Chapter Three: When did I get a Tattoo, 我什么时候得到纹身?

"It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?" –Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I had been wrong about school getting my mind off things. Everywhere I went I could feel the stares of classmates and teachers drilling into my back. After the bell had rung to end third period, Mrs. Hagasawa caught me by the arm before I could run out. "Taro, could you do me a favor?" she asked, her voice dripping with sweetness.

"Sure." I grumbled. C'mon! I'm gonna be late for P.E.!

"Could you take these assignments to Nozomi? She's probably going to be out for the week, so I gathered up all the notes and worksheets." Mrs. Hagasawa dumped a thick stack of papers into my hands.

"Right." I muttered, going for the door.

"Also…I…I'm so sorry about what happened…with Tomo." She whispered.

"So am I." I whispered back before jetting out of the room to avoid any further conversation. So much for school being a safe haven.

I just barely scurried into the gym as the bell rang, pulling my musty P.E. t-shirt over my head. The coach glared at me as I took my place in the cluster of people sitting on the floor. He cleared his throat and bellowed, "Today we'll be working on flexibility again. Pair up in threes and take turns doing the designated stretches. And like I explained last time, splits are not required."

Naturally I paired up with the other wimpy guys in the class to avoid being personally victimized by jocks. Fujita and Akira naturally wandered to me, groaning and complaining about the assignment. "What is the point in this? I'm going to be a symbologist when I grow up, not a stupid Olympic gymnast!" Fujita complained, adjusting his glasses. I always liked to think that they were two giant magnifying glasses slapped into frames.

"But at the moment it affects our GPA, so whether we like it or not we have to do it." I replied sleepily.

"Right then. I vote Taro goes first." Akira raised his hand.

"I forward the motion." Fujita raised his.

"That's not fair!"

"Democracy isn't fair. Now go. We promise not to push you down too far." Akira snickered.

"You guys suck." I shook my head as I pulled my arm behind my head for the first stretch. I put my legs together and leaned down in an attempt to touch my toes.

"You're not that flexible, are you?" Akira laughed pitifully and pushed on my back to make me go down farther. "Ow! Ow! That hurts!" I yelled at Akira, who seemed to be enjoying snapping my spine.

"Hey, what's that?" Fujita pointed at the back of my neck.

"It's a neck, Fujita. And you say I'm dense." Akira rolled his eyes.

"No, I mean, what's on his neck? …It looks like a tattoo!" Fujita bent my head farther down to examine my head. Akira leaned over to look as well. "Holy crap, it is a tattoo!" he wailed.

"You guys are insane!" I pulled myself up and groaned at the pain in my back. Fujita grabbed my neck and lifted my hair up to stare at my neck in amazement. "Wow… When did you get it, Taro? Looks cool…" Fujita traced his finger over the alleged tattoo.

"I never got a stupid tattoo! Now cut it out!" I growled, trying to shake his hand off.

"Were you drunk at any point in your life?" Akira asked.

"No! Will you two nitwits just leave me alone?" I pleaded, doing a lunge while Fujita still continued to scan the 'tattoo'.

"Here, I'll take a picture of it with my cell phone and show you!" Fujita sneered and snuck his cell phone out of his pocket and took a snapshot of my neck.

"There!" He said, triumphantly waving the phone in my face. Sure enough, a large black symbol had been branded into my skin.

"WHAT? W-WHEN DID--? I DON'T REMEMBER--!" I stuttered.

"Obviously at some point you got it done. You were probably drunk." Akira waved his hand.

"B-but I know I never got a tattoo! …And I've never been drunk!" I added hysterically. I heard thick sauntering footsteps crash down on the gym's floor as a burly fist clenched my shoulder.

"What's wrong with Yamamoto?" the coach barked at Akira and Fujita.

"Um…he's…uh…"

"Anxiety attack. He'll be fine in a few minutes." Fujita lied smoothly.

"Whatever. Just try to keep him from squawking like that." The coach grumbled, wandering off to terrorize a different group. "Nice one, Fujita." Akira gave him a thumbs-up. I know I never got a tattoo!

Home, 回家

I'm gonna have to start wearing turtlenecks so no one can see it…

"Hey Taro! How was your day?" Mom asked a little too sweetly when I came in the door.

"It was…good. I have to give Nozomi her homework. I'll be right back." I dug in my backpack for the thick stack of papers and scampered out the door. I hope they're doing okay…I pressed the doorbell and tried to hum to calm my nerves. The door creaked open and Nozomi stared at me, her eyes red and face blotched. "Yes?" she asked quietly.

"Um…Mrs. Hagasawa gave me these for you so you wouldn't get behind."

"Oh. Okay." Nozomi took the stack blankly and shut the door in my face without as much as a goodbye. "You're welcome." I grumbled and trudged back home.

"How was Nozomi?" Mom asked as she attempted to straighten up the kitchen table around Dad and his piles of research books he was poring over. "Not good by the looks of it. She's acting like a zombie." I sighed, plodding up the stairs, still perplexed by the marking on my neck.

I opened my laptop and powered it up, desperate for an answer. Maybe there's some sort of weird disease that makes markings appear on your skin or something… My fingers hastily ran over the keyboard, searching the net for any possible answers. Strange markings in crop circles, strange markings from alien abductions, strange markings manifesting on Bali temples…no, that's not what I need. Let's try 'mysterious spontaneous tattoos'… No match. …How about 'strange tattoos'? The page listed 13,000 references, most of them being for tattoo conventions and parlors. This is gonna take a while…After at least two hours I had combed through 3,000 of the 13,000 references and hadn't found anything remotely promising. Tattoo designs…exploring the world of strange tattoos…Tattoo the movie…Tattoo party cruises? GOD! This is all just plain stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stu—hello, what's this? 'Tattoos under strange circumstances' flashed across the screen; I clicked on the link praying it was what I was looking for.

'Since the dawning of time, tattoos have been closely associated with the paranormal world. In some aboriginal cultures in Africa, it shows spiritual maturity and their newfound connection with God.

There have also been several reports of tattoos or mysterious markings spontaneously appearing on individuals around the world. Although many have been discovered to be a ruse, there still remains the few that may indeed be related to something paranormal.'

"This is ridiculous." I shook my head and clicked the 'back' button.

School, 学校

"Hey, Fujita! Wait up!" I caught Fujita by the arm as he walked by down the hallway.

"What?" he snapped.

"Um…I was just wondering if you still had that picture of my 'tattoo' on your phone."

"Probably. Why?"

"Well…I was wondering if you could take a look at it and tell me what it is." I asked, pulling my collar up higher.

"How am I supposed to know?"

"You said you want to be a symbologist."

"Yeah."

"And yesterday you said it looked like a symbol. Ergo, I'd like you to tell me what it looks like to you." Fujita paused for a moment and thought it over. "Fine. I'll see what I can do." He pushed his glasses up and continued down the hallway. I hope he's a good symbologist.

The next day Fujita caught up with me at lunch. "Well?" I asked as he took a seat on the bench next to me. "It's actually very interesting…" he started with a mouthful of apple.

"I'd love to be enlightened."

"In my initial inspection, I couldn't find the symbol anywhere. I'd gone through every book I had and even scoured the internet for it. No matches. Then I looked at it more carefully and realized that it's not a symbol!"

"Please get to the point before I shove my straw up your nose."

"It's not a symbol, but a bunch of symbols put into one!"

"Such as…?"

"The symbol I uncovered first was an Ankh, an Egyptian letter that stood for the word 'nḫ', which means 'Life'."

"'Kay." It was obvious that Fujita liked to boast about his talents.

"Then I notcied that the bottom of the Ankh was a loop; it's supposed to be a straight line. But I saw that by rotating the symbol on its side it makes an Infinity loop."

"…"

"After that I saw that the top loop of the Ankh had a dot in it, which perplexed me for a while until I looked in one of my books to find that it goes along with the 'Eye of God' symbol, which is ironically identical to a Solar Symbol, which represents power and control. Next I looked into the three sets of three straight lines in the corners of the symbol. I immediately knew they were borrowed from the triangular representation of the Christian Trinity, a version of the Eye of Providence, a common symbol for a protector or something that is all-knowing."

"Uh…right."

"In a nutshell: the tattoo is a combination of symbols. It means: eternal life, protector or all-knowing, and immense power."

"Why didn't you just say that in the first place? …Can you tell its origin?"

Fujita shook his head. "It's a combination. It has no single origin." He started to get annoyed. "You know, it's pretty sad that you got the tattoo and have no idea what it means. Who designed it?"

"I keep telling you that I don't remember getting the tattoo!"

"Whatever you say. Thanks for the stimulating conversation." Fujita grabbed his lunch tray and walked over to his usual table in the corner of the cafeteria. Looks like I'm pretty much on square one.

Home, 回家

I rang the intercom device positioned next to the thick metal door leading to Dad's lab. "This is Dr. Yamamoto."

"Hey Dad, it's me."

"Oh, hey Taro. What's up?"

"I just want to ask you a few questions." The door opened automatically opened and I walked into the dim room. Dad sat in the far corner of the room at his desk, leaning over a test tube filled with yellow liquid and staring at it intently.

"What are you doing?" I asked, staring at the test tube, unable to see what was so interesting.

"Watching the genes combine."

"But… you can't see genes with the naked eye."

"Yes, that's correct, except that I added dye in certain parts of the genes so I can see which ones combine when the liquid changes color."

"Oh."

"You had a question?"

"Hm? Oh, right! To your knowledge is there a disease that makes strange markings appear on the body?"

"Smallpox…Chicken pox…"

"No! I mean, like, intricate designs, not spots." I sighed. Dad scratched his chin in thought.

"Intricate? No disease I know of does that. Why do you want to know, anyway?"

"I'm doing a research paper for science." I lied quickly. Weaving together lies was starting to get easier; I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"You can always research on the internet."

"I already did and all I got was a load of stories about alien abductions."

"Try specifying your query."

"I already did. I still got alien abductions." I shook my head, pulling up my turtleneck.

"People are so idiotic. Aliens don't abduct anything." Dad said with a hint of anger in his voice.

"Wait, are you saying you believe in aliens?"

"Don't you?"

"Come on, Dad. You know they're just a ruse created by people with overactive imaginations."

"Whatever you say, Taro." He said condescendingly.

"Thanks for your help." I grumbled, starting for the door.

"Wait, Taro. I know this is going to sound a little far-fetched, but…"

"What?"

"I have a theory that when a new gene is introduced into a body, the gene manifests not only into the body's genes, but also in a single concentrated area anywhere on the skin, usually taking shape as a symmetrical figure. I'm not sure I would call it a 'disease', per se, but it would be an interesting topic for your paper."

"Thanks Dad!" I smiled.

"And…why are you wearing a turtleneck?"

"I'm cold." I faked a shiver. I waved to him before he could keep asking questions and sprinted upstairs to my laptop. Dad's idea doesn't seem too out there. After all, he does experiment with genes for a living, so maybe some got into my food or something.

The search page opened and I typed in 'strange markings, genes'. Let's see: Evolution, Mouse Genetics, Albino horses, Altered Human Genes, Equestrian FAQ… Wait! Altered Human Genes! I clicked on the link and wasn't quite prepared for what I saw. It looked like it was some sort of news clip.

"Headline: Ryou Shirogane takes responsibility for creating Tokyo Mew Mews! After the more recent attack on Tokyo, Dr. Shirogane took full credit for creating the Mews. "I injected a special kind of gene into five girls after detecting an alien presence on Earth. I decided to use the genes from endangered species, since they tend to be more resilient and have a greater want to preserve their species than other animals. I designed the gene so that when the threat was gone, their DNA would return to normal and when a threat presented itself again, the genes would activate again."

Many have tried to duplicate Dr. Shirogane's work, only to end up with catastrophic results. Only Dr. Shirogane has been able to successfully insert genes, and it seems he isn't keen to share his secrets. But as of 2007, Dr. Shirogane announced that he was bringing a halt to his research without offering an explanation, leaving many unanswered questions in his wake. The list of questions is endless: Who were the girls that were injected with the genes? Are their genes really stable? Were there more than the original five girls that were altered? Will Earth ever need the assistance of Tokyo Mew Mew again? Only time will tell. –This is Mia Haragata, Channel Four News, June 25, 2027."

I stared at the computer screen with my mouth agape. No one had seen or heard from the Mews since around 2006. Growing up they'd just been a bedtime story and now here was a fairly recent news clip about them right in front of my eyes. I didn't even think they were real…Maybe Dad can tell me something about them; I'm pretty sure he was around when the last Mews were here. Mom too, for that matter.

"Mom! Hey Mom!" I called as I bounded down the stairs. I found her sitting on the couch in the living room trying to write her latest song.

"Where's the fire?" she joked, not even looking up from her guitar.

"Mom, can you tell me about the Tokyo Mew Mews?" I asked. Mom's face twisted into a look I would've laughed at if I wasn't being serious. "Um…sure. What do you want to know?"

"Names, powers, anything!"

"Sure. The first Mews were Mew Ichigo, Mew Mint, Mew Lettuce, Mew Zakuro, and Mew Pudding. Mew Ichigo had been appointed as the leader. Tokyo was really chaotic that year... Then a little after the first round of aliens had been defeated, Mew Berry was added after a new threat came to Tokyo: The Saint Rose Crusaders. It wasn't quite as bad as the first round of aliens, though, thank goodness."

"Are you telling me that aliens attacked Tokyo?" I laughed.

"Yes. Then a few years after the Saint Rose Crusaders came another round of aliens. Another Mew was introduced and soon the danger was gone. Since then Tokyo's been peaceful." Mom finished contentedly.

"What was the last Mews' name?"

"I don't remember." Mom said quickly. "Why the sudden interest?"

"I'm writing a science paper on…um, genetics."