Chapter 33

On the left side of my chest, I tattooed the words ‘Yan Yang’. Not the Chinese characters, but their pinyin[1].

The tattoo parlour’s boss was an Englishman. I hand wrote the words, then he asked me what they meant.

I said, “It’s my name.”

My name. It had been decided upon before I was even born, and then became someone else’s later on.

The reality was, the two words ‘Yan Yang’ did not belong solely to me. On this planet, there were countless people, men and women, young and old, who had the name Yan Yang. It wasn’t exclusive to anyone.

But in this family of ours, it was indeed special.

It was my name.

It was my Didi’s name.

And it was also the name of the person I couldn’t let go of, despite how he tormented me.

Until I tattooed this in the place closest to my heart, I would remain unwilling to open my mouth and admit that I saw Yan Yang as my lover despite how every single one of my actions had proven that my feelings for him had long since gone beyond the boundaries of familial love.

In the past, I had always thought that getting a tattoo must hurt a lot, especially when Yan Yang had previously told me that when he tattooed my name on his inner thigh, he had been in so much pain that he was soaked in sweat from head to toe. Perhaps because I had gone in with some expectations, when I experienced this suffering again, I thought it wasn’t too bad.

I didn’t think it hurt. My heart just ached.

Many years down the road, Yan Yang and I went to get tattoos again. We got tattoos on the ring finger of our left hands; wedding rings that could never be taken off for all eternity.

That time, both of us had been in unbearable pain. The tattoo artist said the nerves of the fingers were connected to the heart, so it was normal for it to be painful.

As I got that tattoo, I thought to myself, the first time I had been tattooed, I probably hadn’t felt any pain because my whole body’s senses had dulled. I no longer had regular reactions to anything.

During the period of time when I lost contact with Yan Yang, not only had I struggled to feel pain, I had also struggled to ascertain whether I was really conscious, and whether I was actually alive.

This thing called love; whether you admitted to it or not, it was really quite deadly.

In the end, I was the one who bowed my head first in this period of no contact. It was just like how back when we were young, after I had lost my temper and sent the grapes he was giving to me tumbling to the ground, I had ended up picking up the grapes scattered on the floor together with him.

It had indeed been my fault. Ever since we were young, and after we had grown up too, it had always been me bullying him.

I thought about a lot of things. Every night, when I couldn’t sleep, I thought about Yan Yang.

All these years, he had never owed me anything. On the contrary, it was myself, who owed him far too much.

The reason why I finally had the determination to contact him was entirely because that night had been too unbearable. I couldn’t fall asleep even after taking my pills. In the end, a bout of insanity overtook me and I got up from my bed to take another dose of medication.

Against the doctor’s instructions, I increased the dosage. Although it wasn’t serious enough to cause the loss of my life, when the pills kicked in, the side-effects did give me a scare. For a moment, I really thought I was going to die.

I downed water like mad in an effort to stabilise myself, but the hand that was gripping the cup was shaking uncontrollably, spilling water all over the place.

I had been reduced to a sorry state many times in my life, but rarely had it made me consider the possibility of death. I often felt that life and death didn’t mean much to me. From a young age, I had been seen as a burden. If I died, it would mean freedom.

But at this moment, I suddenly really wanted to live. I at least had to live to say a word of ‘sorry’ to Yan Yang.

I had intentionally deceived him, and I also owed him a lot.

The good thing was, after removing a layer of clothing, as I lay on the bed clinging on to the edge of my life, my mind gradually cleared and my organ functions started returning to normal.

Like that, I stayed lying on the bed. My breathing had not even calmed yet when I grabbed my phone and dialled Yan Yang.

It had been entirely without thought. I gripped my phone, waiting for him to pick up as though I was awaiting salvation.

But it never came. I counted the seconds, each second agony.

A second was akin to a year. For every second that passed, I aged a year.

In the span of under a minute, I went from the age of youth to my sunset years.

Yan Yang didn’t pick up.

I put the phone on my chest, the spot where the tattoo was faintly throbbing.

He had given up on me.

I struggled to get up from the bed. Sitting there, I gulped down three big cups of water, then went to take a shower. When I got out, I started to tidy up the place.

This apartment that was not very big had been turned into a mess, just like me.

It was raining outside. I opened the window, hoping to get some fresh air.

The raindrops were blown in by the wind, landing on the windowsill and the table.

My phone, which had been tossed onto the bed, suddenly rang. I turned around and fixed my gaze on it for a long while before suddenly going to pick it up.

Yan Yang had sent me a message in response, a simple question mark.

Soon after, the phone in my hand vibrated and another message popped up.

Yan Yang: I was practising the piano with my friend just now.

Friend. Practising the piano.

By the time I realised what I was doing, my fingernails had already dug ridges into my phone case.

Footnotes:

[1] ‘pinyin’: Chinese romanisation. So he probably tattooed something like ‘yanyang’.