Dyed in Your Color

Weak to Elder Sister's Pleading

“Is… that so?” was all she could reply in the end. “Still—”

“Laurel!” a man suddenly called. Laurel and Lance heard loud footsteps before they ever saw who was making all that racket. Samuel Flint reached them seemingly at the speed of light, planting himself between the two with no hesitation. “Is this guy bothering you?”

“No!” Laurel answered quickly. “No, no, President, he’s a member of the theater club. He was just asking about our casting problem.”

Being prideful, Samuel couldn’t muster any sort of answer after being corrected. Lance gave him a single nod of acknowledgment before dismissing him altogether. He turned to Laurel again.

“Please give my suggestion some thought,” he said. After bowing to her respectfully, he left.

Once it was just the two of them on that sunlit and airy corridor, there was an awkward silence between Laurel and Samuel.

The latter broke it by clearing his throat. Putting on the face of the “club president,” he asked, “So… what was that all about?”

Laurel briefly considered if she should say something, but she eventually shook her head. “I’m not quite sure yet.”

In the end, Laurel’s caution and sisterly consideration were wasted.

When she and the president arrived at the club room of the film club, the other members present were already abuzz with excitement, and the reason was that very same photo that Lance had shown her.

That time, she didn’t think to wonder where it had come from, but she heard the full story now.

Additionally, it appeared that it wasn’t just her and Lance who thought that her brother Xian was perfect for that role they were having problems casting.

“Big Sis,” said Kiara Jin, who walked up to Laurel and took both her hands in hers. “This is where we’re gonna need your help.”

Laurel was reluctant. “You want me to convince him to take the role?”

“At this point, even just getting him to audition would be enough,” Kiara answered, knowing the difficult position they were putting their senior in. “We’ll take things from there if necessary. So please, Big Sis? Try asking him for us?”

“There’s no guarantee he’ll listen to me,” Laurel replied, torn between two duties.

“Psht, what are you talking about?” said one of Laurel’s friends, who was also in the same club. “Everyone here knows that your two brothers are weak to their elder sister’s pleading.”

Unable to deny this in good conscience, Laurel could only sigh. “Let me think about it.”

Back in the cafeteria, Xian sneezed for the third time in the last half hour.

Chase looked at him with a mixture of concern and disgust. “You catching a cold or something?”

Xian flicked his nose twice. “Don’t think so,” he replied in a feigned confused tone. With one swift but sweeping look at the crowded cafeteria, he could tell that the spread of his picture was still going strong, along with the puzzling hype it was generating. He looked at Chase in all seriousness and continued, “I think it’s just the hazard of being popular—you wouldn’t know about this.”

Chase rightly gave him a punch in the abdomen for his trouble. “Oomf!”

***

The next day, Xian’s lecture in the afternoon was canceled, so he had only morning classes.

Before the whole wig incident had happened, even when he no longer had afternoon classes, he would still stay to have lunch with his friends before going home or killing time somewhere on- or off-campus.

Now, Xian found that he didn’t have the stomach to return to the cafeteria and experience a repeat of what happened the previous day. Also, it didn’t seem like there was anywhere within the campus where he wouldn’t be recognized and pointed at by anyone.

Bright and friendly though he may be, he never wished to become the constant center of attention, subject to everyone’s admiration, envy, and even ill feelings.

He just wanted to be as he was, without ever needing to be concerned about what others thought of him.

As Xian went out of his way to take what looked like the least-traveled path out of the campus, he mused that he’d always thought he was good at that, at not letting other people’s opinions weigh him down or limit his freedom.

It was turning out that it had been easy for him to do that before only because he was largely invisible to others anyway. Other than the people he was closest to, no one paid much attention to what he did, and no one cared except to show concern.

Now he found himself in so many people’s radar. Temporary or not, in this kind of situation, it was more difficult than he’d expected not to feel self-conscious almost all the time.

If it was only the good kind of attention… Even if he found it tiring, Xian was confident he would not have minded things as much.

But after the initial rush of well-meaning jokes and teasing from girls and guys alike, the inevitable snide comments and mean remarks—from girls and guys alike—soon followed. It put a damper to a situation that Xian didn’t find all that amusing in the first place.

He paused at a narrow and deserted cobblestone path that curved and forked in several directions through the trees, and he realized that he didn’t know where he was. After randomly choosing another direction, he continued both his walk and his musings.

It wasn’t even his own idea to put on that wig. He did decide to play along at some point, but at the time, he'd thought his only other choice was to express anger. Will’s thoughtless prank didn’t seem to merit such an extreme reaction.

In fact, the way he saw it, anger would have looked even more suspicious.

Looking back, he recognized that there were more options he could have taken. For instance, he could have pulled the wig off, pretended to be angry, then laughed it off while trying to pull the same prank on his friend. The two of them were always messing around anyway; this would have been nothing new.

So… the question he had to ask himself now was…

Why did he think that there were only those two options?

That he could only either be angry or play along?