Black ink tattoo of two koi fish swimming in a circle on the inner wrist, in a Japanese style with soft brushed shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two koi fish in a circle on a wrist

Japanese · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two black koi fish swim head to tail around an open circle, forming a balanced, yin-yang-like shape. The fish are shaded with soft, brushed black ink and grey washes, with small fins and ripples suggested around them. The tattoo sits on pale skin against a dark background, centred on the inner wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hideo had ground ink for forty years, and he still would not let Emi finish a fish before he had watched her breathe. "Too quick," he said, tapping the sheet with one dry finger. "Your fish are late for their own lives."

Keep reading

She tried again for nine evenings. Each koi came out separate, a dark comma on the paper, and each time he rolled the sheet into the bin without comment. On the tenth night she carried the lantern down to the pond behind the teahouse, where the water was black and the carp moved like thoughts under ice. Two of them, one ink-black and one smoky grey, were circling the flat stone at the pond's edge, nose to tail, never once catching up.

She watched until the lantern guttered. Then she went back and painted them the way they had swum: one brush load of ink for the first fish, the grey wash pulled after it, the second fish starting exactly where the first had ended. Her wrist moved in a slow ring and did not lift.

Hideo came in at dawn, held the sheet to the window and said nothing for a long time. Then he pointed at the middle, where she had left the paper bare. "That is the stone," he said. "The fish never swim over it. Leave the gap open and they will always have somewhere to go."

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