Yixing crosses his arms as he scans the tattoo parlour suspiciously, still not completely convinced this is the right idea. “Are you sure it's okay?” He asks Shang, who is tying his hair back in the mirror.

His son gives him an unamused look over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. “Yes, bà, I'm sure,” he says, “you made me check it out, remember?” He hadn't even been aware his father knew how to do security checks.

“Yes, but we can always leave if – ”

“We're not leaving,” Shang is adamant, “you promised I could get a tattoo for my eighteenth birthday. There is no way you're going back on that.”

Yixing supposes there really isn't. He sighs, wishing that he hadn't been landed with the task of taking his son to mutilate his skin forever. “I'm not.” He's just stressed, and when stressed, he tends to get a bit squirrelly.

“Why do you need me here, anyway?” He asks. He doesn't mean to sound callous – of course he wants to be there for his son, it's just that, usually, Shang baulks at the idea of doing anything with his extremely uncool parents. He eyes a stack of packaged needles warily.

“Because you can make sure they're writing the right thing,” Shang explains patiently, as if to a child. He's explained this several times over the last few hours, so his irritation is rather understandable.

Yixing nods jerkily. He doesn't want his son to have nonsense tattooed on his back for posterity. “Can they even tattoo calligraphy, anyway?” He ponders doubtfully.

Shang grins roguishly, looking very much like both Jongdae and Kyungmi as he does so. “They can tattoo pretty much anything.”

Yixing finds this extremely worrying, as he knows his son, and he also knows he has no impulse control whatsoever. Now he's legal, there's no knowing what he might come back with. Thank god Jongseok and Sunhwa are too young to ever get one – he really doesn't want to think about what they'd end up tattooed with.

He has a sneaking suspicion Sunhwa is already planning to get a skeleton tattoo when she's old enough, and he knows that neither Jongdae or Kyungmi will stop her, as they have tattoos of their own. Why is it always left to him to be the sensible one?

Finally, the tattoo artist makes his way over, smiling kindly. Yixing stares disapprovingly at his eyebrow piercings. He's always been more of a lip-ring kind of a guy, but Jongdae was too much of a scaredy cat to get one.

“You ready then?” He addresses Shang, who nods tersely. “Well, if you'd just like to get your shirt off and lie down.” Yixing assaulted with a wave of deja vu, which dissipates when he realises that – thank god – the tattoo artist is not coming onto his son.

Shang lies down on a leather chair that looks remarkably like the ones found in a dentists. He wriggles for a second, before letting his arms drape down loosely. The tattoo artist wipes his back down, and then carefully lays the transfer on his skin, patting it down gently. As he lifts it up, Yixing sees what the tattoo will look like on his son's skin when it is done, and an ache settles in his gut.

His little boy is really growing up.

“You're sure?” He asks one last time, as the tattoo artist busies himself with pouring out ink, and Shang's eyes roll heavenward again.

“Yes dad,” he says, with exaggerated patience, “I'm sure.”

Yixing has to bite down his bottom lip to stop it wobbling. He wants to scream 'I'm not ready!' but this is his son's choice, and the three of them promised they would always respect his choices.

Even if that includes having passages from Sun Tzu's The Art of War tattooed in his back in Chinese. He supposes he ought to be proud. At least it's sort of academic.

In the loosest sense.

I like getting tattoos. O u O