Fantasy Girlfriend Diary | What If Aoi Kururugi Were Your Hairstylist Girlfriend

In the mirror, the scissors were moving.

The honed blade tips passed just beside my right ear. The cold presence of metal grazed my skin. Her left hand scooped up a section of hair, drew it out with the fine teeth of a tail comb, and pinched it between her index and middle fingers. Her right hand closed the shears. Snip. The severed lock slid across the black cape and landed on my knee.

Hair was scattered on the floor, too. Probably from the client before me. Brown clippings had been left half-swept at the base of the station.

“When was your last haircut?”

She knew perfectly well. Last month, she’d watched me run clippers over my neckline in the bathroom, and told me point-blank: “What are you doing? Stop, that looks awful.” In her Kyoto dialect, brow furrowed the whole time.

But now, the woman in the mirror wore the face of a stylist meeting a first-time client. Her voice pitched half a tone higher. Her sentence endings switched to polite Japanese. A small frame in a black apron, a leather shear case hanging from her right hip, circling slowly around the chair.

“About two months, I think.”

As I answered, a strange sense of disconnect settled over me. Eight months since we started dating. I had never once seen her at work. I only knew her on her days off. The profile of her face as she picked a pachinko machine. The way she held a beer mug with both hands at the izakaya. The sight of her belting anime songs at full volume in karaoke. That was the entirety of the Aoi Kururugi I knew.

In the mirror, a different version of her reached for the next section of hair, scissors in hand.

 

Past seven in the evening, the salon was empty.

About ten minutes earlier, I’d hesitated at the glass door on the first floor of the building.

I could see inside. She was sweeping the floor with a broom. Black apron. Shear case at her hip. Her mouth was moving—singing, probably. Not a single client remained in the shop.

Seen through the glass, she looked like a stranger. Her back was straighter than when we were together at home. Her stride was longer, her movements rhythmic. This is her place, I thought.

Our eyes met. Her expression switched for just an instant—from a working face to the face of someone spotting a familiar person. She leaned the broom against the wall, came to the door, and unlocked it. The moment the glass door slid open, the shop’s air spilled out. The lingering scent of shampoo and the dry warmth left behind after blow-dryer heat had dissipated.

Of the five styling stations along the wall, only the second from the entrance had its light on. The remaining large mirrors sat dark, towels folded neatly on the hydraulic chairs. Bossa nova BGM echoed with strange clarity through the empty space. Sweet traces of shampoo mingled with the faint chemical sting of color agents drifting from the back. A hint of ammonia from perm solution lingered too, pricking the back of the nose. The smell of a salon at the end of its day.

“You were my last appointment today.”

That’s what she said when she greeted me at the entrance. Casual, relaxed—her natural Kansai dialect. Wiping her hands on the hem of her apron, she added, “Everyone else already clocked out,” then paused a beat before switching tone.

“May I take your things?”

I handed over my coat and was led to the station. Paper wrapped around my neck, a black cape draped over my shoulders. There was no hesitation in any of it. Steps repeated hundreds of times, etched into her body. Our eyes met in the mirror, and she raised the corners of her mouth just slightly—then immediately dropped her gaze to the consultation sheet.

“What are we doing for you today?”

Not the casual “so what do you want” she’d normally use. A polished, professional register.

“Stylist’s choice.”

“Certainly.”

She picked up three duck clips and began sectioning my hair. The top pinned up, the sides parted, the nape left free. The plastic clips bit into the hair with a click, click, click.

“I’ll lighten the overall weight, take the sides down to about ear length. I’ll keep some length on top so it has movement.”

She was already behind me as she explained.

 

The sound of the scissors was quieter than I’d expected.

Not the dramatic snipping you see on TV—just the brief, rhythmic sound of blades meeting. Snip. Snip. Snip. Between each cut, the faint friction of the comb drawing through hair.

Her hands moved without hesitation. The comb in her left hand pulled the hair out, her fingers pinched it, and the shears went in. Only her thumb moved on the scissors. Her ring finger stayed fixed through the handle, her index finger resting lightly at the base of the blade. I learned for the first time, at this distance, that a stylist holds scissors differently from anyone else.

From the right side to the back of the head. From the back to the left side. She shifted position around my chair in a slow clockwise orbit. Being short, she rose slightly onto her toes when cutting the back of my head. Five foot one. The mirror’s edge caught the moment her sneaker heels lifted from the floor.

The scissors changed. Thinning shears—one blade serrated like a comb. The sound changed with them. The sharp snip of cutting gave way to a softer, rasping whisper. Thinning the volume, probably. Each time the blades closed, fine hairs scattered like dust across the cape.

“Has work been busy lately?”

She asked through the mirror. The hairdresser’s small talk. A harmless question tossed to a regular client—aimed at someone she knew inside and out. We’d gone to pachinko together just last Saturday.

“Oh, you know. Getting by.”

“I see.”

She drew out the last syllable—a habit that survived even in her polished professional mode. That one tell was the only trace of the woman I knew.

When she removed the top clip, her fingers brushed my ear. Cool fingertips. Just a fleeting instant, yet there was a deliberate motion, almost tracing the rim. I looked in the mirror. The corner of her mouth was slightly twisted. The face of someone biting back a laugh.

She’d done it on purpose. A bit of mischief slipped in under the cover of professional technique.

”…Please keep your head still.”

She said it with a straight face, then continued the cut as if nothing had happened. Only the sound of scissors filled the space. I watched her silently in the mirror. Serious eyes. The smile at her lips was already gone.

As the cut neared its end, she picked up a spray bottle. A light mist dampened the hair, and she combed it into shape. The transition from wet cutting to dry cutting. Building the form while wet, calculating how it would look when dry. I learned only from sitting in that chair that there were two stages to the process.

Blow-drying lightly, she stepped back several times to check the overall balance. She narrowed her eyes, her finger tracing the silhouette line in the air as if only she could see the finished form, cross-referencing it against reality. She refined the texture at the tips with a point cut, surveyed the whole once more, and gave a small nod.

 

“Let me take you to the shampoo station.”

I was led to a space behind the styling area, partitioned off by frosted glass. Three flat-bed shampoo chairs stood in a row. The lighting was dimmer than at the stations—recessed ceiling lights casting a soft amber glow.

I sat down, and the backrest slowly reclined. A cushion met the back of my neck, and my head settled into the rim of the shampoo bowl. The ceiling filled my entire field of vision.

“Please close your eyes.”

The sound of running water. The showerhead met my hairline. Lukewarm water traced along my scalp, past the sides of my ears, and flowed away. She was pressing the showerhead close against my scalp as she moved it. A technique to prevent splashing, probably. The instant it made contact, the water sound went muffled, and the outside world receded by one degree.

“How’s the temperature?”

“Just right.”

Shampoo lather began to build. Her fingertips pressed and traveled across my scalp. The pressure was strong. Hard to imagine from those slender hands in everyday life. Swimmer’s hands, I realized. She’d told me early on that she’d been on the swim team from middle school through high school. Butterfly was her best stroke out of the four, she’d said. There was a time when those slight shoulders had been pulling through water.

Temples. Behind the ears. Crown of the head. Her fingers traveled in a steady pattern. The lather rustled and whispered. The bossa nova had faded away. In a world of nothing but foam and water, only her fingers existed.

Eyes closed, I sensed her presence. Standing on my right side. The hem of her apron occasionally brushed the edge of the cape. Beneath the shampoo fragrance, a faint different scent. Her own, maybe, or the last traces of morning perfume.

“Any spots I should focus on?”

The standard phrase. Seven syllables she must have spoken thousands of times. And yet, hearing only her voice in the darkness behind my closed eyelids, it felt like she was asking something else entirely.

“No, I’m good.”

Her fingers moved to my temples. Circling above my ears, kneading through the foam. Not too hard, not too soft—precisely right. Professional hands. Fingers that had washed hundreds of heads knew the exact amount of pressure. My head was no more special than any other. I understood that, and still, eyes closed, I followed every movement of her fingers.

The rinse began. Warm water traced across my scalp. The lather washed away. When she reached the back of my head, her left hand slipped gently beneath my neck, lifting my head. Her palm pressed against the nape. Her fingertips carefully traced the hairline at the base of my skull. That hand was much warmer than I’d expected.

She moved on to the treatment. A thick liquid worked through the hair, a sweet, fruity scent spreading. Milbon Aujua. “The stuff we use at the shop smells amazing,” she’d boasted once. That was the one.

A steamed towel was draped across my forehead and over my eyes. The heat soaked in slowly. Its weight was comforting.

“I’ll give this a moment to set.”

The water stopped. Silence. The damp warmth of the steamed towel, the slick sensation of the treatment, and behind closed eyelids, darkness. Bossa nova guitar, faintly, from somewhere far away.

I lost track of time. Maybe a minute. Maybe five. The towel’s temperature was slowly dropping, and the skin of my forehead registered each degree. Far off, a bossa nova guitar being plucked. From the faucet, one drop, then another. Only the sense that she was near. The rustle of fabric as she tidied something beside the chair.

The towel was removed. Light returned through my eyelids.

“I’ll rinse now.”

Water again. The treatment washed away carefully. Her fingers slid from root to tip as if confirming each individual strand. One brief flash of cold water at the very end. To close the pores, probably. My scalp tightened with the chill, and my awareness surfaced.

She wrapped a towel around my hair, pressing gently to absorb the moisture. The chair tilted upright. My vision cleared. Through the partition, the salon’s dark mirrors stood in a row. Outside the window, a car’s headlights passed.

Smoothing the towel’s edge, she said in a small voice:

“Feel good?”

Casual again. Her natural dialect. Her eyes smiled, just slightly.

 

During the final blow-dry, her phone rang.

She switched off the dryer, excused herself with a polite “One moment, please,” and disappeared into the back room. Her voice leaked through the wall.

“Yeah. Haven’t closed out the register yet. Still got one more person. …No no, it’s fine, really.”

Kansai dialect. Quick tempo, low voice. A coworker or the manager, probably. Behind the wall, the everyday version of her existed.

When she came back, she looked slightly tired.

“Sorry—that was the manager.”

The casual tone was out in full now. No intention of switching back to polished mode, apparently. She picked up the dryer again, pulling the hair taut with the nine rows of nylon pins on a Denman brush while directing the airflow. The low drone of the dryer. Each time she angled the nozzle, the direction and temperature of the air shifted. The brush lightly combing across my scalp.

When the drying was done, she stepped back and tilted her head. Through the mirror, she studied the overall balance. From the right. From the left. From behind. Lips pursed, thinking.

“Just this spot.”

She pulled out the thinning shears and made two cuts near my right temple. Shh, shh.

“Yeah. Looks good.”

She murmured it like talking to herself, then took a small amount of wax onto her palm and rubbed her hands together. Scattering the tips, pinching, running her fingers through several times. The finishing touches had a different quality from the precision of the cut—broader, more gestural. Like a sculptor smoothing a surface with bare hands at the very end.

“All done.”

The cape’s clasp came undone. She peeled the paper from my neck and swept away the fine hairs at my nape with a brush. Each time the bristles touched my neck, a ticklish sensation shot through me.

In the mirror, an unfamiliar version of me sat there. The jawline looked cleaner, the area around the ears lighter. The top had just the right amount of movement, the whole shape balanced.

“You’re good at this.”

“Obviously. How many years do you think I’ve been doing this?”

She crossed her arms and leaned back slightly, her small frame tilting with satisfaction—proud, but not performative. For the first time, the woman standing there was completely, entirely the her I knew.

 

I tried to help with the closing routine. She wouldn’t have it.

“Sit down. Clients sit.”

Still treating me like a customer, I thought, settling onto the sofa in the waiting area. I drank water from a paper cup at the cooler and watched her work.

First, she swept the floor. Gathering the hair scattered at the base of the stations with a large broom. Rotating each of the five chairs one by one, carefully extracting strands caught in the gaps around the legs. Then the mop. Back and forth across the hardwood, from the rear toward the front, in a steady rhythm. The route she’d traced every day was visible.

Next, she began maintaining her shears. Drawing five pairs one by one from the leather case, opening the blades, wiping them with ethanol-soaked gauze. Holding the tips up to the fluorescent light to check for remaining residue, then sliding them back into the case. In the way she handled them, there was something beyond the word “careful.” A trust in her tools.

“Are those good ones?”

“These cutting shears were 120,000 yen. The thinning shears, 80,000.”

She answered matter-of-factly while pulling stray hairs from the teeth of a comb, one by one.

“I took out a loan for them back when I was an assistant. My take-home was only about 150,000 a month.”

I’d never heard that before. I didn’t know exactly how many years she’d been in the industry. But the five pairs of shears and the worn leather case that held them spoke of all that time.

She started wiping the mirrors. Moving a balled-up towel in circles across each large mirror. Top to bottom. One at a time. All five. Her right hand maintaining the same rhythm throughout.

She moved to the shampoo stations and cleared the drain traps of accumulated hair. Gathered an armful of used towels and tossed them into the washing machine in the back room. Wiped down the color mixing station, washed the bowls and brushes, returned them to the shelves.

There was an order to all of it. Without any visible deliberation, her body moved automatically to the next step. A body that had followed the same sequence every night in this place. Occasionally, she hummed. The same thing I’d seen through the glass before entering. Something like a habit woven into the fabric of her work.

The low vibration of the industrial dryer starting up in the back room traveled through the floor to the waiting area sofa. The sound of her footsteps moving through the salon. The steady rhythm of sneaker soles on hardwood.

Last, she closed out the register. Organized the sales slips, settled the credit card terminal, checked the change. Then opened a tablet and reviewed the next day’s appointments.

“Tomorrow I’ve got a bleach double-color first thing, so I’m in early.”

She murmured it while swiping the tablet. From her fingertips drifted the faint chlorine scent of hypochlorite. The smell of disinfectant. The last scent of her workday.

The overhead fluorescents went dark. Only the indirect lighting in the waiting area remained, and the styling stations in the back sank into shadow. Five mirrors caught slivers of light and floated dimly. The place looked nothing like it did during the day.

“Right.”

She unfastened the neck strap of her apron and untied the knot at her waist. Folded the black water-resistant apron neatly and placed it on the shelf. Unclipped the shear case belt from her hip and set it alongside.

Under the apron: a simple black jersey top and slim tapered pants. Without the shear case, her waist looked almost vulnerable. She rolled her neck, shrugged her shoulders two or three times. A gesture that seemed to finally acknowledge a full day’s fatigue.

That alone, and the stylist vanished. In the dark mirror stood a five-foot-one woman—the one I knew.

“Sorry for the wait. Shall we?”

She slung her bag over her shoulder and reached for the switch on the indirect lighting. Click. The last light went out. Only the streetlamp outside cast a faint reflection across the five mirrors.

 

I stood behind her as she locked up.

An April night breeze brushed my cheek. The sweet lingering scent of shampoo and treatment was carried away on the wind. The salon sign went dark, and the ground floor of the tenant building fell into shadow.

She turned around. Her after-work face was a little tired, the day’s shadow settled around her eyes. But the eyes themselves looked pleased.

“Wanna grab a beer?”

“You’ll be out cold after one.”

“Oh, shut up. I like what I like.”

The face she made when she fired back. Eyebrows raised slightly, lips pursed. “I can’t do cutesy”—she’d declared it herself, and she meant it. No pretense. Every emotion landed directly on her face.

It was less than three minutes to the red paper lanterns near the station. On the shoulder of her black jersey, a single tiny hair clung—invisible under the salon lights. A client’s hair, probably. I thought about brushing it off, then decided not to.

 

A small izakaya, counter seats only.

The sliding door opened to a rush of yakitori smoke and soy sauce. A world of oil, charcoal, and body heat—nothing like the salon’s clean air. We squeezed in side by side, second from the back. The moment she sat down, her back curved and both elbows dropped onto the counter. The perfect posture of her working hours vanished like a lie, all the tension draining from her body.

“Two drafts.”

She held up two fingers to the bartender. Didn’t check with me.

The mugs arrived. She lifted hers with both hands and took a long first sip. Eyes closed, she exhaled.

“Ahh. I’m alive again.”

In that voice was an entire day’s worth of fatigue and release.

Picking at edamame, she started telling me about the day’s clients. A regular who’d come in for color that morning—ordered the exact same shade as last time but insisted she wanted “something different.” An afternoon college student who’d pulled up a photo on her phone of a hairstyle that absolutely did not suit her bone structure, yet wouldn’t budge from “make it exactly like this.”

“If the bone structure doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But you can’t just say that—she’d get upset. So you find a similar vibe, adjust it to actually suit her face.”

Her Kansai dialect was picking up speed. Her hand gestures were getting bigger. The mug was more than half empty.

“So, when she sees the finished look, guess what she says.”

“What?”

“‘Oh my god, it’s amazing! This is why you go to a pro!’”

She tossed an edamame shell onto the plate and laughed triumphantly. A fleck of beer foam clung to the corner of her mouth. No one who hadn’t been there would believe this was the same person who’d worn that stylist’s composure an hour ago.

She started to order a second round, then stopped. One mug and her cheeks were already flushed. She loved it but couldn’t handle it. Same as always.

“Y’know, working on your head today got me thinking.”

She popped the last edamame into her mouth.

“Isn’t it getting a little thin around the crown?”

”…”

“Kidding! You’ve got great hair, honestly. It was easy to work with.”

Behind the counter, yakitori skewers being flipped. The exhaust fan’s steady roar. Her dialect dissolved into the noise. In sounds utterly unlike the salon’s bossa nova, an utterly different version of her existed. Yet the serious eyes she’d had while holding her shears—those were the same as now. The eyes of someone doing what they love.

 

Outside, the air had turned cool.

April nights are slow to darken. A band of deep indigo still lingered in the western sky, and the rooftop antenna of a building stood in silhouette.

The wind shifted, and I caught the salon’s scent from my own hair. Aujua—that sweet, fruity fragrance. It had survived even the yakitori smoke. It probably wouldn’t fade until morning.

She walked half a step ahead. Both hands shoved in her pockets, humming something. An anime song, probably. She was the type to queue up three anime songs in a row the moment she got to karaoke.

My right hand reached up to touch my own hair. Under my fingertips was the shape she’d made. The hands that had circled my head ninety minutes ago were tucked inside a hoodie’s pockets now. Hands that wielded 120,000-yen cutting shears. Fingers that had washed hundreds of heads. The same hands that had been slapping a pachinko machine last week.

She stopped walking. Turned around. Said something. A passing taxi drowned it out.

She tilted her head and tried again.

“It suits you, that hair.”

In the spring night air, a quiet Kyoto lilt drifted by.

Production Notes

I wrote about the time that exists outside the camera’s frame. Her disinfecting the shears after closing, her face in profile as she checks tomorrow’s appointments while closing out the register. There’s a certain film that makes you want to imagine all those moments that never appear on screen.

“Cute Little Devil Stylist Working at an Indecent Salon: Aoi Kururugi.” The word “little devil” in the title cuts right to the core of who she is. The mischief I wrote into this fantasy—casually brushing his ear mid-cut, keeping a professional face while her eyes alone betray a smile. That precise calibration of “oh, she’s good” is exactly the Aoi Kururugi of this film.

A five-foot-one frame equipped with an apron and a shear case, closing the distance to zero with her client in the sealed world of a salon. The salon setting works because the acts of cutting and washing hair are inherently intimate. You let a stranger touch your head. You close your eyes and surrender your neck. When you think about it, you’re allowing something rather extraordinary. Layer Aoi Kururugi’s little-devil nature on top of that, and your heart rate climbs just from sitting in the salon chair.

A perfect 5.00 review score. Neither the craftsmanship of the occupational setting nor the direction that plays to her character cuts any corners. If you’re weak for the gap between a woman’s no-nonsense everyday self and the moment she reveals her professional edge—this one will get you.

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