024: louder than all of them

Fanxing’s northern end was held by the bend of a river which streamed down from the mountains beyond the city’s outer limits, rushing waters always dotted with specks of light like pearls. The river’s edges diligently sought new land to swallow and spread, erosion kept at bay by hand stacked stone walls all along the banks. The north end was known as the Zhao district, adjacent to the market and cast in the shadow of Fanxing City’s shimmering finery—Zhao was a little bit seedier than the rest of the city, a little more dangerous; it was shady in every aspect of its existence, from name to numinous intent.

The main road through the district stretched down a long hill, abruptly halting at the river. It was lined with houses stacked on top of each other, creating a vast maze towering precarious and strange. The last house on the right was of particular interest. Built into a bizarre cavernous arrangement, the house was a curious amalgamation of structures and styles containing whole rooms overhanging alleyways relying on rickety stilts for support, inlines and additions mismatched every which way. The house contained no even lines. They laid either crooked toward or away from each other and gave the appearance that the building was going to topple over at any moment. From afar, it very much looked like a pagoda offset, balance distributed through wonky quick-fixes and overburdened pillars to keep the structure illogically upright. A chimney made from the aluminum fittings of old-world soda cans snaked along the outside of the house, breathing black from a rudimentary hole cut by a rusty can opener ages ago, a colorful pipe dimmed by time.

Sun-bleached curtains rustled behind cloudy capiz windows. The structure was clearly a living space in its upper floors but at the street level, presented itself as a combination shop. On a pair of hooks jammed into wood and corrugated tin just outside the entrance hung a hand-painted sign swaying in the wind: Flowers & Tattoos.

Inside, the space was no less confusing. The front of the shop was dominated by a large wood countertop and various accoutrements for both its offerings. Beyond laid a confounding arrangement of uneven rooms from which an old woman’s voice echoed.

“Jin’er! Jin’er!” Her sound traveled through every wall thin as paper, thick as concrete. “Where have you gone, Jin’er?!”

“I’m here! I’m right here!” 

Jin erupted from an access door set into the ground along the left side of the dilapidated shop, arms full of chrysanthemums of all colors and shapes. Most businesses and residences in the area functioned the same way: on shouts up and down the building facades at all hours of the day and night. Soon the boy, strong browed and strong backed with thick, choppy hair, was laying his bounty on his grandmother’s countertop for her floral scrying, her curse-or-fortune head-dresses. “Did you forget where you sent me, a-po?” 

Squat in stature, although rather straight in the spine, the elderly woman appeared from the dim mouth of a hallway with a throat full of crooked stairs. She wore satins of every color beneath a frenetic assemblage of floral patterns embroidered into overlong shawls. Her small, creased lips were never colorless; her long ebony hair was never without an arrangement of dried blossoms wired into her meticulously rolled bun.

“Don’t be absurd,” the woman huffed as though age would ever get its hands around the lucidity of her mind, “I didn’t know what was taking you so long. Thought beasts may have finally gotten you and pulled you off down the river.” She stepped up to the counter and began to sort through the lot, arranging each by color, then size, then sense. “Do you have appointments today, dear boy?”

“I’m open for consultations,” Jin said slowly, his voice’s weight and pitch better wrapped around a sly yes rather than the hopefully-but-no diction of his actual words. Knowing judgement came next, the tall boy tried to reason with his grandmother before she laid into him for being lazy or unmotivated or before she concocted some scheme for her grandson to promote his (or, worse, her) business. “But a-po, listen—I’ve only been doing this officially for a few months, word of mouth has to get around. You know, we had the Tian Prince in here last week, I’ll get more clients soon, for sure. We just have to wait for it.”

“Jin’er!” The old woman slapped her bony hand upon the counter with enough force to make a surprisingly crisp clap. “How many other appointments have you had in your official few months? You cannot just sit around and wait for business! What did I tell you, ah? You need to get out there, you need to make your face the first face people see when they think of tattoos and artifacts. People are vain, Jin’er, they want the best! You are the best artist out there, so you need to make them come. You must drag them by their hair back here.” The boy’s grandmother folded her arms on the counter, leaning forward and looking up at him. “We are at the end of the street and there are at least a hundred distractions before anyone gets here. You have to be louder than all of them! Why don’t I make you a pretty headdress and you can go to market and tell everyone about yourself and start making money—you pulled some blossoms here that are very attracted to you, it would be shameful to waste them.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah don’t you have a bride coming in for auspicious arrangements today?” Maybe Jin could save himself. Quickly the boy grabbed his overshirt from a hook near the door, quick to escape his grandmother’s idea of promotional decoration. He’d spent his entire childhood modeling this woman’s handiwork; now that he was a man, this had to stop. He was already halfway out the door as he continued. “Don’t waste them on me, I’ll go—see, look I’m going—”

The older of the Ren brothers already had the shop’s door in his clutches, pulling it open to step inside. He was likewise not paying attention, focus directed back to Fei in the midst of an animated conversation. Li stepped right into the tattooist on his way out—crashed into him, head on, body in full.

“I’m sorry!” Ren Li immediately exclaimed, stumbling back to look at the face of the man he smashed himself against. It was impossible to tell that the pair of boys had come from the woods and the water—they were bone dry, fresh, refreshed. Immediately, Li’s cheeks flushed pink, but he hoped that the color would be absolved by the embarrassment caused by his error.

“Hey fucker, watch whe—” Jin cut himself off when he glanced up and caught the sight of Ren Li’s face, remembering him from when he inlaid the black pearl into the city’s young prince. He was mortified, going stark white with his own embarrassment (or something other) staining his cheeks the vermilion shade of his grandmother’s prized peonies. Immediately, Jin fell to his knees, his gaze cast down to the threshold of his door. “I am so so so sorry, young master Ren, I wasn’t paying attention, please don’t take offense.”

“It’s my fault. I should have been paying attention—please. Please, that’s not necessary.” Li bent at the waist, motioning for the man to stand.

“JIN’ER THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY BUSINESS! BECAUSE YOU ARE RUDE AND CURSE AT THE CUSTOMERS!” His grandmother rushed forward, pushing the boy aside to take the older Ren’s hands. “Please, please come inside—you must forgive Jin, he is an ass who knows only how to bray.”

“It’s alright,” Li assured as he was pulled past the tattooist in the narrow doorway, carefully squeezing past shoulders and side. “Ah—I promise it’s alright.”

Somewhere between a sigh and a groan, Jin exhaled, leaning his head back against the frame of the door as his grandmother reeled the young master into her floral web. Before he could fully relax, Fei popped into his field of view, scaring the young inlayer once more to rigid attention. The slender boy slipped by with a sheepish grin and a nonsense gesture that seemed to state: I’m with him.

Cooly, the artist did his best to recover his credibility so shredded and tattered; tried to save face in front of the house of Ren’s stoic young master and who, Jin could only assume, was his gangly, curious brother. 

“Have you won something else already?” Jin asked as he followed them inside, grabbing the conversation’s reins before the Hua family matriarch tried to sell the unsuspecting boys a basement full of flowers. 

“No—” Li wrenched himself free from the woman’s grasp, little apologies streaming from polite lips in gentle murmurs, and turned back to the artist when he was finally free. “No. Not yet. My brother Fei and I were talking about next week’s artifact, the Jade Millipede. I wanted to get your opinion, actually. If I were to challenge it and win, I was curious where best it would be to put it, if it would be compatible with what I already have.”

The older Ren looked from Jin to Fei to the door that shut itself with a jangly slam. 

“Do you have the time for a consultation? If you’re busy, or on the way out, I can make an appointment and come back. I apologize for dropping in without notice.”

Jin peered at his grandmother—a silent I TOLD YOU SO equal parts rude and smug in his beaming expression. “Of course I can clear time in my very busy schedule for a consultation, right a-po?”

“Busy, hah! You’re lucky, boy. These chrysanthemums are looking out for you!” The woman shooed the pair away, ushering them toward the hallway as she returned to her counter. With a narrow finger she gestured to the lone Ren left behind, beckoning him closer with a suspicious curl. Mute, Fei pointed at himself, a hard swallow lodged in his throat. 

“Thank you,” Li said, graceful in his gratitude before looking back to wave at his brother. “I’ll be back, Fei!”

“I hope he doesn’t have any money,” Jin said over his shoulder as they traveled down the hallway and up a couple uneven, rickety steps covered only by a few lashings of split bamboo. They entered a relatively recent addition to the nonsensically sprawling house that seemed to be larger on the inside than the outside let on. “Because he won’t when she’s done with him.”

“Ehh, it’s okay.” Li seemed unconcerned, too busy following all the bewildering angles of the building’s interior and the shape of the tall boy leading him astray. He stood still when they entered the room, awkwardly waiting for direction. “He’ll be fine, he can get more. It’ll be good for him to socialize anyway, he’s having a rough day.”

Leaning against a low scrap-metal outcropping in a salvaged wall, Jin gestured to the knee-high padded bench-table in the middle of the room: a makeshift setup somewhere between examination table, drinking lounge, and bed. “Strip and sit. Lemme see what you got.” He paused. “…Sir.”