We finished eating, and Aki laid back down on the table. Daichi-san invited me to come close to watch with the promise that he would walk me through each step of the process. Aki's arms were by his sides, and he opened his hand so I could place mine into it. His head was turned toward me, Daichi-san working on the other side, and I could see his face out of the corner of my eye watching me while I leaned in to see what Daichi-san was doing. He seemed to be taking pride in the fact that I wanted to be more involved in the elicit side of his life.

"I'm glad to see you taking interest, just don't go thinking about doing this to yourself." He said to me, and I smirked in his direction without fully looking at him.

"Are you not pleased with your decisions, Aki?" Daichi-san leaned over to ask him. "Yet here you are adding some drastic changes to them."

Aki breathed a laugh. "No, I'm perfectly happy." He said. "I just don't think Natsuko would be as happy with the path of life I've chosen."

Daichi-san motioned for me to watch what he was doing. He had his tattoo machine poised in one hand, and he began removing the plastic wrap, applying petroleum jelly to Aki's newly tattooed skin. It was red around the black lines of the tattoo. "I'm putting a moisture barrier here to keep the plasma in." Daichi-san began to explain. "It prevents the scab from starting to form too quickly. If the scab forms too quickly, it gets very thick, and a lot of ink comes out of the skin. The tattoo will heal very light." He started the tattoo machine. A low, soft buzzing noise came from it, and the needles became a blue of motion. "Listen as I make a line. You can hear the needles puncturing the skin."

I listened in awe of the demonstration, and looked to Aki with excitement. "Can you hear it?"

"I can hear it." He said. "And I can feel it."

"The skin starts to try to heal right away, so it's always a little more painful coming back after a break. Even just a short one." Daichi-san said. He kept tattooing, and I squeezed Aki's hand. "The ink sits in the skin in a very deep layer. It would take more than one lifetime to shed enough skin to get to the ink. The tattoo in the end is just a colourful scar." I could see that Daichi-san was completely in control. Aki was holding my hand tightly, but he usually did, and I couldn't sense any desperation in it. His energy was calm and I could tell he fully trusted Daichi-san. As I paid more attention to each detail of the situation, it became a very different experience. It was like composing a song, breaking down the different layers.

Hours passed, the day stretching on, and Daichi-san finished the design around the back of Aki's neck and on his hand. By the end of the day, Aki was struggling with the constant annoyance of the tattooing and the inflammation of his skin. He continued to be in high spirits, excited by the new alterations he was making to his body. As Daichi-san wrapped Aki's hand, the tattoo finally complete, they both stood to stretch and bowed to each other. "Good work, Daichi-san." Aki said to him, coming out of the bow and twisting side to side to stretch his body more.

"Good work yourself, Aki." Daichi-san retaliated. "That was not an easy day for you."

Aki was wrapped around his neck with a black plastic bandage taped to his skin, and his hand covered in the same. His face held an expression of exhaustion, dark circles under his heavy eyes, but his smile remained as he said his closing remarks to Daichi-san at the front desk. "Can we bring you anything before we head out?" Aki asked him.

He shook his head with his monk-like calming expression. "I'm perfectly fine. Get home and get some water into you, sir." He bowed and held his hand out.

Aki took it, his grip firm, and bowed back. They paused a moment like that, and I watched the interaction, I understood how much respect they had for each other. "We're going to get some food and take the train to Kamakura. We're staying in my house there for the week."

Daichi-san handed Aki a bottle of water from a small fridge under the desk. "Use the time to heal well. Back to work soon enough."

It was dark by the time we left the shop, though still early enough that we didn't have to worry about missing the train. We sat in a chain sushi restaurant and sipped tea, ordering plates casually. Aki earned the stares of passersby as he sat in the booth in just his sleeveless shirt and sweat pants, with the black plastic around his neck and hand. He had put on his baseball cap to hide his messy hair, and aside from the bandages, he looked well put together. Eventually he put his zippered sweater back on to attempt to hide the bandages. "Tattooing is still not that common." He explained. "People don't really recognize what these bandages are used for."

As we walked to the station, I reached for Aki's hand to guide him into an upcoming convenience store, but my fingertips touched bandage instead of skin, and I quickly retracted, afraid to hurt him. He laughed as he looked to see what I had been so startled about, and lifted his hand to his chest, offering his arm to me so I could hold him in the crook of his elbow. He raised the hood of his sweater over his hat as we entered the store, and I walked him to the drink cooler in the back.

"Are you doing okay?" I asked him, reaching to place my hands on both sides of his face, as if I could see him better that way. He smiled, an expression of simple joy. "You've been really quite since we left the restaurant." I let go of his face and opened the cooler door to grab a water bottle for Aki to sip on while we travelled back to Kamakura.

Aki nodded. "I feel fine, I'm just tired. The pain of the tattooing is not that bad, but it's exhausting because it's consistent."

"Are you in pain now?"

He started to laugh again, reaching for my shoulders to pull me close against him. His eyes darted around to make sure we weren't disturbing anyone else in the store, but we were alone. "I've never had anyone so worried about me after I've been tattooed before." He said. "I'm not in any pain anymore."

"Have you ever had someone with you while you were getting tattooed before?"

He paused a beat, and I assumed he was thinking back to the other times. "Actually no. But the guys have seen me right after before, still bandaged up just like this, and they never said anything about it."

I made my way to the hot coffee machine and took two cups from the stack, placing one after the other under the spout to fill. I chose decaf, hoping Aki wouldn't notice, anticipating that he would need a good sleep. "The other guys don't have any tattoos at all?"

I put one cup down on the counter and poured in half of a sugar packet, stirred it, and put the lid on. Aki usually drank coffee black, but I knew he liked to add a small amount of sugar to convenience store coffee because he said it tasted bland. "As far as I know, they don't have any tattoos." Aki said. "I've never seen any on them, and we've been to the onsen together quite a lot of times."

I paid for our drinks, and we continued to the train. Aki fell asleep almost instantly as the train began to move, his arms folded across himself and his head tipped back against the seat. I sat close to him, letting my hand rest atop his thigh, though I wasn't sure if he was even aware that I was offering protection while he slept. He only woke as the train pulled into the station in Kamakura.

"Aki, can I ask you something, or are you too tired?" I said as I held the blankets of the bed back for him while he laboriously climbed in and laid down.

"Ask me anything, my love." I knew he would answer that way. As tired as he was, I knew he would tell me anything at any time if I asked him.

"What did you mean when you said that you don't think I would be as happy with the path of life you've chosen?"

He shifted some, seeming uncomfortable with the bandages still around his neck. "Oh, that." He said, and I thought I could hear relief in his voice, like he had expected me to ask a more challenging question. "I knew that having a lot of tattoos in this country would be difficult. You can't go to public gyms, you can't go to onsen, and people stare at you and think you're Yakuza. But I was already a famous musician, and I knew there were more things I didn't have to worry about than things I had to worry about with tattoos." He reached a hand over and gently ran his fingertips through my hair. "I don't want that for you. I want you to be as free to do whatever you please as you can be. But having said that, if you end up wanting a lot of tattoos, I'll support your decision."

I laughed at his comment. "I'm already sharing life with you, though, and I'm not going to do anything that excludes you just because you have tattoos. You chose the path of life for yourself, but I chose you."

He smiled with a tired expression. "I was not so considerate of you."