Chapter 14 first quarter

I have a dog on my arm. The dog is 3 cm long and has blue fur.Its name is Pochi, and it is a male dog.Although Pochi is not handsome, he has a cute face and a white flower in his mouth. Pochi isn't a real dog, it's just a tiny painting on my skin. My friend Yamada gave me a chance to meet Pochi.Yamada is a smart and beautiful woman who serves as a grade committee member, but like me, she has few friends.In my opinion, the reason why she has few friends is the cherry blossoms on her back.But Yamada didn't seem to be aware of this reason, and that day she was lazily reading a magazine called "Monthly TATTOO".

We were sitting side by side in a dark, invisible corner of the dormitory.The coldness of the concrete came through the skirt, and even my waist felt cold.Under the bright sunshine, there is a group of girls playing volleyball in the distance, and their shouts can be heard from time to time. I don't hate this gloomy feeling. "After I graduate from high school, I plan to learn crafts and inherit my family's business." Yamada muttered something.Her tone was so casual that I almost didn't hear it. We will be in the third year of high school next year, but I have never thought about how to go in the future.

I opened my eyes and looked at Yamada, but she didn't even lift her head, her eyes were still staring at the weird magazine on her lap, and I could only see a cool smile on the corner of her mouth. "That means you are going to learn to be a Zhaqing master?" Yamada nodded. "Recently, the number of female tattoo masters has increased, and a woman has also come to my father's place, who learns tattoos. By the way..." Yamada closed the magazine and looked at me who was sitting next to her with my hand on my forehead. "Suzuki, you haven't been to my store yet, have you? Let's play in my store after school today. Hey, what's wrong with you? You look so pale."

"It's okay, it's just because you suddenly mentioned such a big event, it made me feel sick." "Thinking of throwing up? What are you throwing up? Spit up the chow mein bread you just ate?" Yamada's father is a tattoo artist, mainly doing Japanese painting tattoos, tattooing images of dragons and carp on customers' backs. In my opinion, Yamada's store looks a bit like a barber shop, and it is very clean, which surprised me. "I imagined that there would be someone's handwriting scribbled by a master calligrapher on the billboard." The front of the store has a good feeling, with the words "TATTOO" written in gold on the door.

"It doesn't seem to be so bohemian." I said that to Yamada, and she looked at me, folded her arms and sighed. "Not all the customers are what you think, oh, because our store is mainly engaged in Japanese painting tattoos, so people from this industry will also come. There are also many young people who come to get tattoos." "Did the guests tattoo some Guanyin pictures and take them home?" "That's not true. There are all kinds of patterns. Some people choose from catalogs, and some people design their own patterns in advance and bring them to our store."

Push open the glass door and walk into the store, facing the waiting room.There is a potted houseplant in the waiting room and a plain black sofa.The walls are white and clean, like a dentist's waiting room. Yamada asked me to sit in the waiting room while he went to the back of the store.I took a book off the stock shelf, thinking it was a magazine, but it wasn't.There are many photos and illustrations of tattoos in the book, which seems to be a catalog of tattoos. There are many kinds of patterns such as flames, stars, and hearts. Suddenly, a person's shadow was projected onto the magazine in my hand.I looked up, and it turned out to be a tall woman I didn't know looking down at me.Their eyes met, so she greeted with a smile.

"Hello." What she spoke was blunt Japanese, and it turned out to be a foreigner. Beside her stood Yamada. "This person is now learning tattoos in our shop, and he is Chinese." I panicked, not only because it was the first time I met a foreigner face to face, but also because she was very beautiful.The woman is wearing a black suit, tinted glasses and numerous earrings on her ears. The Chinese raised his ring finger and said "please take care of me".At this moment, I completely became her fan.As I introduced myself in a tense tone, I thought to myself: If I were a man, I must knock her out and take her home.

"She's actually leaving Japan." So disappointed. "Are you going back to China?" She shook her head. It is said that she wanted to study laser technology in the United States.I don't understand why she wants to learn laser, but I heard that she needs to use laser when removing tattoos, but this technology is not yet developed in Japan. "I'm here today to say goodbye to Master." The Chinese explained in broken Japanese. "This person's tattoos are beautiful. By the way, Suzuki, if you finally come here, let her give you a tattoo."

Normally, I would have rejected Yamada's proposal, but fifteen minutes later I was sitting in the back of the store, firmly rolling up my left sleeve.Who made me fall in love with this Chinese? I can't help it. There are beds and chairs in the store, which really looks like a hospital consultation room.It is estimated that guests who are going to get tattoos on their backs should lie prone on this bed. I was going to get a tattoo on the upper part of my left arm, so I was ordered to sit on a chair. "A lot of people get tattoos on the upper left arm for the first time."

Yamada sat on the bed, swayed his legs and said to me. "Hey, Yamada, I don't have any money with me, is that okay?" "It's okay, she doesn't seem to be going to ask for your money today." I looked at the Chinese sister, who was sterilizing the shiny silver needles and other equipment. After hearing what Yamada said, she nodded with a smile on her face.Originally, a tattoo seemed to cost 5,000 to 10,000 yen. The room was illuminated by fluorescent lamps as if it were daytime, without a speck of dust, it seemed to be a sterile room.A vase of white flowers stood by the window, and the blackout shade was only half drawn.An owl clock hangs on the wall.

Next to the chair is a litter box.I peeked inside and found some rolled up, blood-stained Kleenex.I suddenly felt uneasy. "Will it hurt?" Yamada narrowed his eyes maliciously and replied: "It hurts." "Really?" "In fact, everyone's situation may be different. Some people feel pain, and some people fell asleep when they were pierced. Suzuki, you should be fine, let's just think so." The Chinese sister sat down on another chair next to me and started tattooing. I took a long breath to calm myself down. As for what pattern to tattoo, I decided before I was brought into this room.I just said to the Chinese sister: "You can stab a puppy for me." She also answered "OK" readily, and then showed me the illustration collection, which has many pictures of dogs.In the waiting room I have already decided which pattern to sew. When I flipped through the illustrated collection, I suddenly felt a kind of fate-like fate on one of the pages.There was a picture of a dog on that page, and it stayed in my mind for a long time.I thought at the time: If this dog is my lucky charm, how wonderful it would be to keep it with me for the rest of my life.So I decided to stab this pattern in an instant.I wrote down the number of pages on that page and told my sister in China.She raised her thumb and said, "Leave it to me." It seems that the pattern should be copied first on the place where the tattoo will be drawn.The Chinese sister seems to be very familiar with this task, and she uses tracing paper.The principle seems to be this: use carbon paper to copy the draft onto tracing paper, and apply medicine on the upper part of my left arm to receive the pattern, so that the pattern is copied on my skin. Although Yamada explained it to me in this way, I didn't listen to it at all.Every time the beautiful face of my Chinese sister approaches me, there will be a kind of fragrance, I am not in the mood to listen to Yamada's explanation.In fact, I didn't even look at the pattern drawn. The next step is to use the machine to thread the thread.The Chinese sister took out a device made of three needles and threaded threads on my skin.Being timid, I turned my face away and closed my eyes, but it didn't seem to hurt that much.This feeling is like pulling out hair with tweezers, and there are several consecutive pains in a second. I relaxed a little and looked at the dog pattern on my arm. Then the owl clock rang, and the hooting of the owl sounded very silly. "Suzuki, do you want to read this book? You can read it with only your right hand." Yamada thought about me carefully. "Well, I want to look at that illustrated book again, and I want to see that puppy." The Chinese sister brought other utensils, this time the utensil seemed to be a row of needles, two or three more needles than the utensil just now.This seems to be used for shading. While flipping through the illustration book, I wiped the sweat that was seeping from my brow. "It really still hurts?" "Well, a little bit." Actually, it doesn't hurt much, but I still answered Yamada like this. Then the Chinese sister used a bunch of tied needles to color.The number of needles increased to about fourteen. It took a total of about an hour to finally finish. "Although the color looks weird now, it will turn into a beautiful color in a few days." I looked at the pattern of the blue puppy tattooed on the upper part of my left arm, and thanked my Chinese sister. She seemed very satisfied with her job, she nodded, and she left here in ten minutes to prepare for crossing the United States.I'm sorry, I wish I had taken a commemorative photo just now. "Her craft is so good, the dog pattern is so small, but she draws it so cute." "I've already figured it out, this dog is called Pochi." Pochi is now sitting obediently facing me on my left arm.As if it wanted to ask a question, it tilted its head and held a white flower in its mouth.Pochi is very small. "By the way, I didn't have the nerve to say it just now. Does that Chinese person often mishear the Japanese spoken by others?" "Well, I sometimes hear it wrong. But she has only studied Japanese for a year, and she is already very good at speaking. How did you think of this?" I showed Yamada a collection of dog illustrations.The page I turned to had a very fierce dog drawn on it, as if it wanted to eat people.It was drooling from its mouth and looked real. Yamada frowned. "It's a great picture." "I should tell that Chinese sister the page number of this page." That's how I met Pochi semi-accidentally, but I still had to live with the itch for the next few days.The place where the tattoo was done was very itchy, but Yamada told me not to scratch it with my hands. After three days, the itching of the tattoo was gone, and Pochi's blue color became brighter.I feel like the tattoo is part of me, which is great.It's not the one I wanted, but it's not bad either.I often look at the puppy on the upper left arm, and I can't help but want to smile on my face. "Did you buy anything nice recently?" Misa put down the cup of iced coffee and asked me that. We were in a coffee shop at the time, and Mei Shahui and I sat face to face at a table, chatting casually.The shop played soft music and turned on the air conditioner.The sunlight outside the glass window was very strong, and many office workers in suits came and went. "Why do you ask that?" "I see you've been humming an inexplicable song just now, the one that sounds like a malfunctioning tape recorder. When you hum that song, it usually means you got something good, so I thought you bought a watch what?" I have lived with Mei Shahui for so long, she seems to see through me. "Yeah, well, I got a good thing, kind of like that." I touched the tattooed puppy through the school uniform, and the puppy was tightly hidden in my sleeve, so it couldn't be seen from the outside. Mei Sae did not continue to ask, and turned her eyes to the ice cubes in the glass. It was quite a coincidence that I ran into Mei Sae on the street that day.I was on my way home from school when she didn't see me and was walking in front of me.I called her, and when she turned around, an ambiguous smile appeared on her face the moment she saw me. That kind of smile is a complex expression that cannot be described in words. Mei Sae looked very tired, and heard her say that she had just returned from the hospital and asked about her husband's diagnosis.I never even knew about her husband's illness. Meisha stared at the black liquid in the cup in fascination, motionless, as if she had forgotten me in front of her. From her heavy expression, it could be deduced that her husband's diagnosis was not satisfactory. "Hi, are you okay?" Misae seemed surprised when she heard me talking to her.She raised her head and replied with a forced smile: "The air conditioner in this store is a bit high." Hearing Mei Shahui's words, I nodded, touched my arm, and found that goose bumps had already appeared.I thought of a puppy living under the goosebumps, and I suddenly had a strange feeling. "By the way, dog..." I was surprised that Mei Shahui suddenly mentioned the word "dog". Maybe we do have a little sympathy for each other, and we have a tacit understanding. "You don't know, I sometimes smell the smell of dogs, maybe it's from the neighbor's house, pets are not allowed in our apartment." She took a deep breath of air, "Do you think this house Does the store smell of dogs too?" "How can it smell like a dog? You must be thinking too much." After leaving the coffee shop, the heat that I had long forgotten came back again, and I was sweating all over.I don't know if the tattoo part will also sweat? I also paid for the chocolate parfait, apple pie and milk tea I ordered. I was bored outside the store waiting for her to finish the bill and come out.There is a small flower bed next to the store door, and the leaves inside are very bright green.I sat on the edge of the flower bed and stretched out my legs deliberately.Mei Shahui reprimanded me angrily: "Pay attention to the image!" "Today the doctor told me 'your husband has cancer'. He has stomach cancer and he has only six months to live." In the tram, Meisa leaned her body on the handrail, her eyes were always looking at the receding scenery outside the window.Said to me. It was a rare day for the whole family to get together.I am most afraid of family gatherings, and I seldom eat with everyone.I kept staring at my father, Fan Nan, at the dinner table, and my relationship with him was not very good.He doesn't seem to be happy with anything his daughter does, and we haven't even spoken much lately. His father, Fan Nan, was originally a man of unsmiling, he never opened his mouth to laugh, nor would he specifically make anyone happy.He didn't get rich either, I don't understand why his hair fell out.I really don't know anything about my father. He drank beer and ate leisurely.When he finally finished eating, he touched his belly and said: "The stomach ulcer seems to be serious recently." It seems that Mei Sae hasn't told him the truth yet.