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Published:
2023-04-29
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1,957
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1/1
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Grown out of Bounds

Anonymous

Summary:

When Yoohyun leaves the house at seventeen, her hair is short, just barely starting to fall past her brows and perhaps soon in need of a trim.

When Yoohyun dies at twenty-five, her hair is long, flowing almost to her waist.

Notes:

Justine said I think fem hyh would have had short hair as a child but never let anyone but hyj cut it after she awakened and I said bet, entered a fugue state, and now a few hours later we are here.
Justine does not appreciate how immediately angsty my thoughts were. Oh well.

English is not my first language and I apologise in advance for any errors. Please enjoy anyway.

Now with wonderful art by the even more wonderful Nenu!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

When Yoohyun leaves the house at seventeen, her hair is short, just barely starting to fall past her brows and perhaps soon in need of a trim.

When Yoohyun dies at twenty-five, her hair is long, flowing almost to her waist, if it weren’t braided tightly out of the way with only a few strands escaping here and there.

As Yoojin is holding the already cold body (she spent too long fighting the dragon, the last of Yoohyun's warmth is gone) she instinctively tries to swipe some hair out of her little sister’s face. It is stiff with dried blood and refuses to move. Yoojin doesn’t know if it had ever been soft.

She very badly wishes she could braid her sister’s hair just once.

(When they were young, Yoojin always cut Yoohyun’s hair. It had started even before their parents died; Yoohyun had just barely started kindergarten. Yoojin wasn’t entirely sure what happened, but apparently there was some sort of incident that ended with Yoohyun having truly impressive amounts of gum stuck in her then almost shoulder length hair.

Yoojin asked their father what to do about it and he’d told her they would probably have to cut it off and then didn’t take Yoohyun to the hair dresser Yoojin herself had gone to a few times. Yoojin understood, their parents were very busy people.

So she’d sat Yoohyun down in the bathroom, perched on the edge of the bathtub, and made a very honest attempt at a haircut with the help of some nail scissors. As a result, Yoohyun’s hair looked uncannily like an unkempt hedgehog for quite some time, but at least it was free of gum.

And then when Yoohyun’s hair once more started to grow she tugged on Yoojin’s hand and asked if unni could cut it again because she didn’t like how it felt on her face. So Yoojin kept cutting her younger sister’s hair, and then her own, and even became somewhat decent at it, sometime between their parents dying and Yoohyun leaving.)

As Yoojin is hugging her sister and telling her she loves her, she reaches up (oh how tall Yoohyun has gotten) and rests her hand on Yoohyun’s hair. It is soft under her touch and Yoojin knows it would spring into loose curls if it were open. Right now, however, it is in the same braid Yoohyun always wears in public, the braid Yoojin has almost only ever seen in magazines or on tv. It is the same braid Yoohyun died with.

Yoojin gently pets Yoohyun’s hair before moving out of their hug. She immediately feels cold but at least now she can see Yoohyun’s face, looking both happy and confused, and so very painfully hopeful. Yoojin is pretty sure she will never get tired of looking at Yoohyun’s face again.

And maybe she won’t have to, considering everything that happens after. Even if attempting to permanently keep her confined was a bit overzealous on Yoohyun’s part, at least it shows she cares. And while it took some scheming to convince her that Yoojin should be allowed outside, at least they gained another S-rank in the process.

And such a wonderfully cheerful girl too. Bak Yerim is almost overwhelmingly energetic, always flitting here and there, so it makes sense that for her debut as a hunter they would opt for a youthful and sporty image. Yerim at least looks like she feels fully at home in her new attire, posing proudly.

Yoojin remembers the grown Yerim of the past having hair that was always precisely grown to the middle of her back and exquisitely styled, not a strand out of place. It made her look even colder, almost rigid and sharp as though you would cut yourself if you tried to touch her.

Her new pixie cut frames her dimpled smile and cheerfully bops up-and-down as she moves.

“They did a really nice job, didn’t they?”

Yoojin nods. “You look wonderful! I remember, way back in the day Yoohyun-ie also used to have short hair like yours now. She looked just as adorable as you.”

Yerim pouts a little, “how could that one ever look cute. I bet it was actually really ugly and you just aren’t remembering right.”

“Maybe, it’s not like I have any pictures of Yoohyun as a child. And I certainly wasn’t the best at haircuts.”

“Ajumma! Did you use to cut Yoohyun’s hair? Can you do mine too?”

Yoojin forces herself to laugh. “Maybe another time, now I would definitely just mess up your styling and then Simyeong-ssi would probably kill me.”

Yerim pouts again. “Ah, fine. But you really aren’t getting away with never helping me do my hair, understood?”

“Loud and clear.”

(When Yoohyun debuted as the leader of Haeyeon, her hair just barely reached her chin. Yoojin remembers when she first saw her face plastered across every newspaper and thought she almost didn’t recognise her sister. She still looked just as young as the day she walked out of Yoojin's life, and yet so very different.

She thinks maybe this is how she truly knew she had been left behind. Yoohyun had grown out of her hair just as she’d grown out of her sister.)

At home, Yoohyun doesn’t always bother doing up her hair. She told Yoojin that she thinks it needlessly bothersome when she asked, and that she generally doesn’t remember unless she needs to go outside, where she needs to be presentable and keep her hair out of her face in case of a fight.

Yoojin can also tell that Yoohyun’s hair annoys her when it isn’t done up. Yoohyun keeps shifting it from one shoulder to the other and pushing it out of her face. Yoohyun’s hair is long and she has a lot of it. Of course it would get in the way.

“Yoohyun-ah, come here.” Yoojin beckons her sister over to the couch where she is sitting, patting her thighs.

“Unni?” Yoohyun questions while she is coming over. “What do you want?”

“Come sit down with me, I want to do your hair.”

Yoohyun immediately settles in front of Yoojin with crossed legs, “really? But there’s no need, unni, you don’t have to.”

As if she’d believe that when her sister came over like this. “I just want to, can’t an unni want to do her little sister’s hair?”

“Of course, unni.”

Yoojin starts by gathering all of Yoohyun’s hair to the back. It feels sturdy in her hands. It matches the rest of Yoohyun, her strong shoulders and wide back. Yoojin almost can’t believe that she used to be the taller of the two. That there was a time when Yoohyun still needed help getting her little arms through the sleeves a coat when it rained.

Yoojin parts the hair into three sections at the nape, slowly detangling where the curls are stuck together. She isn’t entirely sure how to do this, she has never had to braid hair before.

“I never thought you’d grow out your hair when you were younger. You used to hate when it got too long,” she says as she carefully takes the strand on the right and crosses it into the middle. She takes her time pushing the strand that used to be in the middle tight against the base of the braid before resettling her hands and folding the left strand in.

Yoohyun shrugs without moving her head at all. “I didn’t want anyone who wasn’t unni to cut it.”

Yoojin halts in her actions. Her throat suddenly feels tight. “Oh.”

“Actually…” Yoohyun starts to speak but trails off.

“Yes? You know you can tell me anything, Yoohyun-ah.” Yoojin starts braiding again. It isn’t even remotely as neat as what Yoohyun usually wears. Yoojin doesn’t think she could bring herself to pull Yoohyun’s hair tightly enough to ever manage that.

“I was thinking… now that we’re together again maybe you could cut my again. Like you used to.”

Yoojin wishes she could see Yoohyun’s face but she doesn’t need to to make out the hopeful tone in her sister’s voice. She keeps braiding. “We could certainly try.”

She carefully finishes the braid with a hair tie she manages to twist three times around the end. It’s certainly recognisable as a braid.

When Yoojin taps Yoohyun’s shoulder to indicate she’s done, Yoohyun immediately turns around and hugs Yoojin. The loose hairs from the braid Yoojin tried so hard for tickle her nose. “I’m so glad to have you back, unni. It’ll be just like it used to.”

Yoojin thinks of a twenty-five-year-old Yoohyun (with hair almost longer than her life) and swallows heavily. “Yeah, you’re right.”

When they try, it turns out that since Yoohyun has awakened as an S-rank, her hair is too strong for Yoojin to cut. Yoojin tries not to feel relieved as she laughingly soothes Yoohyun’s disappointment.

(When Yoohyun left Yoojin she only ever meant for it to be temporary, of course. Just until she was strong and could protect her older sister like Yoojin had protected her growing up.

She didn’t even mean to grow her hair out at first. It was just that she hated having anyone but Yoojin touching her. She knew that since she’d chosen to become a guild leader – to become someone who could protect her unni – she would have to tolerate certain things, being touched by stylists and healers and all sorts of other people.

However, she always especially loved the time she and Yoojin spent together when cutting her hair. She liked sitting still and listening to the intermittent snips coming from behind her, Yoojin fully focused on her task. At the end she’d card her hands through Yoohyun’s hair, trying to get rid of all the cut ends still stuck. Yoohyun would just lean back into the gentle massage of her scalp.

Sure, not having her hair cut would mean having to tolerate it falling into her face and brushing against her skin, making it crawl. But that was still better than having anyone but Yoojin try to cut it. Maybe this was just the price she had to pay for being strong.

Every time Yoohyun sat, moving her hair into a utilitarian braid, she thought that she couldn’t wait until her unni would cut her hair again. She just had to become strong enough first.)

Yoohyun and Yoojin end up going to the guild’s hair dresser together. Yoohyun is still grumpy that Yoojin isn’t the one cutting her hair but she is at least a little consoled that Yoojin is helping her tell the hair dresser what she wants.

Yoohyun is also delighted when Yoojin asks her to help pick Yoojin’s own haircut, although the ready agreement to any idea Yoojin voices isn’t exactly helpful.

Yoojin ends up with almost the same haircut as Yoohyun. Now, when she looks at them next to each other in the mirror, she thinks people would maybe even guess that they are siblings.

Yoohyun now looks fully unlike her older self. It sits uneasily in Yoojin’s gut, that they have fixed their relationship but that Yoohyun has changed from the one she used to be. The one who died for Yoojin.

But maybe it’s okay. Yoojin’s little sister is next to her, alive. Changed, but still the same on some fundamental level. It’s almost like she never died at all; as though the past no one else remembers was nothing but a bad dream.

Yoojin reaches out to ruffle Yoohyun’s hair. “Ah, I can’t believe I have such a pretty little sister, I must have done well in my past life!”

(Somewhere, beneath an ancient tree, far, far away, snow is gently falling on Yoohyun’s long hair.)

Notes:

I might go through this when I am not shaky and on the verge of falling asleep and fix some things but I really wanted to finish this tonight for some reason :-)
...I did eventually come back a whole year later and no one told me about all my horrible typos in the mean time. I am feeling so brave right now.

I noticed that for a fic from Yoojin's perspective about hair, I don't really mention her hair until the very end so just imagine her with a deathhawk or something during the rest of this.

Please tell me what you thought or leave kudos, that keeps me alive!
Thank you so much for reading.