Chapter 57:
It Was Just a Tattoo
“WHAT ARE YOU looking at?” Xie Qingcheng finished washing his hands, wiped them dry with a couple of tissues, and glanced mildly at He Yu.
The young He Yu asked, “Doctor Xie, on your wrist…”
Xie Qingcheng’s eyes darkened. He looked down to see that his sleeves were rolled up high enough to reveal the skin above his wrist and immediately went to pull them back down. But it was too late. He Yu was already asking, “What does it say?”
Xie Qingcheng didn’t answer for a few seconds, his motions stiff as he unbuttoned his cuffs and smoothed them back out. Then he said with an indifferent expression, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
He Yu recognized the quote: it was the same one carved into the grave of the English poet John Keats. “Why did you get that tattooed? You like tombstones?”
Xie Qingcheng rolled his eyes, lifting his wrist to refasten the button of his sleeve properly. “I like Keats.”
In those days, He Yu usually didn’t talk back to Xie Qingcheng. Even though he was thinking, “Just because you like Keats doesn’t mean you have to tattoo his epitaph on your arm,” he didn’t ask any more questions. It was clear from Xie Qingcheng’s unhappy expression that he didn’t feel like wasting his breath on him.
He figured, though, that Xie Xue probably liked her brother’s weird taste, so she must approve of him inking an epitaph onto his own body. With that thought in mind, he went to a tattoo parlor near his school that very same night.
The owner welcomed him with a broad smile and handed him several thick volumes of reference images. He Yu lowered his head and looked through those pages full of flying gods and supernatural creatures for a while as the owner gave a steady stream of recommendations.
“The most popular one is this flying dragon tattoo. Look at these claws, it—”
“Are there any epitaphs?” He Yu interrupted.
“Huh? Epitaphs?” the owner repeated, confused.
Of course, the tattoo parlor didn’t have any samples of something so bizarre, but the owner had seen shady characters from many walks of life come through his shop with all sorts of peculiar requests. As a result, after a beat of surprise, he continued his enthusiastic recommendations. “I don’t have epitaphs, but if you want some cooler words, young man, ‘om mani padme hum’ is very popular right now.”
He Yu smiled courteously. “In that case, I’ll decide on one myself.”
In the end, he gave three lines to the parlor owner.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
Into something rich and strange.
“This is quite long,” said the owner, “so it will hurt for quite a while. Plus, it has to be broken into several lines. Would you like to find something shorter?”
He Yu said, “It’s fine, I want this one.”
There were, in fact, shorter Latin epitaphs on the graves of other poets, but He Yu wanted something exactly like Xie Qingcheng’s—a long line of text wrapping around his wrist like a bracelet—so he chose this poem that had been engraved onto a tombstone.
When the owner rolled up He Yu’s sleeve, he received a great shock. “Aiya, you have so many scars here! What happened here? Are people bullying you in school—a good-looking kid like you? And they all look like knife wounds?”
He Yu frowned. “Can’t you tattoo over scars?”
“I can. Of course I can. I can put it here, over this really obvious one, to cover it up…”
“There’s no need to cover it up. I want the tattoo slightly above my wrist.” He Yu gestured at the spot, “Right here. Thank you for your trouble.”
Thus, the verses were inked, burning like a brand on the youth’s wrist. The flesh reddened where it had been pierced as the slanting letters of specially formulated ink sank into his skin. He Yu looked at the tattoo, feeling deeply satisfied, and left the little tattoo parlor after paying the bill.
But he hadn’t anticipated that he would be allergic to the tattoo ink.
He woke up the next day feeling dizzy. Not only was the writing on his wrist so inflamed it was unreadable, but his head ached and burned from the allergic reaction.
Unfortunately, that hapless little brother of his was having a celebration later that day for starting school. He Jiwei and Lü Zhishu were both with their younger son in Yanzhou—which was all fine, except that Lü Zhishu called He Yu seven or eight times to remind him to join the video call with his brother on his computer.
“As his elder brother, and as an example to everyone, don’t you think you ought to wish your little brother smooth sailing in his studies?” Lü Zhishu had nagged.
On top of having a distant relationship with his parents, He Yu was proud and withdrawn, so he wasn’t willing to say anything that made him look soft or weak in front of them. Naturally, he couldn’t tell Lü Zhishu that he was sick. So he pulled himself upright, grabbed his laptop, and curled up on the sofa. When the time for the video call came, he opened the webcam and put on his flawless mask of perfection, sending his congratulations to the people on the other end of the call in a manner perfectly befitting the occasion.
Suddenly, a slender hand reached past him from behind and unequivocally slammed the laptop on his knees shut, ending the video transmission. He Yu twisted around in astonishment to see Xie Qingcheng standing behind the sofa.
Xie Qingcheng, with his broad shoulders and long legs and poker face, lowered his peach-blossom eyes to look down at He Yu from above. “You should rest properly if you’re sick.”
“I wasn’t done talking to them yet,” He Yu protested.