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When Ruby was three years old, three years since she had been reborn, three years since Ai became her mama, three years since she got a sibling and three years since she left that hospital behind her, Ai kneels in front of her and cheerfully says that it was time Ruby cut her hair.
A fragile thing cracks inside her chest and she goes still, something that doesn't go unnoticed by Ai.
"Ruby? Is something wrong?"
She shakes off the memories of a well worn beanie and the snip of the scissors as they cut off her brown locks despite her protests and musters a smile, bright and happy.
She's with her new mama now and there's nothing to fear!
But when it was time to go to the salon, she couldn't move out of the room, fear building up inside her stomach to the point she turned tail and ran inside the closet, leaving her family standing at the door. Ignoring her mama's and twin's calls, she tucked herself in between the soft jackets and fur coats, keeping her hair fisted tightly in her hands as if she could stop the loss of it, the snip snip snip by keeping it close to herself.
The only thought running through her head as she hides is that she can't let her hair get cut again. Not again.
It was the first time she had run from Ai.
-
It must have been hours since she had hidden herself away, surrounded in the darkness, her hair curled from how tightly she held it, when a knock on the wooden closet door sounded.
"Hi Ruby!" she heard her mama's voice, cheerful and gentle. "We're not going to the salon today, it's too wet outside! Wouldn't want to ruin your pretty hair, you know."
It had stopped raining that morning.
"Aqua seemed happier about that decision as well. What about you? Did you want to go?"
"No!" she gasped out, fear coating her voice and Ai stopped talking, silence falling. Immediately she wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Mother always said that she troubled her everytime she complained and she didn't want to trouble Mama too.
But then the door opened and her mama's beautiful face came into view, forehead creased in concern and eyes questioning at the sight of her daughter crouched in fear behind the jackets and the tight knot of anxiety eased when she didn't see any annoyance in her eyes.
Her mama held out a hand, just looking at her, face soft and open and Ruby crawls out and into her mama's lap, hiding her face in Ai's sweater. "Don't want to cut my hair." she mutters, voice muffled by the warm fabric but Ai hears her all the same.
"Okay," Mama says, caressing her head. "You don't have to." Maybe she hears something in Ruby's voice that makes it so easy for her to agree, but she's too relieved to care.
A soft tap on her head causes her to look up and Ai is smiling mischievously at her. "Want me to braid your hair instead? It's gotten long enough for it." Ruby nods, excitement overtaking the relief.
Sarina never had her hair braided before. It’d been cut short before it could ever get long enough to even try.
Ai gently places Ruby in front of her, smiling at the tired whine Ruby lets out at ending the hug, before taking out of the rubber band holding Ruby's hair back and smooths out the tangles with her fingers, then parting her hair into three strands, looping them over each other to form a braid. The repetitive action is soothing, and Ruby finds herself nodding off as Ai continues the action. Her favourite idol is braiding her hair but more importantly, her mama is braiding her hair and she's never felt safer in her life.
She almost cries at the warmth fixing the cracked glass in her chest.
She falls asleep to soft voices instead.
-
After the funeral, they're sent back to school within a week, the administration unwilling to let them take leave without a good reason. It's not like they could say that their mother, that Ai was- dead.
Ruby is well practiced by now at swallowing the bitterness that causes.
Miyako kneels in front of her the morning of the day the twins were due to go, and asks if she wanted her hair braided back for school.
She remembers gentle hands and laughing eyes and flinches back, vigorously shaking her head, her hair feeling coarse and rough against her cheeks as she does so. Aqua had used all the shampoo a week ago and they hadn't replaced it yet. Not that either of them had the heart to scold him for it, not when they both remembered the blood caked into his hair.
"Mama..." she starts, but fails, feeling her nose clog up and face burn. But Miyako only nods in acceptance and combs it into a ponytail instead.
She feels pathetically grateful that Miyako hadn't put it into Ai's idol hairstyle, the one Ruby used to wear near religiously, instead diving into her arms to give her a hug in gratitude.
Maybe someday she'd wear it again.
-
Sometimes, she forgets that she's Hoshino Ruby when she wakes up in the morning, expecting a rough mattress, the smell of antiseptic in her nose and the heavy weight of her beanie on her head despite how light her head is without her hair, expecting to wake up as Tendouji Sarina.
She wakes up in a panic when she can't feel her beanie on her head, blindly searching for it around the room when she catches sight of herself in the mirror, ruby-pink eyes, cascading blonde hair and Hoshino Ai's face staring back at her and Tendouji Sarina falls away again.
Most times, she doesn't care about these moments, brushing them off and continuing with her day.
Other times, she locks her door, takes a comb and brushes and brushes and brushes her hair until her arms burn and her hair is frizzy with the continous, frantic movements. Then she puts on her favourite song and dances until she's sure she has control of her body, that her arms and legs move when she tells them to and don’t cramp and stop working, causing her to trip and fall.
And when she's older, she puts a hat on her head, takes the fake glasses she stole from Aqua and walks to an address she's memorised in both her lives, stands in front of the Tendouji engraved in a nameplate and tries not to press the doorbell.
She always walks away as the door starts to open.
-
Ruby tried learning how to braid once.
She found the necessary YouTube videos, spent hours watching the precise and controlled movements of the hairdressers then stood in front of the mirror for even longer, hands grasping her hair and clumsily trying to tame it into a pretty braid.
She took three strands from the top of her head, pulled one under the other than did the same with her other, tried to gather hair from the sides of her face to pull it into the braid, but she always lost control of the strands in her hands, carefully parted locks of three falling out of her grip, followed by the braid itself.
Frustration had hit her like a bullet train at her failures, and she'd scrambled for the scissors on her desk, clutching a fistful of her blonde hair so hard it pulled her scalp, scissors open and coming to snip at the stretched strands, to make them disappear, to let her forget how the barber cut her hair just before she was hospitalised when she didn't want it, to let her forget the way Mama had carefully braided her hair-
She dropped the scissors.
They fell with a soft thump on the carpeted floor, and she was viciously reminded of the same thumps she'd made banging on the glass door when Ai was dying, when she failed to even be there and she-
She picks up the scissors, walks out of the room and throws them in the garbage.
Ruby never tries to braid again.
-
When she was fourteen, she found her brother in a studio bathroom. Aqua had run out of the wrap party for Pieyon's first successful event which was being hosted in the agency, face bone white and shaking. She found him with his hands clenched on the sink counter, a pair of scissors next to him and locks of blond hair scattered around the floor, his hair gone from past his shoulders to haphazardly cropped close to his neck and ears, especially messy on one side.
His eyes were screwed shut, water dripping from his face onto the marble counter and she had quietly closed the door, deciding to leave him alone.
(Many people who knew Ai, including some of the now disbanded B-Komachi members were present that day and there were quite a few drinks being passed around.)
(One of them, Nino had been drunk, and she jolted, as if in shock when Aqua passed by her, before turning to Takamine to loudly say that she thought Ai was there for a second. Barely anyone but her and Aqua had heard the former idol, but he had rushed out the moment he could. Ruby had known there was reason she didn't like Nino.)
She knew why he had cut his hair in such a frenzy.
It was the same reason she kept hers till her waist after all.
He was starting to look like Ai.
-
"Hey, catch."
Something hits Ruby in the right side of her face, light as a feather and floats down on the cushions.
"Ow!" she yells, playfully pressing her hand against her face in mock hurt. Kana snorts from where she's standing at the side of the couch, knocking a hand gently into the side of her head.
"Please, that wouldn't have hurt you at all," she deadpans, throwing one leg over the arm of the sofa and swinging herself on to comfortably sit on it. Kana pretends to not look at her as she picks up the card, but for all her S-tier acting skills, Kana can't hide the glint of excitement and nervousness in her eyes.
It a voucher now that she's seeing it properly, cursive script emblazoned in gold loudly boasting the name of an incredibly popular spa and salon. It was well known in the idol circles, for having some of the best hair and skincare despite the expense.
She had never been there, even though she had been a fairly popular idol for almost a year now. Looking up at her group member, Kana was casually flicking through a book, some random thing about the rarest slugs in Japan or something. Hadn't she seen her brother with a similar book once? Kana's taste was so weird.
"How!? When did you get this? Why are you giving it to me?" Ruby flails around in excitement, shoving her face into Kana's immediate field of view. Kana yelps, tilting to the side, managing to throw her book on the couch at the last second as she lost her balance and fell off the arm of the couch, taking Ruby down with her.
They land on the floor laughing.
“Consider it an early birthday present. Me and MEM got together to get it for you so be prepared for the trip tomorrow!” And Ruby hugs her for as long as she possibly could.
The spa was excellent. She runs her hand through her hair for hours later, marvelling at the softness and the shine. Tendouji Sarina could never have had this, and not for the first time, Ruby is glad she reincarnated.
She wonders what her mother would say if Tendouji Marina could see her now.
She wishes she could braid it.
-
Ruby tears out of the practice room, heading directly for the couch in one of their more private office rooms. The line from the script reverberates through her head and she collapses onto the couch in tears.
I can't love you.
She had realized over the years, that her mama was not an honest idol. That she lied every time she was on stage, singing aishiteru ! to the millions of fans that watched her with adoring, greedy eyes. She had taught herself those same lies when she so so angry at the world, but now, as she practiced for her mother's role, she found herself digging up long forgotten or just buried emotions as she read her mother's true and honest self on the page.
Was her mama's love a lie?
She didn't want to believe it. It couldn't be.
But Tendouji Sarina was an insistent, screaming voice at the back of her head, cruelly reminding her of Marina's- Mother's- lie of love, of the mother who abandoned her in that hospital, not being able to handle her child having a terminal illness and she'd just left her and what if it happened again and her mama-
The cloth over her knees crinkles in her hands.
A warm weight settles next to her and she knows without seeing that it was her brother. He had been better these days, even more openly attentive and caring like he had been before, as her doctor and her brother so she simply turns away, unwilling to accept the kindness she knew he was willing to give.
Aqua sits behind her, patiently waiting for her to calm, eyes gentler then they had been in ages as she dug her nails into her palms, breathing irregular and tears beading at the corners of her eyes.
When her hands stopped shaking, he places a hand on her shoulder, just shy of brushing her hair.
She tilted her head just enough for side pony to touch his hand. "Can you braid it?" she asks, voice quiet. It's possible that Aqua didn't even know how but she just- she just wanted her mama back and Ai braiding her hair was one of the clearest memories she had of those blissful childhood days. One of the clearest memories of the love she had given to Ruby.
Aqua's answer is to remove the band in her hair and she feels it fall away from where it was gathered at the side of her head, loosely hanging from her head as she sits perfectly still. His hands comb through her hair, just like Mama's had all those years ago and she feels her eyes burn, tears beginning to fall again.
She feels him take two strands and put one over the other, again and again gathering hair from the sides into the slowly forming braid, until the rhythmic braiding begins to relax her. She wonders when he got so good at it. He wouldn't have had the chance to as Sensei. Maybe he practiced for one of the other patients he visited?
Tendouji Sarina never had long hair after all.
"Do you remember that day you hid in the closet? The first time we had to get a haircut?" The words cut through her thoughts and Aqua's tone is wistful as he recollects. "I was so confused then, why you protested so much, but Ai seemed like she knew. Or more like she didn't care why you protested. Just that you didn't want to go." It's one of her favourite memories, just her and her mama. She wonders-
"I went to check in on you, when I found Ai braiding your hair, while you slept in her lap." Aqua's voice turns teasing, interrupting her train of thought. "You looked so blissed out, idiot otaku that you are."
She flushes. "Like you were any better!"
He lets out a light snort, holding the finished braid in the palm of his hand as he felt around for the hair band he dropped. "Ai beckoned me there, just holding you gently, like you were a precious gem that would break if she moved." He tied off the braid and she turned to face him, something like sunshine unfurling in her heart.
"She told me that we should never let you get your hair cut unless you wanted it. She'd cut my hair after that, usually when you were asleep, so you didn't worry." His eyes are focused on her, as if trying to get her to understand something.
The sunshine felt a little like hope.
"Ai loved you Ruby."
The tears started to fall.
"She never lied, not to us, not to you." Aqua looked at her straight in the eyes, voice quivering. "Do you understand? She loved you Ruby."
She buries her head into his sweater and sobs.
Maybe if she pretended hard enough, the hand caressing her head would be her mama's.