Dye Dye Dye (Susan & Zane)

The Backlight District was as bustling with activity as ever as Susan floated through streams of people on autopilot, nose buried in her tablet and ignoring the several close calls she had almost ramming into the stalls of aggravated vendors. The massive shopping district may as well have been a second home to her. Well, third home. First was her office in Vista Square which she was more than happy to net the closed-door one at the end so she could put furniture in it. Honestly she had probably taken more power naps on her designer leather couch at work than in her own bed. Second, well, her own house. But that was irrelevant, home was where you made it and Susan was more than willing enough to put in the hours. If only she could keep on one task. Even out in a relaxed environment such as the Backlight District's multilevel strip mall she was dressed to the nines like any other day and cheating on work with other work. Her boss had dragged her away from analyzing expense reports to conduct "open market research". Which was honestly quite fun, or would be if it were anyone else's responsibility but Susan's. Essentially she was to go window shopping for a few hours to get a solid grasp of the local economic scene and take note of growing business opportunities with which they could repeat, but poor Sue couldn't leave a task unfinished. And there she was, floating like a lost soul through other happy shoppers running over spreadsheets when she should have been slightly enjoying herself.

"...so the stock of Smoke and Mirrors Media has fallen for it's 3rd day... no surprise considering... could mark current trends... hmm... individual media outlets are a poor choice for investment because... changing taste... but establishments... suggested buying opportunity in an early market...?" muttered the businesswoman to herself, adrift in her self-created labyrinth of numbers and vague ideas. Data points swirled behind her eyes, connecting them like stars as they began to spell out a picture before her... distracting her completely from the railing she accidentally doubled over.
"OofFAAAH!" she screamed in shock, knocking the wind out of herself as reality hit her like a pallet of concrete. Susan desperately flailed for her tablet, it having come dislodged from her grasped and now precariously balanced on her fingertips as it threatened to jump loose from her hands and take Express Elevator Gravity from the second floor to the first. With a mighty lunge she managed to grab hold of it, kicking her legs in victory... when it occurred to her that she was half way over the railing and her feet couldn't touch the ground.

The space cadet lurched backward and fell on her bottom in a daze before jumping to her feet and looking around to find... that everyone... saw that... Susan's face grew hot and red as she dusted herself off quickly and scurried off with her face pressed to the glass of her precious device so that she wouldn't need to meet anyone's gaze. After a few moments, feeling safe, the timid businesswoman felt as if she could finally turn down her heart rate but the damage was already done. Her mind wasn't in the right place to go back to her spreadsheets. Locked into the real world she decided to actually start attending to the task her boss had sent her here to accomplish. Open market research.

After a bit of browsing Susan had decided on a less-popular boutique for personal reasons. For one boutiques were highly competitive and a good hairdresser could make or break a business, so it seemed like an easy place to invest in. For two, she wasn't actually due back to her usual hairdresser for another week and a half and didn't want to feel awkward about it. Her brain began to fill with imaginary uncomfortable conversations and Susan once again began to mentally check out as she pushed the door open, guiding herself to what was obviously a waiting chair with a blank stare regardless of whether or not there were any personnel waiting for more clients. Susan sat with her usual mousy posture, legs tight together, hands on her knees, pitched forward slightly to make herself seem smaller as she stared into space while she mentally tried to weave herself through conversations that were only in her head and probably wouldn't happen.

Having finished doing a trim for a customer not too long ago, and having no one waiting in line for the current moment, Zane took the opportunity to head upstairs for a bit to log some stuff that would make filing business matters later in the day easier. Might as well use every bit of available time he could get while in the midst of working hours to lessen any potential extensions that could happen. Free time could be hard to find at times when you had to juggle work as well as attending school, and as much as of a repetitive pain in the ass business procedures could be, the faster they were out of the way, the sooner he could afford to kick back for a while. Nothing better than knowing you had some chill time ahead of you.

He would only manage to finish about half of what he had set out to do before he heard the door open downstairs, but any progress was a good thing, right? After taking a hot second to quick save what he had been working on, he would head down to attend to whoever had come in a moment ago. Dressed in a casual pair of black pants and a gray shirt with his sleeves rolled up, the young man would walk towards the waiting lady with a greeting. "Welcome. Is there any way I can help you?"

...and then she would ask "What's the occasion? Did you meet someone?" and I would say "no" but Gretchen would just keep pressing her and pressing her and I would begin to feel like a failure because the only date I've ever been on was with Chris right before Senior Prom and then would come the "Oh but you're so pretty"s and "I bet guys all over would get in line for you" and it would be incredibly terribly embarrassing. I simply can't be asked to deal with that right now, I'm... an important company woman and I have bigger things on my mind and I can't let...

Susan had not even realized that there was anyone in the same room as she was while she poured over imaginary chat logs in scenarios only she could see in her mind's eye, making faces in reaction to things that didn't happen and probably never would. It had only taken until he had said something and moved a bit closer for her to react to him. Even still it had taken her a few silent seconds to process that a human being was interacting with her before the woman was able to shake herself away from her own little world.


Her statement was matter-of-fact rather than inquisitive as if she was attempting to convince herself that she existed in physical space and not inside her own head, her eyes becoming a little less vacant as they locked with those of the hairdresser. He certainly looked... trendy. It wasn't exactly what Susan was expecting, but that wasn't to say it was a bad thing. Most others in this profession she interacted with were higher-end and did things by the numbers, very professional people like herself, but this young man looked incredibly hip with his piercings and dyed hair but avoided coming off as a miscreant or a punk. Susan suddenly felt a little too old to be here, she couldn't manage to pull off an avant garde look as well as he did and she assumed his clientele were just as fashionable. But she was already here and it would be incredibly rude to leave without getting something done.

...she hadn't realized that she had been staring at the hairdresser for several more seconds without saying anything before her eyes widened in mild surprise and she set herself to the task at hand.
"Y-yes, I was looking to have a dye job done. I have an important meeting in the future and my roots are starting to show. Are you able to do eyebrows?" inquired the space cadet. It would certainly attest to his abilities if he could, hair dyeing was fairly difficult to do perfectly which was part of the reason she was so apprehensive with having someone she had not met or had seen a portfolio on handle it. It was at the least much more favorable than the alternative, asking for a trim and having to live with the results for months good or ill. Susan remained seated, awaiting movement or signal from the young man that she should have a seat in his barber's chair.

Zane would offer the woman a laid-back smile, not really minding that she took a moment to notice he had come around. Perhaps she was a spacey person? Well, that was something to put in the back of his mind in case there was a reason for him to ask later. "Yeah." As much as he may come off less high-class and professional due to his choice of outfit and the like, he wasn't the one to seem rude by bothering the customers about their personal matters out of the blue. Unless it was somehow important for the job, or they themselves struck up a chat. He was fine with a bit of chit-chat when it was offered. It took away from the monotone job of doing the hair. Not that he couldn't work in silence, but if there's a way to make it more entertaining, why not take it, right?

The young man would nod when she presented her request. "I can do my best based on what exactly you'd like the results to be." He didn't really do eyebrows and the like often, as most of his customers focused on the hair part of the spectrum, but it was a little addition that wasn't too tough to handle, as long as the demand wasn't something too outrageous. After all, he wasn't running a business that focused mostly on that. Nevertheless, it was something that could be done.

The young man strangely enough would not force his opinion on the matter. Most hair dressers she had met would attempt to put their own perspectives and input on a certain look they would assume their client would look best with or what they were going for. True, if you were going to make a career from grooming people to look their best you would or should consider yourself a fashionista and keep up with the latest trends. But he did not, he left it completely up to her. To Susan this meant one of two things: either this trendy individual was incredibly skilled at his profession and could meet any style or need that a client wishes... or he was simply there to collect a paycheck and didn't care. The second prospect frightened her somewhat, this was her hair they were talking about. If something went wrong it would be a mistake she would live with for months. In any normal circumstance Susan would no longer be here and resign herself to seeing her usual hair dresser at the end of next week, but... she had already imposed herself and it would be rude to excuse herself so suddenly. This was something that she had to see through.

The businesswoman swallowed and steeled herself for the delicate change to her routine and the possibility that it would upset the gentle little flow of normalcy she had created.
"Well... I wanted to have it dyed black. L-like it is now, but the color's starting to fade a little and it's lighter than I would like it to be, but it needs to still look natural and not like one of those artificially black dye jobs that are raven black more like a reflective healthy black because I think people can tell between those two shades of black because I certainly can and I have already given the impression that this is my natural color so... O-oh, and my eyebrows. Does that make sense?" Susan prattled on nervously. She felt it in her best interest to communicate exactly what she wanted in order to minimize the dye job coming out a different way than. The young man's response had made her a little antsy even if it had taken away the awkwardness of the potential back-and-forth that would likely come from her insistence that she did not want to try anything new.

But it was almost intimidating how he had claimed his ability without asking what she had wanted, expecting her to tell him why she was there. It forced her to speak up, something she wasn't the best at, and she was a little lost in the etiquette of the situation. He had not yet gestured to any open chair so she was unsure if she should continue to try taking more initiative or...? I-it was safer to stay seated where she was instead of assume and look like she didn't have a grasp of the conversation. Or would it be more wrong to do nothing and force him to ask or tell her? Susan's eyes began to glaze over again in fret as she tried to weave through whether or not she should brazenly take a chair or be told to do so first, inadvertently making that choice herself as she continued to stay frozen in her seat.