“I have a photoshoot next week for a newspaper article about rising artists,” says Miho, fingering her ends self-consciously. “I told Ara I might just dye it blue tomorrow. Electric blue. I’ve always wanted electric blue hair, like Powerade.”
“Whoa, whoa. Take it one step at a time,” I say. “Give yourself a week at least to think about it. I wouldn’t recommend doing such drastic things all at once because you might regret it.”
Sujin pokes me from behind.
“See?” she says. “You would be such a natural for that job. That’s exactly what Manager Koo said to me during my first consultation. Then she sneakily recommended a dozen more things I should do.”
* * *
—
YEARS AGO, back when I was still conflicted about whether to proceed with my surgeries, I went to a well-known fortune-teller who told me that shaving my jaw would take away all the luck that follows in old age. But when she took down my name and date and time of birth and calculated my saju and my future, her face changed. She said that my later years held only terrible luck, so I should try everything I could to alter my fate.
Grimacing in pity, she told me that because of the shape of my nose, all the money that would flow into my life would flow right out again. And she told me that I had the weakest luck in love—that it would be best to marry late, if at all. She said I had the same saju as a famous historical commander, who went to war knowing he had nothing to lose because he knew the fortune of his later years, and he died with honor and glory.
It is easy to leap if you have no choice.
* * *
—
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I find myself sitting in the waiting room of Cinderella Clinic, skittish with nerves for the first time in all my visits here. I place a hand on my right knee to try to stop it from shaking, but it’s taken on a savage life of its own.
Usually when I’m here, I pass the time judging the other patients, with their oversized sunglasses and overinjected noses, typing furiously on their phones with both thumbs. Make sure Yo-han isn’t late for his Lego lesson. Did you hear that Daesu got into XX school? Or something scathing to their husbands, I am sure, although I cannot imagine what texting a husband is like. Honey, I made your favorite doenjang stew so please come home for dinner for once in your life. Or, those lipstick marks on your shirt collar wouldn’t come off so I cut it up into ribbons while you were snoring, have a nice day!
Today, however, I focus on the staff behind the desks. Three of the four pink-blazered assistants I know well but the fourth must be new. She looks young and cautious, and keeps darting glances at the other assistants typing on either side of her. I give her a hard once-over. What made them pick her? She looks stupidly timid and not pretty at all—she has not had much surgery—just her eyes and maybe filler as far as I can tell. Her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail and her hairline is an embarrassment of uneven, patchy fuzz. I touch my own hair out of habit. Even if I haven’t been to the salon in two weeks, my nightly hair masks have ensured that my ends are silky as seaweed.
The other assistants have been here for years, since I have started coming here. They are nice enough, with syrupy sweet voices and brutal efficiency in getting you to pay up front. They have a very particular way of making you feel as if you are lucky to be a patient here, while also giving the impression that they are secretly looking down on you, so that you end up spending a lot of money to force their respect.
Hoping that they will glance up from their screens, I try to infuse admiration into my face. My cheek muscles hurt from all this beaming.