The next morning, as the clock was ticking towards nine, a flustered girl with messy bed hair and mismatched socks came dashing into the Cutting Edge's training room, immediately looking up at the clock. When she saw that she was just on time, she heaved a huge sigh of relief and collapsed down onto the nearest empty chair.

"Song Hyejin! Where have you been?" a familiar voice called out from across the room. "I've been so worried about you. You weren't picking up your phone or replying my texts! I almost thought you weren't going to show up today."

Hyejin looked up and saw her friend walking towards her, and a broad grin immediately appeared on her face. Waving cheerily, she replied, "Sorry, Yeseul, didn't mean to vanish on you. It's just that signal was terrible at the village so I couldn't respond."

"Village?"

Nodding, Hyejin replied, "We went to a small fishing village to give free haircuts for charity. The people living there are mostly elderly and some of them are bedridden so they can't even leave the house—"

"We?" Yeseul's sharp ears immediately picked up on the key word. After the thought sank into her mind, she grabbed hold of Hyejin's hand and whispered, "Was it Hyunwon that went with you? He wasn't around for the past two days either and we all thought he was just throwing one of his artistic tantrums and staying home as usual. Was he with you all this while?"

"Uhh well yes..." Sensing that this could quickly be misconstrued, Hyejin immediately added, "But it was purely a work trip! In fact, it was training from hell. Do you know how terrified I was of making a single wrong snip of my scissors while he was observing me? I don't think I've ever been this scared since oral exams in school."

Yeseul looked like she was in plain awe of what she had just been told. When she finally came back to her senses, she said in all seriousness, "Do you know how many of us would kill to have the chance to be trained by Hyunwon? You lucky girl! That's like a dream come true! You'll ace the interim assessment today, that's for sure."

Hyejin laughed, but before she could reply, a snide voice interrupted their conversation.

"Oh look who's decided to show up? I thought you'd finally come to your senses and decided to quit! What ever possessed you to return?" Hannah was standing by the door, arms folded across her chest, looking none too pleased to see Hyejin in the room. As she walked past the two girls and took her seat, she made sure to toss them a condescending glance as she went by.

Looks like someone's still sour about what happened the other day, Hyejin thought to herself as she recalled how Hyunwon had abruptly shut Hannah down and put her back in her place. At the thought of how hurt Hannah had looked back then, she couldn't help but stifle a giggle. When she looked up, she locked gazes with Hannah, who seemed slightly put off at the fact that Hyejin seemed to be smiling at her comments instead of looking vaguely offended—that just made Hyejin grin even more.

"Alright, are we all here?" Remington swept into the room, once again with perfectly coiffed hair and impeccable grooming. He surveyed the group that had gathered and did a mental headcount. "Looks like we're ready to begin! Today you will be going through your first interim assessment of this training programme—all these assessments are to be taken extremely seriously because your culminated performance across all the assessments will be used to decide if you get to stay with us." Noting the nervous looks and shifting of feet in the room, he smiled. "Nothing to be worried about, just do your best and let your skills do the talking. Without further ado, let me get you started in your assessment task for today."

Walking up to them, he handed each of them the exact same photocopy from a magazine. The sheet contained a photo of a female model from one of last season's Chanel shoots, wearing a simple asymmetric bob to match the overall simplicity of the collection.

"You have thirty minutes to replicate the hairstyle in the photo on your models, and your time starts now."

All at once, the trainees leapt to their feet and rushed towards one of the mannequin heads so that they could start work. Thirty minutes sounded like a lot of time for a bob hairdo, but at the same time it seemed like hardly any time at all. By the time all of them had their tools ready, five minutes had already ticked by.

Hyejin took a deep breath and stared at the photograph that she had pinned up in front of her. It didn't seem all that hard, but still she knew that her experience was severely lacking compared to all the other trainees. All that she knew, she had pretty much learnt over the past two days. Glancing from side to side, she saw that many of the others had already begun work, their scissors rapidly flying in all directions. Some of the other senior stylists had also entered the room and were standing near the back, observing how their own trainees were performing.

She hadn't seen any sign of Hyunwon this morning—presumably there was no need for him to be around for something as inconsequential as a trainee assessment. Looking down at the old pair of scissors in her hand, she thought back to the words that he had said to her over the past few days.

You can do this, Song Hyejin!

Raising her scissors up to the mannequin's head, she made her first snip, watching as the lock of hair went floating slowly down to the ground.

The challenge of the task was not so much the hairstyle in itself, but in the fact that you could only see the front profile of the model but not the back. That meant that the trainees would have to improvise what they imagined the back to look like. It soon became obvious that people were trying to show off here and there, trying fanciful techniques and twirling their scissors more for the sake of showmanship than for anything truly relevant to the hairstyle they were creating. Out of the corners of her eyes, Hyejin could just about spy the other trainees smirking when they checked out her progress—Hannah even let out an audible scoff.

She paused for a long while, staring at the long locks of hair trailing down the mannequin's neck. She raised her scissors up to make the cut, and then changed her mind, letting her hand slide back down to her side.

"Trust your instincts," Hyunwon's voice suddenly echoed in her mind.

Closing her eyes, she did as she was told, listening closely to her heart to let it show her the way. Then, she continued where she had left off.

"Time's up!" Remington's voice rang out across the room, exactly thirty minutes since he started them off. "Step away from your models now. The senior stylists and I will begin the judging process."

Yeseul sat down beside Hyejin, the two girls holding hands nervously as they watched the panel of senior stylists step forwards. Anxiety hung thick in the air as the trainees waited with bated breath for their performance to be assessed.

"You did really well, Hyejin," Yeseul whispered in her ear.

Shaking her head, Hyejin replied modestly, "Nah, I should be thanking my lucky stars it looks anything close to the real thing. You did a great job, Yeseul!" And she meant what she said, because as far as she could tell, Yeseul's model looked just like what was in the magazine.

In fact, most of the trainees had done a stellar job. As she watched the senior stylists go round each of the mannequins with their black clipboards, scratching comments furiously on their sheets of paper, the butterflies in her stomach started wreaking havoc once more. She had been fairly confident of her final product, but looking at everyone else's, she suddenly wasn't so sure.

When they were all done, they huddled together for a while, handing their score sheets over to Remington so that he could sum everything up. Just as he was doing a final check of his mental sums, the door to the training room swung open and in strolled none other than the creative director himself, wearing an unnecessary pair of Armani shades and an all-black outfit that made him look even more forbidding than he already was. The moment he stepped in, all the trainees instinctively stared down at their shoes, save for Hyejin who was trying to catch his attention to say hi and ask him what he thought of her work, but was being well ignored.

"Are we done here?" he walked up to Remington and asked.

Remington nodded his head, showing Hyunwon his tabulated score sheet. "Here are the consolidated scores. We'll get the feedback summarised as well, but that'll take some time."

Hyunwon took a quick scan of the sheet, before casually handing the clipboard back to Remington. "Announce the results."

"You don't want to take a look at all the pieces of work first?"

"There's no need. I took a brief glance when I walked in—we'll go with what all of you have decided upon."

"If you say so." Remington sounded slightly unconvinced by Hyunwon's words, but he went along with it anyway. Turning back towards the anxious trainees, he cleared his throat and said, "We have tabulated our assessments of your performance, and the following is the rank order for this first interim assessment..."

Beginning from the top position that went to a guy named Taewook, who already had several amateur hairstyling trophies under his belt, Remington slowly made his way down the list. Hannah came in third, which was not what she had been aiming for but good enough for now. With every name that was being called out, the remaining trainees became even more nervous, all praying silently that they would be called next. Yeseul's name finally came up in seventh place, leaving only two more names remaining.

Disappointment was already written all over Hyejin's face, even before her result was announced. Whether she came in eighth or ninth really didn't matter, because in the larger scheme of things, she had already failed.

"In eighth place we have Hyunmin, and last but not least, Hyejin. Alright, that marks the end of the first assessment—for those of you who have done well, good for you, for those who didn't do so well, don't be too disheartened, there's still a long way to go. We'll let you know when the next assessment is at a later date, in the meantime continue learning whatever you can from your mentors."

Yeseul patted Hyejin comfortingly on the shoulder, saying, "Don't worry, you'll do better next time. I didn't do great either." Seeing that her friend was still looking crestfallen, Yeseul stood up and left the room along with the other trainees, deciding to give Hyejin some time alone.

Hyejin remained seated in her chair, as if she were glued to the spot. She stared down at the floor, trying to keep the negative thoughts at bay but failing hopelessly. Within minutes, tears had already begun to well up in her eyes.

"This isn't pre-school. Crying isn't going to solve anything."

Startled by the sudden interjection, Hyejin snapped her head upwards, horrified to find that Hyunwon was still standing there. He had removed his sunglasses now, but she wished he would put them back on because that look of utter disappointment in his eyes only made her feel even worse.

"Do you know why you placed last?" he continued, walking over to her mannequin.

Hyejin shook her head. She knew that her skills were perhaps not yet on par with the other trainees, but looking at her own final product, she reckoned she had done a semi-decent job. She hadn't expected to do spectacularly well, but she hadn't expected to be last either.

"How many times did you hesitate and think things through during that half hour?"

She tried counting. "Maybe four or five times?"

"Four or five? It figures. Over here," he pointed at the bottom left corner of the mannequin's fringe, "is what hesitation looks like. Have you forgotten everything I said over the past two days? If there was just one thing you needed to remember, that was to trust your gut. Trust the heart, not the head. Apparently even that was too difficult for you to keep in mind."

Hyejin stood up and walked over, squinting at where he was pointing at. Sure enough, at closer look, there was a slight misalignment between the top layer of hair and the one below—that had happened when she paused abruptly around the twenty minute mark to think about how she should do the layering of the bob. From afar, you wouldn't have been able to spot the subtle misalignment, but Hyunwon had picked it out in one glance.

All of a sudden, all her tiny errors were beginning to pop up before her eyes. Lowering her head in shame, she said, "I'm sorry, it was all my fault."

Hyunwon stood there with his arms folded, regarding her with his typical cold gaze. It was making him slightly uncomfortable that she seemed on the brink of tears—it didn't gel with the image of the girl who had dared challenge him, and come up tops.

"If you have time to wallow in self-pity and regret then perhaps that time is better used trying to improve yourself before the next assessment," he said, shoving a tissue in front of her face rather abruptly. He glanced downwards at the old pair of scissors sitting beside her mannequin, noting with a frown that it was slightly rusted. "Tomorrow there's a photoshoot for W magazine and we're doing the styling. Take the rest of the day off and report at the W magazine headquarters at ten tomorrow morning. Oh, and change those socks."

Hyejin nodded her head miserably, blowing her nose loudly into the tissue at the same time, much to Hyunwon's alarm. He shuffled a couple of steps backwards (germs could be contagious), before spinning round and marching quickly out of the room.

He's right, she thought to herself as she stared at her own handiwork with all its flaws. No one's going to feel sorry for me, so what's the use of wasting time feeling sorry for myself?

With some of her confidence and determination returning slowly, she pumped both fists in the air and shouted, "Song Hyejin, fighting! You can do this!"

#

Outside the room, Hyunwon was cringing. He was still standing beside the training room door and Hyejin's personal pep rally could be heard loud and clear even with the door shut.

"Why are you still here?" Remington came over and asked. And then he, too, heard the commotion going on inside the room. Chuckling, he said, "Looks like your disciple is getting some of that fighting spirit back. I was a little concerned when I saw the look on her face after the assessment results were announced. Was beginning to think that the spitfire who dared smack the great Kang Hyunwon was just an illusion! Did you comfort her a little?"

Scowling, Hyunwon replied, "Do I look like the sort who does 'comforting'? If you want to comfort her then you go ahead."

"To be fair, she didn't do a bad job. The scores were all really close. In fact, I thought the way she handled the back was a lot better than some of the others. It's a pity she made some slips of the hand here and there. The girl has talent—I'm impressed at what you managed to teach her over two days."

"Of course, who am I?" Hyunwon responded snootily. Ignoring Hyejin's racket, he turned and headed back towards his office.

Remington followed beside him, still chatting away cheerily. "By the way, Ares came by yesterday looking for Hyejin. He looked a little disappointed when I told him she was away. Do you think there's really something going on between the two of them? I mean, I would loathe to believe it given that one of them is a top star and the other came from some small town backwater, but it's a little suspicious don't you think?"

"Stop spreading rumours."

"There ain't smoke without fire!" Remington retorted. "Think about it—why would someone like Ares go to an unknown barbershop in goodness knows where to get his hair cut? That head of his is worth millions! Also, since when did he ever need such regular hair treatments? The frequency of his visits has increased two-fold ever since Hyejin joined us."

He waited for a response from his friend, but none came. Instead, Hyunwon simply sat himself down in his chair and flipped his laptop open, treating Remington as if he were thin air.

"Fine, ignore me," Remington sulked, "and pretend like nothing's going on. But if you ever find out anything—I mean, she's your mentee after all—make sure I'm the first to know. A couple of us have got a pot started and I bet my money on the two of them having a scandal fairly soon. Can you imagine the look on Medusa's face when that happens? She was already hopping mad after Ares and Hyejin's haircut debacle and she went through such pains to get the dust to settle. I don't even want to think about the carnage that will take place if Ares and Hyejin make the headlines again."

"Remy, do you get paid to stand around and gossip?" Hyunwon looked up from his laptop screen, arching an eyebrow questioningly.

Raising his hands up in surrender, Remington backed away towards the door. Just before he stepped out, he added, "Remember, if you have any inside info, let me know." Giving his friend a parting wink, he quickly slipped out through the door before Hyunwon had a chance to throw something at him.

As he turned back towards his laptop, he caught sight of the pile of magazines sitting at the corner of his desk. The salon ordered the latest copies of every fashion and style magazine in town and the receptionist would place the entire stack in his office at the start of every week without fail. He reached over for the magazines, only to find Ares's semi-smiling face staring back up at him from the front cover of Vogue Korea. Remembering what Remington had just said, an unimpressed look appeared on Hyunwon's face as he glanced down at the magazine cover.

That magazine went straight into the trash.

#