observing the irate girl. "So what if it was me? What can you do about it? Song Hyejin, in this salon you're nothing but an ant that I could crush under my sole, so I suggest you get off your high horse and stop acting like you actually deserve to be here. The only reason why you're here is because of a PR mistake, but I can assure you that Ares Hwang sure as hell isn't going to pop out to rescue you all the time. Now, if you have an issue with me being your mentor for the duration of the training programme, then by all means quit and go back to washing towels and brewing tea. That would make life easier for both of us."

Hyejin glared at the obnoxious fellow, biting her lower lip so hard that she could almost taste the blood. It was taking a lot for her to not slap him on the other side of his face, but her rational side told her that if she did that then it would be game over for real. Instead, she sat down in an empty chair across from him and held her ground.

If you think that I'm going to throw in the white towel so easily then I'm sorry mister but you don't know Song Hyejin well enough. The more you want to kick me out of here the more I'm going to stick around to make your life hell. After all, what's there to lose?

"Fine, if that's the way you want to play then so be it," she said calmly. "Where shall we begin?"

Hyunwon blinked in surprise. This wasn't the sort of reaction he had been expecting from her—he had in fact been bracing himself for another tight slap, after which he would legitimately kick her out through the front door of his salon for being downright disrespectful and rude to her assigned mentor.

"Come with me," he said, heading for the door.

"Where are we going?" Hyejin asked, quickly following behind him. She was already imagining a hundred and one possibilities in her mind. Would she first learn how to cut a fringe properly? Or perhaps add highlights to someone's hair? Maybe even try her hand on one of the curling machines?

Hyunwon led her back to the training room, where he flung open two sets of cupboards to reveal stacks and stacks of magazines that were piled from the floor all the way till the ceiling.

"Don't you guys get rid of the old magazines?" Hyejin remarked curiously, fishing out an old copy of Vogue from the pile and flipping through its pages. It was an issue from five years back. "Why on earth do you keep them all here?"

"You never know when they might come in handy." Like now. "This is your first assignment. I want you to go through all these magazines and study the fashion trends that have developed over the past couple of years. Based on the key trends that have emerged, design a couple of different hairstyles to go along with it. Accessories too, if you think that'll help to bolster the look. Hairstyling is not just about the hair, it's also about what you pair together with it."

Hyejin's eyes almost fell out of their sockets. All of a sudden, the piles of magazines looked enough to drown in. There had to be close to a couple of hundreds of them stashed in those cupboards!

Turning to Hyunwon, she exclaimed, "Are you kidding me? There's got to be a thousand magazines in here! How am I supposed to get through all of them? You're just trying to make life difficult for me aren't you? I'm supposed to be training to be a hairstylist, not some librarian. Shouldn't we be starting with some basic scissor techniques at least?"

Hyunwon regarded her coldly, looking entirely unimpressed with her reaction. "If you had gone for any sort of formal qualification in styling, which you haven't, you would know that every student starts off not with a pair of scissors in hand, but a pencil. Unlike the others, you haven't even learnt how to sketch a proper design, what makes you think you're ready to do anything else? Unless you complete this assignment and your sketches are to my satisfaction, you're not stepping anywhere beyond this training room. I'm quite happy to have you camp here for the next three months just flipping through magazines and drawing, even though it would be a massive waste of trees."

Part of it was true, part of it was a lie. Sketching was an important part of any stylist's training, but it wasn't thatimportant. If she thought that he was making her life difficult on purpose, then she would have been absolutely right. Unfortunately, he was the mentor and she was the mentee, which meant that she had to do as he decreed no matter how unreasonable it sounded.

The devil inside him was rubbing its hands with glee.

Hyejin stared despondently at the stacks of magazines, feeling even more miserable than she had been when Remington first told her who her mentor would be. Through the open door, she could just about glimpse some of the other trainees standing beside their mentors, watching attentively as the senior stylists worked their way through their clients' hair. That was what she wanted to be doing, shadowing a stylist and learning the tricks of the trade, not sitting in front of a desk doing some school research project.

"When do I get to actually learn some new skills like the others?" she asked ruefully.

Shrugging his shoulders, Hyunwon replied, "That depends on how long you take to plough through all these magazines and give me at least three satisfactory sketches per fashion trend." Based on his knowledge of the fashion world, there had to have been at least six to seven different trends that had emerged over the past two to three years alone, which meant that Hyejin would need to produce close to twenty sketches before she could be allowed to move on.

"Take your time, I'm not in a hurry," Hyunwon said with a smug smile, giving her a patronising pat on the shoulder just as he turned to leave.

He shut the door slowly behind him when he left, walking calmly all the way back to his office. Once he was back in his own space, he threw his head back and burst out in fits of laughter, so delighted with himself that he collapsed onto his swivel chair and spun around like a kid who just got away with an April Fool's prank.

"So you want to be a hairstylist?" he said to nobody in particular. "Well little lady, it's not going to be that easy."

#

It was close to midnight when Hyejin dragged an entire trolley full of magazines into her father's barbershop, switching on the lights. Stifling a yawn, she slowly unloaded the magazines onto the table and sat herself down on a stool, sluggishly flipping open the cover of the first on the pile.

Being back in a familiar environment made her feel more at ease, more so than when she was in the ghastly white training room at the salon. Hyunwon thought that she had never held a pencil and done a single sketch in her entire life, but he couldn't have been more wrong. This was where she had spent almost her entire life doodling in her cheap drawing pad as she watched her grandfather and father give haircuts to whoever walked in through their front door. Even though she had never had formal training and no one had ever taught her a single thing about style drawings, she still managed to fill dozens of notebooks with her own work.

What right does he have to look down on people like that? Having some paper qualification isn't everything... I may not be as good as he is, but I don't think I'm that bad either.

She knew that Hyunwon didn't intend to teach her anything. He didn't want her in this training programme or even in his salon for that matter, so he was just going to keep doing these things to make her life difficult. That was exactly the sort of man that he was: petty, arrogant, narcissistic, self-absorbed... the list could go on.

As she thought of Hyunwon and all the nasty things he said and did, every stroke of her pencil against the paper became more forceful and angsty, as if she were drawing turtles on Hyunwon's face.

"Are people blind? How is it that an asshole like him ever became Seoul's top stylist?" she muttered angrily to herself.

When she finished with her first drawing, she let out a deep sigh. Every single inch of that sketch was riddled with angst and frustration. It was anger on a page, and there was no way anger on a page could ever be something beautiful. Ripping the sheet out of her sketch pad, she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in the direction of the rubbish bin near the door.

The crumpled paper ball missed its mark, rolling along the floor until it came to rest in front of a pair of rather expensive Doc Martens.

At the jingling of the doorbell, Hyejin looked up, tilting her head in surprise when she saw who it was. "What on earth are you doing here?" she exclaimed.

Ares sheepishly scratched the back of his head, giving her an awkward look. "I'm not sure really. I just needed a breath of fresh air and I found myself in the district. I wasn't going to come in here, but I was walking down the pavement when I saw that the light was still on. Am I disturbing you?"

"Yes," Hyejin replied honestly. She was tired as hell and wanted nothing more than to go home to her comfortable bed instead of being here poring over magazines, and him showing up was only going to keep her up for an even longer time.

"Oh," Ares's face fell, and he looked a little deflated, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I'll... I'll just go then..."

He turned to leave the shop, but before he could push the door open, Hyejin called out to him, "Wait. Come back." She silently chided herself for being soft-hearted once more, but she felt somewhat bad for him. From the moment he stepped in through the door, she could sense this dark cloud looming overhead. Even the smile he wore on his face when he greeted her looked a little forced, as though it had taken him quite a great deal of effort to make it appear.

"I'm probably going to be here for a while, so you can stay for a bit if you want," she said, gesturing toward an empty chair.

Ares looked a little happier when he heard her say that, retracing his steps and finding himself a seat. Hyejin didn't know what else to say to him really, so she continued scanning the pages of her magazines, her pencil scratching away as she tried to focus on the more important task at hand. The longer she took with this, the happier Hyunwon would be, and she didn't want to give him that luxury.

It was a little awkward though because she could sense Ares watching her as she did her work and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand.

"So, how is it that your need for 'fresh air' brought you all the way out here? These are the suburbs—people don't usually just wander this far out of town just because they feel like they want to take a walk," she remarked. Also, you're Ares Hwang. Top stars don't just loiter about the streets alone at midnight. She just needed to say something to save herself from the creepy atmosphere.

"I was just... I'm not sure actually..." Ares replied slowly. "I was at the dance studio practicing till late, then I don't know what happened but it got really difficult to breathe, like I was a-a-almost r-r-running out of air. I just felt like I was s-s-suffocating so I ran out."

Even as he was talking, his breathing started getting a little erratic and his words seemed like they kept getting stuck in his throat. Something just didn't quite seem right.

"Hey, are you alright?" Hyejin asked, getting off her stool and walking over to him. Ares had started almost hyperventilating, gulping in large mouthfuls of air as though he was running short. "What's the matter with you? Just breathe normally! Breathe slowly, in and out, in and out." She patted his back slowly, trying to get him to resume a more steady breathing pattern.

To be honest, Hyejin didn't really know what she was supposed to do in a situation like this. Her heart was racing and the only thought running through her mind was: what if he dies in here? There would be a second media frenzy and this time the headline would read "Top star Ares Hwang dies in suburban barbershop". If only she had paid more attention in first-aid class, maybe she would be in less of a panic now.

"Hwang Minhyun, don't you dare pull this sort of stunt on me!" she shouted at him. "Breathe for goodness sakes, just breathe!"

When it didn't work, she quickly ran to the washroom and filled an empty glass with some tap water. She shoved it in front of Ares's face. "Quick, drink some water. Maybe that'll help," she said.

Since his entire body was trembling non-stop and he wasn't exactly in the right physical state to hold the glass on his own, she had no choice but to force the glass to his lips and pour the water down his throat. It wasn't until he swallowed a couple of mouthfuls did his breathing finally start to ease a little. Taking in deeper breaths, Ares slumped against the chair, exhausted from the entire episode.

"What the hell was that about?" Hyejin demanded, sinking down onto the chair beside him. "Do you have some medical condition or something?" Even though she hadn't been the one who had been hyperventilating, she felt even more drained than he was. This was definitely not how she had imagined her night would end. Raising the glass to her lips, she drank the remainder of the water in one gulp.

"I'm really sorry," Ares said apologetically. "I'm not sure why that happened... It's been happening a lot more frequently recently. I used to have asthma when I was a kid but as I grew older I sort of outgrew it and the asthma attacks stopped happening. The past few months though, it seems to have returned. Sometimes I get out of breath really easily and other times I just start hyperventilating for no particular reason, even when I'm not doing anything strenuous."

"You really should get a doctor's examination. Do you think this is some kind of joke? You could have died in here and what the hell did you expect me to do with your dead body?"

Hyejin had no idea why she kept encountering these ridiculous situations these days, starting from that rainy night when Ares had walked into this shop with that white poodle on his head. To her, Hwang Minhyun was merely a hazy childhood memory, not someone who was supposed to be barging in through the front door so often.

Right now, she had the world's worst headache.

"Hyejin, I'm sorry for causing you all this trouble, I really didn't mean to," Ares lowered his head and said miserably. "I didn't mean to come here but whenever I'm feeling down or I need some space for myself I always come back to this town because over here I feel like I can be Hwang Minhyun again, and not the Ares Hwang that lives on billboards and TV screens."

Hyejin glanced irritably at him, then she walked over to her father's mini fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. Handing one to him, she said, "Here. Maybe this will help." She popped open her own bottle using the table ledge, taking a swig of her beer. The mild sweetness and bitterness of the beer felt refreshing to her tastebuds, like a much needed reprieve after a long and tiring day.

"Hwang Minhyun, how did we end up here?" she asked, laughing a little. "You, one of South Korea's top stars, and me, still the same as ever, stuck in this tiny barbershop just like the time we first met. What does it feel like to be living the dream?" At that moment, Hyunwon's words floated into her mind: There's no value in a dream unless you have the ability to make it a reality. She stared blankly at the stack of unread magazines on the table, wondering how it was that some people were able to achieve their dreams so easily.

Ares sighed. "You know there are times when I wish I never got spotted by that talent scout on my way to school and never stepped into this industry? You're lucky to be you, because no one expects you to be anything more than just Song Hyejin. Having the weight of everyone else's expectations on your shoulders... It could crush you completely and leave absolutely nothing behind."

"Ares, you have everything that a person could ask for. There are thousands out there who would kill to be in your shoes, but for most of them they'll probably continue spending the rest of their lives in obscurity. You shouldn't be telling people like me, the ones who haven't got anything, about how difficult it is to be someone like you. That's just fucking cruel."

"That's only because most people don't really understand what it means to have everything, and what it means to have nothing," Ares replied. He stood up and placed his empty beer bottle on the table—Hyejin didn't even notice when he finished the entire thing, but apparently he had. "Thanks for everything, Hyejin. I mean, for the asthma attack earlier and the beer, and just talking to me really. I know I kind of messed up your life with the whole haircut saga, but I just want to let you know that I'm glad we met again. It's nice to have a friend to talk to once in a while." When he pushed open the door, a gust of cold wind came rushing in. "Goodnight Hyejin, don't stay up too late."

And then he vanished into the night, just as suddenly as he had appeared. Hyejin wondered if it was going to become a common occurrence, him popping in and out of the barbershop at random hours of the night.

It's nice to have a friend to talk to? So what does that mean? We're friends?

Friends with Ares Hwang. Wow.

#