AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hanzo chuckles. “Like I said. He doesn’t tend to share.”
Mal moves to stand beside me, his presence steady and grounding as Hanzo begins the lettering on my ribs. The needle buzzes softly, and the familiar sting of ink being pressed permanently into my skin brings both pain and a rush of adrenaline. I watch as the words take shape, a constant reminder etched onto my body.
Memento Vivere.
Remember to live.
When Hanzo finishes, I look down at my skin, at the way the two phrases sit perfectly balanced: a reminder of death, but also of life.
A vow to myself that I won’t waste what time I have left.
After Hanzo wraps and tapes the new ink, I step into the next room to change out of my shirt and into a hospital gown thatHanzo gives me. It’s sleeveless, for the work on my arm, and the back opens, for when we move on to that.
Hanzo draws the koi with a pen, moving up my triceps toward my shoulder, and then starts to prepare the tattoo gun again.
“Wait.”
He stops when I open my mouth, raising his eyes to mine.
“What if…” I chew on my lip for a second before my resolve hardens. “Could we do the koi the old way? Theteboritechnique?”
Hanzo pauses, his eyes locked with mine, peering into me as if he’s reading me again.
“I’ve had it done,” Mal says quietly. “It’s pretty raw, Freya.”
I turn to glance up at him. “Think I can handle it?”
He doesn’t even hesitate.
“I know you can.”
With a small smile, I turn and nod at Hanzo. He dips his chin and then puts the tattoo gun down. I watch as he readies the bundles of sharp sticks, which he tells me are callednomi.
“Tattoo guns hurt at first,” Hanzo says. “But I find that they eventually numb you as the work progresses.”
I literally just experienced that exact phenomenon. Initially, my ribshurt. But after the first few letters of the new memento vivere tattoo, the area did seem to numb.
Hanzo’s face grows serious. “Thenomiwill not numb you,” he says quietly. “Mal is correct. This will be painful.”
“I don’t mind.”
Just the same, I welcome the feel of Mal’s fingers tangling with mine and squeezing as Hanzo leans in.
“Let’s begin.”
He’s right. It hurts like amotherfucker. I feel each and every little prick of thenomibreaking my skin as the koi on my arm beings to take shape.
But while it never turns numb, in a way, the pain becomes a sort of cleansing, mediative thing. Idon’t try to block it out, because that would be impossible. Instead, I breathe deeply and welcome it in. I let it burn its way through me, until there’s nothing left to catch fire. And it’s there that I find a strange sort of peace.
I end up taking a break after the first koi, because my arm is shaking. Hanzo cleans and wraps that piece before I slide out of the chair to grab some water.
“I’ll start in on you while she rests,” Hanzo says to Mal.
Wordlessly, Mal nods. He pulls off his shirt without hesitation, exposing the tattoos that already cover his chest and arms. His body is a canvas of ink, each mark a story, a piece of his life.
Tonight, he’ll add a new story.
One we wrote together.
