Chapter 163: An Impulsive Decision? [FIXED!][24/09!]

The woman slid a tablet across the counter toward him, thumbing it open to reveal a curated gallery — small, clean designs, clearly organized for people who had no business getting anything ambitious. Simple linework. Minimalist geometry. Nothing that screamed regret in six months.

Liam appreciated the thoughtfulness of it, honestly. Someone had clearly built this catalogue with beginners in mind.

He scrolled slowly, in no rush, despite the fact that he hadn’t technically booked an appointment. Not that he cared much. Worst case, she’d tell him to come back another day.

He was maybe ten minutes into browsing when the bell above the door chimed. Liam glanced over his shoulder to find a light-skinned man walking in, forearms already covered in ink, moving with the kind of ease that told Liam this wasn’t his first time in this chair.

"Ah. There goes my spot."

Liam sighed but didn’t argue the point internally for long. He had no claim over her time — he was the one who’d shown up without a plan or a booking. Fair was fair.

The woman gestured for the man to take a seat at her station, and within minutes, she was prepping her equipment with practiced, unhurried precision. Liam watched from his own chair, catalogue still in hand, genuinely curious to see her work up close before committing to anything himself.

"You good, or you need me to hold still extra hard today?" the man asked, settling into the chair.

The woman gave him a flat look, then held up two fingers, tapping them lightly against her own wrist.

"Two hours, got it." He grinned, clearly fluent in whatever shorthand they’d developed. "You’re worse than my ex with the silent treatment, you know that?"

She rolled her eyes and flipped him off without missing a beat, and the man laughed like this was a running joke between them.

Liam smiled to himself, settling back into his chair. So she communicated in gestures with regulars too, not just with strangers like him. Made sense. He wondered briefly why she never spoke, but figured it wasn’t his business to ask.

The machine buzzed to life, and Liam found himself watching, genuinely fascinated by how steady her hands were. Confident, precise, no hesitation in a single stroke. This wasn’t guesswork — she moved like someone who trusted her own skill completely.

He figured he’d stick around and watch. See what he was actually signing up for.

Two hours turned out to be a rough estimate.

Somewhere in the second hour, the low hum of the tattoo gun and the quiet, steady rhythm of her work lulled Liam into something he hadn’t intended — sleep. His head tipped back against the chair, eyes fluttering shut despite his best efforts to stay alert.

-

The needle bit into his skin, and something was wrong.

Liam looked down at his arm mid-tattoo, and where clean lines should have been forming, there was only an angry, spreading redness, the skin blistering and warping beneath the ink. He tried to pull his arm back, but it wouldn’t move, wouldn’t respond, like it had already stopped being his.

"Something’s wrong," he said, panic climbing his throat. "Something’s really wrong—"

The artist — not her, someone else, faceless — didn’t stop. The machine kept buzzing, drilling deeper, and Liam watched in horror as his arm turned black from the elbow down, the flesh dying in real time.

"We need to amputate," a voice said, clinical and detached, and Liam was screaming now, screaming that this wasn’t supposed to happen, that he just wanted a stupid tattoo, that this wasn’t fair—

He looked down and his arm was simply gone, replaced by a clean, sterile stump, and the worst part wasn’t the pain. It was that nobody in the room seemed to think this was strange at all.

-

Liam jolted awake with a sharp inhale, heart hammering, eyes snapping open to find the shop bathed in the warm orange light of evening. He looked down immediately, breath still uneven — both arms intact, unmarked, exactly as they should be.

"Just a dream. Just a dream."

He exhaled slowly, running a hand down his face, trying to shake the vivid, sickening image of his own arm rotting away in real time.

Across the room, the man in the chair was admiring his finished piece in a handheld mirror, grinning from ear to ear.

"This is exactly what I wanted," he said. "You’re an actual wizard, I swear."

The woman gave a small, satisfied nod, already cleaning her station with the same quiet efficiency she’d shown all evening.

The man’s voice must have been what pulled Liam fully out of sleep, because he sat up straighter, blinking against the last of the grogginess, and immediately checked the time on his phone.

[6:47 PM.]

"Damn. I really slept through all of that."

He should have just gone home the second he realized how long this was going to take. Instead, here he was, waking up disoriented in a tattoo shop chair, freshly haunted by a nightmare about losing a limb over a decision he hadn’t even made yet.

He stood, stretching the stiffness out of his neck, and approached the counter where the woman was now wiping down her tools.

"Um," Liam started, still shaking off the last mental residue of his dream, "can I come back tomorrow?"

The woman looked up at him and gave a single nod, unbothered, already turning her attention back to her equipment.

"Thanks. Sorry for just... camping out in your shop for a couple hours."

She shrugged one shoulder, a gesture that somehow managed to communicate it happens without a single word.

Liam offered a small, tired smile and headed for the door, stepping back out into the cooling evening air. The sun was low on the horizon now, streaking the sky in soft orange and purple.

He took a slow breath, replaying the dream in his mind — the rot spreading up his arm, the casual horror of it all — and felt his earlier enthusiasm quietly deflate with every step away from the shop.

Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

He told himself he’d go back tomorrow, that it was just a stupid dream born from exhaustion and stress, nothing more. But deep down, as he walked home under the fading light, Liam already knew the truth.

He wasn’t going back tomorrow but Liam managed to get her name, it was Hitomi.

-

Liam walked out of Ironwood Ink with no tattoo to show for it, and surprisingly, no real disappointment either. He’d gone in on a whim, no appointment, no design, no real plan — of course it hadn’t panned out cleanly. That was just the nature of impulsive decisions; some worked out, some didn’t, and this one had simply fizzled into a nap and a bad dream instead of fresh ink.

"If I’m doing this, he thought," hands in his pockets as he walked, "it should be with Darren anyway."

Darren had a way of cutting through nerves with jokes and distraction, the kind of presence that made painful things feel manageable simply by being there. Liam made a mental note to bring it up with him properly, maybe even make it a whole afternoon out of it instead of another solo attempt.

The walk back felt good regardless. Clear head, steady legs, evening air settling cool against his skin. He was starting to realize these walks were becoming something he needed — small windows where his mind actually slowed down instead of racing through everything demanding his attention.

He was smiling faintly to himself, lost in the rhythm of it, when a storefront up ahead caught his eye. Louis Vuitton.

Liam stopped walking entirely, staring at the display window, the recognizable pattern catching the last of the evening light.

"There it is."

The idea hit him instantly, sharp and clear. Mrs. Harriet. He hadn’t invested properly in her in a while, not in the way the system rewarded, and here he was, already out, already in the right headspace. This was the moment to capitalize on it.

He walked inside without hesitation, already scanning the displays, mentally running through what she might actually appreciate versus what would just look expensive for the sake of being expensive. He needed something with intention behind it. Something that said he’d thought about her specifically, not just thrown money in her direction.

It didn’t take him long to settle on something — a piece that struck the right balance of elegant and personal, price tag well into six figures once everything was accounted for. Liam didn’t blink at the number. The rebate system had made peace with his relationship to money a long time ago.

But as he stood at the counter, card in hand, a problem surfaced that he hadn’t fully considered walking in.

"I don’t actually know where she lives."

He paused mid-transaction, mind racing. He knew her office. He knew the firm. He knew, vaguely, the neighborhood she’d mentioned once in passing during a conversation he could barely recall details of now. But an actual address? Nothing concrete.

Liam exhaled slowly, running a hand down his face as the cashier waited patiently for him to finish the payment.

"There are ways of finding out," he told himself. "I’ll figure it out."

But the real issue gnawed at him harder than the logistics. This purchase needed to reach her — actually reach her, in her hands — before the rebate window processed the investment. If it didn’t land in time, if it got lost in some limbo of not knowing where to send it, he’d be out roughly two hundred thousand dollars for absolutely nothing.

Even with unlimited-feeling resources, that kind of loss wasn’t something to shrug off. That was the kind of mistake that could genuinely crash him out.

Liam swallowed hard, finalized the purchase, and stepped back outside with the bag in hand and a new problem to solve before the day was over.