Mondo, Part 4

Mondo had never felt as much pain as he did when a certain pop star's metal brush tore through every knot in his hair. A bit melodramatic, yes, but something about the tugging at his scalp was excruciating.

Over the years of styling it the way he did, his hair had become heavily damaged by dyes, sprays, and gels. It wasn't an easy style to maintain, and he was now paying a hefty price. It had been decided that a portion of it was so damaged it would have to be cut off entirely.

"Shit, could you be any rougher?!" He whined.

Hagakure had him pinned to a chair. He had his arms wrapped around Mondo's and clasped in front of his chest to keep him from thrashing about. Leon and Naegi each sat on one of his feet to keep him from kicking. Behind the group, a small girl observed them with her phone held out in front of her, taking the occasional progress picture.

"It's all going to be worth it in the end, I promise! Maizono-san is going to show you how to do a few different styles, too, once she's done fixing the hair itself," the tiny girl said.

The idol in question smiled at that, pausing her torturous movements for a moment to take a step back and admire her handiwork. The pompadour had been raked out, and she was now in the process of correcting and relaxing Mondo's curls and removing the many thick knots.

"You're just lucky the damage is still fixable, Oowada-kun. You should really take better care of your hair! It's gotten terribly dry, and you have split ends everywhere!"

It was difficult to hear something like that from Saiyaka Maizono. Her hair was soft and shiny, and her skin was like porcelain— even someone like Mondo could see that she took good care of herself.

"I'm surprised Taka has never scolded you about it," the smaller girl added. Mondo snorted. Kiyotaka was rather uptight about hygiene. His hair may have looked spiky, but it was incredibly soft to the touch and impeccably clean.

"That's just cuz I never let 'im touch it. He'd just about die if he knew. Say, Chi, do ya... Do you think that he likes me? I mean, ya know—"

"I know what you mean," the girl interrupted. Chihiro Fujisaki was often the third person in a trio that included both Mondo and Kiyotaka. She knew the prefect better than anyone else in the room (with the exception of Mondo, of course). "And yes, I do believe that he does."

"Really?"

"Really. Now sit still! Maizono-san still isn't finished."

Maizono slathered some kind of lotion onto her hands and then stuck them in Mondo's hair, which at the moment was sticking out in every possible direction. She applied the mixture everywhere, and then started spraying his hair with a water bottle.

"Hey, if we're talkin' fashion, why didn't we ask Enoshima?" Leon asked obliviously. Everyone else in the room only shuddered at the thought.

"Because I wanna get a date with Taka, not with fuckin' death," Mondo grumbled vaguely. Leon sighed, realizing he wasn't going to get a straight answer out of anyone.

Maizono tore through the last of the knots in Mondo's hair, which had been softened by the combination of the product and the water. He now had a damp multicolored mop of curls atop his head that fell past his eyes in front and well down his back (Mondo thanked the stars that Chihiro had thought to remove his jacket first, or it would be covered in stray hairs and water by now). Maizono wet the hair thoroughly and then pulled down on the ends. She stuck her tongue out a bit as she closely studied the damage.

"I think I can work with this. I'm going to start to cut it, okay? You'll look better when I'm finished, I promise. You have nice wavy hair, you know."

Mondo only grunted in response, and then he felt the first snip of the scissors right above the bridge of his nose. Maizono got to work quickly, as she seemed to have something in mind already. Behind her, Chihiro plugged in a razor and a hair dryer.

"I better not end up lookin' like some dork. I wanna get cleaned up a bit, but don't gimme a bowl cut or anything."

Maizono laughed.

"No, of course not. You'll still be able to pull off the biker look, it'll just be a little more grown up. You've got a really handsome face, but your look is always distracting from that."

"Uh... Thanks. I guess."

"Ooooh! Didja hear that, Oowada? Maizono thinks you're pretty!"

"Fuck off, Leon." Mondo kicked his foot slightly, just enough to jostle the redhead seated on it.

"Sit still," Chihiro warned. As shy as she was around most people, she could be very stern when she wanted to be. Mondo probably needed that. Between her and Kiyotaka, he really had started to clean up his act. It was almost pitiful how little fear they held of him, how casually they would push his buttons and boss him around. Even more pitiful was how little he did about it.

There were several minutes of silence, the room filled only with the sounds of Maizono's scissors working through Mondo's hair.

"So how long have you liked boys?" She asked suddenly.

Mondo nearly choked on his own breath at that. He felt Hagakure chuckling against his back and shoved him with his shoulder.

"I— I dunno if I like boys or not, I just... I jus' like Taka. That's all."

Maizono hummed in understanding, her face a bit pink.

"Well, answer me this. Of all those girls you asked out to get to your current losing streak... Did you really like any of them? Can you even remember what they looked like?"

Mondo fell silent once more, his gaze fixed firmly on the razor behind his hairdresser.

Wait, does everyone know about my goddamn losing streak?!

"U-Um..." Once he had recovered from his embarrassment, he realized that he couldn't even name a single one of the girls.

"See, that's what I thought. You just wanted a girlfriend because you're 'supposed' to have one; the girl didn't really matter."

Mondo was stunned. Maizono had somehow figured out something that even he hadn't been aware of.

It was true. Daiya had always had a beautiful woman by his side, one that rode on the back of his motorcycle with him. Mondo had often been teased about the fact that he had no such biker's bride. After that, he'd gotten desperate to find one, but had managed to scare them all away with his habit of nervous yelling.

He'd never stopped to consider that maybe he had never liked girls in the first place.

"How— how did you do that?!"

"I'm psychic."

"What?!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! I just have really good intuition."

Everyone else chuckled at what was apparently some kind of inside joke. Naegi explained that Maizono had tricked him the same way on many different occasions, and Mondo groaned.

I can't believe I fell for that.

"...An' this intuition of yours says that Taka's gay? Hagakure said so."

"It most certainly does! And trust me, I'm never wrong about these things."

"I can't believe you haven't picked up on it," Chihiro teased. She was now all but affixed to Maizono's side, watching as Mondo's hair was removed in chunks.

"W-well, I kinda thought that maybe he was once or twice, but I... I figured that was wishful thinkin', y'know. Like I was just tryin' to make myself feel better."

The other boys hummed knowingly, and Leon patted his knee reassuringly. Chihiro made a sympathetic sort of aww sound.

Before long (actually, she was almost impossibly fast), Maizono had finished cutting off Mondo's damaged hair and shaping it into something resembling a hairstyle. She took a razor to the back and the sides (only a trim), and then dried the remaining mop of blondish-brown hair, fluffing it with her hands as she did so. What he was left with was something like a fluffy mohawk. The boys seated on his feet and wrapped around his chest stepped back to admire Maizono's handiwork.

"Okay, I'll explain what we have here. With this style you still have plenty of volume on top, and it's still kind of edgy. If you want to, you can leave the bangs in your face, but you can also... do this." With her last word, Maizono ran a gel-covered hand through his messy bangs and slicked them back. She then messed with them a bit, leaving a few intentionally errant strands hanging down across his forehead. Mondo heard a collective bunch of oohs and ahs.

"Well, would you look at that! Sexy!"

"I'll fuckin' kill you, Leon."

"It is really nice, though," Naegi said. Chihiro nodded her head in furious agreement.

"You should do Hagakure's next," Leon muttered.

"Hey, what's wrong with my hair?!" Hagakure stuck both of his hands in his mess of dreads as if protecting them from Leon's gaze.

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Maizono chimed, and she took a small wipe and ran it across Mondo's eyes. The liner came up easily, and he blinked at her. For some reason, she looked confused.

"What?"

"You're... You're not wearing mascara?"

"Why would I be wearing mascara?!"

The other boys let out varying sounds of shock.

"Dude, you have some freakishly long eyelashes!" Hagakure finally exclaimed.

"Sh... Shut up! It runs in the family!"

Or at least, Daiya's had been similar. It's not like he had ever really known his parents, or anyone else in his family.

Mondo shook the thought from his head, and turned to find that Maizono and Chihiro were now rummaging through his dresser drawers and tossing clothes aside as they ruled them out. Chihiro found a pair of straight-legged dark wash jeans, and Maizono settled on a fitted grey t-shirt with a sloping v-neck and a normal, not-gang-related leather jacket.

"He can still wear the boots, right?" Chihiro wondered aloud.

"Yeah, they'll match with the jacket. The belt is fine, too. It's a nice personal touch."

Mondo folded his arms and glared at them.

When did I turn into a fuckin' Barbie doll?

Despite his protests, Mondo was forced into the bathroom, where he changed his clothes. As he changed, Maizono rattled off information about his new hairstyle at him through the the door, telling him how to dry it in the mornings and how to tie it back. When he finished changing and looked over his reflection in the wall-length mirror, he had to admit that he was impressed. He felt confident, but more importantly, he looked mildly presentable, like someone who deserved Kiyotaka's affections.

He turned to see Maizono and Chihiro beaming up at him proudly, and he sighed, wrapping the two of them in a hug with his muscular arms.

"Thanks, guys," he whispered. The girls giggled, the sound muffled by his broad chest.

Just then he thought he heard another voice, and looked to the door to find that Naegi had opened it and was in the doorway talking to Kirigiri. She had appeared as silently and suddenly as ever, it seemed, and the two exchanged quick whispers. When she noticed Mondo staring, Kirigiri stood tall and locked eyes with him. Naegi immediately panicked and pushed her out, slamming the door in her face.

"What was that about?" Mondo asked, directing the question at Naegi.

"Uh, it was nothing! Say, um, did you have a plan for where to meet Ishimaru-kun to discuss the note?"

Mondo had half a mind to push the subject of the purple-clad detective further, but found himself distracted by Naegi's question. He actually hadn't thought of that.

"I was... I was just gonna stop by his dorm, I guess."

The crowd voiced its disagreement, and then Naegi took Mondo by the arm, winking at Chihiro. Before Mondo could say anything to her, Chihiro fled the room.

Now that he took a moment to think about it, he hadn't actually seen Chihiro come in. She hadn't arrived with Maizono. She had appeared suddenly a little while after Maizono had started trying to untangle his hair. And now she had disappeared as silently as she had appeared, reminiscent of Kirigiri. And before he could voice this concern, Maizono, too, ducked out, leaving him alone with the boys once again.

"...What the fuck is going on with—"

"Oh, I have a great idea! Come with us, Oowada-kun!" Naegi tugged at Mondo's arm, and the biker relented, allowing the trio to tug him along to a destination that everyone but him apparently knew.