The Art of Ink

Chapter Twenty Two - So the lesson is....

By Tuesday evening Mo Guan Shan was exhausted, he looked at the clock in his apartment and it read six pm. He had been tattooing clients since seven am, the store opened early especially for one of their customers who didn't have any time during the day, so early mornings were the best. Which meant due to his early start and fucking busy day, he was sprawled on his sofa, Jun beside him, with no energy to even go and make some dinner.

Shan reached over and stroked Jun's super soft ear over and over, it was his therapy. He was so conflicted. He Tian even though he was hugely unsuitable, the dark haired man was all Mo Guan Shan could think about. Jun sighed loudly and put his head down on his paws, his expressive eyebrows wiggling as he looked up at his master.

"I know I know I miss him too, but as gorgeous, witty, and funny as he was, we can't keep thinking about him." Shan stroked Jun's head and let his head thump tiredly back on the sofa cushion.

The sound of his apartment bell ringing wrought a loud groan from him.

Jun sprung up, barking and scratching at the door.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming please be someone going door to door with free dinner." Mo grumbled and the looked through his peep hole, there was no one there. Shrugging he opened the door and saw that there was a large box on the floor by his door, a white paper bag sat on top of it. It was all addressed to him, no return sender, the address was hand written, no postage stickers covered the parcel either.

"Weird." Looking one way and then the other, there was no one to be seen along his corridor, most people were probably returning home from work it was pretty quiet. Mo bent down and picked up the box, it was pretty heavy, as he was wrestling his way back into his apartment his nose pressed up close to the bag. He groaned loudly as his nostrils were caressed with the scent of something tasty.

He carried the packages over to his little dinning table. First he went to his kitchen to get a knife, then he carefully slit the box all the way down the middle and opened the sides.

Inside was a lot of black tissue paper, Mo started pulling out handfuls of paper until he encountered something flat and smooth. Inside the top part of the box was an expensive hard back book, it was all about traditional Japanese tattooing and it made him smile almost instantaneously.

Intrigued Mo kept digging through the black tissue paper and encountered something else hidden in the box, he opened the paper and this time it was a small, round object and on top was a tattoo style imperial dragon. It was one of those things that went on the back of your phone and popped out so you could hold it easier. Cool!

Mo dug down deeper into the box, throwing more black tissue paper until his kitchen table looked like an explosion had gone off in a packaging factory. Next his fingers encountered a large set of multi-liner ink pens and he nearly jumped up and down because these babies were the best! Any tattoo artist worth their salt needed these pens for accuracy and precision. Woah he was blown away, who was sending him stuff like this?

Shan shook the box and although he thought it was empty, it wasn't. At the bottom was a thin box, like iPad thin, no way! Mo opened the thin box and gasped when he saw it was an LED art craft tracing pad. Holy shit! Wow this was so thoughtful, so personal.

At the very bottom of the box was a large rawhide bone, Mo shook his head and handed the bone over to a very curious Jun who ran off to his bed with it.

That was it, no note, no message, no delivery information. Hmm, must have been from Zhan Zheng Xi or Jian Xi? Maybe his mom? It wasn't his birthday.

"Shit." Mo was smiling like an idiot, it was a pretty awesome present, he loved it. Pilling the gifts on the table his stomach growled at him, reminding him that there was a bag of food under all the black tissue paper. Mo knocked everything to the floor until he found the bag, the logo was from one of his favourite Korean food delivery.