Kiyotaka couldn't withdraw from his appointment just because he'd realized his own stupid mistake, so he allowed the staff members to (almost forcibly) sit him down in the special tattoo chair. He was beginning to realize, just then, how big of a decision he was making. Tattoos were permanent. He swallowed, and his throat felt swollen and dry.
"Soooo..." Ibuki's eyes ran down some kind of list on the clipboard in her hands. "Your name?"
Kiyotaka lowered his head, trying to conceal how embarrassed he was.
"...Ishimaru."
"Your full name," Daiya corrected. Kiyotaka was reminded of the time that Mondo had demanded his first name at the noodle restaurant. Even their voices and speech patterns were similar. Daiya's voice was deeper, possibly just because he was older. Did they both smoke? He didn't smell like nicotine. ...Well, Mondo didn't, either.
"Kiyotaka," he grumbled. "Kiyotaka Ishimaru."
Ibuki scribbled something down. Daiya didn't say anything. When the drawn-out silence became awkward, Kiyotaka looked up and found Daiya staring at him, taking in every detail of his appearance, looking both surprised and very, very curious.
"...Really? Y'don't say..."
"Y-Yes!" Kiyotaka stiffened and felt his face going red. Daiya's eyes were like Mondo's in the way that they felt strangely invasive. They were equally intense. "What, is it a strange name or someth—"
He trailed off. Even he (the guy who had been dense enough to miss how blatantly Mondo had been hitting on him) had a vague idea of what was going on here. Daiya had flashed Ibuki some kind of signal, and now they both seemed very interested in him. Mostly his face. Ibuki was uncomfortably close to him, her eyes wide and eager.
Mondo had said, the first time they'd talked at the restaurant, that he told his older brother everything, and maybe he'd really meant that. Maybe he'd called his brother up and told him all about the guy he was so fixated on.
"Or... have you perhaps heard my name before?" Kiyotaka asked accusingly. Daiya flinched. Bingo.
"Pffft— what?! No! Of course not! I jus' thought it was kinda fancy, is all."
Daiya Oowada may have been a good brother, but he was a pretty terrible liar. A much more reasonable excuse would be his grandfather— plenty of people recognized the Ishimaru name due to that scandal, and the surname had earned Kiyotaka no small amount of dirty looks. It wasn't as frequent of an occurrence anymore, but still.
Daiya quickly got to work organizing his tools, trying a little too hard to look busy, and gave Ibuki a wink She started asking a bunch of questions so fast that Kiyotaka could barely understand her. The piercing guy, who had been watching a baseball game on the small TV affixed to the wall, was suddenly intrigued, and he raised an eyebrow at Daiya. Daiya flashed another signal. The piercing guy didn't seem to get it just yet.
"So what made you decide to get a tattoo? Have you decided on what you want? How old are you? Where do you work? When is your birthday? What's your sign? What's your favorite animal? What's your favorite food? Do you like music?! What's your—"
"Mioda! Girl! You've gotta give the man some time to answer!" the redhead called out. Daiya casually flipped him off.
"Nobody's talkin' to you, Leon!"
The redhead, apparently named Leon, crossed his arms. He looked more amused than angry at the interruption. Ibuki did stop asking questions, though, and Kiyotaka tried to remember all of them. She seemed determined to get answers.
"...I... just wanted to try doing something a little rebellious. A small tattoo seemed reasonable. I-I still don't have any idea what to get, though..."
"Oh, we've got a book for that. Mioda can—"
Ibuki threw a hairbrush at Leon. Her client laughed before going back to pretending that she wasn't eavesdropping. Daiya shot him a glare, and then he flashed a wicked grin at Kiyotaka as he pulled the cap off of a marker.
"How 'bout I surprise ya? I have somethin' in mind that seems perfect for ya. ...C'mere, Ibuki. I'll sketch it for ya. You can tell me if ya think it's a good idea."
Kiyotaka chewed on his lip as the two of them huddled over the work table. Whatever Daiya had sketched, Ibuki thought it was delightful and had difficulty containing her giggles and squeals. Kiyotaka couldn't seem to work up the nerve to stop their schemes, to insist on picking something out of the book. It was likely because he'd already told Ibuki that he might let the artist pick something, and he didn't want to disappoint her. She was overwhelming, but she somehow seemed like a very nice person anyway.
The team agreed on the design. Leon glanced at it and raised a suspicious eyebrow again, but didn't give it away. Daiya offered Kiyotaka another grin.
"N' where were ya thinkin' of gettin' it?"
Kiyotaka gulped. He'd already decided on the spot, and he couldn't think of any better place (he'd run the risk of someone seeing it if he put it elsewhere, if he were to go swimming or something). But he hadn't expected this situation, and now, it was highly embarrassing. The trio stared in anticipation as Kiyotaka slowly stood up.
His face went bright red. He looked down at the floor. And then he patted his hip.
"...Right here," he mumbled. "My hip. It'll always be concealed by my pants that way. The only way someone would see it is if they had me... you know. Naked."
Kiyotaka looked back up, and he swiftly regretted that move. He did not like Daiya's expression.
"What an incredible idea, Kiyoyo!" Ibuki squealed. Kiyotaka frowned at the weird nickname she'd decided to give him. He also realized, just then, that he'd have to pull his pants down.
Daiya warned him that the placement would likely hurt quite a bit, as the flesh over the hip bone was often quite tender. But since it was a small symbol, he was sure Kiyotaka would be just fine. Kiyotaka grit his teeth as he awkwardly adjusted his pants. Ibuki gave him an apron to cover himself with, so he at least didn't have to worry about flashing anyone. He hadn't been able to stay seated. The chair adjusted into some kind of flat bed, and he was now lying helplessly across it, his fate sealed.
Ibuki got a little too close to his face again. He felt like a laboratory sample, especially with the bright lights right above him.
"You didn't answer my other questions."
No, not a laboratory sample— this was like a police interrogation. Daiya and Ibuki were staring him down. He gulped.
"I-I don't even remember what they were!"
She easily remembered them and rattled them off like it was nothing. He did his best to answer them while the trio of workers studied him. Leon still wasn't quite catching up to what Ibuki and Daiya were scheming.
Daiya started tracing the design onto Kiyotaka's skin as Ibuki finished up with her client and sent her off. The process wasn't quite as awkward as he had thought it would be, because the man was clearly a professional who didn't think much of it. He wouldn't let Kiyotaka catch a glimpse of the design and intentionally blocked it with his arm. Kiyotaka glared at him. He was going to reverse this interrogation.
"...So you're Daiya Oowada, right?"
"Yeah. That's what the business card says. Why d'ya ask?"
"Because I think that I just so happen to know your brother. ...You know. Mondo?" Referring to him by his first name felt a little strange, even if that's how Kiyotaka had been addressing him in his head.
Daiya feigned shock. He was trying way too hard.
"What?! My little bro?! You don't say!"
"Whaaaaaaaat?! You know Mondo?!" Ibuki, too, was a less than stellar actress. Kiyotaka rolled his eyes and caught a glimpse of Leon squinting at him, his head tilted to one side.
"I... do... He's a, um. Friend? I suppose?"
"...You suppose, huh?" Leon repeated, stroking his beard. He was starting to get it. Slowly but surely.
"It's... kind of a long story. He did me a favor a while back, and ever since then, we seem to keep running into one another. He's towed my car a couple of times. He's very, uh... forward."
Daiya concealed a chuckle at that. He knew damn well what his brother was like. He knew what Kiyotaka meant.
"What kind of favor are we talkin' about?" Leon asked. Kiyotaka groaned.
"I... I got very drunk, and Mondo kept me from running into traffic and got me home safely. It's embarrassing, but that's what happened."
Kiyotaka saw the realization hit Leon. He may have been a bit dense, and maybe he hadn't heard Kiyotaka's name or a proper description, but he had, apparently, heard that story. Kiyotaka wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. He was now outnumbered three to one, and Leon wandered over, a plotting smile on his face.
"Hey, I heard about that! He hadta pay Owari to take you home, right?" Leon remembered aloud. Kiyotaka nodded. His face was turning a bit pink. Ibuki clearly noticed that.
For the next few minutes, as Daiya prepared his newly-sanitized tools, Ibuki and Leon asked questions and told stories. Kiyotaka was admittedly grateful that they were distracting him from his nervousness about the needle, but he had a feeling that their motives were twofold. Ibuki kept telling really nice stories about the time that Mondo had helped her move to her new apartment, or about the time he'd stopped some robbery-in-progress, while Leon asked questions about Kiyotaka's history with the man (while Daiya pretended that he hadn't already heard it all). It was nice, he supposed, that Mondo had such a supportive group of friends... Friends that would so plainly try to talk him up.
"Yeah, the group of us, we all hang out n' support each other. You remember pink-hair from earlier?" Leon asked. Kiyotaka hissed, as the needle touched his bare skin for the first time just then, but tried to ignore it. Daiya made some kind of clicking noise at him that was weirdly soothing.
"I do," Kiyotaka answered through his teeth. He had to raise his voice a little to be heard above the noise of Daiya working. "He was a bit difficult to miss, I'd say."
Leon laughed.
"Yeah, that was Souda. He's a friend of mine. But he and Mondo are friends now, too, all because'a this place. They're both into tattoos n' fixing cars. They work together on projects sometimes, or sell each other parts... This is a nice place to work. Y'meet all kinds of interesting people."
"But Mondo doesn't work here!"
"He don't have to. I do," Daiya explained. "So he's here all the time, hangin' with me. I started this fuckin' business and I live right upstairs. ...That's really the only reason he's so tatted up. He lets me use him as a canvas."
Kiyotaka couldn't help but giggle. It was a strangely innocent reason. People often gave Mondo disapproving looks in the grocery store lines, likely assuming that the tattoos were a prison thing, or maybe a gang thing. That's what Kiyotaka had thought at first. But, no... He was just a walking artistic experiment for his brother's sake. Actually, Kiyotaka could see down Daiya's shirt, confirming that he had a tattoo just like Mondo's gang crest in the exact same spot. Matching tattoos for the former leaders of a fearsome biker gang.
"He's let me give him a few piercings, too," Leon added, furthering the point that Mondo's appearance was kind of misleading. Kiyotaka did recall seeing some kind of metal bar in the upper part of one of Mondo's ears.
"And Ibuki does his hair! It's very soft," Ibuki sang, standing with her hands proudly on her hips. She must have been referring to the bleached portion. Kiyotaka scoffed. Did they think of Mondo as some kind of promotional billboard?!
"He's been bleachin' it since middle school," Daiya quietly muttered. Like he'd read Kiyotaka's mind. "N' he wouldn't just let us do whatever the fuck we wanted if he didn't like it at all, now, would he? The man's an adult."
A minute of silence. Daiya rounded some sort of corner with the needle, hitting more tender flesh, and Kiyotaka tried not to flinch. Ibuki held his hand and allowed him to squeeze it. "Breathe through the pain," she coaxed.
"...You know, he's... not so bad," Kiyotaka finally mumbled. Daiya seemed especially happy to hear that. "A little rough around the edges, and very blunt, but... he's also really kind at heart."
"I should fuckin' hope so," Daiya retorted. "I mean, I pretty much raised the brat. 'S not a good reflection on me if he's an asshole."
Kiyotaka's brow furrowed.
"You raised him?"
Daiya shrugged.
"That's what I said. ...Don't worry about it. Long story."
Ibuki and Leon got distracted as a couple more customers arrived. Daiya assured Kiyotaka that he was almost done, that the design was being filled in now and the worst part was over. And then, when he was sure that the other two couldn't hear him, Daiya leaned close to Kiyotaka's ear.
"Mondo's a good kid. ...Actually, scratch that. He's a good man. We've both been through hell n' back, but he's seen some shit I didn't have to. Ya wouldn't know it jus' by lookin'. I honestly don't know how he's handled it the way he has, and god knows I didn't fuckin' protect him from it all like I was supposed to. I hafta think about that every day, but y'know what? He insists to this goddamn day that I've never failed him, n' that he knows I did the best I could under the circumstances. I... I can act all big n' tough all I want, but at the end of the day, I'm the one who's lucky t'have him. Not the other way around. If he says otherwise, he's wrong."
Daiya's voice was quiet, calm, and very, very serious. Kiyotaka had no idea what he was talking about beyond the slightest of inklings. His eyes widened slightly.
"I'm... not sure that I understand what you mean."
"All I'm sayin' is that my brother is a fuckin' catch. Do with that what you will."
He slapped the work table a couple of times. Ibuki ran over like she'd been summoned, and the needle stopped buzzing.
"It's done?! It's done?!" she chanted. Leon told his clients to wait a moment and ran to Ibuki's side. Daiya nodded and let them see it, though he still blocked Kiyotaka's view.
"All finished. Whaddya think?"
Daiya's comrades voiced their approval of the brand-new tattoo. He grinned, and before Kiyotaka could see it, he cleaned the area again and then slapped some kind of bandage over it that he taped down. He started rattling off instructions about how to keep it clean and avoid an infection. Something about flaking and redness, and about how the bandage should stay on until the itching subsides so he wouldn't be tempted to scratch it.
"You can look at it as soon as ya get home," Daiya assured him. "The bandage ain't necessary. Just a precaution. Ibuki'll give ya a skin bandage— you can see through it, but it keeps ya from scratchin'. Take care, kid."
He gave a weird salute. Kiyotaka paid, took the items that Ibuki handed him, and then wandered to the door. He looked back at them, uncertain. Ibuki told him to come back again sometime— if not to get another tattoo, then just to visit. "We can talk about Mondo some more," Leon added with a wink. Kiyotaka left soon after that. He didn't know what the weird, empty feeling in his chest was.
The curiosity nearly killed him for the entire duration of his drive home. He ran up the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator and launched himself into his apartment. He flew to the bathroom and stood atop a stool so that he could get a better look at the image in the mirror. He held his breath, counted to three, and removed the bandage.
He didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. Because he hadn't just gotten a tattoo that day— he'd been branded.
Daiya Oowada had tattooed a diamond on his hip.