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The first thing Shen Yihuan did upon returning to Beijing was to get a tattoo.
A few days ago, Shen Yihuan had messaged a contact in her phone named “Gorky” and asked for a recommendation for a good tattoo artist.
Lin Kaige, with his numerous tattoos, was an expert on the subject and immediately sent her a recommendation.
Gorky: Oh, are you letting loose and not being a good girl anymore?
Shen Yihuan smiled and replied with one word: “Piss off.”
After landing, she went home to freshen up. The weather was unusually warm, with a hint of early summer heat. Shen Yihuan changed out of the heavy clothes she wore in Xinjiang, wearing a camisole under a jacket.
She wanted to get a tattoo over a scar.
She had two scars on her body, one on her leg and one on her chest.
The scars were not very noticeable; you couldn’t see them without looking closely. But Shen Yihuan still wanted to get some kind of design.
Because Lu Zhou had one on his back, she wanted one too.
Shen Yihuan stood in front of the mirror. The neckline of her camisole was quite low, revealing a faint cleavage, which was perfect for exposing the scar and would make it easier to get the tattoo.
Lu Zhou was initially against it, afraid she would be in pain, but in the end, he didn’t say anything.
He knew that Shen Yihuan had planned this as soon as she got back to Beijing to avoid seeing her mother.
Lu Zhou was a human GPS. He could easily find his way in the vast desert, let alone in a big city.
Shen Yihuan simply handed her phone to Lu Zhou. It had the location that Lin Kaige had sent her. He glanced at the contact name “Gorky” and frowned.
The tattoo shop was big, not the small, hidden place she had imagined.
The shop’s name was a series of English words on a stylish, brightly lit sign, as if daring anyone to miss it.
Lu Zhou opened the door for her.
The shop owner was a punk-looking man in all black, with a shiny black leather jacket.
“Are you Miss Shen?” he asked.
Shen Yihuan was a little surprised, afraid he was talking about someone with the same last name. “Oh, yes. But I don’t have an appointment.”
“Lin Kaige recommended you. He told me you’d be coming soon.” The owner poured them a glass of water. “Have you decided on a design yet?”
“Not yet.”
The owner asked, “And where are you getting it?”
“Here.” Shen Yihuan pointed to her calf, then to the area below her collarbone. “Or here. Which one hurts less?”
“Both of those spots will hurt. The skin is thin and there’s not much flesh. But the one below the collarbone will be a little better, and it’ll look great there.”
Shen Yihuan decided quickly. “Okay, let’s do it there.”
The owner then looked at Lu Zhou, who was standing behind Shen Yihuan. “Handsome, are you getting one too?”
Shen Yihuan answered for him. “He’s not.”
“First, take a look and see if there are any designs you like,” the owner said, handing her a design book from his workstation.
Shen Yihuan already had a rough idea of what she wanted, but she took the book anyway. She opened it to find many different designs, big and small, black-and-white and colored.
She sat on the sofa, flipping through the pages.
The owner watched her for a moment and asked casually, “Are you two models too?”
Lin Kaige was a model, and he had recommended many model friends to the shop, so the owner assumed they were also his colleagues.
Shen Yihuan smiled and shook her head. “We’re not.”
“Oh, judging by your looks, I thought you were models.” The owner finished speaking and walked into a studio room on the side, where someone was already getting a tattoo.
Only the two of them were left in the main hall.
Shen Yihuan pushed the design book toward Lu Zhou. “Which one do you think is good?”
“What do you want?” Lu Zhou asked.
“Boat.”
“Huh?”
“A sailboat. Right here!” Shen Yihuan poked the scar on her chest.
Lu Zhou was stunned. Shen Yihuan had mentioned it before, but he hadn’t taken it seriously. At that time, he thought she was just saying it casually.
She was so afraid of pain.
Shen Yihuan said softly, “I want to get something about you tattooed on my body too.”
“...Okay,” Lu Zhou said in a deep voice. His eyes were dark as he looked at Shen Yihuan. After a moment of silence, the corners of his lips slowly turned up, and a husky laugh escaped.
“Are you happy now?” Shen Yihuan leaned in close, looking into his eyes.
Lu Zhou rubbed her head.
“Are you jealous?” Shen Yihuan snuggled into his arms and pulled on his cheeks with both hands. “Huh? Jealous Lu?”
Lu Zhou calmly raised an eyebrow and admitted frankly, “Who’s Lin Kaige?”
“The ‘Gorky’ in my phone. He’s a model. Oh, right, you should have met him. He was at the hospital when we ran into each other last year.”
Lu Zhou remembered.
The man who had picked up Shen Yihuan at the convenience store and driven her home.
The explanation only made him more upset.
He clenched his jaw imperceptibly and asked, “Did he ever pursue you?”
“I don’t think so,” Shen Yihuan replied instinctively. Then, she suddenly remembered something and slapped her thigh. “...It sounds like he really did! I always thought he was gay!”
“...”
The tattoo artist came out of the studio.
He was followed by a young girl wearing a mask, who was likely his apprentice, and a man with a freshly tattooed sleeve.
“Hey, Miss Shen, have you chosen a design?” the owner asked.
“This one,” Shen Yihuan said, pointing to a sailboat design.
The owner looked at it. “This one’s pretty simple. You can choose whether I do it or my apprentice.”
The place Shen Yihuan wanted the tattoo was just above her chest. She would have felt awkward with a strange man leaning over her there, especially with Lu Zhou around, so she chose the apprentice.
“Okay, you can wait in the studio,” the apprentice said, taking off her mask. “I’ll get ready.”
She came in a moment later.
The tattoo artist was quite pretty, with big eyes. She seemed very young and cool, coming in with a stack of things, wearing a mask and gloves.
“Below the collarbone, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The tattoo artist leaned in closer to look. “Over this scar?”
“Yes, is that okay?”
“It’s fine,” she said with a smile. “A lot of people get tattoos over scars these days. But... I’ve never seen a scar shaped like this.”
It was a “cross.”
It could be considered a matching couple’s tattoo with the scar on Lu Zhou’s back.
“How did you get this?” the tattoo artist asked as she prepared her tools.
Shen Yihuan said, “A gunshot wound.”
“A gunshot wound?” The tattoo artist, who had been sleepy until now, suddenly looked bright-eyed. “That’s so cool. Are you a police officer?”
Shen Yihuan pointed to Lu Zhou. “A soldier.”
“Wow,” the tattoo artist exclaimed.
She walked over, had Shen Yihuan lie down, and looked closely at the scar. After a moment’s pause, she said, “We can make your scar the mast of the sailboat. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good. You can decide.”
First came the outline. At first, it was just a series of little pricks, but as she repeated the motions, it started to hurt.
Shen Yihuan lay on the tattoo bed. The tattoo artist was bent over her collarbone with a lamp. Shen Yihuan couldn’t see what was happening and was too scared to look, so she just turned her head to look at Lu Zhou.
Lu Zhou was frowning as he watched the tattoo artist work.
“Lu Zhou,” Shen Yihuan called his name.
Lu Zhou immediately leaned in and took her hand. “Does it hurt?”
“A little. And it’s a bit numb.”
The tattoo artist smiled. “The skin is thin here, and you’re skinny, so it’s going to hurt. We’re almost done. Just bear with it.”
At this point, she had no choice but to bear it.
Shen Yihuan wanted to do something to distract herself. She poked Lu Zhou and said, “Let me play with your phone for a bit.”
Lu Zhou gave her his phone.
The first thing she saw was the default screensaver. There were only a few common apps on his phone. It was completely unexciting.
Shen Yihuan, with her hands held up, clicked on his photo album. She raised an eyebrow slightly. It was filled with her photos and the group photo of the two of them from the Beijing exhibition. She didn’t know when Lu Zhou had saved it.
After a long time, she finally settled on a photo that Qiu Ruru had taken of them in the Kumtag Desert. She set it as the wallpaper.
“All done. Take a look at the design. If you like it, we’ll start with the color,” the tattoo artist suddenly said.
“Oh,” Shen Yihuan sat up a little to look. A large patch of her fair skin was red, and the outline was done. She nodded. “It’s good. Let’s do the color.”
She lay back down, and her phone rang.
It was Shen Yihuan’s phone that Lu Zhou was holding.
“Who is it?”
Lu Zhou said, “The Commander’s wife.”
“Huh?” Shen Yihuan was stunned. “Can you answer it for me?”
Lu Zhou took the phone and walked out of the studio. He came back less than two minutes later.
Shen Yihuan asked, “What did she want?”
“She wants us to come to their house for dinner.”
Shen Yihuan glanced at the clock on the wall. “Will we make it?”
“It’s fine,” Lu Zhou said, sitting back down. “They eat late. We’ll make it.”
Shen Yihuan ended up grabbing Lu Zhou’s phone and watching a random movie. After about twenty minutes, the tattoo artist finally looked up from her collarbone. “All done. Take a look.”
It was a very small, light blue design. The skin around it was still red, but it fit perfectly with the cross-shaped scar. You couldn’t even tell there was a scar underneath.
“Isn’t it pretty?” she asked, turning to Lu Zhou and pointing at the tattoo.
Lu Zhou’s eyes darkened. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He glanced at the fair, reddened skin on the young woman’s collarbone before looking away. “It’s pretty.”
Shen Yihuan hummed in satisfaction. “See? I told you it would be pretty. You didn’t want me to get it back then.”
After leaving the tattoo shop, they went straight to the Lu family’s house.
The Commander’s wife even called to hurry them up.
When the car drove into the Lu family’s compound, they got out and went inside. The Commander’s wife saw them and immediately asked the cook to bring out all the dishes.
“Come, come,” the Commander’s wife said, calling Shen Yihuan to her side. She also had someone call Lu Youju down from his study upstairs.
They sat down to eat.
Halfway through the meal, the Commander’s wife, on a whim, brought out a bottle of champagne.
Neither Lu Youju nor Lu Zhou liked to drink. They would only drink at certain gatherings and were otherwise teetotalers.
Shen Yihuan, however, loved to drink, especially champagne and red wine. But her tolerance was low, so Lu Zhou usually kept an eye on her. Today, with an opportunity, she certainly wasn’t going to refuse.
By the end of the meal, Shen Yihuan was already drunk.
Luckily, she still had some sense left. She knew Lu Youju and the Commander’s wife were still there, so she didn’t make a scene. She just leaned drunkenly in Lu Zhou’s arms, quiet and well-behaved.
“We’ll be heading back now.”
Lu Zhou helped Shen Yihuan stand up, frowning slightly. “Shen Yihuan, can you walk?”
“Of course!”
The young woman’s voice was clear. She held her two hands straight out and was about to perform a perfectly straight walk. “You! Watch!”
...Of course, she walked crookedly.
“Oh my,” the Commander’s wife, who had a high tolerance for alcohol and wasn’t drunk at all, laughed and bent over, quickly helping her stand steady. “I thought her tolerance was better than that. Lu Zhou, you need to keep a close eye on her from now on. Don’t let her drink outside alone. What if she gets like this again?”
Lu Zhou wrapped his arm around her waist. “She doesn’t usually drink much.”
Lu Youju saw the tattoo below Shen Yihuan’s collarbone and frowned. “Did she just get that design today?”
“Yes,” Lu Zhou said as he took Shen Yihuan’s hands off his face.
Lu Youju scolded him. “Look at you. You’re setting a bad example! Now a perfectly good girl is following your lead and getting a tattoo.”
“...”
He was referring to the tattoo on Lu Zhou’s back.
He didn’t want to say anything more and just said, “Bye, Commander Lu and auntie.”
________________________________________
You couldn’t get the tattoo wet right after getting it.
When they got home, Lu Zhou first carried Shen Yihuan to bed and then went out to get her some hot water.
He walked into the bedroom with the cup and froze, standing still.
Shen Yihuan had her back to him, naked, and was putting on a nightgown. It was a dark blue silk one. The smooth fabric slid down her skin, quickly covering her graceful figure.
The nightgown went down to her mid-thigh, revealing two long, straight legs that accentuated her hips.
Lu Zhou pursed his lips. He walked over and hugged her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder.
His breathing grew heavy.
All of it landed on Shen Yihuan’s ear.
Shen Yihuan was drunk. Lu Zhou didn’t want to take advantage of her, afraid of hurting her again.
But the young woman, unaware of the danger, turned around. Her eyes were narrowed, and the corners of her eyes were slightly upturned, both alluring and provocative. She put a finger on the thin neckline of her nightgown and pulled it up, stretching the fabric taut and revealing the scenery underneath.
Lu Zhou’s eyes darkened. His gaze, out of his control, fell into the abyss of her cleavage. He pressed the tip of his tongue against his teeth.
She seemed completely oblivious to everything and asked Lu Zhou excitedly, “Look, with this blue nightgown, don’t I look like a sailboat on the sea?”
At this point, Lu Zhou wasn’t in the mood to think about seas or sailboats.
“You do.”
He said it without thinking, his lips covering hers, grinding against them.
One hand held the “waves of the sea,” crumpling the nightgown and then smoothing it out.
Then he wrapped his arms around Shen Yihuan’s waist and laid her down on the bed.
...
Perhaps it was because she was drunk, but Shen Yihuan was very well-behaved this time.
Her occasional whimpers were like those of a little kitten, making Lu Zhou’s heart flutter. His movements were slow and passionate.
When it was over.
He gently brushed the long, sweaty hair away from her face and kissed her forehead. “Are you tired?”
Shen Yihuan was sleepy and didn’t answer. She just feebly pushed Lu Zhou.
Lu Zhou got off of her and patted her back. “Sleep.”
“Lu Zhou.”
She spoke softly, without opening her eyes.
“How about we go get our marriage license tomorrow?”
His breath hitched, and his heart pounded wildly. This was the only time his heart had ever fluttered, and it had continued until now.
Fortunately, all of his feelings had been reciprocated.
“Okay,” he said solemnly.
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