[1]
When Tan Ji was ten, she got a long scar on her left arm that hadn't faded even after several years. Wanting to make it look better, she went to a newly opened tattoo shop in town.
The shop owner asked what she wanted tattooed.
Tan Ji thought for a moment, then traced the scar. "A straight line."
The shop owner said nobody got tattoos like that, and it would look ugly.
Song Cheng, who had come with Tan Ji, immediately handed over several red bills and said one word: "Do it."
Later, Tan Ji found out that Song Cheng had gotten the same ugly thing tattooed on the inside of his own arm.
-
Tan Ji and Song Cheng had known each other since they were little.
They'd grown up together with their butts bare, gone to the same elementary, middle, and high schools, and were more like brothers-in-arms than childhood sweethearts.
When they were little, Song Cheng got into fights, and Tan Ji would rush in and bite the other kid. Once they started school, when a teacher wrongly accused Tan Ji and made her stand as punishment, Song Cheng kicked over a chair and stood outside the classroom with her.
Tan Ji had always thought of Song Cheng as a close buddy.
Until one day, the so-called buddy in her eyes had a cigarette between his lips, the most bitter, harsh, expensive kind from beneath the supermarket counter. Through the haze that hadn't yet cleared, he said to her:
"I've kind of been wanting to try it lately."
"See what it feels like to take the girl I've spoiled since childhood home with me."
[2]
After they got together, Tan Ji got a whim and went alone to the tattoo shop, extending the straight line on her arm to eighteen centimeters.
When she got home, she pointed to the line and grinned, asking him to guess its length.
Song Cheng glanced at it but didn't answer.
Much later, one day, Song Cheng wrote an incredibly sappy song inspired by Tan Ji's name.
Tan Ji couldn't stand him.
So Song Cheng went along with it. "Then I won't sing this song anymore."
"?"
He pointed to the inside of his left arm, where he had a straight-line tattoo in the same place as hers, and smiled with even less shame than when she'd asked him to guess its length.
"I'll turn it into a music staff, and tattoo the chorus here."
*A stubborn, cool girl with an eighteen-centimeter straight-line tattoo on her arm vs. a rock-and-roll bad boy with a bit of a romantic streak who has doted on her and only her since they were kids
*Also known as: What Do I Do When My Childhood Friend, Who Always Saw Me as Just a Friend, Suddenly Says He Likes Me? and A Hundred Ways to Woo Someone After Your Childhood Friend Finally Gets a Clue
Note:
1. The title comes from Pu Shu's "New Boy."
2. The protagonists' names may change. I'll leave them for now and change them when I think of better ones.
Theme: There will always be lasting hope and longing for the future.
