Chapter 25: Symbolism
In a parlor of ink where the canvas was skin, Cha Hwa Rim was at work creating her next masterpiece. The air smelled of ink and antiseptic with undertones of iron and copper.
The buzzing needles of the tattoo machine sang as ink flowed beneath the skin, bringing her current design to life.
At first, Dan Woo wasn’t sure how well he could do this, but after he took hold of the tattoo machine, it all just clicked into place, as if his own body knew what to do without any direction.
He sat within the shell of Cha Hwa Rim, listened to the client’s requirements, and came up with a fitting enhancement that would work toward achieving the man’s goal in receiving the tattoo. A money frog—that was his conclusion after the talk. Yet there were several factors to consider: how many money frogs he would need to draw, how big each one of them would be, and the placement of each position. So he kept asking questions, and the more information he got, the clearer the picture became.
He would do three three-legged money frogs, each representing one of the three types of wealth: material wealth, physical wealth—good health—and the wealth of the heart, so that even through the accumulation of all his wealth, the client would do so with principles.
Once Cha Hwa Rim came up with the tattoo design and its placements, she would also give the client a rulebook to live by, for the tattoos were sort of like living beings that had to be cared for. Therefore, there were taboos on what not to do, otherwise one would be doomed by them.
For these specific tattoos, each one had to be fed. The first would be fed drive and ambition, the second care and watchfulness over one’s body, and the last care for spreading love, peace, and joy. If any one of them wasn’t fed, it would devour the others, breaking the harmony, collapsing their owner, and ultimately devouring them as well.
As Cha Hwa Rim explained this to her client before she began working, Dan Woo couldn’t help but feel how surreal all of this was.
Not only did he have Cha Hwa Rim’s memories, abilities, and emotions, but he felt that he had always been Cha Hwa Rim. He was even beginning to question whether he was Dan Woo or Cha Hwa Rim, or if both Dan Woo and Cha Hwa Rim were simply two sides of the same coin. Dan Woo was a scriptwriter who had lived a fairly comfortable life... or was it an actor? Yet the Dan Woo he was familiar with was bad at drawing, whether on paper or skin.
Meanwhile, Cha Hwa Rim continued drawing the three three-legged frogs, each with a coin clasped within its mouth. As she worked, she could feel that the more she painted the skin, the more something inside her seemed to grow. Through drawing, she had always found that she channeled meaning through her work.
Was this actualization? Dan Woo couldn’t help but ask, but no, that felt different.
His mind immediately turned to how actualization had felt before. When he dealt with actualization, it had felt as though he had drawn from the very concept of time. But here, it felt like he was doing something different.
Was this realization?
He couldn’t help but ask himself. He wouldn’t be sure before he got into contact with some Ascendants.
Wait... am I— is Cha Hwa Rim an Ascendant?
The question came to him as he recounted all that Cha Hwa Rim was capable of.
Cha Hwa Rim was very powerful, yet her powers felt a bit different from how Dan Woo’s normally worked. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t an Ascendant, did it?
No. It didn’t matter.
As long as he could convince the Bureau that Cha Hwa Rim was an Ascendant, wouldn’t that give him a place through which he could gather information and maybe obtain the tools needed to protect himself?
Now the problem was, how was he to convince people he was the real Cha Hwa Rim? After all, the real Cha Hwa Rim was dead.
"Dead..." she suddenly muttered as she continued inking the man before her.
"What?" the man suddenly asked.
"Nothing. Your design will be done in a bit."
As soon as she said that, she turned back inward.
The real Cha Hwa Rim was indeed dead.
And she was dead because of what those scoundrels did.
Dan Woo could feel her negative emotions permeate the room as her tattoos of butterflies and lotus flowers began to churn and swirl. The black ink upon her skin started to take the shape of a broken flaming sword surrounded by skulls, each of the skulls carrying small butterflies upon them.
The room suddenly became colder, startling the man getting his tattoo. Yet he let Cha Hwa Rim finish the tattoo, afraid of offending her.
As soon as his tattoo was done, he received his instructions on how to proceed with living alongside it, paid Cha Hwa Rim a hefty amount, and quickly disappeared.
Cha Hwa Rim was left by herself, contemplating all that had happened to her—from her emergence from the closet instance to her fight against the two groups of assailants: the Blood Ink Society and the other mysterious group.
For the Blood Ink Society, she could guess their reason for coming after her. After all, all the tattoos she made created powerful expressions that would give anyone a much-needed boost, and through said tattoos they could track her movements and status, whether she was alive or dead.
But still...
How did they find her so fast?
And that other group... who were they, and what did they want with her?
Could all that had happened be tied back to that anomaly?
These questions continued to plague her, yet they meant nothing unless she found a way out of the instance, or whatever it was she had found herself in.
Dan Woo turned back to his first scenario in this instance—the one where he woke up to Han Soo Hee still being together with him, only for it to abruptly change and end as though he had merely experienced a nightmare.
Maybe there had been hidden rules there.
The first thing he thought was that the instance was behaving very dream-like, so maybe the instance was happening inside a dream. But how could he be sure?
He turned to the tattoo machine on the table. Maybe if he could command it to become a pen, that would prove he was dreaming, wouldn’t it?
He focused all his energy on the machine, willing it to become a pen, but at first there was nothing. It only made him look like a fool.
Only when he finally reached for the machine did it transform.
Wait... did I have to touch the thing for it to transform?
He decided to try it with something else.
He looked at the bottle of ink next to the machine. He picked it up and started imagining it was a television, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it to work.
Was I wrong?
No... let’s try something else.
He grasped the small vial of ink when suddenly something from deep within Dan Woo compelled him to think of a bottle of blue sparkling water.
And just as he thought of it, a bottle of blue sparkling water appeared before him.
As it happened, he could feel trickles of déjà vu, something strangely familiar, just like how it had felt when he had drawn upon the concept of time.
"Well done."
A modulated voice suddenly rang out as one of the butterflies tattooed upon Cha Hwa Rim’s skin started to flap its wings. The butterfly detached itself from her skin and floated into the air.
"You just performed an actualization of your own concept."
"You... how long have you been there?"
"As a star up in the night sky, how can such a question apply to me?"
"You... so is this thing all over?"
"I am afraid not."
"You fucker!"
"I am afraid it is no longer in my hands anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"We are in the Dream Realm, and it seems your constellation is hungering for a story point."
"What do you mean?"
"You are such an intriguing star. I never thought I would meet one who holds power over symbolism. It seems you are more interesting than I had initially expected."
"What?"
"Good luck on your quest. I will keep your two humans company."
Before Dan Woo could get another word in, the butterfly faded from existence as though it had never been there.
He stared at the empty space where it had been moments ago.
"...Was that a threat?"