After My Death, Everyone Repented (Transmigration) - Chapter 7

Xie Shaoyun told Damei that she would try to complete all the backlogged tattoo appointments over the next two months before leaving the tattoo industry for good.

“I won’t be attending the Haicheng Tattoo Expo, but you should go. Find some talented artists as soon as possible and recruit them to bolster the studio’s reputation.”

Hearing this, Damei’s expression changed.

Her breathing grew rapid, but even so, she didn’t argue with Xie Shaoyun in the car.

Only after parking in the underground lot of Xie Shaoyun’s apartment building did Damei light a cigarette and hold it between her lips.

Xie Shaoyun disliked the smell of smoke, so Damei didn’t smoke inside her home. Instead, she stood by the stairwell entrance in the basement.

“I don’t agree,” Damei said.

Xie Shaoyun had lost count of how many times she’d heard those words today, Chi Yi disagreed, and now Damei disagreed too.

But why should their opinions matter?

Xie Shaoyun replied, “This is my life. Your disagreement doesn’t change anything.”

“I’m not here to argue nonsense with you. If you’re taking a break because of your fallout with Chi Yi, I’d be fine with that. But how can you just abandon the career you worked so hard for and your sisters?” Damei spat out the cigarette butt, her eyes reddening.

“Damei-jie,” Xie Shaoyun softened her tone. “Don’t be like this.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just said. Xie Shaoyun, when Twilight Studio first opened, it wasn’t because of me, Damei.”

Damei glared at Xie Shaoyun, enunciating each word deliberately. “It was because you picked up that tattoo gun and told all of us that being a tattoo artist isn’t just a way to make a living, it’s a precious art form. Because we can leave eternal works on people’s skin.”

“That’s what you’ve always pursued and so have I. So, what right do you have to destroy it?”

With red-rimmed eyes, Damei glared fiercely at Xie Shaoyun, refusing to let her throw away their shared dream.

Xie Shaoyun couldn’t find the words to respond. She called out to the system in her mind and asked, “System, why has it come to this?”

“You’re asking me why? Ha! You have the nerve to ask me why?” The system began spewing curses, cycling through the same shallow, idiotic phrases over and over.

After a while, it sighed again. “Wouldn’t it have been better to just be a proper NPC? This was supposed to be your final role-playing mission. But no, you had to break character, play the good person, and now we’re stuck in this mess of reluctant goodbyes. Happy now?”

“That’s just your bias against me,” Xie Shaoyun attempted to argue. She fiddled with the heavy earring dangling from her ear. “I’ve been diligent with my tasks all these years, slacking off, dressing provocatively, hanging out with delinquents. Everyone calls me a ‘gangster sister.’”

Mentioning this only made the system angrier. It began listing all the “crimes” Xie Shaoyun had committed while playing the role of the villainess.

“Oh sure, sure! You did scold people but then you’d hand Jian Qing a piece of candy afterward, afraid she’d cry herself blind.”

“When she was six, you did take Jian Qing to the amusement park and then abandoned her there, but you beep”

A burst of static interrupted the system’s rant. A few seconds later, its voice returned.

“Exploiting loopholes in our Quick Transmigration Bureau’s rules, you really did befriend a bunch of riffraff, buddying up with gangster sister Damei. But the whole time, you were just warning her not to get a full-back tattoo because it’s a lifelong commitment.”

“You sleep in class, leave school early, and play the role of a slacker in many ways, yet you broke character to get into Nanjing University just to live up to Chi Yi’s tutoring efforts.”

“You tell me yourself how much trouble you’ve caused for our Quick Transmigration Bureau’s Role-Playing Department.” The system grew more and more agitated as it scolded her, eventually wearing itself out. It sighed like a frustrated teacher dealing with a hopeless student: “I named you No. 1 because I wanted you to complete your tasks quickly and reincarnate as a human. But look how you repay me. I already covered for you once why must you insist on breaking character for the same person again?”

Xie Shaojun let out a puzzled sound. “Breaking character? What do you mean?”

The system fell silent.

“Wait, you just said I took Jian Qing to an amusement park when I was six? Was that part of the plot? I don’t seem to remember anything from that year… Wasn’t I supposed to be transmigrated as a newborn?”

Xie Shaojun seized on the system’s slip-up, but it seemed so infuriated that it reported itself and went into lockdown.

Xie Shaojun: “…”

Damei helped Xie Shaojun carry her luggage to the door but didn’t even have time for a sip of water before answering a call and rushing off.

That night, Chi Yi didn’t call. There was no message, no contact at all. Just as she had said, she calmly accepted the divorce and cut off all ties.

Tossing and turning in bed, Xie Shaojun realized how terrifying habits could be. After getting used to a plush mattress that smelled like sunshine, returning to her own modest two-bedroom apartment left her sleepless. She flipped over several times before finally deciding to privately contact Secretary Wang the next day to ask where Chi Yi had bought that mattress.

Truth be told, as a tattoo artist of her caliber, she made a fortune. Even a small design could fetch over a hundred thousand, with clients scrambling for appointments. Xie Shaojun was loaded, yet everyone assumed she was an uneducated, penniless slacker.

The thought of all that money with nowhere to spend it in the afterlife suddenly made her melancholic.

With her savings, she could easily buy a mattress identical to Chi Yi’s hell, she could even afford a duplex apartment.

Sixty days left to live? She could splurge a million a day on herself and still have plenty to spare.

With that comforting thought, Xie Shaojun finally drifted off to sleep.

She would lie atop a pile of gold coins, shining brightly.

The next day, Xie Shaojun’s schedule was packed. She arrived at the studio by 8 a.m.

The receptionist hadn’t shown up yet, so she unlocked the door herself.

Three clients came in for touch-ups in the morning, followed by two small tattoos in the afternoon.

She spent the entire day diligently wielding her tattoo machine, zapping away at skin. Even Damei couldn’t help but give her a sidelong glance, snarking, “What’s this, Teacher Xie? Packing your schedule like this, trying to wrap things up early?”

“Wrap things up? What do you mean, Damei-jie?”

One of Xie Shaojun’s apprentices leaned in to ask.

Damei kicked him lightly. “Why ask me? If you’ve got the guts, get your shifu to explain it herself.”

Xie Shaojun ignored them entirely. As a terminal brain cancer patient, she had zero patience for nonsense.

A bunch of annoying debt collectors! She was fed up, shooing them all out with a single glare.

At 3 p.m., a high-profile celebrity came in for a tattoo.

Xie Shaojun worked meticulously, finishing by 5 p.m.

The star insisted on giving her concert tickets, so out of politeness, Xie Shaojun walked them to the door.

Only to spot two lawyers striding into Damei’s office, legal documents in hand.

Ten minutes later, Xie Shaojun saw the client off into their car, then turned back and kicked open the office door. Arms crossed, she walked up to the desk and extended her hand toward Dami, who was trying to cover something up. “Hand it over.”

“What?”

“The thing you’re hiding in the drawer.”

“Aren’t you quitting anyway? None of your business.”

Dami’s tone lacked the same vigor as yesterday when she was cursing. Xie Shaojun ignored her pettiness, yanked the drawer open, snatched the lawyer’s letter, and scrutinized it carefully.

It was a legal notice accusing Dami of botching a tattoo job. The plaintiff was IMG Models, one of the largest modeling agencies in the world.

Over a cup of tea, Xie Shaojun listened to Dami’s explanation.

A month ago, Dami had gone to New York for a tattoo convention and took on a job there. The client was a Chinese national, quite famous in the international modeling scene. She had been one of the invited guests at the convention and approached Dami after seeing some of Xie Shaojun’s sketches that Dami had brought along.

“She reached out to me first,” Dami said, hanging her head in a show of remorse. “She wanted to book an appointment with you through me. Of course, I said no. For one, you wouldn’t travel to New York for work, and two, I felt she had ulterior motives toward you.”

Xie Shaojun completely disregarded Dami’s unreliable “woman’s intuition” and coldly retorted, “So you took the job instead?”

“I refused at first,” Dami admitted. “But she offered a seven-figure price.”

Xie Shaojun was furious. The design the client had brought was a large, intricate cluster of thorny vines meant for her waist. The vibrant colors demanded exceptional skill from the tattoo artist. Even industry veterans might hesitate to take on such a challenging piece, one slip of the hand could ruin the skin.

Even if Xie Shaojun had taken the job, she would never have used the client’s original design. She would have drafted her own sketch and confirmed the client’s approval before starting.

“You deserve this,” Xie Shaojun said, too tired to scold her further.

The client was a professional model, and Dami’s botched job had effectively derailed half her career. The compensation demanded was exorbitant.

Xie Shaojun glanced at the figure on the letter and asked, “How bad is the damage?”

Dami shook her head. “I stopped as soon as I realized something was wrong. During negotiations, the client agreed to settle but insisted that you be the one to fix it. I thought it was suspicious, so I didn’t agree.”

“She specifically asked for me?”

“Yeah.” Dami nodded timidly.

Xie Shaojun thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, “You said she’s Chinese, what’s her name?”

“Her English name is Jian.” Dami quickly pulled out her phone, pulled up the client’s photo, and handed it to Xie Shaojun. “Her Chinese name is Jian Qing. Not very well-known domestically, but she has tens of millions of followers on Instagram.”

Xie Shaojun glanced at the photo with a bored expression. The little white lotus was wearing sky-high heels, her face painted with artistic designs looking even more avant-garde than Xie Shaojun herself. She wondered what Professor Xie and his wife would think if they saw this.

With a click of her tongue, Xie Shaojun pushed Dami’s phone away and narrowed her eyes. “Schedule it. Tell that white lotus to come tomorrow at 10 AM.”