I could feel my anger quickly rising from my stomach to my throat.
Damn, this beggar was turning up his nose at me.
I pointed at this beggar and scolded him: “Damn, I understood you were poor and gave you some money, but you thought it was beneath you. Well, I will give you nothing. And now get out of here, or else, I will hit you.”
But this beggar clanged his iron rod, singing and laughing: “One two three four. My brother, don’t get so angry, when I said I didn’t want your money, I didn’t mean your money was beneath me. It was said, ‘even though you have gold and silver mines, if you sit idle and eat, in time your whole fortune would be used up’. So could I come and make a living here?”
This beggar wanted to find a job in my studio?
I looked him up and down, asking curiously: “How could you become a beggar if you wanted to work?”
“Hah, several years ago I earned some money, but now I used it up and I have to find a job and work.” The beggar pointed at my studio and told me that this was a good place for him to work since it belonged to Yin.
I drew in my breath: “Were you also in this field?”
“Well, more senior than you.” The beggar smiled and said: “Shall we go inside and have a chat?”
“Please.” I thought that this beggar might be a master so I invited him in.
This beggar was sitting in my studio, complaining and whining. He said I had good skill that could bring me a fortune, but I just stayed here.
I told him I didn’t want to earn too much money and I would never do things that violated the rules and went against my conscience.
When I said this, the beggar immediately stuck up a thumb and said: “You are a good guy with great skills, but you are not impetuous. What a rarity.”
Then he said he wanted to be my membership consultant, or the receptionist of my studio.
I stared at him and asked: “You seem to be a capable person, so you still want to work for me?”
“Why not? I had been wandering for a long time, and now I want to rest.” This beggar said and laughed.
I asked him how much did he want for his salary.
He raised one finger.
“One thousand?” I asked.
He shook his head and said: “Ten thousand.”
I got surprised by this beggar when he demanded such an exorbitant price.There were indeed membership consultants in the big tattoo studios, but they were usually paid one thousand and eight hundred, some bosses paid higher, at two thousand and two hundred per month.
This beggar asked for ten thousand.
I shook and told him this price was too much and I couldn’t afford it.
He said he was worthy of this price, and he wouldn’t work for me if it was lower than this price. Otherwise, he would go to another place to work.
He was about to leave when I pulled him back.
I was thinking that I hadn’t been in this field for long and I needed to find a master to follow. Though Liu the Sixth could help me when he was free, he came from privilege and wealth and only helped me occasionally. On the other hand, I could make faster progress in this field if this beggar was really a capable and experienced person.
I just calculated, I could earn about twenty or thirty thousand Yuan per order, and it was not so expensive to spend ten thousand per month to hire this person for guidance. If he was not so good, I could fire him after a month. In any case, ten thousand was not so much, or not so little.
Thinking about that, I gritted my teeth and said to this beggar: “Ten thousand is OK.”
“Generous.” The beggar smiled and stood up. He asked me whether I could provide him with a change of clothes. Otherwise, nobody would consult him if he looked like that.
I didn’t have any spare clothes, I only had clothes for working. So I pointed at the wardrobe and said that there are several working out fits and told him to change first.
The beggar smiled to me and said: “My name is Feng Chunsheng, and you?”
“Yu Shui”, I replied.
“Brother Yu, nice to see you. Let me have a bath first and I’ll talk with you later.” He made an obeisance to me and went into the bath room.
After the bath, he wore the working clothes. Then I could tell this beggar was about a forty or fifty mid-aged man. He looked decent, but with a bad smell.
Feng Chunsheng patted the working clothes and told me it was the first time he got new clothes in the past ten years. Damn, what he said might nearly make me burst into tears.
After he cleaned up his clothes and intended to chat with me, someone came knocking at the door.
I turned back and found a well-dressed, beautiful lady at the door. She was in the grey silk tunic, white-washed jeans, and Asics sports shoes which looked very clean.
It was Bai Ling.
“Xiao Ling, here you are.” I said hello to her.
Bai Ling smiled sweetly. She came in, sat on the tattoo couch and said hello to me. She said, “Shui, I got into trouble, so could you help me?”
I was about to ask her what happened when Feng Chunsheng pulled me back to the door and whispered, “This girl is unusual.”
Nonsense, normal people never came to my shop for a Yin and Yang tattoo.
I gave him a supercilious look and was about to enter the room.
Feng Chunsheng pulled me back again. He pointed at Bai Ling secretly and said: “Look at that girl; she’s hunchbacked.”
I glanced at Bai Ling and found that she was indeed bending a little, but not so much, and you couldn’t tell if you didn’t observe carefully.
However, common people were always slouching a bit. How could she be straight all day like a soldier?
Feng Chunsheng told me, “It is normal like that. Have you ever seen a hunchbacked person who kept their neck straight?”
Then I looked at her again, and found it unusual. She had an unusual hunchback, where she had a straight neck but bent back and waist. Well, how could I describe it? It was just like a person with a hunchback who tried to look at you horizontally.
Then Feng Chunsheng said, “Actually there is something on the two shoulders that caused this hunchback. Usually it is baby’s ghost; it is too heavy and bends the back.”
When a baby became a ghost, it always rode on the person’s neck. It was terrible.
I had goose bumps all over hearing what he said. Then I asked: “Really?”
“You just go and ask her.” Feng Chunsheng said: “You shouldn’t lower the price. It should be more than forty or fifty thousand.”
I hired Feng Chunsheng as a membership consultant, but now he was my consultant.
However, I didn’t fully believe what he said, so I went to Bai Ling and asked: “Xiao Ling, what happened to you recently?”
She was about to tell me but stopped when she saw Feng Chunsheng.
I waved to Feng Chunsheng.
Feng Chunsheng was a decent person; he came to me for a cigarette and went out when it was lit.
I guessed she might tell me something, so I just closed the door.
When I closed the door, it was almost a confined environment. Then I asked her: “What happened?”
Then Bai Ling talked. She told me she always felt something on her shoulders, so she took up a mirror and found she was stooped slightly, while that was not the case before. So she tried to look up, but she could still feel something on her neck and couldn’t get it off.
“Have you see a doctor? It may be a problem of the cervical spine, lumbar spine, or shoulder joint disease. It’s said the people working in the city will always suffer from this problem,” I told her.
Bai Ling shook her head and told me that she did see the doctor and did an X-ray and an MRI, but it all showed that there was nothing wrong with her shoulders. However, she still couldn’t straighten up.
The doctor also suggested that there was nothing wrong with her shoulders, but they looked abnormal, so the doctor told her to go to the psychology department and check whether it was because of too much psychological pressure that caused the muscle tension and lead to the hunched back.
Bai Ling opened her hands and said: “I went to the psychology doctor, but he couldn’t find any reasons, either.”
This was a rather strange issue.
Then I remembered what Feng Chunsheng told to me. He said that there was a baby ghost on Bai Ling’s back.
I tried to ask her: “Xiao Ling, have you ever committed any sins…on a child?”
“Child? No, no, actually, I like kids very much.” When she mentioned the child, she had blood-shot eyes and touched her belly subconsciously.
I saw no reaction from her soI asked again: “So have you ever committed any sins against babies?”
Hearing the word ‘baby’, Bai Ling paused and stood up. She asked me: “Who told you about this? Who was it?”
I didn’t even know what Bai Ling was talking about. She backed away and her legs hit the tattoo couch. She flipped over and crashed down to the floor from the tattoo couch.
I went to her quickly: “Are you ok?”
“Leave me alone, leave me alone.” Bai Ling pushed me away. Then she pushed the door open and unsteadily ran away.
“Oh, why don’t we chat again? You left so early.” Feng Chunsheng called out from the door as he smoked.
Bai Ling didn’t respond. She was running very fast and even dropped a shoe, but she didn’t mind and madly ran on with only one shoe.
Damn, why was she so sensitive when I mentioned the word ’baby’?
Feng Chunsheng came in and opened his hands: “So the business was over just like that? Wow, you have poor business negotiation ability.”
I told him I didn’t know why Bai Ling ran away when I mentioned the word ‘baby’.She looked very embarrassed.
Feng Chunsheng slapped his thigh as if he wished iron could turn into steel and complained: “You are such a green horn. Didn’t you remember what I had told you? This girl carries a baby ghost on her neck, which means she had hurt a baby and felt guilty, and that’s why she was disturbed by the baby ghost. So you were just scaring her when you mentioned the baby.”
“Was it true that she became a hunchback because there is a baby’s ghost on her neck?” I asked Feng Chunsheng.
Feng Chunsheng opened his hands: “That is the explanation in this field, but nobody has ever seen the real ghost. Who knows? Anyway, it must be so, according to her reaction.”
I shook my head and sighed: “Why did you say she offended the baby? Did you mean an abortion?”
“You don’t need to guess when you don’t know, or else I will know how bad you are. You see, during an abortion the baby is not fully formed yet, so there would be no soul, and it is only dead flesh, so this couldn’t be an abortion.” Feng Chunsheng sat on the tattoo couch and smoked freely, then he gossiped: “You know…this woman must be very lewd.”
“How do you know this?” I found this man was such a gossiper, and he was very wretched too, since he had a different focus compared to other people.
“Well, let me tell you whether this is a lewd woman or not.” When he was talking about this, he looked so happy, he sat up quickly and wanted to share his experience with an animated expression.