Chapter 23: The Woe of The Gambler

I was stunned ... Is this the Niu Xiao’er I once knew?

Once, Niu Xiao’er...was high-spirited amongst my class mates. Although he was not the most handsome, he must have absolutely been the sunniest. Many girls had secretly given love letters to him.

But now he had a bald head, and there was an unspeakably violent scar on his eyebrows.

His right hand only had three fingers; his middle finger and little finger were gone.

He did not hide his disability, and he showed off the three fingers and said, "My brother, you judge if I have been unlucky. Years ago, I gambled with people, lost everything, and then used my fingers to gamble. Finger was thirty thousand Yuan…shit, I still lost two fingers.

I smiled and said that he was ruthless. Besides money, he began to gamble his life away.

"Damn, do not talk about this matter. I have lost all my money." Niu Xiao’er drooped his shoulder and said, "My brother, let's go at noon, we two brothers, to have a drink."

"Go." I also wanted to have a drink with him.

Although I knew he was not the Niu Xiao’er I once knew, for the sake of our old friendship, I felt we should have a glass of wine.

I took Niu Xiao’er to a little restaurant next to my tattoo studio, ready to have a meal.

Niu Xiao’er sneered at that small restaurant and said, "My brother, we can ‘teat here. In small restaurants the chef can't cook good dishes. Let us go downtown and find a classy restaurant.”

I have always been frugal. It would cost maybe a few dozen Yuan to eat at the small restaurant, but if went to the classy restaurant, it would cost a few hundred.

I was a little distressed about the money, but since the brother had said so, for the sake of peace of mind, or for the sake of face, I had to endure. I said, "The city has a Korean-style grill joint, let’s go there to eat meat."

I said that at the Korean-style grill place, it would cost two people five or six hundred dollars to eat, plus a good wine. I estimated that a few thousand Yuan were out.

But Niu Xiao’er was still dissatisfied.

He slanted his head with a bad smile, "Puff, my brother, you call that place a classy restaurant? You look like you're not going to eat. I’ve been to your city before, and I know there's a French restaurant over here, and it's very tasty. Let’s go there to eat."

I was amazed by him.

To be honest, I really didn't earn much. It’s OK if we eat something cheap, but you’re trying to make me eat "high-range food"? Isn’t this a bit...?

Alas!

I thought the meal would probably cost me all the money I’d just gotten from Mimi.

I rode the tram and took him to a restaurant in the city for a French dinner.

The place was really luxurious, and I hadn't been there before. But Niu Xiao’er, as if he was a regular, sat on the leather seat and began to order.

"Red wine, big snail, foie gras, and black truffle." He ordered casually.

I felt a pain in my wallet for his sake.

When I walked in the door, I saw the price of the big snail, oh my god, more than four hundred Yuan.

This time in the French restaurant, I estimated that I couldn't go out if I didn't spend plenty of money first.

But I belong to those people who take things as they come. Now that I was there, I was going to eat boldly. It was OK for me to swipe my credit card.

Frankly speaking, although this French food was expensive, I was really not accustomed to eating it. The black truffle was suffused with a strange flavor, the foie gras was sticky, and the big snail was unsavory.

Maybe I am the kind of person accustomed to eating scallions dipped in sauce, not such fancy dishes?

I did not eat a lot of food and kept drinking red wine, looking at him eating quickly.

After a couple of drinks, both Niu Xiao’er and I were slightly tipsy.

Everyone says that after drinking people tell the truth. He drank too much, and just told me his stories.

I almost fainted when I heard them.

Originally...his life was much more complicated than losing two fingers.

Three or four years ago, he actually had a good life.

Niu Xiao’er had opened a sanitary napkin factory at that time, specialized in fake goods such as Anerle, seven-degree space, Whisper, and other famous sanitary napkin brands. He was making fakes of those brands.

He could make tens of millions of Yuan a year at his peak.

Once people have money, they will be itching to do something. At the time, Niu Xiao’er wasn't satisfied with eating and drinking, so he became addicted to gambling.

This was a bottomless hole. Ten bets, ten losses. After two or three years he lost his all money, and his own house and car were mortgaged out.

He lost all of it.

At the end of last year, he bet the factory, and also mortgaged it. Of course, he lost.

Niu Xiao’er was really angry.

Now his wife ran back to her home, his mother was dead because of anger, and he became a loner.

Recently he was betting less. He often saw that he could not borrow more money, so he thought of me, thought of the idea of playing with a Yin and Yang Tattoo.

When I heard that, my heart was extremely shocked. I hurriedly waved, "My brother, I really advise you, don’t gamble... Let's get you a job and make a comeback. Don't you know how to drive? After a period of time, I can give you a loan to get a seventy or eighty thousand Yuan BYD; you can become a driver, make some money each month, how about that?"

"Become a driver? Oh... It's a grandson's job, I'm not going to do it." Niu Xiao’er grabbed my hand and said, "Brother, just... You tattoo me a Yin and Yang Tattoo that can gamble... Then I can make a comeback. So I can get my money back through gambling.”

"No."I said to him, "Brother, your bets destroyed you, do you still not understand? This gambling cannot make money; only hard work can make money."

"No, no, still work? I am not a diligent person ... I became rich by relying on my brain. Gambling also relies on my brain... Tattoo me a Yin and Yang Tattoo." Niu Xiao’er was afraid I didn't give him the Yin and Yang Tattoo, also grunted and said, "Brother, don’t blame me if I am talkative, but you know... If I hadn't helped you, you might have drowned in that river, right?"

As I heard this, I was very angry.

Niu Xiao’er used ‘I saved your life ‘to coerce me into giving him the Yin and Yang Tattoo.

“OK, OK.”

I held back my anger and said, "Brother, since you have brought up the old past, then I will give you the tattoo... But when this tattoo is done, don't keep finding me ... My mother now have uremia -kidney exhaustion –and is lying in the hospital, and so I give her money to make the operation. If I tattoo a Yin and Yang Tattoo for you, don't come to find me, all right? I can't endanger myself."

I found Niu Xiao’er to bean extremely extravagant gambler who didn't care about anything. I was just an honest man trying to earn the surgery fee for my mum. We were not of the same class of people, so we had to stop seeing each other later.

"OK. As long as I make money, I'll go and win the money back." He said, "By the way, your mother is seriously ill, and I have come from a distant place, bringing nothing. I’ll give some cash to let Auntie buy some nourishment."

After that, he clapped his hands and put a hundred Yuan bill on the table.

One hundred.

I did not know what to say ... In fact, if you, Niu Xiao’er, didn't make me come to this French restaurant to eat, there would still be a few thousand more Yuan for my mother’s operation expenses.

I took the money in order to save his face, and after saying thank you, I found the waiter to pay.

I altogether spent more than seventy-eight hundred Yuan for this meal.

My credit card limit was eight thousand, just enough.

I finished paying, picked up my jacket and said to him, "Let's go to the tattoo studio; I'll give you a Yin and Yang Tattoo.”

"Alas. This is right, you should not advise me to quit gambling. I, at least, was a person who earned tens of millions of Yuan a year once." Niu Xiao’er crooked his head to walk beside me.

Just then, the French restaurant's live band was playing a song called ‘sleep on my upper bunk, brother’.

I heard the song and didn’t hurry to go, standing in the doorway, listening to the song.

When I heard ‘your letters are more and more polite, you do not mention love, you say you have a lot of friends now, but no longer sad for those things’, I was deeply touched.

In these lyrics, I heard a pair of good schoolyard friends drifting away from each other.

Niu Xiao’er and I were drifting away.

He had been here all morning, but after meeting... Except for what he told me, there was nothing... I felt that we didn’t share a common language.

I wiped my sour nose and turned to go.

Niu Xiao’er said happily, "Ouch, Brother, you - a tattooist -know literature and art? You still like the songs of Lao Lang?"

I sighed. I was disgusted to Niu Xiao’er.

We went back to the tattoo studio, I gave Liu a call: “Hello.”

"What's Up? New business?”

"Not a business, a favor ... Help me get a jar of new souls." I said to Liu, "Oh, for this new soul, I’ll owe you... The credit card has no money today... I'm sorry."

The forty-two thousand Yuan I made last night I had already sent to my mother, with only a few hundred Yuan left in my hands.

"OK." Liu said, "I will give you the goods right now. Last time it was a preferential price, but now the price will increase. This new soul’s price is nineteen hundred and ninety-nine Yuan.”

"Ooh! A thousand Yuan more than yesterday?"

"Ah, you have to take into account how much one Yin and Yang Tattoo is worth," Liu said and hung up the phone.

I thought about it. The new soul is the core of a Yin and Yang Tattoo. In addition to this cost, there is no basically no other cost, and I can still make plenty of money.

"Well, it’s a deal." I turned to Niu Xiao’er and said, "Brother ... I’ll do a Yin and Yang Tattoo for you and I will not charge you money for it, but a Yin and Yang Tattoo requires a new soul, and a new soul is two thousand Yuan. Can you spend this money?"

He lay on the tattoo couch, cocked up his legs and said, "I won’t cheat you. When I came to you here, I borrowed from other people. It was still only one hundred, which I just gave for your mother to buy nutrition...Right now, I have no money."