Sorry for your loss. Now it probably make sense as your cousin died "young"?, and so it could be "夭" , (youthful passing), or "天", (in Heaven) Perhaps the Tattoo master really knew what he was doing, assuming you explained the sad situation to him?

Judging from the skin tone, and doing a tattoo without knowing the language, he is quite young?, at least at the time the tattoo was done?

We need to know the words on top to know what it really is? It looks a lot like "夭"?

Here's a modern song based on that -- youtu.be/Cs6ZUESJuHgsi=pIdwEe8SWKmcgAWv

This is not an answer, just speculation. Quote:- "...how does 力 relate in any way to 幼's meaning, 'young'?" The silk radical, 幺, also means " the most young" or a "minor component", also the number 1 of a dice or the "1" in mahjong as opposed to "9" Well, the silk 丝, is produced by the silk worm, the "young" caterpillar of a specie of moths. And the silk, for its size, is well known for its "strength", 力. So, I supposed the idea being the "young" silkworm is able to produce something of "strength", In any case, youth or the young, in any culture, has also been associated with strength.

Unless we consider the question and the answer options as a general test of one's understanding of the Chinese words and phrases in a situational context?

Yes, at least in the early stages. Even foreigners who spend some time in a Mandarin speaking environment needs fine tuning because, like all languages, vocal nuances, especially spoken at some speed, is quite different as it appear on paper. Here's a funny example, youtu.be/XRsGNjMkfFE?si=-r4bAXuQPEGdMSZv. A famous oldie song sung by 潘秀琼, born in Macau, China, grew up in Malaysia and Singapore, is a Singaporean singer. Please tell me where she went wrong?

"幹(loudly)~~(1 sec)~~什麼(quietly)" You cheeky little ............. :) (Options: words starting with (a) "s", (b) "m", (c) "b" (d) "c" (Note: @Becky is exempted)

"...to prevent any subnation separatism", i.e. "separatism nationalism", being the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, regional, governmental separation. Was that the unspoken intention of the policy makers in1949 when Mandarin as 普通话 was introduced? The case of the Republic of Singapore comes to mind; that country has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. Mandarin is called 华语, not 普通话. If the PRC were to do the same, to quell any separatist ambition, to give every language / 方言 a place in the sun, it'll have god knows how many official languages.

By these definitions, "Mandarin" was originally a "方言" since historically it was spoken primarily in the region around Beijing? But becomes a "National Language", (named "普通话"), by governmental edict rather than it being a truly transregional lingua franca which it later becomes after 70 years of pedagogical and general usage. Perhaps the confusion, (argument), stems from a strict, rigid definitive correlation between 方言 & Dialect in the sense that a dialect is a 方言 but a 方言 is not necessarily a dialect?

There are also lots of other metallic metaphors around the World, such as "Golden Parachute", "Golden Handshake", "Golden Handcuffs", and, wait for it, Trump's "Golden Diapers" -- youtube.com/watch?v=nTZJu_baYdg

On the English side we have Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain", (a political metaphor used to describe the political and later physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas of influence). It does not mean that the English people actually use curtains made of iron, at least not in ordinary homes.

As far as I know, 幹, as a vulgar profanity, such as 幹你老媽, (pronounced in Hokkien of course), is used quite often, (I dare say exclusively), by the Hokkien immigrant community in South East Asian countries. So, I suppose that accounts for its relative rarity in the Main Land which of course has its own iconic collection of metaphoric profanities.