Michiko inhaled deeply, letting the spring wind pour into her lungs like a current feeds to a river's gentle flow. Around her stood tall oak trees, their leaves turned a bright pastel pink to signify the season's transition; spring, at last, had arrived. And Michiko sat cross-legged on the edge of the wood-plank porch, isolated from her family—still sleeping inside the house—and surrounded by nature in full bloom. The pink petals cascaded from the trees and down to the river, shedding hastily and creating a stir of pastel confetti in the air. It whooshed past Michiko, blowing her thick black hair in her face. She brushed the strands from her eyes, tucking her overgrown bangs behind her ear, and fixated her gaze on the little wooden box she'd brought out with her. Today, on this early spring morning, it was finally her time.
Within the box, she knew, was an old family keepsake. A sacred tradition of mind, body, and soul. As she removed the wood-carved lid, the morning sun glinted off of its sharp, steel blade. One of her slender hands reached out to take it by the wooden handle and examine it closer. The head of a dragon whittled onto its dark oak hilt, its scaly body spiraling up into an impossibly sharp, pristine metal blade crafted generations ago to be used for none other than this instrument—this folding razor—of her family's lineage. Such precise craftsmanship, aged like a fine wine.
And today was Michiko's eighteenth birthday. Today was at last her turn to continue the family's tradition. Michiko tied a long ponytail from her waist-length hair and would delay no further. She dipped the razor into the river in front of her and stared into the blade's dripping reflection, inhaling a deep breath of courage and determination, letting the air fill her lungs entirely.
For a moment, she just held her breath and kept her eyes shut. She let the spring breeze pass her by once again. Whoosh... And when the right moment struck, she exhaled, releasing all of her doubts, and began chopping away at her waist-length ponytail, grasping it tightly with one hand and slicing with the other. Left to right she persisted, like a see-saw against the trunk of a spring-blossom tree. She was by no means a professional hairdresser (yet), but the style she was after called for no high understanding of the craft. As her grandfather always told her, one only needed patience, willpower, and a capable instrument to hack away at the hair on their head, reducing further and further until it was shorn to mere stubble— the style adorned by her family's boys and girls alike as a final stepping stone toward their man- or womanhood.
And those three core factors burned brightly within her chest. Very soon, Michiko's silky ponytail was severed from the rest of her head entirely—shhhhhhik. Her remaining locks bounced onto her cheeks, reaching down only to her neck's nape. She brought the long ponytail around the front and let it drop onto her lap, onto the soft fabric of her springtime kimono. In the river's clear reflection, she saw her hair cut somewhat sloppily into a haphazard bob.
Never before, Michiko reflected, have I worn it so short. She stroked the soft remnants of her ponytail slowly before letting it drift gently into the water. Piece by piece she let it go, just as a cherry blossom's petals fall from the branch and into the river as one part of a whole. Michiko ran both hands through her newly-cropped hair, surprised by how fast it was for them to reach their jaggedly-cut ends. She tucked a portion behind her ear and admired her reflection. It felt healthy; revitalizing, even. To be freed of those nasty split ends at long last.
Maybe I'll let my hair grow back into something like this once I'm done. She smiled, savoring the feeling for as long as possible, keeping her eyes shut and running her hands through her luscious, shortened locks, stroking down to the back of her neck and feeling its gentle curve before letting her hands fall back into her lap and gently clasp together.
And now, Michiko knew, comes the most daunting step. For this, she rolled up her sleeves and bent over the river's reflection as she began to soak her hair in its watery embrace. She went in for a few scoops from the river, creating ripples in its shimmering surface until her shortened, lush locks were left thoroughly drenched, her scalp underneath tingling from the water's ice-cool embrace combined with the brisk breeze bouncing off the surface and onto Michiko's wet, soft-featured face.
Michiko dabbed at the sopping ends of her bob with a towel, carefully putting their drips out while maintaining her hair's overall wetness. To continue cropping any shorter while the hair remained dry on a head of such thick, abundant, flowing locks was truly an exercise of futility. And with that, she squeezed the bob's ends one last time before picking up the razor by its wooden hilt and going in for the next step.
Scrrrrrrrape—Michiko felt the chill of cold metal against her soaking scalp as she paved a path directly down the middle, exposing an open strip of smooth, milky skin that lay underneath her nest of jet-black hair and reached all the way back to the curve of her neck. Immediately, she was impressed by the fineness of the razor and the ease at which her hair was shorn, falling into the river in bundled clumps. She gazed upon her reflection and admired the boldness of her reverse-mohawk—it looked like there'd be no need for a second shave at all, given how it appeared to leave nothing behind. No sharp bristles, no stubble; just smooth, pale, naked skin.
She continued scraping the razor along either side of her head, carving smooth, precise paths starting from the hairline in front and extending all the way to the one in back with a single fell swoop each and every time. The spring breeze blew in her direction, brisk against the exposed parts of her scalp, sending chills down her spine as she continued scraping away. And with every buttery-smooth stroke, more of her hair's inky-black strands were severed effortlessly from the root, cascading into the river as they fell, never to find their way back onto Michiko's scalp again.
She scraped, and scraped, and scraped, and scraped, and scraped, and scraped some more, shaving from left to right, forward to back, up and down, and side to side before at last arriving on the final patch of her dampened hair, just below her right ear. Michiko angled her head upward to get a better reflection from the river, and scraped away the very last of her prized locks, watching as it fell from her freshly-shaved head and sailed away on the river's surface.
Free... Michiko thought as the spring breeze blew coolly against her fully exposed scalp, Free at last. She set the razor down and put a hand to the crown of her scalp and slowly scaled it backward, closing her eyes and feeling the smooth ecstasy of her new freedom in its entirety. Her left hand soon followed suit, meeting the right at the back of her neck, where they briefly met before going back around her head for a few more cycles as Michiko rolled her neck in either direction, letting her slim, elegant hands get the full experience of her new baldness, before eventually unfolding back into Michiko's lap once they'd had their fill.
Michiko then covered her exposed scalp in another layer of the river's water, letting it seep in between her roots—feeling the stray droplets trickle down her spine and around her breasts' sensitive nipples—as a primer before applying a final layer of wax contained within the razor's wooden box so that her head glistened in the morning sunlight.
Michiko rubbed it in, whisking her hands this way and that as she buttered it on, carefully massaging the cream deep into her scalp with her soft fingertips, and afterward felt her head tighten as the wax seeped into every last root on her skin-wrapped skull. She looked out at the sun's orange glow on the horizon, framed by the warm-toned morning sky, the crystal-clear river, and the pink cherry-blossom trees gently swaying in the spring breeze, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief at her family's sacred tradition being passed down to her generation at last. In the river, she looked to her bald-headed reflection as the first step toward a grown woman's maturity at last. To purge herself of the hair she'd lived with for so many years entirely was to rid herself of the childhood she'd now lived fully. To grow her hair back into a beautiful, flowing mane would signify her blossoming into adulthood, and would be her final rite of passage.
But, unfortunately, it seems a grave error had been made. As Michiko felt her scalp continue tightening—beyond what she thought was necessary, and to the point of pain, she looked to the characters inscribed onto the wax's green-glass bottle, expecting to see "急成長" ("fast-growing"), but instead seeing "永久" ("permanent"). Michiko's heart sank as she realized what irreversible act she'd just committed.
"Permanent..." escaped the panic-dripped words from her lips, barely a soft whisper. But no. Certainly not. This had to be some mistake on the labeler's part, not hers. But as she frantically scaled along the top of her bare head once again, her fingertips noticed the roots dotted across her naked scalp were closing up one by one, replacing her hair's roots with smooth skin and, therefore, blocking any future growth entirely.
Michiko sat in shock, her eyes downcast at the bare-headed woman in the river. She refused to believe it. But soon enough, the proof was in the pudding. Her trembling hands reached back up to discover her head was left with no roots at all—only smooth, slick skin, gleaming in the sun's morning light. Her hand shakily plopped back into her lap as her entire body trembled and she came to grips with all the harsh realities she now faced.
No hair would ever again find its way back onto Michiko's forever-bald head, and she would never fully cross the path to maturity. Michiko, the beauty of her village, left tarnished. The apple of every boy's eye, left rotten. She was supposed to have her hair back to a healthy length by the end of the month, but she'd instead always have to look at her shameful reflection in the mirror and blame her terrible bare scalp on no one but herself.
Michiko, the aspiring hairstylist. She'd never again fashion her gorgeous, flowing locks into an intricate crown, layered with complex braids and colorful flowers picked specifically to complement her equally intricate makeup. She'd never again undo a tight bun and feel her luscious locks cascade over her shoulders after a long day's work. She'd never again woo any of her future partners with such an apparent lack of flashiness as the humiliating, irreversibly bald head she now bore.
And she'd have to deal with the scathing looks from her village and future clients alike—for who would put their trust in a hairless hairstylist? Seeing a bald woman was already such a shock to their systems—most women in Michiko's village, in fact, would rather spend all their days locked away inside than be seen in public with their scalps swept so squeaky-clean—but a bald woman styling the hair of others when she couldn't even be trusted to keep her own roots intact? No, ma'am. Her dreams, it seemed, had been dashed.
She rubbed her smooth head once again in sorrow, eviscerated of its hair follicles, for what else could she do now but grow accustomed to it? To think, if she'd have just taken the jar of wax directly above the one she'd used. If she'd have just read the label a bit more carefully. If she'd not been caught up in the rush of feeling something so fresh and new, she wouldn't have condemned herself to such a horrible fate. But alas, it had already been done. The heart of Michiko's beauty had been stripped away from her bare hands. To be born so achingly beautiful, yet end up with a trait so irreversibly ugly by the end of the day. She wept, inconsolable as she laid sideways on the wooden porch, hiding her waxed scalp from the light. Her careless mistake of misreading a label had resulted in a label being plastered onto her own hairless, shiny dome that she was sure, like her baldness, would follow her to the grave.
Michiko Tanaka: the beauty gone bald.