Traveling to a world that advocates tattoos, if you don't have any tattoos on your body, you are no better than a dog.
I was dressed as a mine slave, with only one slave pattern on my body - the meanest kind.
The old man who shared the shed with me said before he died: "Don't go deep, there is something inside."
I didn't listen.
Then I saw - there were living patterns on the stone wall, densely packed and crawling.
There is a human-shaped indentation in the middle of the stone wall, and something is breathing inside.
Breathing in and out, in the same rhythm as my heartbeat.
Later I discovered that those tattoo artists tattooed people, and I could do it just by looking at them.
How to hold the needle, how to adjust the ink, and how to make the pattern "alive".
It was the first time I had a tattoo on my body, and the dot was glowing and moving slowly under the skin.
Then I heard a voice: "Stab me."
I don't know what that is. But I know - something is growing in this body.
Twenty years later, he climbed out of the mine. From slave to tattoo artist, from the most humble tattoo to the taboo tattoo.
They say I am the God of Thorns.
But I knew that something deep in that mine had been waiting for me.
Wait for me to go back.
Wait until I finish stabbing it.
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What is pricked is the skin, but what is changed is the life.
