The Cutting Edge completed The Cutting Edge AUTHOR: amber_rose 
LEAD: D.O.
GENRE; SETTING: drama, fluff; general
CHAPTERS: 42
READER INFORMATION: None  

"All you need is a pair of good scissors to get you through the day."

That was what her father said to her when she first stepped into the shop, and that was the motto that she lived by ever since.

Small town girl Song Hyejin grew up with a pair of scissors in her hand, spending her high school days in her father's barber shop cutting crew cuts for young men who were about to enlist in the army; this was how she was intending to spend the rest of her life. When top star Kim Kai walks into the shop one rainy day demanding that she give him a haircut even thought it is past opening hours, her life gets thrown straight into a raging hurricane known as the world of showbiz.

Enter Do Kyungsoo, hairstylist to the celebrities, touted by all the country's fashion magazines as the golden hands that could catapult anyone, literally anyone, from obscurity to stardom. When his limelight gets stolen unceremoniously by the head of hair atop one Kim Kai (whom he had callously rejected to style just days before), his ego takes a beating that he will never forget.

When he finds out who it is who was responsible for his humiliation, he vows to show this clueless suburban girl what it truly means to be hair-raisingly good with a pair of scissors...

thoughts PLOT: Hyejin is perfectly happy in her father's barber shop, but when an old acquaintance (Kai) tips up needing a haircut after another stylist turns into a disaster, Hyejin's forced to join The Cutting Edge salon so that Kai won't lose his exclusive contract with them and cause a scandal. (She doesn't even want to do that, either, but family problems and a gambling brother taking her advance payment and signing her up in any case force her to.) D.O., in a funk after being jilted by his girlfriend, who he was planning to propose to, slips into a blue mood and returns to The Cutting Edge several days later to discover a new employee without proper training who he hasn't vetted knocking about, and as the creative director, he is absolutely furious. He tries to convince her to leave, and then kick her out (which is made difficult by the fact that she's already tied in to at least six months of her contract, thanks to her brother), but after falling into a trap of his own making and deciding to mentor Hyejin on a competitive trainee programme for admitting a couple of new interns into The Cutting Edge, his initial plan being to neglect her and make life so bad for her that she'd quit or get dropped, he realises that he actually has to teach her or he's going to ruin his own stellar reputation.

And then there's the other trainee, Hannah, who's determined to make Hyejin fail, and Kai, who is trying to