Riku Can't Be a Goddess by Kumi Tamaru

Author:Kumi Tamaru [Tamaru, Kumi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: light novel
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Published: 2024-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

***

I’d struggled with insecurity about my hair since childhood. My mom had gotten pregnant with me in high school, and my father and his family moved to a town far away before I was born. I’d only seen his face in photos; he probably didn’t even know the sex of his own child.

It’d be giving my mother far too much credit to say she worked as hard as she could to raise me as a single parent after that. She went through one rocky relationship after another, and my last name changed more times than I cared to count. I hated having to explain the situation to my friends each time that happened.

“Was your real dad foreign, Hikaru-chan?”

Since I’d been born with light-brown hair and eyes, I was barraged with thoughtless questions like that all the time. My friends might’ve asked out of mere jealousy over my appearance, but I’d never forget overhearing my own grandparents whispering about the same thing late at night. However westernized Japanese people were becoming, no one around me had such light hair.

Back in junior high, one boy in my class had actually complimented me. “Your hair’s so cool, Iguchi.”

We’d been smack in the middle of puberty, a period when boys and girls rarely interacted, but he was a popular kid who’d gotten along with everyone.

At the time, my female classmates were spreading rumors that I dyed my hair. I guess having a Japanese-looking face but lighter hair and eyes didn’t seem believable. However many times I denied their accusations, no one believed me. That boy was the only one who believed me.

A lot of girls in my class didn’t like that I was friendly with him.

When we came back after a junior-high summer vacation, one girl showed up with lightened hair. “Iguchi-san has brown hair, so we should be allowed to dye ours too,” she said.

From that point on, they started coloring their hair, one after another. It wound up becoming a big problem at school. Eventually, the girls who’d lightened their hair—and me—were called to the staff room and told, “You all need to redye your hair black.”

“This is my natural hair color,” I’d protested.

“You need to dye yours too, Iguchi. School rules state that everyone needs black hair.”

What the staff were asking seemed completely unreasonable to me, but the other girls were appeased; they redyed their hair immediately. I bought a home hair-dye kit and colored my hair black, but that was just the start of the hell awaiting me.

My hair didn’t hold color; not long after I dyed it, it would fade back to brown. Whenever that happened, the other girls tattled, and I’d be called back to the staff room and coerced into dyeing it again. My hair eventually got so damaged, and my scalp so irritated, that I had to chop off most of the hair I’d worked so hard to grow out.

My mother was so infatuated with her new partner that she paid no attention to my plight. When I told her I needed to go to a salon for a haircut, she just handed over money.

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