He closed the browser window as fast as he could.
Kentaro’s face was red as hell. He shot a furtive glance at the girl sitting next to him, but she was looking at the photos of his previous customers on the walls. Maybe he’d got away with it. Close shave.
He opened up a new browser and clicked on a saved bookmark that took him to Google Maps. The software loaded up and he typed ‘Tokyo’ into the search bar. The map zoomed in, and then the city filled the browser window. He clicked on satellite view, then zoomed in further, the detail getting larger and larger. Gridlines of buildings divided by roads, canals winding along thin alleyways, the sprawling bay, and the veins and capillaries of train tracks pumping people throughout the city.
‘That’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I want that on my back.’
‘No, that is impossible,’ he said.
‘I came to you because you’re supposed to be the best.’ She sighed. ‘I guess they were wrong.’
‘No one could do this.’
‘I’m sure I could find someone for the right price.’
‘It’s not about price, it’s about skill. I’m one of the few true horishi left in Tokyo.’
‘So what’s stopping you?’
‘It’ll take time. Could be a year, could be four.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed his face with a sweaty palm.
‘I’ve got time.’
‘It’ll be painful too.’ He fought back a smirk.
‘I told you already: pain is not an issue.’
‘You’ll have to get naked and lie face down on the table.’
‘Sure.’ She began to unbutton her shirt straight away with no hint of shyness.
Kentaro felt a hot twist in his stomach and quickly looked down at the floor. He ran to the bathroom to get some baby oil. It definitely wasn’t necessary, but he’d had an idea that he would use it as an excuse to touch her body. He imagined his master who’d trained him when he was an apprentice – he’d be turning in his grave seeing him pulling this baby-oil trick. When he came back into the main room she was already naked, lying face down on the table. Kentaro couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Her skin was perfection, unblemished. The muscles of her lower back led perfectly down to her round buttocks, swelling briefly into powerful thighs. He swallowed as he walked towards her.
‘Uh, I just need to rub your back with oil.’
‘Whatever.’ She shifted slightly.
He squeezed out a glob of the oil onto his right hand – the bottle made a farting sound, which he almost apologized for, then thought better of it. He snapped the cap back on and began to rub the oil into her skin. It glistened under the lights, and the heat he’d felt in his stomach earlier began to spread downwards.
‘So . . . what’s your name?’
‘Naomi.’
‘Mmm . . . Naomi . . . Pretty name. And . . . do you have a boyfriend?’
She rolled over slightly to face Kentaro and looked straight at him again, her eyes a soft flash of green. He could see her breasts.
‘Look, mister. I’m not gonna put up with any funny stuff. I came here for a tattoo, and that’s all I want. I saw you looking at some weird stuff on your laptop earlier, and I’m fine with that – each to their own – you know. I don’t know how that couple would feel about you spying on them through their webcam though. Maybe that’s something you should have a think about. But I’m not gonna have you perving on me. I’m paying you for a service, so be a professional. Okay?’
Kentaro held his oily hands limply in the air. ‘Spying? Webcams? I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Save the bullshit. I don’t want to hear it.’ She lay back down. ‘And by the way, your flies are undone.’
Kentaro looked down at his trousers, did up his flies, then got to work.
Work was something Kentaro had always been good at. He could concentrate for hours at a time – the client usually asking for a break before he himself ever grew tired. When he was tattooing a customer, he threw everything he had into the task, and his work had always been highly praised by fellow artists.
Naomi came to visit him over the course of several months, whenever she had the time. And he was always glad to see her. He had some superfine needles especially made by the best knife-seller in Asakusa.
He began inking out the entire city all over her back, shoulders, arms, buttocks and thighs. He started with the roads, the outlines of buildings, the rivers – tracing the outline before he even started thinking about the colouring of the tattoo. He had to complete the ghostly shell-like skeleton of Tokyo, and only once this was finished could he begin shading and colouring. The entire tattoo would take a couple of years to complete and would require regular visits over that period, in which he would work on a portion each time – there was also the small matter of how much pain the customer could take in a single session.
He jumped straight into the task of inking the city, which he always did in the traditional tebori manner, carving and inking lines deeply into Naomi’s skin with his metal needles. She was truly one of the toughest customers he’d ever had. She didn’t even blink at the pain. He used a pair of loupes attached to his glasses to draw the finest of detail in the tattoo and created microscopic features of the city, which retained its overall structure when viewed from afar.
Kentaro struggled only in one matter: it was impossible for him to hold the entire city in his mind while he worked. He would have to work on small levels and refer to a zoomed-in portion on his laptop. Unlike all his previous designs, which he had been able to visualize fully while working, the size and scale of the macroscopic city was just too much to retain in any human brain.
It took several visits to ink the outline. The last part he finished was his very own parlour in Asakusa. He planned on leaving the roof of his parlour blank as the final space to sign his name – keeping to tradition.
Once he had completed the outline of the city in black ink, he then faced colouring, the shading and the detail. He decided to start with Shibuya.
‘Hmmm.’ He paused in thought.
‘What’s wrong?’ Naomi asked, lifting her head.
‘Oh, I’m just trying to decide whether to have people actually crossing the intersection at the Shibuya scramble crossing, or whether to have them waiting for the green light.’
‘I don’t want any people.’
‘What do you mean?’
She lowered her head back to the table and closed her eyes. ‘I just want the city. I don’t want any people.’
‘But it won’t be a city without people.’
‘I don’t care. It’s my back, it’s my tattoo. I’m paying.’
‘Hmmm.’
Kentaro felt a twinge of pride. It was true that Naomi had paid regularly, and was a good customer. But he was one of the finest tattooists in Tokyo. His customers agreed to his designs. They never told him what to do. His inner artist flared, but as the Japanese saying went: kyaku-sama wa kami-sama desu – the customer is a god.
Well. She had said no people. Animals weren’t people, were they?
He smiled to himself and shaded in a small cat – two blobs of colour, like a calico – just opposite the statue of Hachiko the dog in Shibuya. And then he went about his work.