Sheng Sui would never abandon Zhou Shiyu.

“We have previous finished works here for reference. Of course, if you brought photos or your own design, under normal circumstances, we can also do those.”

“Good, thank you.”

The tattoo shop was two stories high with a modest floor area. Sheng Sui sat down on the hard sofa in the first-floor reception hall and accepted the iPad handed over by the round-faced girl, lowering her head.

Different from what she had expected, the tattoo shop—whose even the tablet case followed the black-red-white punk style—displayed finished work samples of surprisingly diverse types.

Cyberpunk style, fresh and clean aesthetics, minimalist sketch style—everything was available, which quite surprised Sheng Sui.

In her stereotypical impression, anything involving tattoos would only bring to mind full back pieces and sleeve tattoos as her first reaction.

“I can tell at a glance that this is your first tattoo.”

The receptionist attending to Sheng Sui was a tall northern girl with sweet features who had shaved a cool asymmetrical undercut. She spoke in a straightforward manner:

“Nowadays, tattoos come in all kinds of styles. Whatever you want, we can make it happen.”

As she spoke, she turned her face sideways and pointed to the large patch of spider lilies on the right side of her neck, indicating: “I had surgery before and got cut here. You can’t tell at all, right?”

Sheng Sui stared carefully at the blooming flower cluster on the girl’s neck for a while, nodded in acknowledgment, then asked softly:

“You mentioned earlier that I can directly bring photos for the design, right?”

“That’s right, but there’s an additional handwork fee, and you’ll need to show the image to Brother Ao first. If he accepts it, then we can do it.”

“Alright.”

The tattoo shop was quiet and empty on a weekday. Sheng Sui followed behind the girl as they walked to the innermost cubicle on the first floor.

Pushing aside the curtain to enter, the workspace immediately revealed a tattoo reclining chair, with high shelves nearby filled with various tools. In the corner sat a man with slightly disheveled hair, around thirty-five years old, with well-proportioned and profound features.

The receptionist girl smiled and said: “Brother Ao, this sister is getting her first tattoo. Remember to be gentle.”

“Nagging.”

A hoarse voice responded. He Ao was drawing with his head down when he spoke, not looking up as he extended his hand, speaking concisely: “Photo.”

The design Sheng Sui wanted wasn’t complex. The man only glanced at it casually, maintaining his terse attitude:

“Where?”

“Left wrist, inner side.”

Upon hearing this, He Ao stopped his pen and looked up at Sheng Sui, his pitch-black eyes sharp as a hawk’s: “The skin on the inner wrist is thin, prone to color bleeding, and very difficult to cover up.”

The round-faced girl also gave a warm reminder: “From someone who’s gotten tattoos all over—inner wrists and necks can both be considered the highest pain levels. For beginners trying for the first time, we recommend the outer sides of upper and lower arms, or the back.”

Facing both their dissuasion, Sheng Sui lowered her gaze to look at her smooth wrist, murmuring to herself in a low voice:

“…So when the wrist gets injured, it’s the most painful.”

She had never known this before.

“It’s fine, just tattoo it on the left wrist inner side,” she looked up with curved eyebrows, smiling in response. Her peripheral vision fell on He Ao’s unfinished draft, and her words paused:

“May I ask, can I also add the effect from the drawing on your desk?”

He Ao’s work table was covered with drawing papers, with an unfinished sunset seascape at the top. Because it was a draft, the paper was filled with seemingly chaotic and fragmentary horizontal lines everywhere.

He Ao heard this and turned back, frowning: “What?”

“……”

After ten minutes of Sheng Sui’s earnest persuasion, He Ao finally agreed to her request, extracting partial designs from both the photo and the unfinished draft.

After signing the consent form, Sheng Sui sat down in one of a row of chairs outside the workspace, quietly watching as the round-faced girl cleaned her wrist, then printed the design on thin copy paper, pasted it on the area where she wanted the tattoo, and traced it initially with a special pen.

After applying ointment and peeling off the thin paper, then using the pen to draw the complete image a second time, the girl couldn’t help but ask her:

“Are you… really sure you want it tattooed with this effect?”

Sheng Sui nodded.

Thanks to being a diabetic patient, Sheng Sui was more familiar with needles than anyone. She thought that since they were similarly thin needles of comparable diameter piercing the skin, there wouldn’t be much difference between the abdomen and the wrist.

However, when she clearly saw the rows of fine needles on the pen-like devices on the rack, her back still broke out in a small patch of goosebumps.

He Ao said: “First outline, then shading and coloring. If it really hurts, you can cry.”

After a few seconds of silence, Sheng Sui heard herself say softly: “…It’s fine.”

“What I mean is, you need to relax,” the man’s hoarse and cold voice sounded again, emotionless:

“Tension will only make it hurt more.”

Hearing this, Sheng Sui looked down and saw that the veins on the inner side of her thin, white, clean wrist were all bulging prominently, as if they were about to burst inside her body the next second, with bright red blood gushing out.

“……”

It’s fine.

No matter how painful, it will end.

The buzzing sound of an electric saw cutting through aluminum and iron continuously rang out. Each sound penetrated Sheng Sui’s ears with inescapable precision, as if the fine needles were repeatedly piercing not her wrist, but her fragile eardrums.

Sound after sound entered her ears. The left half of her body continuously went numb. Except for her left wrist, which could clearly perceive the pain, all other parts of her body seemed to simultaneously lose sensation.

Initially, the pain from outlining was bearable.

It was like getting an injection in the wrong spot on a normal day, hitting a nerve and causing pain. A whole row of high-frequency driven needles went from thin to thick, pushing into her wrist then pulling out, needle by needle piercing the most sensitive and fragile skin, bringing small waves of trembling.

Perhaps similar to drug resistance, humans also have adaptability to pain. Just as Sheng Sui was trying to optimistically comfort herself that wrist injuries weren’t as painful as she thought, He Ao, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly told her to prepare for shading and coloring.

The next second, fierce and intense, irresistible pain swept over her like a giant wave, instantly drowning Sheng Sui.

Only then did she understand that there are some pains that can never be adapted to.

The electric saw that had been piercing her eardrums moved positions—it turned out the saw head was cutting her wrist again and again, breaking it then reconnecting it, convenient for the next sawing.

Her body began to shake uncontrollably, and physiological tears were about to fall from her eyes almost instantly.

Sheng Sui didn’t want to shed tears in front of strangers. Her right hand pinched her thigh, not allowing the tears to fall.

The undiminishing, even increasing accumulated pain, with each pulse beat, clearly fed back the pain sensation to her brain.

Sheng Sui suddenly understood that in the face of absolute pain, even time loses meaning.

Until her head began to feel dizzy in waves, she looked up at the empty black ceiling, suddenly thinking of the countless scars on Zhou Shiyu’s wrist.

She then hazily wondered if a blade cutting through blood vessels and needles piercing the wrist would feel the same.

When Zhou Shiyu repeatedly and desperately cut his wrists, did he feel the same pain as she did now?

If it was this painful, why would he treat himself like this again and again?

She thought she could probably never truly empathize with what Zhou Shiyu had carried alone in those years, or how he endured each endless dark night.

Because she and Zhou Shiyu were completely different.

She had choices—as long as she got up and left now, the pain would immediately disappear.

Zhou Shiyu never had choices.

Because no matter what, he was in pain.

Thinking of this, Sheng Sui couldn’t help but want to cry again.

The design Sheng Sui tattooed on her wrist covered a very small area, just a tiny patch below the base of her palm.

However, the coloring part was quite complex, and she had to endure a full three and a half hours before finally being able to get up from the chair, her steps unsteady.

Calculated, it was surprisingly similar to her usual time of returning home.

By this time, there were already five or six people queuing for tattoos in the shop. When Sheng Sui was paying at the cashier, the round-faced girl said with genuine admiration:

“First time getting a tattoo, and on the wrist no less—you didn’t make a single sound. Amazing, sister.”

Sheng Sui looked at the protective film on her left wrist. Under the thin membrane was a large patch of inflamed red skin. After a long while, she said softly: “Maybe I felt I didn’t have the right to.”

“……”

During their phone call at noon, Sheng Sui hadn’t proactively mentioned the media interview and the time off. Zhou Shiyu naturally and considerately didn’t ask too many questions, only leaving the message to contact him anytime if needed, giving Sheng Sui ample private space.

At the same time as usual, Sheng Sui took the same subway line home. As she repeatedly looked down to ensure her wrist tattoo wasn’t getting rubbed, she clearly felt gazes that had never existed before, following her like shadows.

She was naturally very fair-skinned, and today she wore a half-length short-sleeved chiffon shirt. Without Sheng Sui making any special effort to hide it, the tattoo on her wrist was completely and entirely exposed to the air and the stares of surrounding strangers.

Or rather, in what she couldn’t distinguish as either real or psychologically-induced Schrödinger’s stares.

When taking the escalator, the man on her left made eye contact with her several times—was he looking at the tattoo on her wrist?

When the car was crowded, the young mother beside her briefly glanced at her then quickly bent down to whisper to her five or six-year-old son—was she warning her son that tattoos were bad behavior that should never be imitated?

And when she offered her seat, the silver-haired elderly person who had been thanking her continuously suddenly paused mid-sentence, his gaze flickering away from eye contact—was he lamenting that appearances can be deceiving, that she looked well-behaved on the surface but secretly violated the principle of “the body, hair and skin are received from parents and should not be damaged”?

Or were all these her own overthinking?

Sheng Sui would never know.

She only knew that when she used to take the subway home with clean wrists, her mind had never been filled with so many thoughts like today.

She only knew that Zhou Shiyu had endured more than ten years alone in such an environment.

The prolonged pain made her feel extremely exhausted. After Sheng Sui got home and changed into clean clothes, she immediately lay down on the bed. Her head hit the pillow and she drowsily fell asleep.

When she woke up again, it was in a daze, feeling someone gently and closely holding her in the dim environment.

Her nostrils were filled with the reassuring scent of cold wood. In Sheng Sui’s half-asleep state, she heard Zhou Shiyu’s low, warm voice by her ear:

“Were you busy this afternoon? You seem very tired. I called you several times but you didn’t wake up.”

Feeling the vibration of the man’s chest as he spoke, Sheng Sui somewhat clingy turned around, closing her eyes and burrowing into Zhou Shiyu’s embrace: “It was okay, I was just sleepy.”

“You’ve worked hard,” Zhou Shiyu kissed her forehead, coaxing in a low voice, “Do you want to sleep a bit more, or get up now to eat?”

As he spoke, he raised his hand to gently pat her back, but his arm happened to brush against the tattoo location on Sheng Sui’s left wrist.

The sharp pain cut through all the hazy drowsiness. Sheng Sui suddenly frowned and couldn’t help but lightly suck in a breath of cold air.

“What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”

The bedroom curtains were tightly closed and the lights weren’t on, with only light from the outer room slanting in. Even so, when Zhou Shiyu quickly looked down to check, he immediately saw the tattoo that had appeared out of nowhere on Sheng Sui’s left wrist.

“……”

The man’s hand lifting the thin blanket suddenly froze. He clearly saw the design on her hand, yet for a moment he held his position, refusing to touch it for a long time.

In the repeated suppressed breathing sounds, after a long while, Zhou Shiyu’s hoarse voice rang out:

“……What is this?”

“It’s a tattoo.”

The man’s rare long silence and visibly tense emotions made Sheng Sui suddenly remember that night when she discovered the cuts on Zhou Shiyu’s wrist—he had the same reaction.

The place that had been brushed ached faintly. She pulled her left hand out from under the covers, blowing gently on her wrist, trying to dispel the large inflamed area.

Then she pulled the corners of her mouth into a smile, laughingly extending her wrist for Zhou Shiyu to see.

“The school gave me time off this afternoon. I passed by a tattoo shop and suddenly really wanted to get a tattoo.”

As she spoke, her right hand under the covers took hold of Zhou Shiyu’s left wrist. Under Zhou Shiyu’s dark stare and tightened lips, she carefully unfastened the man’s wristwatch.

In an instant, dozens of crisscrossing old scars were immediately exposed to the air, each one ghastly and terrifying.

In her peripheral vision, the man’s jaw muscles were prominently clenched. Sheng Sui just looked again at the design on her wrist and said softly: “Look.”

“On my wrist is your favorite snapdragon. I searched online for a long time before choosing this image. Isn’t it beautiful?”

The tattoo design on her wrist wasn’t complex. Compared to magnificent sleeve tattoos and full back pieces, it was hardly worth mentioning.

It was just a blooming snapdragon, swaying gracefully in the wind.

It was just some additional elements inspired by He Ao’s draft—dozens of horizontal lines of varying lengths weaving through the snapdragon.

It was just that in the special wrist location, these numerous scattered lines that sometimes intersected and crisscrossed would immediately make people think of mentally twisted self-harm behavior.

Seeing that Zhou Shiyu still refused to speak, the atmosphere seeming frozen and congealed, Sheng Sui wasn’t discouraged and continued:

“Look, from now on we’ll be the same—”

“Why do you want to be like me?”

Zhou Shiyu suddenly interrupted her latter half of the sentence with a low voice.

The man suddenly raised his hand, wanting to grasp Sheng Sui’s slender left hand suspended in the air, but stopped abruptly just one second before touching her wound, his fingertips slightly curled.

“Sheng Sui, I don’t understand.”

This was the first time Zhou Shiyu spoke to Sheng Sui while suppressing anger: “Why do you want to be like me?”

He desperately wanted her to be well, wishing he could present all the beauty in the world before her.

Why?

Why did Sheng Sui have to turn around and jump into the swamp and quagmire he was trapped in?

Zhou Shiyu couldn’t understand.

“Because you’ve already walked ninety-nine steps toward me.”

Tonight the two of them seemed to have switched roles. The steady and reliable Zhou Shiyu was unusually emotionally out of control, while Sheng Sui was extremely calm:

“If the distance between people is calculated in a hundred steps, I want the remaining last step to be me walking toward you.”

Her right hand gently held Zhou Shiyu’s left wrist, her fingertips carefully resting on her lover’s scarred wounds.

This was the first time she had touched these old scars, the first time she felt how the wounds rose and fell, and also the first time she felt that when Zhou Shiyu was emotionally agitated, even his fingertips would tremble uncontrollably.

“Actually, when I saw the tattoo today, I felt an indescribable happiness.”

“Its existence made me realize that wounds don’t only represent harm and suffering—they can bloom into the most beautiful flowers.”

Sheng Sui leaned over to kiss the corner of the man’s mouth, her fingertips moving slightly, interlocking fingers with Zhou Shiyu: “I promise, your old wounds won’t always be painful.”

“——Zhou Shiyu, trust me one more time, okay?”

The words had barely fallen when everything went dark before her eyes. Sheng Sui was tightly pulled into a warm embrace. The man’s palms used such force that she even felt somewhat suffocating pain.

Zhou Shiyu buried his head deeply in her neck, his breathing trembling more violently than ever before. His hoarse voice, torn like ripping fabric, sounded muffled:

“……Does it hurt?”

“Only a little bit.”

Just like Zhou Shiyu had comforted her when she was sad countless times before, Sheng Sui raised her hand to gently pat his back. Through a layer of thin shirt fabric, she could still clearly feel the man’s scarred spine, winding from his shoulders all the way down to his tailbone.

Her heart felt sour again: “Zhou Shiyu, I once heard someone say something.”

“He said that people are all fallen angels who have lost their wings in the mortal world.”

Sheng Sui endured the pain in her wrist and tried to hold her lover even tighter, her gentle voice choking at the end:

“But when we embrace each other tightly, we’ll have a pair of wings.”

Feeling the person in her arms suddenly stop breathing, Sheng Sui took a deep breath to compose herself, managed a perfect smile, and spoke clearly word by word in Zhou Shiyu’s ear:

“So, don’t be afraid.”

“Sheng Sui will never abandon Zhou Shiyu.”

“……”

After a long while, Sheng Sui felt drops of moisture in the hollow of her neck.

Zhou Shiyu was crying.

That man who was invincible in her heart, her beloved whom she loved desperately, her lifelong companion husband, was now silently crying in her arms.

The hot tears were scalding, sliding down her collarbone across her skin, almost burning even Sheng Sui’s violently beating heart beneath her skin.

Sheng Sui knew this tear was not for the grievances of past sufferings, nor was it tears of extreme joy for the beautiful new life that would come.

Rather, it was a scalding teardrop that a boy who had been betrayed and abandoned since age sixteen, walking alone under heavy burdens, finally had the right to shed when he knew he was alive and had reached a safe shore, never to be abandoned again.

On Zhou Shiyu’s life path of thorns where advance and retreat were both dead ends, Sheng Sui was his third path to survival from desperate straits.

“…Zhou Shiyu.”

After another long silence passed, this time it was still Sheng Sui who spoke first: “Do you know why I wanted to tattoo a snapdragon on my wrist?”

Zhou Shiyu only held her tightly, as if wanting to merge Sheng Sui into his own body. In his hoarse voice, there was a hint of nasal congestion:

“…Why?”

“Because you said you love snapdragons the most, but you’ve never successfully kept one alive in all these years.”

Sheng Sui slowly raised her left hand in the dim environment, looking at the blooming flower on her wrist that symbolized “please notice my love,” curved her lips in a smile, and said softly:

“But this one of mine will bloom for you forever, never to wither.”

Author’s Note:

“People are all fallen angels who have lost their wings in the mortal world, but when we embrace each other tightly, we’ll have a pair of wings.”

In the fall of 2021, due to a sudden illness, I spent seven full days alone in the intensive care unit of a foreign hospital. Having always been a healthy child since childhood, when the doctor told me the diagnosis, I felt like the sky had turned dark. It was at this time that someone said the above words to me. Although not the exact quote, it truly saved me at that time.

Now he and I are doing well. Sheng Sui and Zhou Shiyu will be well. I sincerely hope that everyone who sees these words will be well in the future.

This is my original intention in writing this story: everyone may experience the darkest moments of life, but please believe that the future will definitely be beautiful, and please never, never give up hope for life.

Finally, I want to add one more thing.

I really love Sheng Sui, with an indescribable fondness for her.

1: Excerpted from “The Classic of Filial Piety: Opening and Clarifying the Meaning”

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Thank you very much for everyone’s support. I will continue to work hard!