The first sound was softer than she expected.
Not the loud, dramatic bzzz she’d imagined, but a steady, patient hum — like a distant electric toothbrush. The barber switched the clippers on and off once, testing the rhythm, then smiled reassuringly through the mirror.
“You ready?”
She looked at herself for a long moment.
The ponytail she’d worn for years rested over the cape, familiar and safe. It had followed her through exams, breakups, late-night coffees, hospital waiting rooms, and countless ordinary mornings. It was the last piece of normal she still had.
She nodded.
The first pass started at the back of her neck.
A cool line opened across her scalp as the clippers moved upward. She felt it more than she heard it — a gentle vibration, like a small engine carefully erasing something old. A thick lock slid down the cape and landed in her lap.
She laughed.
Not out of sadness.
Out of surprise.
“That’s… colder than I thought,” she said.
The barber chuckled. “Air reaches places it hasn’t met in years.”
Another pass. Another swath of hair fell.
With every stroke, the mirror showed less of the person she’d been trying to hold onto — and more of the person she was becoming.
Halfway through, she stopped looking at the floor.
Instead, she watched the reflection directly.
The shape of her head appeared slowly: the curve above her ear, the neat slope behind her crown, the softness she’d never noticed beneath the weight of hair. Without it, her expressions looked clearer — almost louder.
“You’re smiling,” the barber said.
“I know,” she replied, surprised again. “I thought I’d cry.”
Sometimes she had. At home. At night. In silence.
But here, with the steady hum and the quiet concentration of someone doing careful work, it didn’t feel like loss.
It felt like permission.
The final pass swept across the top.
Short stubble remained, pale and new, catching the overhead light. The barber brushed loose hairs away and turned the chair slightly toward the mirror.
“There.”
She raised her hand slowly and touched her head.
The sensation startled her — soft, warm, real. Not fragile. Not broken. Just… different.
She grinned, wider than she had in months.
“I look like myself,” she said quietly.
And for the first time since everything had begun, she meant it.